PKDuckman

Frankly while this game has incredible character models for 1988, the gameplay is rather repetitive and often devolves into button mashing. You're better off with Final Round or Punch Out.

Fun fact: The Genesis version was made quickly to cash in on Buster's win over Mike Tyson, with Sega themselves porting over the game and simply renaming a similar looking boxer to Buster Douglas. By the time the game came out however, Buster Douglas lost to Evander Holyfield.

I'm waiting for a console release as well. Arcade Archives seem to stay away from sprite scaling games, so the next best thing may be City Connection emulating Night Striker S as part of Saturn Tribute.

Wasn't the original Final Fantasy influenced by D&D as well? IIRC the Famicom version had monsters inspired by D&D's copyrighted monsters like the Beholder and Illithids, which got changed in the NES version to something less derivative.

Why can't the publishers include Silver Star Harmony alongside? I prefer its mode proportional models over the original's.

@PinballBuzzbro I bought their games digitally and I'm screwed as well. For Turrican and Wonder Boy they released a cheap compilation first then announced that a more complete version is coming later, which only added to the confusion. Had they communicated to their customers instead of remaining radio silent, I would not have bought the cheaper compilations but waited.

As for Ratalaika, their self published retro rereleases are generally competent and reasonably priced. It's the ones they partnered with ININ for that have the most issues. The first Irem Collection has button rebinding and autofire issues that took months to correct, and this is made harder by the fact that both Image Fight and X Multiply are already on Arcade Archives in better form.

@gojiguy According to an article I've read, SLG is in financial trouble, with their founder departing, bad communications on delays, and many physical prints and hardware didn't sell well. Apparently their last physical releases were shipped in March 2023.

https://seafoamgaming.com/2024/05/08/benedict-cofounder-of-strictly-limited-departs-as-slgs-finance-troubles-persist/

I recommend the game for being absolutely insane. It starts off as a standard military shooter and go off the rails fighting against magical creatures and aliens from another dimension.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/riot/

The entire Macross arcade series is great. The second game was also developed by NMK but changed into a horizontal shooter. The third game was developed by Moss, which also made the current Raiden games, and is a vertical shooter again with the Macross Plus license.

Whether Aladdin uses a sword in the film or series is irrelevant, since he never jumped on people's heads either. Scrooge never jumped on people with a pogo stick in Ducktales either yet his series get a pass due to being made by Capcom.

Good to see Arcade Archives bringing out more 90s arcade games. Pretty much all of the Mystic Warriors board-based games are brilliant, now all we have left are Gaiapolis, Martial Champions, Monster Maulers, and Violent Storm.

I didn't know why Taito and Hamster even bothered when Solitary Fighter's AA port already exists, which is pretty much Violence Fighter Championship Edition.

Anyways the gameplay in Violence Fight did not age well, it was that phase before SF2 when developers were still codifying what a fighting game should be, and nowadays play more like a wrestling game with free movement and jumps.

Worms look so much better without the noses

Yep, the release order of the games on TG16 is 2, 3, 4, 1, with the last being a remake.

Hopefully it will be better than Sengoku Cannon on PSP

I have only played the Mega Drive version before. Apparently the MSX2 and X68000 versions lets you pick from 3 characters, while the Mega Drive version only has the fighter.

@amongtheworms Yep the cover art is one of the best things about the series, created by the one and only Yoshitaka Amano.

I'm waiting for the sequel to Saiyuki World, which also got localised in the West as Whomp Em, where the Monkey King got replaced by a Native American warrior. It is pretty much a copy of Mega Man and is like the closest the Switch gets to Black Myth Wukong.

This game plays alright even if you don't know Japanese, since most of the gameplay is commanding your armies.

Kure also made the First Queen series which improved upon the formula, and the fourth game had a PS1 release which was on the American PSN for some reason. The game was also ported to DOS in Chinese, which I had fond memories of playing.

It makes sense:

*SNK is now owned by an organisation ran by the Saudi crown prince
*Ronaldo is currently signed to a Saudi football club

@Hexapus Look up the Plaza Accord. Back then the Japanese economy was seriously challenging the USA's and was on the verge of becoming an economic superpower, so the US's finance minister pressured those of several developed countries to "reduce trade imbalances". Japan's bubble eventually bursted in the early 90s.

Of course, the USA will always put its own interests first, even if it screws the interests of its allies.

It's a friendly rivalry, and the original author is seriously overthinking it. It's like saying SF1 has an anti-Thai agenda because Sagat is the final boss.

Also there were plenty of other works teaming up an American and a Japanese back then, from Black Rain to Showdown in Little Tokyo, and while they have their fair share of stereotypes, they are are more like "two people from opposing culturws overcoming their differences to work together".

I really hate how Hamster is going for the bottom of the barrel. Enough NES Vs System games, being about the 32 bit games already. I'm dying to play Outfoxies.

@kitestar Or better yet update the Requiem Collection so it also includes the Rondo of Blood remake, which was included in the Dracula X Collection on PSP. Also perhaps offer an option to play with the original cheesy voiceover in SOTN.

I've played the remake and it's very good, akin to the remake of Castlevania Adventure. Simon no longer has slippery controls and all the attacks feel powerful.

The original game is also included, and there's also an option to remove the limited continues.

The second and third games aren't bad at all, and they have some interesting gimmicks setting them aside from the average Final Fight clone.

The problem is that the Western releases were heavily butchered to the degree of Streets of Rage 3. The localizers of Peace Keepers were convinced that Americans hate anything resembling anime, so they replaced the anime-style portraits with something out of Mortal Kombat. Special attacking based on East Asian mythological creatures? Nah let's replace it with characters shouting words. And that's not mentioning the removal of entire cutscenes and enemies, cut the number of continues, and replace the music with ambient background noise.

I'd love to pay for non-cloud versions of the games, but unfortunately Antstream's competitors have their own issues. You have Arcade Archives taking their sweet time releasing games, or the likes of LRG charging a premium and often fail to deliver.

Sigh, it's LRG again. I wish Ratalaika got the rights instead, since they actually release their games on Xbox in addition to a reasonable price. Just compare the price of Ratalaika's Gleylancer, Gynoug, or Shockman in contrast to LRG's Felix the Cat.

I want to get the previous expansions but it seems ININ which distributed the Egret 2 Mini outside of Japan just gave up, and I can't be justified paying so much for 10 games.

If only Arcade Archives moved to Taito F3 games.

Hopefully we can see Taito F3 games on Arcade Archives soon. The only ones on Switch are the emulated Saturn versions like Cleopatra's Fortune, Elevator Action Returns, and Puzzle Bobble 2+3, alongside M2's ports of Darius Gaiden and Rayforce.

And censorship the least of the game's problems. The game is based on the AES version and has limited options compared to the Arcade Archives rereleases or the original Xbox version.

*No voices for Zero
*No transformations and interactions for Athena and Red Arremer
*No transparency effects
*No selecting the amount of continues
*No stage select in training mode

Apparently the Japanese version is easier since your stamina doesn't drain while walking around.

Waiting for either Astyanax, Shatterhand, or Whomp Em.

I played the Famicom version on the Namcot Collection, it's an okay game for its time but doesn't hold a candle to Legend of Zelda. The sequel Legend of Valkyrie is great though.

I really wished Ratalaika got the rights instead of Edia. Not only is their emulator better, they also have reasonable prices, and not the daylight robbery prices Edia change for the Valis games.

@Blast16 I'm sorry but games are meant to be played not used as investments, and hardly any of LRG's releases hold their value that well especially with their ***** quality extras. Wata and their speculators are already running the hobby.

I've given up on LRG and its ilk, save for a few games which are very big in download size like Alien Isolation. As much as I'd like to physical copies of some games, in this economy I can no longer justify their costs plus shipping and delays. For small games like retro releases digital is far more convenient.

And the annoying thing is, it seems like LRG's competitors are far worse in terms of customer service.

https://seafoamgaming.com/2022/04/14/the-limited-print-report-card/

Decent football game but I feel that the sequels as well as the Football Frenzy games are much better. However the sequels run on the F3 board and no game using that board has been released on AA yet.

Very interesting. Are there any other games that have competing English translations? Advance Wars: Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict is the only one I know of.

Speak of the devil, Warrior Blade is announced for Taito Milestones 3, alongside Rastan 2.

https://www.taito.co.jp/taitomilestones/vol_03

@NinChocolate The closest thing to Legendary Axe is Astyanax, made by the same developers. The arcade version is on AA, and while it's not as good as the NES version, it makes up for it with an absolutely crazy final level.

Don't care much about Rastan 2, but I hope to see Warrior Blade on AA soon, especially since it runs on the same hardware as Darius 2. IIRC its only previous home release was on the Japanese version of Taito Legends on PS2.

It's worth noting that Ratalaika has released compilations of Shockman 1 and 2 as Shockman Collection Vol 1, and I assume Vol 2 will consist of Shockman 3 and 0.

@MontyCircus Yeah it sounds like a missed opportunity considering that the popularity of the NES exploded in the USA during the late 80s and many unconventional games appeared on it, including a few flight simulators which brought the NES's processor to a crawl. In contrast Star Luster ran very well for a 3D game.

Still amazes me how the game never saw a Western release, seeing how technically advanced it is for a FC game in 1985. Namco could have reskinned it to be some X-Wing game.

Sorry but this is just pointless if they do not take advantage of the SNES's colour palettes, or add in the QOL changes from the PS1 ports like quick weapon switching. As far as I can see it's just the NES games overclocked, which the Legacy Collection does just as well.

Or maybe because it's not worth spending all that money for an official tournament right in the middle of COVID with all its restrictions?

They're also around in Australia, and I've scored some cheap OG Xbox games from them.

The annoying thing is that almost every time I visit, there's some unsophisticated person complaining that their second hand iPhone doesn't work and holding up the line.

I'm still annoyed that there is no English language update for either the Japanese physical or digital releases.

Seems the game is unavailable outside of Japan due to its use of real world American digger planes.

Wait the US Gamestop still sells classic games? The Australian equivalent, EB Games, doesn't sell anything older than PS4/XB1.