MAME ROW #9: Puyo Puyo 2
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Two fairly big names this week. 'Kung-Fu Master' is a particular childhood favorite, but I do love puzzle games, so I'll have to give 'Puyo Puyo 2' it's full time in court before I vote. You're right about 'Boxing Bugs' @pjft. It was a spinner-controlled game as seen below. Mame will likely have a working control option for it, but I imagine that a good bit of the fun will be lost in translation.
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@mediamogul Figured as much - at least from the video it didn't seem practical to control using a joystick. Thanks for checking! There certainly is a part of recreating these systems that'll be hard to preserve unless we have dedicated hardware. For Midnight Resistance - a game I have fond memories of from playing on my ZX Spectrum back in the day - I learned that the arcade machine had a rotary control as well.
Mame2003 can emulate those, where you may map it to L1/R1 to rotate left/right, though you can clearly tell that it's a rough adaptation rather than how it's meant to be played. In this case, it looks like it requires some dexterity, so unless you'd be able to map it to an analog joystick directly, as a compromise, it may be hard to play.
Puyo Puyo as a whole is great - I'm happy with either game this week!
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Curiously the first number I got from random.org brought the game Slick Shot. I wonder what kind of hardware is needed to play that snooker game...
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Wow Kung-Fu Master ... One oft my favourite games in the CPC. In the other Hand a New Plattform puzzle game? Why not - expect my votes.
@meleu Good luck for your audit. Can be very frustating but it is necessary for security and handling regulatory things 😯 -
Unexpectedly, I think 'Puyo Puyo' has edged out 'Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo' as my third favorite puzzle game behind 'Dr. Mario' and 'Tetris'. What a fun game. I can't believe this is my first time playing it.
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@meleu said in MAME ROW #9:
I wonder what kind of hardware is needed to play that snooker game.
The good ol' fashioned kind...
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Had a play of these last night. Boxing bugs looks like it would be my favourite, as I love these vector based games, but as others have said, without a spinner it's not very playable. I've thought in the past of getting myself some less generic controllers, like a spinner and a trackball, steering wheel, yoke, but it always comes down to the fact there are only a small number of games that make use of them, and it's hard to justify the expense for something that will probably only be used a couple of times every year or so.
Of the other two, I thought Kung Fu Master hasn't aged very well. I remember such games being groundbreaking, but often suffering from the 'soak up damage with more coins' problem. Altered Beast was bad for that too. Pretty much unavoidable health loss.
I'm not a huge fan of puzzle games, but Puyo Puyo 2 does look like a good one. I never got past level 2, but suspect there's probably a lot more to it than meets the eye.
So for a fun challenge, my vote this week is going for Puyo Puyo 2!
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Kung-Fu Master was also ported to the Nintendo/NES. It was one of the original 17 launch titles, and a childhood favorite of mine (although today I don't know why...we could never get past like level 3).
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@Dochartaigh said in MAME ROW #9:
Kung-Fu Master was also ported to the Nintendo/NES.
Such a great NES game. In my opinion, it stands alongside 'Contra' and 'Punch-Out!!' as being superior to their arcade counterparts in game play, despite their reduced visuals. Something I didn't know until a few months ago was that Japan actually got a sequel. Over there 'Kung-Fu' was released in 1985 as 'Spartan X' and six years later 'Spartan X 2' was released.
The game is not nearly as iconic as the original, but it's still a good bit of fun and an interesting mix of 'Kung-Fu', 'Double Dragon' and 'Ninja Gaiden'. Anyone wanting to give it a go can benefit from a fan-based English translation patch found here. As you can see from the video below, even the title screen has been translated to 'Kung-Fu 2'.
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This week is going to be a puzzle week.
Good oportunity to keep playing and rest the finger/forearm after all those shooters. :-)
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@meleu Yay! After reading the feedback on Kung Fu Master here in the thread, I'm happy others voted for Puyo Puyo.
Will still try Kung Fu Master out, but excited about Puyo Puyo. I'm leaving on Saturday for a week, so I hope to have time before then to try the game out and report back on a score.
Cheers!
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@GtBFilms only now I watched the Puyo Puyo video :-)
It seems to be a great puzzle to play on versus mode! -
Puyo gets difficult in a hurry. The first stage is fairly slow to get you used to how things work, but once you get past 15,000 points and level up, get ready to move quickly.
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@obsidianspider said in MAME ROW #9: Puyo Puyo 2:
Puyo gets difficult in a hurry.
No joke, right? I mentioned earlier that this might well edge out 'Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo' as my third favorite puzzle game. After looking into the history of the game, it seems that the designer was of the opinion that the current puzzle games on the market at the time lacked the frantic fighting action that he personally enjoyed from popular fighting games like 'Street Fighter'. Not only would the 'Puyo Puyo' series be his solution to that problem, but the concept would eventually find itself going full circle, as it is noted for actually being the primary influence for SPF2T.
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@mediamogul said in MAME ROW #9: Puyo Puyo 2:
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
I still have a CD-ROM of that for PC floating around somewhere. Such a good game.
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A definite classic. I can really see the similarities in 'Puyo Puyo', but SPF2T has a more traditional and gradual difficulty curve. This week will be quite a challenge.
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If anyone gets to a six digit score this week I will be REALLY impressed.
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@obsidianspider Ok, so, wow.
First of all, yeah, if you like this game definitely try "Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine" on the Mega Drive.
Second, this game does ramp up the difficulty pretty fast in single player. You were talking about "after stage 2 it speeds up a lot", and here I was after my first match thinking "oh, I must be good at this - level 2 is not that bad". Then I lost and was like "huh, but I only have 8k points... interesting".
Next game after I passed 15k and got to stage 2 (not level 2), and I got what you were talking about :D
If you see the attract mode for the game, there's one on Stage 9, and I can't even imagine playing that.
On the Dr. Robotnik game, the two player mode is a blast, especially as it speeds up fairly quickly for both players which makes it quite chaotic and fun.
Here are my two scores - my best was 18.809 - I'm not sure I'll be able to play again this week, so here it is for the record.
I suspect some of the opponents will be easier than others, so it's a matter of getting to know them and choosing the easiest ones, I suppose? Unsure. Do they have special abilities or are they just cosmetic changes?
Cheers.
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@pjft So far it just seems to be cosmetic. I don't know Japanese so I have no idea what they say to you before a round starts, but yeah, if you start a stage with 15,000+ points, you'd better be paying attention. ;)
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Also, played Kung Fu Master a bit.
Boy, am I glad that didn't make it :P I never made it past mid-stage 1, so that would not have been a fun game.
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