River City Girls 2 Is Getting A Performance Update On Nintendo Switch
"We are nearly finished testing"
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Oh My Car! A Thread for Beat-em-Ups
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Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Not to say that this is completely uninvited or anything. That said, if they are bringing back this obscure brand, I feel like they should do something a little more Troma. It could still be for relatively all audiences but still feel somewhat... low-key subversive?
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
Toxic Crusaders is a weird choice, based on a not-especially popular cartoon that was a dilution of a cult film. There were Toxic Crusaders games in the past... and none of them were very good, an ill omen for this release.
(Then again, the watered-down cartoon version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is why that franchise became so popular...)
(Then again, the watered-down cartoon version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is why that franchise became so popular...)
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Ghostbusters beat-em-up sounds weirdly good. I can think of a few others with nothing but long-range armaments.
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Swing for the fences and make a brawler based on Wuzzles
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Getalong Gang Wars!
Snorks of Rage
Only trust your fins.
Police will never help you.
Police will never help you.
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River City Girls 2 update out now (version 1.0.3), patch notes
A significant update for River City Girls 2, version 1.0.3, is now available. The update is highlighted by repeat New Game+ playthroughs. It also comes with frame rate improvements and other fixes. The full patch notes for the River City Girls 2 version 1.0.3 update are as follows: Frame...
nintendoeverything.com
I can confirm that the game runs *way* better post update
There was always a sense of skepticism in my head whenever people would hold up The Ninja Warriors as one of the best beat-em-ups of all time. I had never played it, and I've been slightly disappointed in the past whenever I've tried other "GOAT" beat-em-ups.
Well, tonight I finally played Ninja Warriors: Once Again (as Kunoichi). That is a good fucking video game. Initially I got stuck on the 1st boss for a while, and I started to feel resentful that it had checkpoint respawns instead of instant respawns. But then I finally beat the boss. And all of a sudden things were clicking more, and I beat the 2nd and 3rd stages first try. It just... opened itself up to me gradually until all the tiny layers became visible, all the while constantly throwing together new mixed configurations of its varied enemy types. Just... an engrossing and satisfying gameplay experience. I was still learning stuff fighting the final boss.
Well, tonight I finally played Ninja Warriors: Once Again (as Kunoichi). That is a good fucking video game. Initially I got stuck on the 1st boss for a while, and I started to feel resentful that it had checkpoint respawns instead of instant respawns. But then I finally beat the boss. And all of a sudden things were clicking more, and I beat the 2nd and 3rd stages first try. It just... opened itself up to me gradually until all the tiny layers became visible, all the while constantly throwing together new mixed configurations of its varied enemy types. Just... an engrossing and satisfying gameplay experience. I was still learning stuff fighting the final boss.
Hamster put out Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III for its first international release ever a couple of weeks ago through their Arcade Archives label, and I strongly recommend the game to all curious--for my tastes, it's one of the top examples of the form, partly because it doesn't adhere to such strict formalism since in 1991 people still hadn't congregated around the accepted canon of the codified genre greats. So much of what people value about the genre at large are occupied by iterations of flat battle-boxes to combo enemies around in through increasingly numerous moveset verbs, and while there can be fun in that expression, too much of an identical fixation will leave anyone bored. Warrior Blade existed in a timeframe when the idea of "what a worthwhile beat 'em up is" hadn't been communally arrived at to be iterated on in perpetuity, so its nature has as much to do with that freedom of experimentation and lack of expectations, as well as its own heritage in what Rastan Saga originally was.
You get a stunning audiovisual spectacle showcasing the best of Taito's pixel art talents through the show-off Darius/Ninja Warriors multiscreen display and Zuntata member Masahiko Takaki's tonally diverse music--funky and driving one moment, subdued and sorrowful the next--that is as impressive and convention-busting in its context as the original game was four years earlier, and playing it there's a staggering commitment to elaborate setpieces which nevertheless do not sacrifice mechanics or overextend themselves to take over the level design for the worse; if anything, it's almost a Strider-esque achievement in structuring an arcade game's progression to a filmic reel of distinct choreographed sequences, which all still naturally feed into the game's fundamental mechanics and inputs whether you're galloping through a forest path on horseback, soaring through the air on pterodactyls, or sliding down a treacherous mountain slope. Of all the barbarian video games indebted to and modeled after Conan, Warrior Blade approaches the sense of dramatic action with the same kind of intensely theatric fervour the best.
It's not a complicated game in the sense of what you can do at any given moment; mostly the basics suffice for its needs but it's all in the nuance of what's done with them. A regular combo, a jumping attack, a running tackle, a throw... the lingua franca of the genre is present and accounted for, but you also have unusual wrinkles like an alternate technique mapped to attack + jump that's meant to integrate into your core options; the usual health-substracting get-off-me maneuver is moved over to rapid presses of directional inputs for a more secondary, panic-induced context. And context is what governs how such a toolkit will impress upon oneself: for beat 'em ups to this point, it's quite a packed set of options, and for the combofiends of later years, a truncated half-thought of a movelist. What ultimately matters is how such limitations suit a given game's design sense, where anecdotally later Streets of Rage games might have gigantic movelists to flex with, but the first game remains my favourite for various reasons but importantly for feeling the most interesting to me when putting into context its combat options against its enemy placement, setpieces and level design. Warrior Blade displays a similar beguiling mastery, where huge crowds of enemies bellowing their German war cries can be overcome with just a few initially limited-seeming actions applied with precision, and for that selfsame reduced complexity learning the intricacies of each of the handful of attacks is a more attainable goal to pursue and then execute upon in context of the level design, which can take on a more central role as a result. The set dressing does not consist of static combat-cubes, but rather incorporates nods to Rastan's platformer past in ways that occasionally turn up in the genre when the mood strikes: traps and pitfalls endangering player and enemy alike, stairs to traverse for topographical diversity, or ropes to climb for a more eventful environmental narrative.
It's a true-blue beat 'em up for certain, but certain idiosyncracies nonetheless set it apart from the rest. For a game that describes its playable cast as bandits, thieves and mercenaries, it's perhaps appropriate that treasure plays a large part in it, both as a narrative motivator for the self-interested adventurers and mechanical texture. Point items in other beat 'em ups always carry a secondary, almost an ignorable value to most play: health is what's actually desirable, or an offense-augmenting temporary weapon. In here, the riches-seeking protagonists truly live by money's power, as the number of coin accrued over the course of a stage is a primary way of restoring health at the end of it, as automatic full restores at those intervals don't exist and healing items of the more direct kind are rarer and randomized contrary to other genre works. It makes each pick-up feel meaningful for even basic play for survival, and how characteristic it frames the rogue-ish trio, who depend on their own wit and skill, and don't pick up an array of disposable weaponry to complement their main arsenal, only supplies to keep them healthy and rarely modifiers to their personal weapons. Magic in true Conan fashion is not the purview of the protagonists, and can only be utilized through the help of a wandering wizard, by comically and bluntly knocking them about to compel them to cast. The game avails itself constantly with thoughtful and personable implementations of common genre mechanics and concepts, reframing them just so to create a distinct identity for itself.
Games of this type and vintage are often meant to be mastered through iterative play on a baseline, and accusations of "quarter-munching" play balance ring outward from interactions with them, but even in this aspect Warrior Blade bucks trends as it is not especially oblique to understand what a player should do within it to succeed, nor too taxing to put that plan into action. It's one of the only beat 'em ups ever where I would claim that the boss roster in its entirety has been prepared for projected first-time clears, and completely feasible no-hit clears; the design sense is so contrary to genre convention then or now that it boggles the mind that it's so heart-wrenchingly unique an approach to take to climactic action. It's not a combofest by any measure during these fights, but a pleasingly rhythmic hit-and-run dance that one must learn the steps to, and once internalized each encounter will be over in a flash, its impact not diminished by its brevity. The concepts alone lend themselves to unforgettable acclaim, with the cursed king's remains serving as both an unique crowd control exercise and a disquieting tonal exploration of a boss fight, set to his monotonous pleading for help from beyond the grave. Art direction and subject matter again ring true to the source material, in grim fascination with the beautifully morbid and melancholy.
Beat 'em ups are and will remain a "mechanics-first" kind of genre, for those that discuss them and continue to sustain them, there's no question about that. It would however behoove one to remind oneself that genre prescriptivism often walks hand in hand with snobbery, where only a particular niche of an already marginalized game type are accepted as the ones that have unlocked the full potential of what's possible within it, most often through maximizing the limits of a control scheme or the number of permutations allowed by the assets created for a work. Warrior Blade and its ilk are that materialized reminder that even a hardcore genre can shine as its best self through emphasizing the qualities often least attributed to its central appeal.
You get a stunning audiovisual spectacle showcasing the best of Taito's pixel art talents through the show-off Darius/Ninja Warriors multiscreen display and Zuntata member Masahiko Takaki's tonally diverse music--funky and driving one moment, subdued and sorrowful the next--that is as impressive and convention-busting in its context as the original game was four years earlier, and playing it there's a staggering commitment to elaborate setpieces which nevertheless do not sacrifice mechanics or overextend themselves to take over the level design for the worse; if anything, it's almost a Strider-esque achievement in structuring an arcade game's progression to a filmic reel of distinct choreographed sequences, which all still naturally feed into the game's fundamental mechanics and inputs whether you're galloping through a forest path on horseback, soaring through the air on pterodactyls, or sliding down a treacherous mountain slope. Of all the barbarian video games indebted to and modeled after Conan, Warrior Blade approaches the sense of dramatic action with the same kind of intensely theatric fervour the best.
It's not a complicated game in the sense of what you can do at any given moment; mostly the basics suffice for its needs but it's all in the nuance of what's done with them. A regular combo, a jumping attack, a running tackle, a throw... the lingua franca of the genre is present and accounted for, but you also have unusual wrinkles like an alternate technique mapped to attack + jump that's meant to integrate into your core options; the usual health-substracting get-off-me maneuver is moved over to rapid presses of directional inputs for a more secondary, panic-induced context. And context is what governs how such a toolkit will impress upon oneself: for beat 'em ups to this point, it's quite a packed set of options, and for the combofiends of later years, a truncated half-thought of a movelist. What ultimately matters is how such limitations suit a given game's design sense, where anecdotally later Streets of Rage games might have gigantic movelists to flex with, but the first game remains my favourite for various reasons but importantly for feeling the most interesting to me when putting into context its combat options against its enemy placement, setpieces and level design. Warrior Blade displays a similar beguiling mastery, where huge crowds of enemies bellowing their German war cries can be overcome with just a few initially limited-seeming actions applied with precision, and for that selfsame reduced complexity learning the intricacies of each of the handful of attacks is a more attainable goal to pursue and then execute upon in context of the level design, which can take on a more central role as a result. The set dressing does not consist of static combat-cubes, but rather incorporates nods to Rastan's platformer past in ways that occasionally turn up in the genre when the mood strikes: traps and pitfalls endangering player and enemy alike, stairs to traverse for topographical diversity, or ropes to climb for a more eventful environmental narrative.
It's a true-blue beat 'em up for certain, but certain idiosyncracies nonetheless set it apart from the rest. For a game that describes its playable cast as bandits, thieves and mercenaries, it's perhaps appropriate that treasure plays a large part in it, both as a narrative motivator for the self-interested adventurers and mechanical texture. Point items in other beat 'em ups always carry a secondary, almost an ignorable value to most play: health is what's actually desirable, or an offense-augmenting temporary weapon. In here, the riches-seeking protagonists truly live by money's power, as the number of coin accrued over the course of a stage is a primary way of restoring health at the end of it, as automatic full restores at those intervals don't exist and healing items of the more direct kind are rarer and randomized contrary to other genre works. It makes each pick-up feel meaningful for even basic play for survival, and how characteristic it frames the rogue-ish trio, who depend on their own wit and skill, and don't pick up an array of disposable weaponry to complement their main arsenal, only supplies to keep them healthy and rarely modifiers to their personal weapons. Magic in true Conan fashion is not the purview of the protagonists, and can only be utilized through the help of a wandering wizard, by comically and bluntly knocking them about to compel them to cast. The game avails itself constantly with thoughtful and personable implementations of common genre mechanics and concepts, reframing them just so to create a distinct identity for itself.
Games of this type and vintage are often meant to be mastered through iterative play on a baseline, and accusations of "quarter-munching" play balance ring outward from interactions with them, but even in this aspect Warrior Blade bucks trends as it is not especially oblique to understand what a player should do within it to succeed, nor too taxing to put that plan into action. It's one of the only beat 'em ups ever where I would claim that the boss roster in its entirety has been prepared for projected first-time clears, and completely feasible no-hit clears; the design sense is so contrary to genre convention then or now that it boggles the mind that it's so heart-wrenchingly unique an approach to take to climactic action. It's not a combofest by any measure during these fights, but a pleasingly rhythmic hit-and-run dance that one must learn the steps to, and once internalized each encounter will be over in a flash, its impact not diminished by its brevity. The concepts alone lend themselves to unforgettable acclaim, with the cursed king's remains serving as both an unique crowd control exercise and a disquieting tonal exploration of a boss fight, set to his monotonous pleading for help from beyond the grave. Art direction and subject matter again ring true to the source material, in grim fascination with the beautifully morbid and melancholy.
Beat 'em ups are and will remain a "mechanics-first" kind of genre, for those that discuss them and continue to sustain them, there's no question about that. It would however behoove one to remind oneself that genre prescriptivism often walks hand in hand with snobbery, where only a particular niche of an already marginalized game type are accepted as the ones that have unlocked the full potential of what's possible within it, most often through maximizing the limits of a control scheme or the number of permutations allowed by the assets created for a work. Warrior Blade and its ilk are that materialized reminder that even a hardcore genre can shine as its best self through emphasizing the qualities often least attributed to its central appeal.
My own play experience and looking things up further suggests there isn't any alternate ending, really. There are those four bonus stages, which come with their own interesting narrative interstitials, accessed through either using continues (they are a BAD FORTUNE path after all, despite culminating in permanent stat boost treasure) or toggling dip switches to play through all of them; completing them however doesn't change anything about how the climax of the game unfolds. The ending is just written to be less triumphant than usual for the genre, with Rastan and pals not finding everything they were searching for, so the assumption from players may be that there must be something more to it. There isn't, and I like the game for it.
Ah, thanks. I definitely set the dip switches to play all the levels when I go through it because the game is beautiful and awesome. I was just wondering if there was an alternate ending, the only one I ever got was the traditional Rastan/Conan ending of "I must keep adventuring in search of more treasure" It's definitely an appropriate ending but one that leaves you wondering if you missed something.
Huh, dang. I guess I just assumed after seeing that ending that I did something wrong. Or I was conflating this with Shadow Over Mystara.