Together Retro February 2020 - Not For YoU.S.A

[alienjesus]

I got stuck into The Firemen today. I've beaten the first 3 levels so far, and I suspect that's a good chunk of the game as it seems pretty short overall. I'm a little worried about there potentially being limited continues as the game has been pretty challenging so far - the levels arent too bad, but the third boss was a real jerk. For some reason my health dropped down to almost nothing whilst fighting him despite nothing hitting me - wish I knew why!

The game has a pretty good localisation for the era, the script is quite well written and has good grammar and spelling for a change. The game has an odd Die Hard feel to it - there's no terrorists, but you are climbing a big dangerous building on Christmas Day, with lots of buddies calling in to talk to you on the radio. I like it a lot so far.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I started Disaster: Day of Crisis today. Much to my surprise, the game appears to have no Japanese dub of any kind, unless that's some super locked away feature. My Japanese version defaults to an English dub with Japanese subs, and appears to only be able to turn off the subtitles. Reminds me of God Hand in that way, I suppose

My first impressions are that style-wise, from the UI layout to the sound effects to the way the characters are modeled, this is DEFINITELY a Monolithsoft game. It's giving me huge Xenoblade flashbacks with those little bits of style. It's also definitely a Monolithsoft game in the GIANT GIANT cutscenes in between gameplay. Granted I've only done the tutorial/prologue mission so far.

Mechanically, this game is not heckin' great. I'd call it downright clunky and even offputting in how Ray moves and the camera is controlled with the D-pad. I'm gonna give it another go tomorrow, as I often can gel with a game better if I try it out and come back to it a later day, but my gut feeling right now is that this is something I'm gonna get really frustrated with and just abandon eventually. Hopefully that ain't the case though! I don't have anything for any of next month's themes, and I really don't have any cash to buy games that would fit in with them, so I'd like to get at least one thingy done for this month's TR.

[MrPopo]

Told you to do the other game you were thinking of

[PretentiousHipster]

Goddamn Kuru Kuru Kururin is difficult.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Goddamn Kuru Kuru Kururin is difficult.

Yep. It’s no joke. Some of the later levels are just insane. I still thought it was fun, though. Reminded me a bit of trying to get a couch into an apartment. It’s almost a “fitting a big piece of furniture through a door” simulator.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I got back to Disaster: Day of Crisis today, and I did enjoy it more after coming back to it (or at least I stuck with it easier). The lightgun sections are pretty good, but the controls for walking around still kinda suck, and the driving controls, while alright, often are nowhere near good enough to make up for the rough (and sometimes outright terrible) design of the tracks you're driving on. AJ is absolutely right that the game is more than the sum of its parts, but it's still something I'd have a hard time recommending at this point.

I think maybe I'm like halfway through the game, at least judging by the HLTB time (I'm 4.5 hours in). Currently going down an ashy mountain and just beat a helicopter. Gonna have to fight the helicopter again though, as the Wii hard-crashed when I picked up a key, so I'm gonna have to do that section again, unfortunately. Granted, out of all the sections I could've had to redo, this is definitely one of the less bad ones XP

[alienjesus]

I'm a little behind on updating this thread.

First of all, I've finished up The Firemen. Overall, I found it to be a solid title that just narrowly misses being truly top-tier on the console. The gameplay is a ton of fun, but a little too difficult for it's own good towards the end - each level comes with some obscenely strict time limits towards the end, with tons of opportunities to take damage too. Your scanner which detects lifesigns nearby also stops working, which is problematic because rescuing people rewards full health restores. The game also has limited continues (3, with only 1 life per continue) and a game over means restarting from the beginning.

I feel all of these problems are the games way of addressing it's biggest flaw - it's actually super short, surprisingly so. There are 6 levels, each taking about 10 minutes each, so you can play through the game in an hour or so. In all honesty, this game would be better if it was longer and had a more gradual difficulty curve, but I suspect it was a bit niche to justify the extra cost.

Which is a shame, because The Firemen is otherwise pretty great. The gameplay is fun generally, and I enjoyed the back and forth dialogue between the characters in and outside the building. Even though most of the enemies are 'fire' they manage to make different behaviours of each type of fire feel distinct and challenging, and they also throw other unexpected obstacles at you, with backdraughts, explosions, falling scenery and more as you progress. It's a bit too pricy to get the European copy if you ask me (and I should know, because that's exactly what I did for this Together Retro) but if you can play a patched Japanese version or emulate via some means, I'd recommend it. It's pretty great.


I also played through Bishoujou Senshi Sailor Moon for Super Famicom. This one did get a PAL release, but only in France, where it's pretty rare and pricy. The Japanese copy, on the other hand, cost me less than a tenner, so I'll stick with that.

I actually didn't really know much about Sailor Moon, so I watched a few episodes of the subtitled anime to bring me up to speed a bit. I didn't get very far into the series (the sailor scouts other than Sailor Moon havent showed up yet) but I'm glad I gave it a go - I recognised a lot of similar elements and musical themes in the games presentation to the show, which I would have otherwise missed had I not watched it.

My wife was a fan of the dubbed Sailor Moon growing up, so I managed to convince her to give the game a go with me. It's a beat 'em up game with 5 stages - we played through as Sailor Jupiter (me) and Sailor Venus (wife). There's not a hige variety in moves or enemy type in all honesty, and the music is bizarrely low key for a game about punching dudes - it's a fairly basic beat em up. But it's clearly had some effort put into it with how it looks and animates, and whilst it's unremarkable gameplay wise, it's also not bad, and we enjoyed it well enough.

Early signs indicated that we might not be able to beat the game - the first boss has a super unreasonable hitbox and shredded through quite a few lives. Weirdly enough though, he's probably one of the hardest bits of the game, and we cleared through the rest of the game without too much trouble, and finished it on our first attempt. It's fairly easy overall.

Anyhow, those were the 2 games I had planned for this month. I'm not too sure I have anything else that fits the bill to play now that I've not beaten before, but I look forward to seeing everyone elses updates over the next 2 weeks!

[PartridgeSenpai]

Just finished Disaster: Day of Crisis. FINALLY done with that game. I'll write my review tomorrow once I have a little distance from it, because writing it right now would be a biiiit negative XP

It's definitely a mixed bag, but the better parts are just alright/fairly entertaining while the worse parts are BAAAAAD. The campiness is fun, sure, but I think you can easily get the feeling for that just watching a playthrough online. Outside of the silly presentation, the US really did not miss out on much with this game. "A hidden gem that was hidden for a good reason", is perhaps the best way to sum up my immediate feelings on it Xp

[Sload Soap]

I've had to throw in the towel on Tokyo Road Race. It's just not good fun depite being a decent racer. Generally it's just a punishing game and the drfiting isn't really clicking with me so I'm replaying events more than I can be bothered with. Oh well.

X-treme Express is even more difficult to get a grip on but has this weird charm that has pulled me back. I still struggle to actually finish competitive races never mind place well and it's just down to the way races end. Essentially if you aren't well out in front and thus get to choose which platform to finish I've found it really hard to anticipate what the cpu trains will do and often end up crashing. That said I also wouldn't replace this odd mechanic with a standard finish line as it is kind of what makes the game unique.

[PretentiousHipster]

Planned on playing more but I'm not sure I can even beat Kuru Kuru Kururin on time. It's definitely a great game, but almost overwhelming with how difficult the levels are getting.