Yet again I’m in a state of mind where I know how to play a game to the end, although I don’t seem to be able to work my way in a single credit. Blame it on difficulty, blame it on rank, but most of all blame it on me for believing I’m already ripe for the 1CC when in fact I’m still in need of practice. Never was that message from the announcer in Gradius II more true than it is in my gaming routine right now.

With the upcoming cross-platform release of Under Defeat upon us I thought it would be nice to clear the Dreamcast game before seeing its new HD incarnation in current gen consoles. I dipped my toes for a few days and finally engaged in learning the necessary chops some three weeks ago. The game has proven to be a soul crusher, and with my gaming time reduced it seems even more cruel in its hatred towards pretentious players. It’s teaching me the meaning of humility.

Being under a constant state of defeat should be bad for me. Nevertheless the game is so good that this becomes irrelevant. It’s a work of intense beauty with a vicious challenge that protrudes above the wonderful aesthetics, a late nod to the old school way of shmupping. It makes you feel powerful even when you lose, like when you nail 100% on that snowy 4th stage regardless of how awfully you performed on the 3rd stage.

Now let me go practice.

SOFT RANT MODE OFF

I had been anticipating this place opening for a while and was excited to try out some of the classics.

I tried most of their games out. Asteroids, Burgertime, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Defender, Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong (2 of them!), Donkey Kong Junior, Frogger, Joust, Ms. Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Space Invaders Deluxe, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Track & Field.

The first game I played was Crystal Castles. Never played it before. It uses a rolling ball for control of the character.  This game was pretty fun and the ball control worked well. Right away I was spinning the ball fastly to sweep up the lines of dots. I looked at the marquee game play instructions on many of the games I had never played or didn’t fully understand how to play.  And some just because they look cool.  This place has all the original cabinets for these games and some are pretty cool to behold.  Space Invaders Deluxe for example, uses a projection of the game screen onto what appears to be a thin cardboard scene of a city.  The best word I can think of to describe playing it is that it’s classy. Very classy.  I don’t recall playing Space Invaders with 2 buttons for left and right, either.

Another game with buttons for left and right was Asteroids, positioned just adjacent right to Space Invaders.  Space Invaders is also the game closest to the entrance. Where Rampage is also close but adjacent the store’s main window where there is a table and bench for players to take a break.  Also a fridge for Mexican coke, (AKA, the real cane sugar shit!).

Asteroids was a game that I grew addicted to almost instantly.  Before I played it I was watching another guy playing, almost beating the hi-score of 37k.  I saw him disappear and appear somewhere else and I said, “Whoa, what was that trick?” and he told me about the hyperspace feature.  I had no idea it existed.  I had never actually seen an asteroids cab and the way the game brightly lights shots fired was captivating to me. It’s cool how it brings so much focus to the game, the shots and how bright they are.  Also, the sound effects are awesome.  The music resembles something like Space Invaders, as time progresses in a stage it beats faster and the UFO enemies keep coming.

Later on I watched the same guy from Asteroids playing Burgertime, and there he explained some of the mechanics and how to play correctly to me as well.  I tried to play but barely got lucky enough to beat the first stage I think.

Centipede also sparked my interest a little more than other games on the first day. I don’t remember ever playing Centipede before.  It was also controlled by trackball.  At first, I didn’t realize I could move up and down in the bottom area of the screen.  I’ve played this one a handful of times and it’s still odd to me. Not exactly sure what my strategy is supposed to be yet.  Really odd, hard, but interesting shooter.

The DK and DK Jr cabs were a bit odd to me.  The joystick felt really mushy the way it was moved around.  It felt like it was broken but at the same time it was responsive if I held it depressed all in one direction.  The stick was throwing me off completely and I could only manage to beat the first stage in DK and DK Jr.  Are they supposed to feel like this?

All of the games in this arcade use American cabinets with American parts from what I can tell.  Including the Street Fighter Alpha 3 cab with its Happ parts and uniform American button layout.

All in all Rusty Quarters is a great little place to hang out and play retro arcade games.  They have cubby holes for you to store your backpacks or coats which I find quite handy and the table, (if only just one) is nice to have if you need to take a little break.

On the 2nd day I went, Space Invaders was glitching out on me, sadly.  A fake UFO will sweep across the bottom of the screen creating its own barrier.  Then about 5 seconds later all of the invaders rush the screen and I get an instant game over. Sucks man. I hope they fix it because playing that game is possibly the highlight of the place for me. It’s just so cool.

Having already made it to Stage 5 boss in normal play, I went and savestate-practiced the latter stages because I got frustated over having to play ~20 minutes just to make it to where I’m having problems. Worked wonders. Figured out quick-kill techniques for the last four bosses, though they basically boil down to “get real close so your pod does huge damage”. Still, felt good finding those. Of course using those means points lost, you could milk some of the bosses for spawning enemies, but it’s a checkpoint-shmup anyway, so scoring isn’t really a high factor in the game’s appeal in the first place.

There’s a Whoops-moment just before the fourth boss, when I accidentally detonate the pod when I was just trying to lock the bits back in place. Oh well. Luckily that boss can easily be done without the pod and I just played Stage 5 a bit more carefully until I got powered up again. Come to think of it, I imagine the first five stages could be done without the pod completely…but from Stage 6 onwards there’s quite a lot of enemy fire coming your way, I don’t know if those are possible without the pod’s frontal protection.

I really like the C powerup, which increases the shot’s charging speed and allows you to hit rapid max faster with fewer button taps. It’s like the developers saying “Fuck that constant tapping, here, take this so your fingers won’t fall off”. And even then the game is roughly 50% about applying charge shots, I do almost the whole last stage with that alone.

Anybody else notice that the first boss is like a garbage-version of the final boss? Looks kinda the same, has similar attacks…it didn’t occur to me until this last run.

Video at my site and Youtube.

It was an okay run overall. My fight against the first boss didn’t go exactly according to my usual battle plan, instead I kept jumping around like a moron, but hey. My first death was in the ladders of Stage 3. Real bummer that one, probably could’ve been avoided. It takes two bullets to take those guys down, and you’ll notice I did shoot him twice, but the second bullet hit him while he was still in the last frames of his invulnerability period which allowed him to take a shot off.

I’m very pleased I didn’t die again until the latter part of the last stage. The game’s all about finding the right pacing for each situation, sometimes you want to take your time and kill every enemy on screen, other times you want to just run past as fast as possible since enemies themselves don’t hurt you, only their bullets do. The hallway of lasers is certainly of the latter variety. The last two deaths were just unfortunate timing, especially the last one. Echoing my first death, the last death happened mere frames after my own invulnerability period had worn off.

Video at my site and Youtube.

But that’s still a long way ahead. Out of the game’s eight stages I’ve only seen the first five. I’ve one-lifed it to the fifth boss a couple of times and every time I do he seems to have a new attack waiting for me. And as per usual in this subgenre, dying once means you’re pretty much fucked. Not that it’s terribly hard to get back to the boss from the checkpoint, I’ve done it, but the ship’s so underpowered it’s difficult to put up a good fight. Actually, in large part that’s due to lacking the C powerup, which simply accelerates the rate at which your cannon is charged (and also makes it easier to reach max. rapid firepower). With C you can really dish out the firepower and bosses tend to fall very quickly.

Instead of letting the fact that the game is best cleared on the first life bother me, I’ve taken it to mean that the first life is when I play serious and safe, the rest are for experimentation. Figuring out if there’s space to squeeze through that spot, if that route is better, stuff like that. It’s a long process to be sure, I just hope I can keep at it.

Also, I finally crossed over that final line in arcade gaming and got into PCBs. There was a lovely supergun for sale (made by the very talented RGB, who also made me my CMVS) and I jumped on it. As an added bonus, all the hacked Saturn controllers I had for the CMVS also work with the supergun perfectly. Very awesome. And yes, that means I’ll be using autofire with those games as well.

My plan is to only own a couple of PCBs at any one time. Buy a game, reach the arbitrary goal I’ve set for it (1LC for most, I’d guess), make a video, sell it, repeat from step one. We’ll see how spectacularly that plan fails. For now, I only have one PCB, Irem’s GunForce: Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island, a pre-Metal Slug run’n'gun. It was a good purchase as it was fairly cheap, it’s made by my probably favorite gaming company and it only received a what I understand is a not-so-great SNES port. It’s a pretty fun game, too.

It’s certainly flawed, though. Though there’s several vehicles to jump into, you don’t really need them and many times it’s even better to ignore them completely. Even though the vehicles have their own hitpoints, enemies can still hit the player character directly as well, and it’s much harder to dodge a shot you see clearly coming your way when you’re on a tank. So it’s not like the Metal Slug where you just hide inside and take a pounding.

The biggest problem with the game, however, is its absolutely bonkers off-the-asylum-wall player hitbox. I made some gifs of my recent fights against the first boss to demonstrate:

<– This doesn’t kill you…while this does –>

Quite insane. I think I’ve once made it to Stage 4 on my first life but that was a rare occasion indeed. My best credit has been midway into Stage 6, the last stage. But I’ve only made it to that stage twice overall, a good part of my runs end already at Stage 4. I should be able to manage a 1CC, but I’m not sure I want subject my sanity to trying to one-life this. Interestingly, when I credit-fed through the game to get a bit more acquainted with the later stages, I actually killed the last boss on my first try, without dying. Yet I still get killed by the first boss way too often because the nutty hitbox. (Actually, I guess it could be that only that boss’ that particular attack has a bugged hitbox, I haven’t noticed such ridiculousness with my deaths elsewhere.)

On the plus side, the game’s very short. A full playthrough only takes around 15 minutes. This makes it much more comfortable to start a new credit, when you know you can be back at your problem spot very quickly. I often end up playing 5 credits in a row which takes me around 40-50 minutes, yet I usually only play one credit of Pulstar at a time because currently it takes around 20 minutes to get back to my problem spot…and I’m only barely over the halfway point in that game.

I do have some other PCBs coming in (and I’m on the lookout for a few more) so hopefully I can keep working on these without being terribly distracted.

This place had two arcade cabinets near the entrance of the restaurant and next to the games was an odd fortune-telling machine taller than me that gauged your “lovelines,” was that it? It had a white ball you rested your hand on.  The games were Pac-Man and Commando.  Commando had the “Commando” title burned onto the screen.

To go off on a tangent about playing Pac-Man before I get to Commando:

I had played Pac-Man a good amount already, in fact, one of my friends’ Dad owned a cocktail Pac-Man cabinet in their home.  I spent a lot of time at his house playing Pac-Man, it was an awesome thing to do.  I played so much that after what must have been 2 months of sneaking credits in when my friend was doing something else: I beat his Dad’s score on the machine.  Reaching 1 million points, I got my first taste of playing a game for score and the thrill of beating someone’s score.

I remember I was really proud of myself for beating his Dad’s score.  It was a million points in Pac-Man after all.  A credit that must’ve lasted a half hour and a credit that featured the whole variety of point items.  I held that glory for the following week or so and one day I came back to his house and I found out that his Dad had unplugged the machine and reset my score.  I remember that fact brought me a dirty satisfaction because I thought that he wasn’t pleased that I beat his score.  But I also felt a tad deflated that my score was off of the machine.  After that time I didn’t set a new score, I had already had my fun.

Back to Old Mexico.  It may have been because I already played Pac-Man that Commando stuck out to me. And well, it was Commando. A game that wasn’t Pac-Man but a newer game, a vertically scrolling world war themed shoot’em’up by Capcom.  I asked my parents for a few quarters and that’s all I played for each visit, maybe a couple more after we ate.  It was a difficult game and I uncommonly reached the 2nd stage but I did like it.

Some 10 years later, I began to play Commando again in the comfort of my own home with a pre-built arcade joystick and button setup.  I’m not standing anymore or asking my parents for quarters, or catching customers walk into the bathrooms in the corner of my eye but it’s something.  I’ve been playing the past year or so it seems. Not using any save states for practice because I have held this nostalgia of playing the game like I would in that restaurant.  But tonight, I’ve finally seen and beat all 8 stages, where the game declares your mission completed.  But the game just keeps looping anyway.

Back then, I never imagined that I could see all 8 stages of the game.  It was mostly just something to do to kill time.  I was, however, keen on playing.  Maybe I would beat the 2nd stage this time?  No idea, maybe I’d get lucky.  I never was that lucky.  But I loved the thrill of beating the first stage, where enemy soldiers flood out from a large gate.  Some running like being chased by killer bees and others spraying bullets and lobbing grenades like a slow-motion battle sequence, it was a chaotic end of a stage.

The 2nd stage end-area has a lot of enemies flooding you from 6 caves and it’s a tighter space than the first stage end-battle.  Even beating the 2nd stage in the recent year I found there was a methodical strategy and skill to beating it.  But when I played as a kid I merely hoped for the best, probably scantly devising some crass button-mashing method.

Tonight I saw the end of the stages and one section features something annoying but comical that I couldn’t pass previously where cars drive straight down from the top of the screen trying to run your ass over.  I can imagine the enemy general thinking “Fuck! He’s killing all our men. Okay, get in the cars! He can’t kill those as easily… and RUN HIS ASS OVER!”  Before this the cars and motorists were attempting a flank kill so I guess this was their last resort move.  Many of the cars rush down while soldiers take pot-shots at you.  The rest I just played like you play the majority of the stages, constantly moving upwards and doing a spread shot kind of attack, picking off intrusive enemies in the way and managed to finish the last end area.

I was somewhat surprised to find that beyond the first 2 stages, that Commando was a real gem of a game all together.  I guess I knew it was fun, but I didn’t expect my enjoyment to necessarily last to the completion of the 8 stages.  I just thought of it as that game I played at Old Mexico but now it’s a game that I cherish and will continue to play when I want a cheap thrill.  Thanks Capcom and thanks to the brave soldiers that died in the war.

But, NO! I finished Dragon Warrior IV!  I took my time.  Maybe completing this game was a sign that I’m not a teenager anymore.  Given that circumstance, I would have completed the game in a few weeks to a month.  Times do change, yea, so I really took my time with this one.  Well, now that I think about it more–this isn’t the first time I spent more than a few months on an RPG or game in recent years. Persona 4, yeah, that took nearly a year.

So perhaps not only because I don’t have the obsessive compulsion to power through games anymore, is the fact that Dragon Warrior IV is an NES RPG.  But a little patience and frame-skip was all I needed to rightly appreciate it– Lest I become burnt out on pixels on random encounters.

I wanted to play Dragon Warrior because I wanted to see the similarities to the Mother series and because I wanted to play one of the NES era Dragon Warriors to get to know the roots of the series.  I found more than a few similarities that I’d like to point out in a list.

1. The changing color window menus: White border when your party is healthy. Green when one of your members is close to death. Red when a member is KO’d.
2. Instead of losing progress when Game Over’ing, you just return to the last save point with KO’d members who are revived for a fee.
3. A variety of music for the overworld and battles.
4. Limited inventory for each character.
5. An auto-fight feature (introduced in Chapter 5 for your other party members)
6. A teleport ability and many similar abilities i.e. buff and sap spells.
7. High experience enemies. (Metal Slimes to Fobbies / Foppies and the Criminal Caterpillar)
8. Starting each chapter as a new character alone, uniting them towards the end of the game.
9. Terrific hits = Smaaaash! hits
10. In Chapter 5, you use a colossus to travel a mass of water. (In EarthBound, this is somewhat similar to the use of Dungeon Man’s submarine to reach Deep Darkness.  And to the fact that Dungeon Man can move at a point.

The AI was competent enough for auto-fight in chapter 5. It didn’t bother me much switching tactics occasionally.  The teleport ability was very welcome and it became available quickly in the game with the use of Wings of Wyverns.  The high experience enemies were awesome to have around. They gave tons of experience.  Limited inventory was not often a large worry but you did need to stock your items somewhat smartly in the early chapters. I compared the terrific hits to Smaaaash! hits because both seemed to do more than your average critical hit in an RP-type-G.  Point 10 about the colossus just kind of stuck out to me as funny as Dungeon Man is one of the weirdest/ coolest parts about EarthBound in my opinion.

On the music: it was wonderful. I never heard an NES soundtrack so emotive and deliberate in its melodies.  This is clear to be heard for a couple of symphonic albums released for DQ IV’s music.  In spending that extra 40 seconds idling in the overworld or for that extra long battle, looking over a FAQ or itching my ass; the melody would go on to tell a whole new aspect of the story that was going on with the characters.  I love the story the music tells to accompany the events of the story.

For example in Chapter 4, the story of a dancer and fortune teller whom are sisters. Their battle music portrays just this premise of a dancer and fortune teller attempting to defeat dangerous monsters.  Surprise, bewilderment, confusion, uncertainty, teamwork, cunning, shouting and crying are all things happening for these two characters in their plight. Koichi Sugiyama paints the canvas of my imagination with his lively compositions.  Every time I heard a new song in the game I was always happy and hearing the latter verses always brought a new light to the ideas revolving around the story.

I think part of why the music is so successful is because the story and motives of the characters are straight-forward and not overly written in.  Few key lines get the point across.  Some of the best are when characters meet each other and join.  The brevity of their union is almost magical.

‘Very impressive!’ ‘Hero, let’s fight together to save the world!’ – Ragnar, after the Hero slays a boss.

‘I’ve one favor to ask of you. Monsters are after me.’ ‘I’d feel safer being with strong people like you.’ ‘Let me join you. Let’s travel together all over the world!’ – Taloon, the fat Arms Merchant.

I feel this way about the characters being mostly open slates in the Mother series as well, particularly Mother 1 and 2.  Jeff’s introductory speech is still funny to me, especially when you decline him.

On the overall difficulty of the game, it was not particularly unfair or “grindy.” I did however Game Over many times usually when I ran out of provisions and I was deep in a dungeon.  Thankfully this was not a large concern because getting Game Over doesn’t restart your progress.

On party management the wagon is a great idea.  In overworld areas and some areas the whole party received experience.  But the 4 members outside of the wagon only gain experience in dungeons.  Because of this I was able to make use of all the characters without some characters becoming too low-leveled to use.  Each character had their own purpose but I will say that Ragnar and Taloon were my most un-used in Chapter 5.  Mostly because Alena is just too badass with her double strike and Terrific hits occurring often.

Wrapping this up but one thing I need to mention is the day and night cycle for the overworld and towns.  This feature really helped the atmosphere.  In the day-night change the color palette changes about 5 times.  Every change is meaningful, reflecting the light or night beckoning or escaping on the land. And you could freeze one of those palettes by entering a town.  Also cool was that the night in town was different from day and new dialogue NPC was available and in some cases events only happened at night.

I recommend this game for anyone willing to play an older style RPG.  I did manage my time a bit by frame-skipping the battles that only required mashing the A-button. But playing the real thing may be a test of patience as enemy encounters can be frequent in some areas.  For me this was a great J-RPG experience.  Charming through and through and by the epilogue I was moved at what I had gone through.  30 some hours in front of a CRT monitor, Sega Saturn USB pad in hand.  Hats off to Enix.

What Dragon Quest game should I play next?

If you follow my blogs on this site you probably know I really like TwinBee.  It’s damn fun and having a goal to strive for is going to make reaching 4 million that much more enjoyable.

Right now I have all the save states I need setup for practicing the tough parts up to 4 million.  The most annoying part about achieving this score is going to be the fact that recovering in this game is very haphazardly risky.  There are only some select places in the latter 10+ stages where you have the opportunity to power up via bells without being harassed by enemies or enemy fire.  I feel uncomfortable with intentionally dying when I only have one arm left and no medics.  Only because by doing that I’m risking ending my credit from constant deaths on a failed recovery.  On the other hand, if I lose my last arm or die during a hectic part of a stage, it’s also game over.

I found a place in stage 20 where I could possibly recover, in the metallic club area.  But as it stands I’m not sure if I can rely on recovering.  I’ll have to very careful not to lose my arms as I play.  Right now I feel confident that I can beat 4 million, and I’d like to set a new bar for a western record with that.  Maybe 5 million or better yet, I believe the game counterstops at 10 million.

I tried to test out using the shield + spread shot combo but it just doesn’t provide enough firepower for the latter stages compared to using options.  So I’ll be sticking with options.

Overall I’m happy with this endeavor because this game is just so fun!  Updates to come as I make attempts to 4 Million.

Many people complain about the slow ship speed in Raiden III but after playing Raiden IV which has a slightly faster default ship speed, I can say with confidence that Raiden III’s slow ship speed is not an issue.  But that is only true if you understand how to play Raiden III or Raiden IV.  Speed is not an issue because most of survival can be boiled down to using small dodges; weaving inbetween bullet spreads.  Seldom is a situation where you need speed to reach a safe area.  Rather, the safe areas are present in the design of the bullet patterns.  Where it is the player’s job to find a good preemptive positioning and dodging strategy to avoid death.  This includes not cornering yourself when bullets will trap you! I guess the laymen just blindly assumes speed is what is needed to avoid death.  And we (shmuppers) see the same rash assumptions elsewhere such as in bullet hell games where the onlooker assumes a stupid amount of skill is needed to play these games.  No, only a small chunk of enlightenment will do people good!

I can’t say what people will like or won’t like, however.  But Raiden III and IV are no-frills, classic shoot’em’up action and this is why I love these games.

I came back to playing Raiden III after a long hiatus! (But not before my time with Raiden IV)

The last time I played I had practiced and familiarized with most of the game and was in fact mostly prepared to perform the 1cc. I got burnt out or bored of it, however, and stopped playing.  Coming back recently was not that difficult, though.  It’s amazing how the brain works.  Because despite, at least, a few months where I had left the game, it only took me a couple hours of practice to become acclimated again with the stages and bosses of the game.

Both are great games and each offer a hefty dose of Raiden style gameplay.  It’s hard to say one is better than the other but I think the bosses and stages of IV were more diabolical compared to III.  Stage 6 and 7 are amazing in III.  I like the colorful parts of Raiden III and I feel like Raiden IV had more of that.  The more I think about both games, the more I realize they are quite similar to each other.  My mind has blanked out thinking of both of these games together in my head.  Guess that’s it.  ’Till next entry.

Given that, it’s a deep source of shame for me that I’ve never cleared it. Like much that brings shame, I’ve resolved this mostly through repression. When I’m playing Ghouls I ache knowing nothing I could do with a pad that would be as worthy as beating it, and when I’m not playing it I’m sealing all thought of it behind bulwarks of ego.

And then Ghegs happens to mention that he’s playing it. And while he might not sign up for the previous two paragraphs, he also holds it in high regard and also has not gotten the deed done. So our pact was that we should both knuckle down and work on that there clear, while sharing notes, woes and fellow-feeling here on gamingjournals.

Clear means both loops, of course. I’m strangely unsure just how close I’ve gotten. I’ve looped it in years gone by, but only a handful of times, and I’m not sure how deep I went into the second loop on any of those runs. I do know that, back when I was at my best, many (most) of my plays ended at the st5 boss. So we’ll call that my ceiling. Progress begins when I’m beyond that, when I’m clearing the first loop.

Then what do we call what I’m doing now, which is ending games shy of the st4 boss? Rust does not seem a sufficient term. I think perhaps, based on this and plentiful other evidence, that I am significantly worse at action gaming of all sorts, thanks to age. This is unsurprising yet somewhat distressing to experience. Still, we’ll save the chronicles of the aging gamer for my book deal. We can regard the decline in Ghouls skill in isolation for now.

I’m playing whatever version is nearest at hand. So far that has meant a bit of MAME (World version of the ROM) and a bit of Capcom Classics Collection Remixed on the PSP. I am getting much better results on MAME. I am not at all sure that they are identical in difficulty, but that’s a slippery thing to determine. The PSP game, despite being apparently emulating the arcade, does not offer the same options as the arcade dip switches. They are both running on default diff, which both label as Normal, but the scales aren’t the same so that might mean anything. Life stock and extra life milestones are identical. There’s nothing obviously different, but I think the spawn rate might be just a bit higher on the PSP. Like I’m killing twice as many reapers by the time I cross the river. But then I could be imagining all that.

So that’s how it started. I would say the challenge is underway, but there’s not much of competition in it. We’re not racing to the clear, just pursuing it side-by-side. So the pursuit is underway? The thing is on! Description of follies to follow.