Bicyclops posted:

Lode Runner
this was a pretty cool puzzle game in the vein of Wrecking Crew. gold is scattered throughout the level, as are enemy guards. you can move, climb ladders, climb horizontally along ropes, and eliminate a brick block that is immediately underneath you; they reappear after a few seconds. you can fall as far as you want. you lose if the guards get you, if your brick reappears in a space that you're inside, or if you get stuck in an area that you can't escape from (this is easy to do, on purpose). sometimes there are invisible holes that both you and guards will fall through if you try to walk on them (this is surprisingly not as annoying as it sounds most of the time). if the guards end up in a brick as its reappearing, they respawn, but they can also easily get stuck. there's a lot to do with those basic concepts! personally, i don't think there is 150 levels of it, though, so i'm glad i played the NES port, which only has 50 levels. that felt just about right. when you beat the game, it just loops back to the beginning - no ending. i was curious if there was supposed to be a story, so i read the instruction booklet - apparently you are supposed to be a galactic rebel stealing unfair food taxes back from the vaults of an evil empire, lol.

interestingly, there's a level editor, which i think would have been pretty revolutionary at the time. it feels pretty clunky now, and the main game feels like it explored most of the interesting things that you can do with the mechanics, with more screen room than the level editor has. still, it's a very early example of letting players make their own content, and probably the most impressive thing about the game.

some complaints: often the puzzle aspect is figuring out how to dig into a set of bricks to get some gold without locking yourself in, which is fine, but on a few levels, the solution for getting out is falling through an invisible hole. that sucks. the difficulty curve on this is also weird. there are levels in the teens and 20s that are middle-of-wrecking-crew hard, but most of the levels after 40 just involve moving quickly to capture the guards, and the puzzles sort of start to fizzle out. also, in wrecking crew, you could pause and pan over the screen to plan. while it's not as necessary in lode runner, there are levels where it would have helped (i believe this is unique to the NES port, as you can see the full screen on the apple 2 version).

next up: Raid on Bungeling Bay, which sounds like it was designed purely to give imps an opportunity to make fun of its name.

trying to jack off posted:

afterb you play 2 do not play 3, its a rockstar cover shooter with unskippable cutscenes

Kongming posted:

It makes sense if you side with Dagda as you're trying to create a new world so you need to dethrone God. But yeah it makes no sense if you get the "power of friendship" ending.

Bicyclops posted:

i wish i had played this version. even the normal song is catchy though, lol.

Spelunker
while this metroidvania was designed for the previous generation of consoles, it was at the tail end during the crash, so the NES version is perhaps the most well-known. apparently this is infamous for its poor controls, and don't get me wrong, they're bad, but i think it's just the game's complicated development cycle make it a second generation game on a third generation console. more than anything else, this feels like playing Pitfall, and it controls about how Pitfall did. that just feels terrible because it's on a console with games that control more like Super Mario Bros. you can only fall a couple of pixels, and the slightest tap when you're climbing a rope makes your guy climb off of it into thin air. areas like this make you break out into a cold sweat:



that's basically the major problem: the jumping requires very precise inputs. it's intentional that it's hard, but it's naturally pretty frustrating. but it's cool! you have a limited power supply that ticks down as you explore, and there are batteries that recover it at set points in the cave. other things you can collect are treasures, keys, bombs and flares. treasures give you points. keys (there are blue and red) unlock doors of their color, and bombs can blow up boulders that block your path. there are only two enemies in the game: a bat and a ghost. you can temporarily scare the bat away with a flare, and you can bust the ghost at the cost of some of your power supply. they're not nearly as much of a threat as falling off a ladder or missing your jump by a pixel. the game has checkpoints where you recover your power. it's a pretty good game if you think of it as an atari game with upscaled graphics rather than a nintendo game.

full disclosure, the game puts you back in the same cave but ups the difficulty something like six times, but i only played through the first cycle. that felt like enough, i got a victory screen:

elf help book posted:

spelunker party on switch is very good

mycophobia posted:

this game is cool

elf help book posted:

instead of playing gradius play the sexy gradius - like game from the creators of gradius: otomedius excellent

SpaceAceJase posted:

DUSK
Death Wish 1.7 (Blood: Fresh Supply)

ArfJason posted:

English Country Tune (100%): i first "finished" this like 6 years ago, but i had 2 puzzles left to truly complete the game. I would try them randomly every now and then over the years, and early this year i completed one of them, but the final one, from the HALF PLANTED world, has stumped me over and over no matter how many times ive tried. today i finally, *finally*, got this motherfucker done.

absolutely fantastic puzzle game, and no wonder the guy would eventually go on to make stephens sausage roll

Fungah! posted:

blaster master zero 2. really good game except for the long eve section at the end, i'll need to get 3 when it goes on sale

welcome posted:

Wizards & Warriors (NES)

I think I used four continues? I wish I'd known about the feather in level 2 back in the day so I could've beat it then, instead of dying 300 times in level 3 waiting for a blue potion to spawn. Now I want to try Ironsword again but I know I won't beat it.

trying to jack off posted:

the snes wheel of fortune theme always cracked me up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-52QjeZdag

Arrhythmia posted:

Axelay. Easy, 6 continues. I don't want to hear it.

Wormskull posted:

Tembo the Badass Elephant - 5 hours

This game is a lovely platformer that you die from it being so tedious. Avoid at all costs.

Wormskull posted:

They put in a bunch of movement tech that a grown man could enjoy but every level and boss is keep the kid quiet tier tedious trash that makes you impatient.

absolutely anything posted:

drill dozer was cool they should make another onea those

ArfJason posted:

I hate the term nintendo hard so much cause its an excuse for very retarded bullshit in old games lol and most modern games that market themselves as "RELIVE THE DIFFICULTY OF OLD GAMES" do things a lot differently ie: super meat boy had very short levels so itd be like having checkpoints everywhere and infinite lives

absolutely anything posted:

i had to save before talking to any npc because it was basically a 50/50 on whether or not it would crash. there were a couple of times i forgot and lost like an hour of progress for daring to check the shop. if i was extra lucky the only thing it would do is this



like honestly i think the switch version should be actually illegal to sell. the nicest thing you can say about it is that it's technically beatable

Wormskull posted:

Wormskull posted:

“Finished” inside of John Romero’s of age, alive, consentual mom’s of age pussy last night.