MAME ROW #110 - Super Spacefortress Macross II

[GtBFilms]

I'd not played any of this week's selection before, so this was an interesting one for me.

Super Spacefortress Macross II

R-Type is probably one of my favourite arcade games of all time, so I knew I was going to like this one. It seemed a bit slow though, so I decided to switch from my emulator of choice (MAME2003) to Advmame and it runs a lot smoother. It's a pretty decent horizontal shooter, the end of level bosses aren't impossibly difficult to beat and there's a few different weapon choices. However the powerups come so thick and fast you don't get much chance to choose which one to use. The game runs at a nice pace, faster than R-Type certainly. The only bit I wasn't keen on was the asteroids, which you don't seem to be able to dodge very easily. It's more a game of quick reactions than R-Type, which is more strategic. I enjoyed playing it though.

Scrambled Egg
Ah, now this is exactly the sort of bizarre game that makes the MAMEROW interesting! Like a lot of Japanese titles this has it's fair share of weirdness. As far as I could tell, the aim of the game is to open all the eggs by giving them a good kicking. Meanwhile what look like a couple of long legged tables wander about repairing your cracked eggs, and trying to kill you, accompanied by a a nightmare psychotic version of Pacman, with sharp teeth. You can kill the tables by throwing your eyeballs at them or smashing them with an egg, but monster Pacman is impervious to eyeball attacks. Sometimes the chickens turn blue, I'm not sure why. Regardless of whether chickens are yellow or blue you can kick them off the screen. I never really worked out whether this was a good or a bad thing to do. I never succeeded in clearing the screen.
Weird. But fun.

Wit's
Well I looked at the preview video and thought "that looks like the old Nokia snake game, but with better graphics". So I wasn't too surprised to discover it's basically snake, with better graphics.
(Although Wikipedia tells me that Nokia didn't add snake to their phones until 1997, eight years after this game was released and the original version of Snake was called 'Blockade', produced in 1976!)
On this version you have the ability to jump over your own or your opponents trail once, and the backdrops are pretty neat, but at the end of the day, it's still just snake.
What I did like about this one though was the attract screen, which demonstrated how to play the game, with little guys wresting with the controls. A nice touch.

I seriously considered Scrambled Egg as my choice this week, as I do enjoy these odd-ball Japanese games, but in the end it was Super Spacefortress Macross II which got my vote for sheer playability.

[mediamogul]

@GtBFilms said in MAME ROW #110:

Well I looked at the preview video and thought "that looks like the old Nokia snake game, but with better graphics".

Don't forget the Light Cycles game from 'TRON'. Given the artificial intelligence of the time, snake games just aren't much fun without a human second player. Then it's a surprising amount of fun, like with 'PONG'.

I seriously considered Scrambled Egg as my choice this week

Man, I did too. I even sat at the voting screen for a few extra seconds, but it's hard to argue against 'Super Spacefortress Macross II'. I ended up selecting it as well.

[obsidianspider]

This week's winner is Super Spacefortress Macross II

[GtBFilms]

This game is great fun.

I'm still not entirely sure why I run out of time, rather than energy, or how I can avoid running out of time in level 2.

Also for some strange reason it keeps putting my name in as SERBEE all the time, instead of GTB like I entered.

Best score so far (beginner mode) was 520090

[mediamogul]

@SERBEE Very nice!

[GtBFilms]

I assume we're playing this on the EASY setting?

I thought that starting on a harder setting might increase the available bonus, but I'm not sure that it actually does, you just seem to start on a later level.

I tried the hardest start level and it was certainly noticeably more difficult.

[thelostsoul]

I tried it out too and don't know how to understand and work with the timer. No score for now, until I understand the game.

[obsidianspider]

The asteroid field in level 2 kicks my butt every time.

@thelostsoul from what I can tell, you have to get a certain amount of points before the time runs out. You can "die" as many times as you want, but you must get all the points it asks for or you can't move on in the game.

[GtBFilms]

Ah, I've discovered what SERBEE is, it's the name of the Player 1 ship.

From https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7335

Game Introduction
One or two small spaceships called Valkaries must take on the enemy armada and save Earth. Player one is Serbee and Player two is Necks; both are charactors in the Macross II anime. The Valkaries have the ability to transform into three modes:
Fighter - looks like a jet and can shoot powerfull forward lasers.
Gerwalk - part fighter, part batteloid that shoots weaker shots forward and horizontally downward simultaneously.
Batteloid - its form looks like a giant robot. It can only be accessed by pressing the 'bomb' button. Once the bomb (actually a missile birrage) is completed it reverts to it's previous form.
Items that give you additional Bombs, as well as convert your Valkarie betwen Fighter and Gerwalk modes, are common in every level. Certain rare, hidden items like Minmei dolls and destroying certain enemy space ships can greatly increase your score. Minmei dolls are released when key parts of the background are shot repeatedly. Repeatedly getting weapon items will increase the firepower of the Gerwalk and Fighter modes.

Game Play
In one- or two-player cooperative modes, the players must destroy as many enemy spaceships and point items as they can in order to achieve the minimum score necessary to move on to the next level before the time runs out. The number of points left to complete the level are displayed in the top center of the screen and this tally changes color to reflect your points/time left ratio. If the time runs out and the minimum score is not met, the game is over. If the score is met, the players continue to fight enemies in that level until the time is over. Then they move on to the next level. Ironically, defeating the boss of the level does not give many bonus points, and regular enemies continue to come after the boss is defeated until time runs out.
As the game starts, the players must choose to start on the easy, medium, or hard levels. Each difficulty has three unique levels, plus a final level that all routes share. In other words, there are ten unique levels in this game.

In competative mode, the two players select one of the nine normal levels to compete for the higher score. When the time ends, the player with the higher score wins.

[obsidianspider]

837910 for now. I'm really liking this game.

[GtBFilms]

@obsidianspider I'm getting the hang of it, but haven't caught up with you yet. There's a couple of fast enemies that fly from left to right quite early in level 2, they don't hang about but if you hit them they're worth 20,000 each.

I've also found some hidden bonuses, sometimes they appear when you fire and there doesn't appear to be anything there, but a bonus appears.

I've not worked out quite how the bonuses work but those ones that look like a set of gold aviation emblem wings seem to multiply up if you get them in quick succession.

[AndersHP]

Wow, the input lag combined with the great jolt the ship moves with in this game is hard to tackle, do you have it too?
Tried Advmame, mame2003-plus and mame2003, the latter plays the best I think.

Is there a speedhack or something that needs to be toggled on?

[GtBFilms]

@AndersHP Ah, to be honest I've not been using my Picade this week - I've been playing it on my PC under MAME 0.146.

I did notice when I initially tried it on the PICADE that it was sluggish - I thought advmame 0.93 gave me the best performance.

[thelostsoul]

@AndersHP I only tried the game 2 or 3 times with mame2003 on overclocked Pi3 yet and don't remember anything like input lag or sluggish behavior. Do you have performance issues based on the Raspberry Pi? Maybe the FBA version is working better for you.

[GtBFilms]

Well as you can see, it took me a few goes, but I eventually managed 866170.

Still can't complete level 3 in the allocated time though.

Great game, I've got control pad thumb from playing it so much!

[thelostsoul]

496470
My first entry, still very low. I couldn't type my name, ironically the timer timed up (its Tuncay).
The concept is unique and interesting. I like this game too, at first glance. You seem really enjoying it. :-) Nice score btw.

[pjft]

@mediamogul I think I asked about this a long time ago, but is there any 2-or-more-player snake Gage on RetroPie? Maybe an unknown arcade game or under ports?

Edit: missed this this week, but I'll see if I can still give it a go tonight! Will be playing on a pi, is AdvMame the preferred choice then?

[mediamogul]

@pjft said in MAME ROW #110 - Super Spacefortress Macross II:

is there any 2-or-more-player snake Gage on RetroPie?

You'll be hard pressed to find one that supports more than two players. I can't think of any myself. Funny thing is, since even the simplest of computer AIs were uncommon at the time that snake games were popular, it's actually more difficult to find a version that allows a one player game. However, 'Surround' for the 2600 does support both one and two players and is not only the very first home version of the game, but also the first 2600 title where a programmer figured out they could use the playfield to allow complex player objects rather than it just be a static background. The best version you're likely to find overall though is probably 'Snafu' for Intellivision. It supports one and two players, has lively colors and is one of the only games on the platform to have persistent music. It's not a bad tune either, but I'm sure it would get old after a few games.

[obsidianspider]

MAME ROW #111 is live

[pjft]

@mediamogul thanks, I will look into them! Snafu looks interesting from the videos. Wonder if it plays with 4 players or is it 2 humans vs and 2 CPU ones.

As for this game, it's a fun shooter that I'll come back to! I played on AdvMame once and for a measly 435k score. Might try it out another time and submit a proper score. It's an interesting twist that you need to achieve a certain score before the time runs out.