August 2019 Together Retro: Retro Sports Games

[CFFJR]

I played some Ten Pin Alley on the Saturn yesterday.

I'm only really familiar with some arcade bowling games that used a trackball. This game requires you to stop a couple of meters for your throw. You can manually set your spin, then there is a meter for power, and a second meter that I just did not understand until I looked up a pdf of the manual. It represents the timing of your release, which made so much sense I felt stupid. And just as in real bowling, letting go too late can really fuck your aim.

It took a while to get used to the timing, and every bowler in the game has different style that might focus more on power or spin. Once I got used to it though, I could put the ball where I wanted it pretty consistently. Sometimes though, the ball still won't go where you expect, and apparently this has to do with the game's physics. The oil used to grease the lanes dries and wears over time as you play, and the game takes this into account, so a ball thrown with a heavy spin might grip a lot sooner than you expect and fling itself into the gutter. Its not something the player can account for visually, so you just have to adjust after you've already failed.

Aside from practice and open play modes, there are 64 player tournaments at 3 difficulty levels. I was able to beat the Beginner Tournament without too much fuss, but I'm now stuck in the third round of the Amateur Tournament against a player who effortlessly tosses out strikes. Check out these scores from the first time I went against him.



I didn't exactly do poorly here, but I still never stood a chance. So I tried again. Here's the follow up game.



This dude was one pin shy of a perfect game. And of course he picked up the spare. Holy hell. I can't believe I got rocked this hard by a guy who calls himself Smiley. In the amateur tournament! Not even pro!

Anyway, the game is fun, and its actually quite satisfying to play once you've gotten the hang of it. I don't know that I'll keep pushing the tournaments or anything, but I think I'll pull this down for a round once in a while now, maybe with my wife or a buddy, which is nice considering how long it sat on the shelf unplayed.

[pierrot]

THPS [...] 1 > 2 > 3

I liked 2 the most, overall. I played the first three games pretty much as they were released, and I liked 3 just fine, but 2 felt like the pinnacle of the series, to me. Maybe that was just because of Spider-Man, I don't know. The only thing that really stuck with me from THPS 3 was playing as Bam Margera, and listening to CKY. I never played another THPS after finishing 3, and didn't even 100% it like the first two.

[Gunstar Green]

This dude was one pin shy of a perfect game. And of course he picked up the spare. Holy hell. I can't believe I got rocked this hard by a guy who calls himself Smiley. In the amateur tournament! Not even pro!

Goddamn, Smiley has zero chill!

[prfsnl_gmr]

I won the Tecmo Bowl. I had to play a hell of a lot of football, but the L.A. Raiders, after multiple attempts, finally defeated the Indianapolis Colts by 3 points to claim the title of World Champions.

I played a lot of Tecmo Bowl when I was younger, but I always played multiplayer and never spent time with the single-player mode. Tecmo Bowl is a pretty great multiplayer game and tremendous fun if, like me as a kid, you aren’t that familiar with football. The single-player mode is kind of a slog, though. Passing plays are almost completely worthless; so you end up using the same two running plays every down. Also, the first team to take more than a seven point lead is going to win the game; so, is you get down by ten points, you might as well hit reset. Likewise, if you get up by ten points, you start trying to run out the clock (which, strangely, takes forever despite one minute thirty second quarters). You also have to beat every team to beat the game, and the difficulty spikes at Week 3, Week 6, the second round of the divisional playoffs, and the Tecmo Bowl. As a result, I had to play these games many times before I was able to progress.

I will probably play Tecmo Bowl again at some point, but it will only be the multiplayer game mode. (The benefit of slogging to the Tecmo Bowl is that I am probably a pretty fearsome player at this point.) I am also looking forward to Tecmo Super Bowl, which I u defrost and to be radically better. My (perhaps) unpopular opinion now, however, is that Tecmo Bowl, despite its popularity, is a just-OK sports game, and that ( ) it is not as good as NFL Football for the Intellivision.

.....

I have also been playing a bit of Hot Shots Golf 2 (PS1). It is awesome. Not quite as much fun as Hot Shots Golf 3 (PS2), but it is still a really solid golf game.

[Gunstar Green]

The Little League World Series has started it's 2019 championship tournament near me in Williamsport, PA. A good excuse to play the licensed Little League Championship Series game for NES.





It's actually a very solid baseball game for the console. It's basically SNK's Baseball Stars torn down to its base gameplay. It's very basic but that's exactly what you'd want a Little League game to be. It's also got decent graphics compared to some of its competition and the sound design is solid. It's pretty unique as an officially licensed Little League game and well worth a look as gameplay-wise it stands up with some of the better baseball games on the NES.

[noiseredux]

I loved that Little League game on NES when I was a kid. I was bummed that it wasn't included on the SNK 40th Anniversary collection.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Played some Track & Field last night. Don't have this on the Atari 2600 (yet) but I do have it on NES!

Now I'm a giant weirdo. Track & field is my favorite sport by an absolutely huge margin. I'll watch anything pro track related, but I only watch a handful of "ball" games per year.

Now, this game....... The problem here is the simplicity of track & field itself. There's no real way to "play" the 100 meters, outside of button-mashing. This sucks, and it's very hard to beat the computer. So everyone just seems to cheat (then and now) with a turbo controller. Which causes you to run the 100 in like 8.60 seconds. lol.

I can get through the first few events but tap out at the skeet shoot. This requires precise aiming and the turbo controller isn't helpful at all.

Oh yeah, skeet shooting and archery are on here... and those are clearly not track & field events!!!!!! (And the sequel has things like gymnastics and pistol shooting and hang gliding!)... This always drove me crazy as a kid. Turns out the "Track & Field" series is known as "Hyper Olympic" in its native Japan, where these are indeed marketed as more generalized Olympic games. I'm actually surprised at the localization here. You would think "Olympics" would sell better in the States than "Track & Field" -- maybe the publishers figured that a reference to the Olympics would "date" the games, who the hell knows.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I “beat” the arcade version a few years ago. I appreciate what it did for video games on its release, but beating it almost gave me arthritis (and put some serious wear on my poor NDS). The last event in the arcade version (e.g., the high jump) is not intuitive at all, and controls terribly. Moreover, you have to shatter the “world record” to qualify for the event and roll the credits, which makes the game incredibly frustrating. Thankfully, the Konami Arcade Collection lets you set your control to rapid-fire (and even lets you choose the speed!) so you can crush the other events and practice the high jump a bit.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Have you played the The Activision Decathlon?? I'm a little scared to try that one out. I gotta give them points for accuracy -- it even contains the 1500!!!

[prfsnl_gmr]

Have you played the The Activision Decathlon?? I'm a little scared to try that one out. I gotta give them points for accuracy -- it even contains the 1500!!!

Is that just like the 100...but with 15x more button tapping? It sounds excruciating!