MAME ROW #24 - 1941 - Counter Attack

obsidianspider

1941: Counter Attack is a typical vertical shooter, but it's fast, quite fun, and I really appreciate that you have a life bar, not one hit deaths.

Pandora's Palace is sort of like Donkey Kong, and I like it.

Bubbles initially got stuck for me with a screen saying "Factory Settings Restored" but then when I reset it (Select+B) it started working, and subsequent loads of the game worked. It's an OK game, but wow, that face on the bubble is weird.

chubsta

I used to own a dedicated Bubbles - great game but to play properly you need the hall-effect joystick

UDb23

Only two votes so far !?
1941 is a classic we can't miss.

Is it allowed to do electoral ads to get votes ?
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btw gals panic is just a "hot" clone of Qix. For what I see on the web in terms of images, I can image it may have been scandalous for that time. :-))

meleu

@UDb23 "If 1941 win I'll make an overlay for it" would be much more persuasive! :D

UDb23

@meleu I was pretty sure you were going to say that :-D
Already found some nice original artwork to use...

GtBFilms

Unfortunately I didn't get much time this week to try these out. I had to use my PC to give them a quick play.

For some reason my copy of Bubbles got stuck at the 'Defaulting to Factory Settings' screen and wouldn't go any further.

I enjoyed both of the other two, although Pandora's Palace was quite frustrating. It took me a couple of games to realise you could go down the green columns! It's one of these platform games that you just have to play it enough to memorise the timing/route for each level, then it's easy. But you die an awful lot to get to that point.

1941 - Counter Attack was a pleasant surprise for me. I had played 1942 before and found it a sluggish and uninspiring shooter, with predictable and weak powerups, but with 1941 they appear to have turned it up to 11, and it's a much more fun shooter.

So this week my vote goes to 1941 - Counter Attack!

obsidianspider

@GtBFilms If you reset Bubbles (Select + B) when it's stuck on that screen, then it should work. At least that's how I got it to work for me.

Lyle_JP

Of all the Capcom 19xx games, 1941 has the best music, hands down.

meleu

Here is the result:

UDb23

so now I HAVE to make the overlay. ;-)

obsidianspider

1941 suffers from the common shooter condition of "waytoomuchstuffflyingaroundallatthesametime-itis" but it's proving fun.

Also, a tip. If you hold down the fire button you'll charge up and release a barrage of missiles when you release the button.

I'm not sure how to tell how many bomb/backflip attacks you have in inventory that you use by pressing the alternate button (Y on my controller).

UDb23

controls & weapons:

obsidianspider

@UDb23 Spinning? How the heck do you do that?

UDb23

@obsidianspider flying into walls. No real damage but you can shoot around this way.

obsidianspider

213900

It's really hard to keep track of everything whizzing around.

GtBFilms

I managed 266700, but always die at roughly the same place. It's where two medium sized planes come up behind you and there's a boat in front.

I lose a lot of energy there every time, even if I remember to use my smart bomb!

Enjoying the challenge though!

UDb23

Hi guys,
here's the overlay.
Quite time consuming; it took extra time to recreate also a vector version of the game logo, but I'm really pleased with the result.

All original arcade game flyer based graphics, including instructions.

Volunteers wanted for testing and screenshot ;-)

Files available in the Overlay Repo.

obsidianspider

@UDb23 Thanks for another great overlay! It looks really nice on my TV.

UDb23

@obsidianspider thanks for testing !

obsidianspider

@UDb23 I'm not well versed in Github so my idea of right click on the file names to try to save them didn't work. (I ended up saving files that had HTML in them.) I had to go to each one, open it manually and put them in files on my computer. I'm sure there's a better way to manually get files from Github, but I havnen't messed with it enough.