[Sniper Honeyviper]

Guys, if you have problems emulating a game, just say something!

[Sniper Honeyviper]

TODAY'S GAME IS: Hatris (Arcade)

An incredibly unforgiving puzzle game from Alexey Pajitnov. Seems to be universally hated for its difficulty, but I find it enjoyable nonetheless. This version is by Video System, known for the Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings series.

5-hat stacks will be cleared. More dangerous hats are worth more points. After depositing one hat of a pair, the other can continue to be moved independently. Combos using this are quite tricky to set up, but will award a multiplier. After a certain number of cleared stacks, you'll get a SALE, which will let you remove all of one kind of hat from the board.

Red fires will remove all the hats of a kind stacked together. Blue fires will burn an entire column. In a stunning feat of trolling, crowns cannot be burned, precisely because they're the most dangerous hat type.




First: 6440

Just beating the top default score is a serious challenge!

[Schwere Viper]

Woooooow. You lose your cool in this game and it's over. A mistake now and then can be worked around but too many at once and you're done.
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Blog: Machines That Sing

[Bennett]

Hatris: 3700

I panicked.

[cake]

I didn't realise this was real game for several years ... I though it was just a bizarre made-up game people would mention to illustrate how many crazy clones of Tetris there were. I got a good score but I was playing the US version, and now that I look at your screenshots, they are in Japanese.

- cake: 7916

[Bennett]

Best: 16570



Challenge: burn the hair off all the heads at the bottom of the screen.

[notbov]

3988



I do not like this game.

Now Wordtris... there's a good horrible Tetris cash-in.
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[Sniper Honeyviper]

Excluding versions of Tetris, I really don't think any of Pajitnov's games are "cash-ins;" he just wanted to keep designing new stuff. Don't think he worked on Wordtris, though. I think Hatris holds together remarkably well, even if one small mistake can easily ruin your entire run.

Anyone else tried Welltris? It's bizarre, disorienting, and nearly unplayable. There's also Knight Moves, a Pajitnov game only released on the Famicom Disc System.

[Bennett]

I like Wetrix. But the best tetris clone is Rampart.

[Sniper Honeyviper]

TODAY'S GAME IS: Sengeki Striker (Arcade)

A well made, if boilerplate and easy shmup from Warashi, developers of Shienryu and Triggerheart Exelica. It was their first arcade game, although much of the team had previously worked on Daioh, which shares many elements with Shienryu.

It's a straight blast-em-up with no special scoring tricks (as far as I know), but I would advise not hanging around the very bottom of the screen too much, since all four of my deaths resulted from enemies popping up there without warning.



First: 41156690. This is really not as high as it should be, due to the aforementioned cheap deaths. The 100-place leaderboard is hilarious. Does the game have a second loop? I would imagine it'd be much crazier.

[Deets]

Just as a heads-up, Sengeki Striker requires the Kaneko Super System Bios or whatever

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Thanks, I should have mentioned that. Same bios you'll need for Cyvern.

[Schwere Viper]

11428550!

TINY BULLETS

TINY BULLETS EVERYWHERE

OH GOD

(to be fair the hitbox is quite generous)
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Blog: Machines That Sing

[Deets]

Sengeki Striker
14,243,450

ohhh man I dunno. This game is pretty damn stressful

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Most of the bullets gave me no serious trouble, they're predictable and usually non-aimed. :(

I'm hardly Lord of the Shmups, so...I dunno either? It's not that I played the Japanese version, I checked to make sure both were identical.

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Best score for Zaxxon's Motherbase: 256580. As before, I didn't use an emulator.

Really think you guys should give this game more of a chance, it picks up quite fast in Stage 3, and even more so once you get down to the planet. There's a huge variety in attacks between the jackable ships; I even found one with close-range buzzsaws.

[Sniper Honeyviper]

TODAY'S GAME IS: T-T-T-T-Turbo Force (Arcade)

A glorious one-button shmup about flying cars defending America from crab aliens. One of the purest games ever made.

There aren't any tips to give, as this is TURBO FORCE, but keep in mind that the first stage is deceptively easy. Oh, and you don't have any bombs.




First: 150300. Miss too many powerup items and you're doomed.

[Schwere Viper]

68800, sadly. Got done in by the two robots with their homing bullets.

Going to play this and Zaxxon a bit more and see if I can get a decent best score out of either!
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[Bennett]

86900. Might try again.

/edit second try was 148600. It does help a lot if you try to conserve bullets, since your weapons constantly downgrade while you're firing them.

[notbov]

First:157700



I was a little thrown off about how easy it was. At which point, the game knew my guard was down and threw lots of shit at me. Also, for a game with the word TURBO in the title, these flying cars are pretty slow.
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[cake]

- cake: 58500

some suggestions:

- Mustache Boy
- Noboranka

[Bennett]

Suggestion: Fire Trap. Something a bit different and nonviolent.

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Excellent suggestions, and I had never heard of any of them! I will be featuring them all.

TODAY'S GAME IS: Mustache Boy (Arcade)

A chronicle of the life of young Shrug. Also, a delightfully weird hybrid of Pac-Man and Bomberman with jumping. Although it's not credited to Seibu Kaihatsu, we know they made it because it uses their hardware, and their name's all over the PCB.

As the tutorial shows, most enemies can be safely jumped on. I've found that the speedy mono-eye enemies will still hurt you while they're flashing, though. Here's a rundown of all the special tiles, because some elements of them are unclear:

Bomb: The tiles flashing around this after you step on it will explode, killing both enemies and you.

Stop: Enemies can't move or spawn for a short time. They also won't hurt you, so you can walk across tiles they're covering.

Pow: The power pill equivalent. A robot fist appears in front of you, smashing enemies in its path. Knocking one enemy into another is worth 1500 points total.

Kill: No beating around the bush here, it kills everything onscreen.



First: 78400

[Schwere Viper]

93790! Apparently, there's a warp object that lets you skip three levels. I don't know if that's a bad thing or a good thing.

Still, amagad so close

(btw: MAME's history.dat credits Seibu to this. March did the distribution.)

[Bennett]

Only managed 22190. Didn't like the game, seemed overcluttered with ideas.

[Rud31]

Turbo Force 1369300
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THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Sniper Honeyviper]

[Loki Laufeyson]

will play turbo force and mustache boy later today, when i get round to auditing mame. it takes so long ;_;
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[Schwere Viper]

[cake]

Lost all my lives on Mustache Boy trying to jump over enemies. Although it's not an especially great game, I think it has a good spirit.

- cake: 27320

[notbov]

First:72470



So, those conveyor belts on the 3rd stage. They can push you around when you have a single pixel on them. I found this out on a brief sojourn into the abyss.
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[Loki Laufeyson]

both these games are really great


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[Sniper Honeyviper]

Sorry, Bennett, but it turns out I can't feature Fire Trap. It uses two sticks, which is a problem for those like myself without a dual-analog PC-compatible pad. In any case, here's...

TODAY'S GAME IS: Noboranka (Arcade)

Kind of a much, much better version of Action 52's City of Doom, where you control some sort of obese ladybug man with stubble. Is this based on a Japanese folktale? The muted pastel palette is very nice and unusual.

Button 1 shoots, button 2 takes off a letter from the ILOVEYOU meter to activate flight mode. You can stand on the side branches, as well as fly between them. Skulls will occasionally drop from enemies instead of fruits, so watch the items carefully. The bubble blower adds a one-hit shield. Oh, and as well as replenishing the meter, fruits will add seconds to the timer, so don't constantly rush to your death like I did.



First: 45600. Didn't realize the timer wasn't so tight.

[Bennett]

[Schwere Viper]

20100. Strange game. Screen gets pretty busy early on and quite a few enemies have erratic patterns, so you have to be on your toes from the start.
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[notbov]

55200.



The timer's pretty deceptive, since you get lots of extra time from fruits.
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[Sniper Honeyviper]

[Bennett]

I got 28000 for Noboranka - about 25000 from my first life, and then it was a bit of a fiasco.

[cake]

said Dr. Foddy (32), creator of infamous internet game "QWOP".

I have no problem playing Fire Trap, but then as I have a dualshock, I'll have no problem playing Fire Trap. As for Noboranka,

- cake: 23400

... I guess I'll go and put the 2nd screenshot into the Moai Galaxy Oddity thread.

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Yeah, I've only got wireless 360 pads and Dualshocks with no PS2>USB ports.

I was lucky enough to play Night Stocker on original hardware today! You need to spin the wheel like crazy to get anywhere. The light gun is scarily accurate: it's a dinky little grey plastic thing, but it aimed spot-on 100% of the time. In contrast, most Konami/Namco arcade guns are notoriously easy to de-calibrate.

My new best score is 252550! Was much easier to aim around than on a mouse.

Also played some T-MEK, the bitchin' multiplayer sequel to Battlezone. It has the most responsive controls of anything I've ever used.

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Usually at SBGCD1CR we have featured good games, or at least interesting and unique ones. Today we will be doing nothing of the sort. For this is...

TODAY'S GAME IS: 3D Pinball for Windows - Space Cadet (PC)

I was going to do Hover!, but that would be pure masochism.



A shitty blast from the shitty past. Relive those hours of wasting time in work/school! For me, it was the high school library when I was supposed to be doing research papers, and Doom/Starcraft had been taken down from the public server HDD again. I can see why they didn't put any action games into versions after XP.

Download Vista/7 version (I have tested it for spyware):