MAME ROW #114 - Naughty Boy

obsidianspider

This is the MAME Random Of the Week #114

The three random numbers for this week are: 192 1625 1166

Click here to vote! Which game do you choose for MAME ROW #114?

The result of the poll is posted on Wednesday, so we have Monday and Tuesday for experimentation.

192
Game Name: Borench
Company: Sega
Year: 1990
ROM file name: borench.zip

1725
Game Name: Son of Phoenix
Company: Associated Overseas MFR, Inc
Year: 1985
ROM file name: sonofphx.zip

1169
Game Name: Naughty Boy
Company: Jaleco
Year: 1982
ROM file name: naughtyb.zip

What is the MAME ROW?

MAME ROW stands for MAME Random Of the Week. We randomly select an arcade game from the 0.78 MAME Reference Set to play on the week. The idea is to play games we've never played before, interact with other forum members, post hi-scores, share game strategies, fun facts, and (the most important) HAVE FUN!

Notes:

We usually post hi-scores screenshots after playing with only one credit. If you used more than one credit, please mention it on your post.
There's no need to use RetroPie to join the MAME ROW! You can play it on any platform you want.
Feel free to post your hi-score (or any content about the game) anytime you want on the previous rounds topics (link below).

Every Monday we create a topic at the "General Discussion and Gaming > MAME Random Of the Week" forum section with the 3 random games to be voted. And on Wednesday we check the result.

These "rules" are constantly being improved!

Previous Rounds

thelostsoul

Son of Phoenix looks like a mediocore shoot'em up from early days. i am not very interested into looking further. The other games are already discovered by me. Borench looks like an interesting puzzle game, but I don't know how well it works for highscore play. Naughty Boy is charming and oldschool. Here is a description I had in my thread:

naughtyb.zip (mame2010): A very old maze like game with scrolling. Goal is to destroy those flags on top of screen. You can imagine that a Google search with this title leads to wrong results. ;-) Some say it's a bad game, but I think it is interesting.

@VictimRLSH said the game described how you can earn points by cheap play: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17047/share-your-hidden-gems-and-insider-tips/110

I don't know what to vote.

GtBFilms

@obsidianspider said in MAME ROW #114:

Son of Phoenix

Added these to my PICADE and scraped them but couldn't find Son of Phoenix - turns out it's a bootleg of the game 'Repulse' so appears under that name - in case anyone else can't find it after scraping!

Gotta love that old-school faux-wood bezel design on the original Naughty Boy cabinet!

GtBFilms

There appears to be a problem with the strawpoll link this week - I can't get to the poll, and it just links back to this page.

However, I did try each of the games and here's my comments:

Borench
Another puzzle game, I know these are tremendously popular but apart from Tetris, I never really 'got' any of them. This one is an interesting cross between Marble Madness and Pipe Dream.
I found it quite difficult to make out what the current block actually was sometimes, and the game either seemed to be quite slow initially, or mad panic as the ball nears the goal.
Passable, and I'm sure some puzzle fans will love it, but not my choice this week.

Son of Phoenix
Interesting one. I played a few games and quite enjoyed it. The sense of depth is purely aesthetic, as your shots can hit any enemy, no matter how far away they are. It got a lot easier after the first power up which was an auto-firing weapon. The shield is a decent addition, although as always with a shield, I seem to forget to activate it until it's too late. Decent game.

Naughty Boy
Now this is an odd one, looks pretty rubbish, but I actually really enjoyed playing it. The stated aim is to destroy all the flags but I found I could rack up a decent score just taking out the enemies. The question marks seem to make all the enemies go red, I'm not sure if that means they are vulnerable or more deadly. A bunch of sandwiches and suchlike also appear for no apparent reason, and bombing them scores more points. I like the oddness of this one, and I have a feeling it's one of those games where you can discover some new tactic which will increase your score multi-fold. I'd quite like the opportunity to play this a bit more. Plus as I already mentioned, the cabinet artwork is charmingly retro.

So this week, if I had managed to cast my vote, it would have gone to.....

Naughty Boy

thelostsoul

@GtBFilms Naughty Boy would get my vote too, its very charming. What do you think about the cheap play possibility? That would ruin the highscores. I am still uncertain about the vote.

Lyle_JP

I would also vote Naughty Boy just to mix it up (we've had shooters for a bit), but I don't hate Repulse (aka Son of Phoenix).

GtBFilms

@thelostsoul yeah the cheap play thing does kind of spoil the high score competition. I indulged in similar cheap tactics back when we did R-Type and at the time we discussed it and came to the conclusion that a high score is a high score, regardless of cheap tactics .

It's a tricky one. The problem of course of ruling out such cheap play just to amass score is everyone's interpretation of what constitutes such tactics differs.

I remember back in the 80s having debates about the RoboCop arcade machine. Each level is timed but the timer is generous . Some players used to use this extra time to repeatedly shoot the thrown grenades , taking care not to shoot the guy throwing them. You could get more points doing that that you did for any remaining time when you completed the level. It was a cheap tactic for sure, but was it actually cheating? I don't think we ever came to a conclusion on that one!

Really games could prevent this by giving a massive end of level bonus. So any points earned messing about are negligible compared to advancing to later levels . Not sure if Naughty Boy has such a mechanic though.

thelostsoul

@GtBFilms We can find it out. ;-) I still like the game. On some serious Communities for highscore plays some cheap play or bug abuse are not permitted, for the sake of not ruining the experience. Not everyone likes this, as the game is what it is.

GtBFilms

@thelostsoul You reminded me of some LAN parties we used to have. Four of us used to bring PCs to each others houses and set them up for Duke Nukem, Half Life, Command and Conquer, Red Alert and other Westwood RTS games.

I remember we had 'fair play' rules for Red Alert, which involved a ban on engineer rushes (where a player quickly loads up an APC with engineers, drives it straight into the early-game undefended opponents base, all the engineers jump out and grab control of key buildings, then immediately sell them). Everyone agreed that it was a cheap trick and not much fun for anyone.

But then we introduced new rules, like no laying mines in ore fields, no Soviet tank rushes for the first 10 minutes, no hiding your last infantryman behind a tree, refusing to admit defeat until they found him, and no using underground units going round and round in circles (Tiberian Sun) to annoy opponents with constant "Subterranean Unit Detected!" warnings to the extent that they switched off their radar.

Eventually when someone wanted a rule "No using Cruisers, because I don't know how to defend against them" we decided it was getting ridiculous, the games the game, and all's fair in love and gaming!

thelostsoul

@GtBFilms I can only see how this happened. I am not a big fan of setting up artificial rules, because that's not the game anymore, besides exceptions. Just thought that I'll bring this topic up prior to voting.

Btw, vote does not work, the link brings me back to this page.

obsidianspider

I definitely goofed on the voting link this week. Sorry about that, but it looks like the consensus was for Naughty Boy

thelostsoul

@obsidianspider No problem. I think too Naughty Boy looks like the winner to me (still not very confident with it).

Lyle_JP

I don't see this as being an issue of "cheap play" but rather of strategy. To me, cheap play is exploiting a bug that gives you a score you shouldn't have (like in Phoenix).

IanDaemon

I really enjoy trying out games I find out about here. (and chatting about them) I'd otherwise ignore some of these.

GtBFilms

@IanDaemon I agree, we get a nice selection of familiar ones, plus some unusual ones that passed me by back in the arcades . My personal favourites are the peculiar Japanese ones that never made it to the West, or at least not to my local arcade - "I'm Sorry" was a classic oddball one, and I also discovered "Pac n' Pal" via the MAMEROW which, although overly complicated, is an interesting progression for the Pacman genre.

Of course we also get our fair share of absolute stinkers, but I consider that all part of the fun! I actually enjoy watching YouTube reviews of bad games more than ones of good games, but trying to play them myself, the novelty soon wears off!

One of the big problems with this hobby is when you have 17,000 games on a system, some of which don't actually work properly, you tend to just stick to the ones you are familiar with . As you say, MAMEROW is a good opportunity to seek out those ones you might never stumble across otherwise.

thelostsoul

@GtBFilms said in MAME ROW #114 - Naughty Boy:

Of course we also get our fair share of absolute stinkers, but I consider that all part of the fun! I actually enjoy watching YouTube reviews of bad games more than ones of good games, but trying to play them myself, the novelty soon wears off!

As I include working and good games only in my collection, I always try to decide if a game is worth adding. So finding out if a game is bad is as important as if a game is good. And MAMEROW did change my mind more than twice.

GtBFilms

Interesting one this week, but a bit flawed.

Playing it 'properly' - ie actually trying to take out the flags, I managed 33100.

Playing purely for the high score (just taking out enemies for as long as I could) I scored 78970.

Oddly when player 1 gets a high score, this isn't actually displayed as the current high score until the next credit is inserted, which is a bit strange. You can see this on my screenshot, taken just after my high score .

obsidianspider

MAME ROW #115 is live