MAME ROW #28 - Surprise Attack
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This is the MAME Random Of the Week #28
The three random numbers for this week are: 1400, 1871, 1240.
Click here to vote which game you choose for MAME ROW #28
The result of the poll is posted on Wednesday, so we have Monday and Tuesday for experimentation.
1400
Game Name: Power Instinct (USA bootleg) (set 1)
Company: Atlus
Year: 1993
ROM file name: powerins.zip1871
Game Name: Surprise Attack (Japan ver. M)
Company: Konami
Year: 1990
ROM file name: surpratk.zip1240
Game Name: Orbitron
Company: Signatron USA
Year: 1982 (estimated)
ROM file name: orbitron.zipWhat 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:
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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.
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There's no need to use RetroPie to join the MAME ROW! You can play it on any platform you want.
Every Monday we create a topic at the "General Discussion and Gaming" 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
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Power Instinct seems like another Street Fighter II-esque game that wasn't done well, but it's not awful. If you let it run as a demo with lr-mame2003 it will crash after a few minutes, but lr-imame4all works fine. lr-fbalpha won't run it at all.
Surprise Attack seems pretty cool. It's not always easy to see the projectiles being fired at you, but it's well done for a 90s platformer.
Orbitron was ok, but it got monotonous after a while.
My vote this week goes to Surprise Attack!
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@obsidianspider I concur! Voted for Surprise Attack as well.
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+1 here
BTW, I noticed that the score decreases after a continue, but doesn't go to zero.
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BTW, I noticed that the score decreases after a continue, but doesn't go to zero.
That's interesting! I don't know if I've ever heard of that before.
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@backstander Just noticed that the score falls in half after a continue.
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Tried these out last night - all were good fun!
I had some weird behaviour with Mame2003 though - Power Instinct only seemed to have two punch buttons mapped properly, no kick button - I was loath to mess around with the mame2003 config as everything else works fine. I tried it in Mame4all instead, and the (3) buttons all worked as expected - two punch and a kick. A nice game but too much of a carbon copy of Super Street Fighter II.
Mame2003 was also playing up with Surprise Attack, this time I had shoot, but no jump button! I found that I could only jump by pressing buttons B and C at the same time. Weird. Again I tried it on mame4all and it worked perfectly. Reminds me very much of Rolling Thunder and Shinobi this one.
Orbitron was a bit mixed, a first I thought it was rubbish and too basic, but then after playing it a bit I quite liked it. The idea of defending your little island against attacks was good. But it went on too long. I'm not sure how this made any money in the arcades, because I played it for quite some time before getting bored, all on a single credit.
So between the first two, I thought that Surprise Attack was probably a better game for a high score challenge, so that's where my vote goes this week!
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Yeah, the game reminded me Shadow Dancer (MegaDrive). And the stage after the first boss, with that gravity switching, reminded me Metal Storm (NES).
I noticed that there's a trivia quiz after the first boss, then competitors who can read Japanese will have an advantage in the score. :)
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I like a good fight'em-up, but I'm also devil's advocate with games, especially when I now have so many to choose from. So, bizarrely enough, perhaps because it reminds me of Space Invaders, Defender, Missile Command and has similar sounds from early Vectrex type games, I'm going to do the unthinkable and probably be the only one who votes for Orbitron. Yes it's weird and different, but often that's what gives me a buzz with gaming. We've all had to learn moves, strategies and bosses many times over- but I'll never let that be the boss of me!!))
@GtBFilms said in MAME ROW #28:
Orbitron was a bit mixed, a first I thought it was rubbish and it went on too long. I'm not sure how this made any money in the arcades, because I played it for quite some time before getting bored, all on a single credit.
(Hope I haven't mis-quoted, phone editing and all that...)
Well, you're certainly going to beat my score!) Often I found being able to spend time on a game in the arcades, not just money, gave a feeling of value, especially with my hard earned pocket money! And while I never had that much of a choice, there were, and are, games that I feel I can get my money's worth even if I'm not paying as much as I did then;) Time is money- but back then money was time:)
Disclaimer- quality vs quantity equations still hold true, even in this scenario😉Edit: lol, I am the only one!!
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@Fruitybit I did quite like orbitron. And if you were looking for some sound effects to pretty much sum up 1980s arcade gaming, you could do a lot worse than use the Orbitron sounds!
Reminds me of a TV soap we have, where whenever kids are playing a console they always dub on the same old sound effects from a library. You get some kid playing a ps4 attached to the TV (you never see what's actually on the screen though) and the sound effects are from Scramble!
I guess that's just 'Video Game Sound 1' in the sound effect library!
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@GtBFilms Ha! I love Scramble- I'd better check now on the ps store... 😁🎮
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This week's winner is Surprise Attack
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@obsidianspider do you know if there is an english ROM for this game? I wanna get those kissess from the twin sisters on the trivia quiz! :)
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@meleu I've seen a video of a guy playing through it where there is English text. Ironically, he's speaking what I think is Spanish in the voiceover. I'm not sure where he found that version of the game.
I'd be curious to know how hard those trivia questions are if you can actually read the language. I just picked anything and sometimes it ended up being right.
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@obsidianspider said in MAME ROW #28 - Surprise Attack:
I'd be curious to know how hard those trivia questions are if you can actually read the language. I just picked anything and sometimes it ended up being right.
I think they are questions about chemistry and physics (high school level).
I saw a question like "arigato sayonara ichi ni san?" and the options were some acceleration values in m/s². I chose 9.8 m/s² and got it right. Then I think they were asking about the gravity's acceleration on Earth.
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Tip for a better score: don't get that electric thing that turns the character invulnerable for a few seconds. When you don't use that power you get +10k points in the end of the stage.
Also, I've found this blog post with some fun comments about Surprise Attack. Can be a funny pastime reading...
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82,400 for now. (I'm only playing on one credit per game.) The third level where you're flipping up and down and all over can get disorienting on whether you have to press up to duck or jump or whatever.
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I've just realized another MAME ROW "collateral benefit": discover great blogs. :-)
I've spent some time glancing at vgjunk article index (that blog I linked above with an article about Surprise Attack) and noticed that it has some cool and well written articles. Like these:
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@meleu
The Super Mario Bros. Hacks: "Bowser Vs. Wario" and "Mario Vs. Airman" look like they are well done! I'll have to check them out!Also "Atario Bros." might be fun to play through as well!
"Atario Bros. has a simple yet extremely effective concept: all the graphics are swapped with ultra-low resolution replacements to recreate the look of an Atari 2600 game."
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I've almost put my name in the 1st place: 93300. Only one credit, of course! :-)
BTW, I don't understand what that PTS column means. I think REACH column is the stage where you got the game over.
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