The next NES game for my blog is an unfinished 10-pointer. I don't want to spoil what game it is but hopefully I can contribute it when I'm finished. It might take me a month to get through it.
The next NES game for my blog is an unfinished 10-pointer. I don't want to spoil what game it is but hopefully I can contribute it when I'm finished. It might take me a month to get through it.
If it's one of the big Koei games (or Shingen the Ruler), it might be worth spoiling it just to be sure we don't have two people working on it. I wouldn't want to un-Shingen you, or vice versa. (Not that I'm working on Shingen right now, though I've toyed with the idea.)
The next NES game for my blog is an unfinished 10-pointer. I don't want to spoil what game it is but hopefully I can contribute it when I'm finished. It might take me a month to get through it.
If it's one of the big Koei games (or Shingen the Ruler), it might be worth spoiling it just to be sure we don't have two people working on it. I wouldn't want to un-Shingen you, or vice versa. (Not that I'm working on Shingen right now, though I've toyed with the idea.)
It's definitely not a Koei game or Shingen the Ruler. I figure if someone is working on a tough one or longer one then they might bring it up here before starting it.
What I'll be working on is a puzzle game, if that helps!
What I'll be working on is a puzzle game, if that helps!
Aha! Well, I have a few suspicions, but I'll look forward to being surprised.
Meanwhile, it's back to garbage games for me, as "Fuzz Power" from Action 52 is done -- or, at least, as done as it can be, since there's an impassable wall early in Level 3.
You can tell they wanted to achieve something with this game, since the character design and play control are a bit better than most other titles on the cartridge, but the gameplay is by turns abominably unfair and trivially easy.
And another tough one from Action 52 goes down: "Robbie Robot", aka "Robbie N The Robots", is beaten.
It's an action platformer of a very primitive sort, and definitely one of the better Action 52 titles I've played -- but it's marred by a hugely unfair bottleneck near the beginning of Stage 4, where you reach an enemy gun turret on a set of ascending blocks. You have no chance to dodge its shots, and if you intuitively jump backwards to avoid them, you'll often die from falling one square too far, à la Spelunker. The only chance is to fire like crazy (which you need to do throughout the game anyway since it reduces the enemy fire rate), while executing the jumps necessary to reach the turret in between shots, and hope it doesn't shoot you before you shoot it.
(That same segment is reused at the very end of the stage, but fortunately the stage clear point is a couple tiles before you reach the turret, so just charge forward and you're golden.)
The other big issue is just that you're constantly under fire from turrets that you can't shoot back (they're too high and you can only shoot horizontally). That always annoys me in games: we all spend so much of our lives taking unfair shots from people we can't hit back, so what's the sense in subjecting players to that same experience?
Otherwise, it's typical Action 52 -- though above-average for the cart, and with some vague sense of thought into the design. It reuses patterns that can help the astute observer (if the ceiling dips in Stage 3, then Evil Robbie is about to attack, etc.). Since the game lets you walk on floor tiles below the surface, it's often wise to do just that -- getting you out of the way of the floating robots.
I'm still not sure how I survived the last couple screens of the final level, but "Rosy Bubblegum" from Action 52 is now done.
Whoo, where to begin with this one...it took me over five hours to beat. It starts out with relatively straightforward platforming in typical Action 52 style (at least your character can jump and fall a reasonable distance), except for a mid-level jump that requires absolutely perfect timing but fortunately doesn't punish you for failure. After a while I was able to no-hit that with relative ease.
Then the second stage switches to a driving game that depends almost 100% on the RNG, since the enemies move completely at random and there's nothing you can do if they block your path. Otherwise it's pretty easy, but only if luck breaks your way.
But the third stage, wow...easily one of the most aggravating I've encountered so far. It's back to platforming, but you're constantly under attack from fast-moving bats (at least I think they're bats) that change direction at random and are hard to see (light yellow on light blue). You can proceed slowly and try to take them out one at a time, but it's incredibly frustrating to try to target them -- they always seem to be just out of range -- and in some areas, you just don't have enough maneuverability to do it safely.
When you've got three or four of them after you, and you pair that with tricky platforming over spikes or piranha plants à la Mario -- not to mention, of course, the utterly screwy controls -- it's just brutal. And you can only take two hits, and only get two lives, so...yep. Glad that one is done.
The funny thing is that Action 52 is hardly even a game. The collection of games, OK but how can you call it games really?? I wouldn't call it a game but rather unstable electronic mess that pretends it's a game, so many times, you don't even have any idea if you "beat" a game or not and this is explainable because there is completely no rules xD . So how do you even grade it??
The funny thing is that Action 52 is hardly even a game. The collection of games, OK but how can you call it games really?? I wouldn't call it a game but rather unstable electronic mess that pretends it's a game, so many times, you don't even have any idea if you "beat" a game or not and this is explainable because there is completely no rules xD . So how do you even grade it??
Have you played Action 52 much? I ask because, before I played it, I pretty much thought what you did: everything on it was barely a game, programmed in 10 minutes, etc.
And there are some games that definitely fit the stereotype, like Starevil -- total trash, where it feels like they put together the most basic shooter engine and called it done before they even bothered with niceties like level design.
But others, like Silver Sword, are fairly close in quality to some of the 1980s third-party Famicom releases. You can tell that there's some thought put into the level design and gameplay. It's totally devoid of bells and whistles, and needed a lot more polish, but the basic structure of the game is there and could've been developed into something at least as good as your average Famicom kusoge.
Take Silver Sword, add better music and an ending, polish out a few bugs, throw in a couple powerups, and it starts looking pretty typical for 1986-1987 Famicom. (Hell, it's already probably better than the likes of Super Monkey Daibouken or Stargazers.)
The lack of endings is a huge demerit, yeah. Fortunately there are guides like this one to help make it clear when you've reached the end of the game's content:
For me, Action 52 is sort of the perfect thing to be working on right now: short, simplistic, straightforward games with no real learning curve or subtleties to understand, where half the challenge is figuring out how to respond to the game's brokenness with countermeasures of your own. However it falls apart when there's too much randomness, like in Bubblegum Rosie's 2nd and 3rd levels.
And on cue: "Dedant" from Action 52 is beaten. Simplistic Centipede ripoff, sort of. The guide makes it sound like the safe zone on the edge of the screen is a glitch, but I think it's an intentional part of the gameplay (and absolutely necessary for survival).
I've enjoyed your write-ups of the games on Action 52. By all means continue! You've also inspired me to take a crack at a couple of these games. I just beat Jigsaw a moment ago for my first Action 52 clear.
Looking back at our previous attempts, in 2013 we beat 48/52 games on the cart. One of the unbeaten ones was Silver Sword, so it's nice you that you beat it already. The others were Haunted Hill, Spread Fire, and Storm Over the Desert. Also, I believe we said that it was virtually impossible to beat Micro Mike without cheating, so I counted it as beaten just for getting to the stage 2 boss. So that wasn't technically beaten either. I suppose we should try our best to see if it can actually be done, and if not then we just consider that beating it again.
I've enjoyed your write-ups of the games on Action 52. By all means continue! You've also inspired me to take a crack at a couple of these games. I just beat Jigsaw a moment ago for my first Action 52 clear.
Looking back at our previous attempts, in 2013 we beat 48/52 games on the cart. One of the unbeaten ones was Silver Sword, so it's nice you that you beat it already. The others were Haunted Hill, Spread Fire, and Storm Over the Desert.
Hey, thanks so much, and congrats on those three clears! Wow, I'm very pleased to learn that we made it all the way to 48/52, and even more pleased that I've managed to take out one of the four unbeaten ones. I'm not surprised that Silver Sword was left on the vine -- it's very long and demanding -- but it's actually very beatable if you put the time in, since it's 100% non-random.
Speaking of randomess, I took a crack at Storm Over the Desert and made it to Level 7 of 9, but I don't know if I can put up with its completely arbitrary enemy spawn patterns, so someone else may have to take that one down. I tried making a safe zone by wrapping around the screen like in Dedant, but it doesn't seem to work. At least you get an extra life for every level you clear, and it's pretty easy until Level 7 (where I quit out of frustration and impatience with 4-5 lives still in the tank, no pun intended).
I don't know Micro Mike but I'll check it out. I have to be careful to pace myself with these -- after Robbie and the Robots (with its constant need for spamming the fire button) and Bubblegum Rosie, I'm not sure how much more I can take! I like the deterministic games better, so maybe it's time for a nice, relaxing game of Meong...
"Micro Mike" might be impossible without slowing it down, either with an emulator or slow motion feature of a controller, but that's tantamount to cheating. I expect it to remain unbeaten without cheats.
The description on GameFAQs makes it sound like if you absolutely luck out and survive Level 1, the other two are actually playable. (I haven't tried it myself yet.)
Comments
The next NES game for my blog is an unfinished 10-pointer. I don't want to spoil what game it is but hopefully I can contribute it when I'm finished. It might take me a month to get through it.
If it's one of the big Koei games (or Shingen the Ruler), it might be worth spoiling it just to be sure we don't have two people working on it. I wouldn't want to un-Shingen you, or vice versa. (Not that I'm working on Shingen right now, though I've toyed with the idea.)
The next NES game for my blog is an unfinished 10-pointer. I don't want to spoil what game it is but hopefully I can contribute it when I'm finished. It might take me a month to get through it.
If it's one of the big Koei games (or Shingen the Ruler), it might be worth spoiling it just to be sure we don't have two people working on it. I wouldn't want to un-Shingen you, or vice versa. (Not that I'm working on Shingen right now, though I've toyed with the idea.)
It's definitely not a Koei game or Shingen the Ruler. I figure if someone is working on a tough one or longer one then they might bring it up here before starting it.
What I'll be working on is a puzzle game, if that helps!
What I'll be working on is a puzzle game, if that helps!
Aha! Well, I have a few suspicions, but I'll look forward to being surprised.
Meanwhile, it's back to garbage games for me, as "Fuzz Power" from Action 52 is done -- or, at least, as done as it can be, since there's an impassable wall early in Level 3.
You can tell they wanted to achieve something with this game, since the character design and play control are a bit better than most other titles on the cartridge, but the gameplay is by turns abominably unfair and trivially easy.
I have a long weekend and I am suffering from Formula One withdraw, so expect me to clear a lot of F1 and racing games in the next few days.
It's an action platformer of a very primitive sort, and definitely one of the better Action 52 titles I've played -- but it's marred by a hugely unfair bottleneck near the beginning of Stage 4, where you reach an enemy gun turret on a set of ascending blocks. You have no chance to dodge its shots, and if you intuitively jump backwards to avoid them, you'll often die from falling one square too far, à la Spelunker. The only chance is to fire like crazy (which you need to do throughout the game anyway since it reduces the enemy fire rate), while executing the jumps necessary to reach the turret in between shots, and hope it doesn't shoot you before you shoot it.
(That same segment is reused at the very end of the stage, but fortunately the stage clear point is a couple tiles before you reach the turret, so just charge forward and you're golden.)
The other big issue is just that you're constantly under fire from turrets that you can't shoot back (they're too high and you can only shoot horizontally). That always annoys me in games: we all spend so much of our lives taking unfair shots from people we can't hit back, so what's the sense in subjecting players to that same experience?
Otherwise, it's typical Action 52 -- though above-average for the cart, and with some vague sense of thought into the design. It reuses patterns that can help the astute observer (if the ceiling dips in Stage 3, then Evil Robbie is about to attack, etc.). Since the game lets you walk on floor tiles below the surface, it's often wise to do just that -- getting you out of the way of the floating robots.
Also, Flintstones completed:
Who the hell plays Action 52??
...someone who's trying to help this thread achieve its goal? :? What a strange thing to say, in this of all places!
But for now Al Unser Jr.'s Turbo Racing is done.
Whoo, where to begin with this one...it took me over five hours to beat. It starts out with relatively straightforward platforming in typical Action 52 style (at least your character can jump and fall a reasonable distance), except for a mid-level jump that requires absolutely perfect timing but fortunately doesn't punish you for failure. After a while I was able to no-hit that with relative ease.
Then the second stage switches to a driving game that depends almost 100% on the RNG, since the enemies move completely at random and there's nothing you can do if they block your path. Otherwise it's pretty easy, but only if luck breaks your way.
But the third stage, wow...easily one of the most aggravating I've encountered so far. It's back to platforming, but you're constantly under attack from fast-moving bats (at least I think they're bats) that change direction at random and are hard to see (light yellow on light blue). You can proceed slowly and try to take them out one at a time, but it's incredibly frustrating to try to target them -- they always seem to be just out of range -- and in some areas, you just don't have enough maneuverability to do it safely.
When you've got three or four of them after you, and you pair that with tricky platforming over spikes or piranha plants à la Mario -- not to mention, of course, the utterly screwy controls -- it's just brutal. And you can only take two hits, and only get two lives, so...yep. Glad that one is done.
The funny thing is that Action 52 is hardly even a game. The collection of games, OK but how can you call it games really?? I wouldn't call it a game but rather unstable electronic mess that pretends it's a game, so many times, you don't even have any idea if you "beat" a game or not and this is explainable because there is completely no rules xD . So how do you even grade it??
Have you played Action 52 much? I ask because, before I played it, I pretty much thought what you did: everything on it was barely a game, programmed in 10 minutes, etc.
And there are some games that definitely fit the stereotype, like Starevil -- total trash, where it feels like they put together the most basic shooter engine and called it done before they even bothered with niceties like level design.
But others, like Silver Sword, are fairly close in quality to some of the 1980s third-party Famicom releases. You can tell that there's some thought put into the level design and gameplay. It's totally devoid of bells and whistles, and needed a lot more polish, but the basic structure of the game is there and could've been developed into something at least as good as your average Famicom kusoge.
Take Silver Sword, add better music and an ending, polish out a few bugs, throw in a couple powerups, and it starts looking pretty typical for 1986-1987 Famicom. (Hell, it's already probably better than the likes of Super Monkey Daibouken or Stargazers.)
The lack of endings is a huge demerit, yeah. Fortunately there are guides like this one to help make it clear when you've reached the end of the game's content:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/587064-action-52/faqs/22139
For me, Action 52 is sort of the perfect thing to be working on right now: short, simplistic, straightforward games with no real learning curve or subtleties to understand, where half the challenge is figuring out how to respond to the game's brokenness with countermeasures of your own. However it falls apart when there's too much randomness, like in Bubblegum Rosie's 2nd and 3rd levels.
So, halfway done with Action 52!
So, halfway done with Action 52!
I've enjoyed your write-ups of the games on Action 52. By all means continue! You've also inspired me to take a crack at a couple of these games. I just beat Jigsaw a moment ago for my first Action 52 clear.
Looking back at our previous attempts, in 2013 we beat 48/52 games on the cart. One of the unbeaten ones was Silver Sword, so it's nice you that you beat it already. The others were Haunted Hill, Spread Fire, and Storm Over the Desert. Also, I believe we said that it was virtually impossible to beat Micro Mike without cheating, so I counted it as beaten just for getting to the stage 2 boss. So that wasn't technically beaten either. I suppose we should try our best to see if it can actually be done, and if not then we just consider that beating it again.
EDIT:
Also beat Sombreros on my first attempt.
I've enjoyed your write-ups of the games on Action 52. By all means continue! You've also inspired me to take a crack at a couple of these games. I just beat Jigsaw a moment ago for my first Action 52 clear.
Looking back at our previous attempts, in 2013 we beat 48/52 games on the cart. One of the unbeaten ones was Silver Sword, so it's nice you that you beat it already. The others were Haunted Hill, Spread Fire, and Storm Over the Desert.
Hey, thanks so much, and congrats on those three clears! Wow, I'm very pleased to learn that we made it all the way to 48/52, and even more pleased that I've managed to take out one of the four unbeaten ones. I'm not surprised that Silver Sword was left on the vine -- it's very long and demanding -- but it's actually very beatable if you put the time in, since it's 100% non-random.
Speaking of randomess, I took a crack at Storm Over the Desert and made it to Level 7 of 9, but I don't know if I can put up with its completely arbitrary enemy spawn patterns, so someone else may have to take that one down. I tried making a safe zone by wrapping around the screen like in Dedant, but it doesn't seem to work. At least you get an extra life for every level you clear, and it's pretty easy until Level 7 (where I quit out of frustration and impatience with 4-5 lives still in the tank, no pun intended).
I don't know Micro Mike but I'll check it out. I have to be careful to pace myself with these -- after Robbie and the Robots (with its constant need for spamming the fire button) and Bubblegum Rosie, I'm not sure how much more I can take! I like the deterministic games better, so maybe it's time for a nice, relaxing game of Meong...
By what I've seen I will be needing the alcohol to endure that thing.
Although it's based on the same arcade game it's a completely different port than the NTSC version.
I never bothered getting the pal version because I have the NTSC version here.
I guess it wasn't listed because it was considered a duplicated. This should be fixed.
And I will have to do some hunting for a copy of it now...