Purple
(She/Her)
So just on kind of a random whim, I just found an emulator that had FDS support and decided I'd actually play some Doki Doki Panic!
The first thing I noticed is that the intro theme is a horrible tinny garbage tune that hurts my ears and I never want to hear it again.
This was followed by learning that playing anything on the FDS is a royal pain since the disks are double-sided and this emulator recreates the magic of having to let that intro load, then before even getting a "press start" immediately having to eject the disk and flip it.
The next thing I learned though is...
There is no run button in Doki Doki Panic!
B is exclusively used for picking things up and throwing them, and has no effect at all on your velocity. You just kinda have to deal with having 2 speeds. Stop, and go.
The first effect this has on things is that if you've played SMB2 extensively, your muscle memory is going to betray you constantly and you're to mistime everything and maybe jump down some pits. But also, hey, there's hard limits on platforming abilities now. A jump you can't make without a running start in SMB2 is one you just can't make at all in DDP. Granted, there's like... maybe 2 points in the game where that even matters, but it's a heck of a thing, and increases the worth of hover-jumping.
The other biggest mechanical difference is that the 4 characters' progress and life counts are all tracked separately. You can't beat world 1 as Imajin and then switch to Papa for world 2. Papa's still back in world 1 and has to get there on his own. And of course, getting the real ending thus requires you to do a full clear with each character alone.
Past that, I'm mostly surprised by how little is different? The music is the same except the 2 recycled SMB tracks, but slightly faster tempo than SMB2. Monsters scream when killed. There's more of a masquerade motif, with different in place of mushrooms/bird doors/turtle shells (I... dislike the way shells look). And... vases are generally less interesting? I swear SMB2 added more variety to their contents.
Oh and Phanto doesn't shake and fly off the wall when you grab a key, just swoops out after you leave with it.
The first thing I noticed is that the intro theme is a horrible tinny garbage tune that hurts my ears and I never want to hear it again.
This was followed by learning that playing anything on the FDS is a royal pain since the disks are double-sided and this emulator recreates the magic of having to let that intro load, then before even getting a "press start" immediately having to eject the disk and flip it.
The next thing I learned though is...
There is no run button in Doki Doki Panic!
B is exclusively used for picking things up and throwing them, and has no effect at all on your velocity. You just kinda have to deal with having 2 speeds. Stop, and go.
The first effect this has on things is that if you've played SMB2 extensively, your muscle memory is going to betray you constantly and you're to mistime everything and maybe jump down some pits. But also, hey, there's hard limits on platforming abilities now. A jump you can't make without a running start in SMB2 is one you just can't make at all in DDP. Granted, there's like... maybe 2 points in the game where that even matters, but it's a heck of a thing, and increases the worth of hover-jumping.
The other biggest mechanical difference is that the 4 characters' progress and life counts are all tracked separately. You can't beat world 1 as Imajin and then switch to Papa for world 2. Papa's still back in world 1 and has to get there on his own. And of course, getting the real ending thus requires you to do a full clear with each character alone.
Past that, I'm mostly surprised by how little is different? The music is the same except the 2 recycled SMB tracks, but slightly faster tempo than SMB2. Monsters scream when killed. There's more of a masquerade motif, with different in place of mushrooms/bird doors/turtle shells (I... dislike the way shells look). And... vases are generally less interesting? I swear SMB2 added more variety to their contents.
Oh and Phanto doesn't shake and fly off the wall when you grab a key, just swoops out after you leave with it.
