Share your hidden gems and insider tips

thelostsoul

Done. ;-)

Btw, I had problems with two of the Arcade games for Mame, so I included them back to PC Engine. Splatterhouse had the wrong orientation and I did not knew how to correct it. But that is ok, as I just install the PCE version. Bloody Wolf had no sound on Mame. So, back to PCE version. I don't want troubleshoot here, just reporting.

mitu

For the Turbo CD - Lords of Thunder is a well regarded shmup with top notch music. Not quite the hidden gem, but in the spirit of your quest for new games on the PC Engine.

thelostsoul

@mitu I read a lot recommendations to this game. Unfortunately I don't have much more space on my Micro SD card here. That's why I missed so many CD games. If you have more of these, you can post them. Do you play Turbo CD games?

mitu

@thelostsoul said in Share your hidden gems and insider tips:

Do you play Turbo CD games?

Besides the Castelvania one (Rondo of Blood), no. I enjoyed very much Blazing Lasers and played the hell out of Bomberman '94 (one of the best Bomberman IMHO).

EDIT: Size-wise, you can compress the CD images to CHD for the TurboCD emulator. For instance, Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo is about 296 Mb on-disk compressed in CHD format.

VictimRLSH

I still have to get vic-20 rolling on my Pi build, but I always loved playing the Vic-20 version of Omega Race, even more so than arcade. The only difficulty was I had to crack it myself because I didn't have a write protect on my vic-20 RAM expansion, and the program had protection vs. copying to RAM. I imagine there is a proper crack for it now.
Any love for the vic-20 version of that here?

thelostsoul

I was searching for the newest entry in Mame Row, then found some other games by accident. I want to emphasize, I didn't play these games much, just read about them and tried if they are working. Further more on Mame2003 I discovered some mediocre quality games and included them as a small list without description.

Arcade Games

To me the most interesting games in this list was some shmups with some unusual features, like Rohga Armor Force and Captain Tomaday.

Mame2003 (9 Games):

lr-mame2003 (v0.78)

Dragon Breed
dbreed.zip
A solid horizontal shmup made by Irem. The special thing is, the hero is riding a dragon, who can block enemy attacks. This reminds me to another similar title, which I forgot the name.
Cosmic Cop / Armed Police Unit Gallop
cosmccop.zip
Another horizontal shmup by Irem. This is somewhat a racing game too, more or less. There is a timer and going to right side of screen speeds the scrolling up and left for speed down. The goal is to stop some mad cars.
The Legend of Silkroad
silkroad.zip
A side scrolling brawler with moves executed like in Street Fighter 2. This game is the reason why I found all the others in this list. It is the one played by Mame Row currently.
Hammerin' Harry
hharry.zip
A side scrolling action platformer, where the hero have a big hammer to hammer down everything in his ways.
Tumble Pop
tumblep.zip
Single screen action platformer like Bubble Bobble. The character have a big vacuum-cleaner and must suck in enemies and spit them out to kill it.
Armored Warriors
armwar.zip
Side scrolling brawler with mechs by Capcom. It features the remarkable ability to take up parts of enemy and gain its powers (not switchable like in Mega Man!).
Blood Bros.
bloodbro.zip
Gallery Shooter type of game, which plays like a modern Cabal (and was a sort of sequel to it). Solid, nothing special about it, just not well known.
Xain'd Sleena / Solar Warrior
xsleena.zip
The first stage plays like a linear Turrican and then next part is a shmup like Gradius. So, it constantly switches the type of game each stage.

Honorable mentions: Act-Fancer Cybernetick Hyper Weapon, Black Tiger, I Robot, Time Killers, Asterix

Mame2010 (2 Games):

lr-mame2010 (v0.139)

The Astyanax
astyanax.zip
Side scrolling action platformer in a fantasy world. Reminds me a little to the PCE game Legendary Axe.
Rohga Armor Force / Wolf Fang
rohga.zip
A side scrolling shmup, or like a run and gun type on the ground. The player can construct his own mech or get a predefined one. Cool thing is, that mech can ride on parts of the background. If he loses his big mech, he plays as a small character and can fly around. According to Wikipedia, the game is related to Vapor Trail and Skul Fang; need to check out too for whats going on.

FBA (1 Game):

lr-fbalpha (v0.2.97.43)

Biomechanical Toy
biomtoy.zip
A horizontal run and gun game, with nice looking comic graphics and animations. Gameplaywise, comparable to Metal Slug, but not in same degree of quality.

Neo Geo / FBA set (4 Games):

lr-fbalpha (v0.2.97.43)

Aggressors of Dark Kombat
aodk.zip
Maybe not really hidden, but I didn't know about the concept before looking further into it. It is a 2D fighting game like Street Fighter, but combined as a Final Fight like brawler mechanism. The fighter does jump with a button and can freely walk around.
Andro Dunos
androdun.zip
Solid horizontal shmup. The player can change the set of weapons anytime he wants. Otherwise not really groundbraking. Just widely unknown and solid.
Captain Tomaday
ctomaday.zip
An untypical vertical shmup. The hero is a tomato with arms and he does not shoot, but stretch its arms to punch enemys (greetings from Rayman I suppose). Ok, thats weird and interesting enough to be tested. Looks quite funny to me, with cute graphics. No English information on Wikipedia found.
Voltage Fighter - Gowcaizer
gowcaizr.zip
A superhero based 2D fighter. The twist is, if player wins, he gets a special move from his opponent. Unfortunately he can only carry 1.

Thats it for now guys (and ladies). I would be happy if you try some of these games out and find something interesting for you.

VictimRLSH

@thelostsoul Yes, love Dragon Breed and Captain Tomaday. The fact that the dragon is indestructible adds a very unique element to the game, especially when you have to dismount to grab something on the ground.

Also recently discovered The Speed Rumbler (srumbler.zip) MAME 2003. THIS GAME IS COMPLETE CHAOS!!! The state of disorder in the battles is a lot of fun. When your car is destroyed, you have a chance to jump out and fight on foot with your tiny little gun until you are supplied with a new car (but often just get ran over...)

mediamogul

@victimrlsh said in Share your hidden gems and insider tips:

When your car is destroyed, you have a chance to jump out and fight on foot with your tiny little gun until you are supplied with a new car (but often just get ran over...)

This puts me in mind of 'Boogie Wings', an amazing hidden gem that I don't believe has made this page yet. Game play is best described in the excerpt from hardcoregaming101 below

The first thing one notices about the airplane is the “skyhook”, the grappling hook swinging under it, carries a mine that acts as a smart bomb if thrown with the second button. The mine can also be used to destroy enemy planes and vehicles, by moving the joystick in circular motions and using the chain as a wrecking ball. This idea already elevates the strategic component Boogie Wings, but this is just the beginning. The hook, when empty, can be used to pick up and throw almost everything in the game, be it other enemy vehicles and soldiers, or pieces of landscape (trees, statues, crates, etc), making for an especially versatile weapon. It takes a while to get used to it, but in the hands of the most skilled players, it becomes a great advantage.

When your biplane is lost, the game becomes a run 'n gun as well, even allowing the pilot to eventually take control of several other vehicle types, such as tanks, steam punk robots and even a pogo stick. I'm definitely going to pair this and 'The Speed Rumbler' together later this evening for some extended chaotic fun.

Here's a video of 'Boogie Wings' in action.

thelostsoul

@mediamogul Yes, Boogie Wings is definitive under appreciated hidden gem. It is one of those rare shmups where your hero jumps off the vehicle and then you still fight. I would love to see a list with this feature. Definitvely check this out if you (the reader) didn't yet.

I didn't include it here, but on a different thread and then forgot about it. Maybe we should start collecting all games from the topic (every other topic too) and do a user defined list for easier include and share.

mediamogul

@thelostsoul said in Share your hidden gems and insider tips:

Maybe we should start collecting all games from the topic (every other topic too) and do a user defined list for easier include and share.

I'd be a huge task, but a welcome effort.

VictimRLSH

@mediamogul What romsets is Boogie Wings compatible with? Not seeing it in my MAME 2003 set, but I can play it on the laptop from my master set.

mediamogul

@victimrlsh

I'm using 0.106 with AdvanceMAME.

thelostsoul

@victimrlsh And I use FB Alpha v0.2.97.43 to play Boogie Wings (Euro v1.5, 92.12.07), romname: boogwing. In this list
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GaqIIoiWbzKHwZ52S2xCSDQXILo81Ls1mHK6czKGAtM/edit#gid=1671511927
someone made a note that this game have crackling sound. I am don't remember any crackling.

pootis spencer

Two games that are in my favourites are Willow and Wardner. Always love to play these games.

thelostsoul

@pootis-spencer Wardner was actually one of the last games I had to decide to include or not. I never played it before and so, I have not the same feelings as you maybe. I watched videos and reviews about it and still, not sure about that game. I disliked that in later stages you must have the strongest beam, otherwise its practically impossible to make that stage and boss. Willow on the other hand is much more interesting and better from the looks of the videos and description. But still, I lack experience in both games and just decided from reading others opinion. It is interesting to watch in YouTube people talking about their childhood games and that makes these games more interesting. :-)

mediamogul

@victimrlsh said in Share your hidden gems and insider tips:

Also recently discovered The Speed Rumbler

This was a lot of fun. Vehicular combat might very well be my favorite type of action game and it's great to see one with a sense of humor. I'll definitely be playing it a lot more of it in the future.

Clyde

@victimrlsh @mediamogul I also discovered Speed Rumbler not long ago. For me, one of the funniest things about it is that you ram the cages to free the the hostages. I often can't help it to expect a bloody mess of wood and body parts, especially when I'm just driving over them at full speed. 😇

Spiky

Not exactly a gem, but very well hidden. Zurk's Learning Safari is a MS-DOS game released in 90's. It has been nowhere on internet to be found, not even big archives with thousands of MS-DOS games had this game. Times changed due to my copy, so if anyone tried to find it, it is possible now.

robertvb83

@victimrlsh thanks for pointing out Speed Rumbler. This is a lot of fun.

I was just looking into the respective manual and found a very interesting chapter

I like to look into the commercial aspect of those arcade games. You can be sure that the games development put huge efforts in optimizing profit. And it is interesting how this affects gameplay. Not only by making games difficult but also find ways to keep the player interested. The whole idea of "continue" is often a very good argument for putting that next coin in. I did not know that there are hints to how to optimize profit in the manuals! Cool find!

thelostsoul

@mediamogul said in Share your hidden gems and insider tips:

@thelostsoul said in Share your hidden gems and insider tips:

Maybe we should start collecting all games from the topic (every other topic too) and do a user defined list for easier include and share.

I'd be a huge task, but a welcome effort.

So, it's done.

Custom Collection

I compiled a list of recommended games in this thread. The collection does not cover everything mentioned here. If you want add something to the list, feel free to download it, modify and upload again.

custom-hidden gems and insider tips.cfg (v1, 2018-08-12)

Game count for each system

megadrive: 22
snes: 52
nes: 9
fds: 6
n64: 1
mame2003 (mame-libretro folder): 49
mame2010 (arcade folder): 14
fba: 13
neogeo: 7
gb: 9
gbc: 2
gba: 11
atari2600: 1
gamegear: 1
mastersystem: 3
pcengine: 37

Not included games and systems

But not all games made it; I had some trouble or don't use these systems. Mostly referring to the first post of mediamogul, where a lot of different systems are used to recommend games. In example I don't use other Atari systems other than Atari 2600 and so I don't have the filenames. Off course I could check somewhere else, but forgive me here for my lazyness. I also excluded complicated to setup systems like Amiga and DOS, which aren't straight forward to add through such a listing, at least not in my experience. Same goes to CD based systems, most prominently the Playstation and PC Engine. There are also several games I couldn't find in my archive, like Gameboy: 'Square Deal' and Atari 2600: 'Dolphin'. While I found Square Deal later on a different source and included it into the list, I need to test which version to include for Dolphin and so excluded it for now. Ninja Baseball Batman is also not included for its slowdown problems. I also did not include games created by rom randomizers for obvious reasons.

Why you need path correction (script)

There are a lot of filenames, which will or may not match what you have installed. It starts with custom filenames due to translation patches or different regional versions of games. Or even games with same checksum and region, they are just named differently with (U) or (USA) in example. Then there are different filetypes. Not only that, I also have 4 different folders and systems showing up in my menu for arcade games. I use mame2003 (folder=mame-libretro), mame2010 (folder=arcade), FB Alpha v0.2.97.43 (folder=fba). I also use separate folder for Neo Geo games (folder=neogeo), which still uses same FBA emulator. And you might use genesis folder, instead of megadrive like i do.

What am I talking about is a script, which will try to find the rom with different filename or folder and rename the collection entry automatically. It will create a new collection, based on the corrected paths in it without touching your roms itself. I highly recommend to checkout the script made by @cyperghost:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17783/pathfinder-for-custom-collections-correct-pathes-for-custom-collections