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The X Button - Core Conceptions


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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 11:24 am Reply with quote
I'm glad Bloodstained got funded, I miss metroidvania games. AAA is dying and Kickstarter and other crowdfunded games will be the future. There's one thing missing and it's Japan's part in crowdfunding, while we have a big dev or two coming onto the crowdfunding bandwagon, we don't have enough and we need more on Kickstarter and we also need Japanese developers to have crowdfunding campaigns on services in their own country for games.
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andyscout



Joined: 20 Jul 2010
Posts: 36
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 11:26 am Reply with quote
That Miku 3DS game got delayed by 4 months, doesn't come out next week anymore. False alarm about the false alarm!
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 12:25 pm Reply with quote
Dragon Gun: Dang, this sounded like an awesome game. An advice-giving dragon gun? Too epic. I'm sad to say I never played it though. I don't even recall seeing this in any of the arcades I frequented as a kid. And it's a shame that there really isn't a way to recreate the experience.

By the way, in the paragraph's final line, I think you meant to say, "Because there is nothing like Dragon Gun."

Yooka-Laylee: Watch as people hate on it for being too kiddy-looking. Heck, that was the first thing people ripped on it for when Playtonic Games was showing the first batch of screenshots for it.

Arduboy: Well if anything, it's a cute and novel idea. A portable game system the size of a credit card is certainly compact if anything.


Last edited by belvadeer on Wed May 20, 2015 1:43 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Sume Gai



Joined: 09 Jan 2008
Posts: 72
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 12:53 pm Reply with quote
Two minor typos. In the Yooka-Layee section, after the image you have:
Quote:
and it lets playerd buy

And in the splatoon section
Quote:
a mallbmanned by weird animal-folk


More importantly, for anyone with a Wii U and a passing interest in splatoon, there's another global testfire on Saturday from 3pm-4pm PT
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Battle Cossack



Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 87
Location: Bay Area, CA
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 1:39 pm Reply with quote
On Data East: I'm glad you've found another game of theirs you like. I was surprised you chose to pick on them a few weeks ago, as they seem like the sort underdog you'd like.

I'd consider myself a fan, or I at least enjoyed their better output. They peaked in the 16-bit area, with solid games like Joe n' Mac, SNES iterations of Metal Max and Legend of Heracles, the Raiden-esuqe shmup Vapor Trail, Karnov's Revenge, the Genesis conversion of Atomic Runner, and the Magical Drop games on the NeoGeo. Bump n' Jump and Burger Time are pretty fun classics, the latter of which received some neat updates in arcades and handhelds.

Sometimes they'd even make something pretty inspired, like the mech-themed Rohga: Armor Force, the action-packed brawler The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy, the Frisbee favorite Windjammers, or the aforementioned Boogie Wings. Diet GoGo and Trio the Punch also underscored a certain insanity lingering among the devs. Their most interesting games I think take the form of mashups, like Nitroball, which combines Smash TV with an awesome pinball theme; Ghost Lop where Ikaruga meets Arkanoid; and Bloody Wolf for the Turbografx 16, a pretty awesome Metal Gear/Contra combo, followed-up in arcades by the awesome Desert Assault.

I think Data East's output is enough to warrant more the minimal preservation they've seen. Metal Max and Glory of Heracles series have seen continuation over the past five years, Magical Drop got a buggy sequel on Steam which includes a Ghostlob mode, and Rhoga has been released as Wolf Fang on PSN by MonkeyPaw. Some of the more visible entries have been represented in Virtual Console releases and a half-hearted collection, but the best of the bunch have have languished in obscurity. It's fair to say their legacy is almost completely unmarketable at this point, which is quite a shame.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5887
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 3:52 pm Reply with quote
The X Button was kind of meh this week

Quote:
Laylee is the bat, so she can blast enemies with sonar, flap through the air, and presumably transmit rabies.


But this quote had me rolling.[/quote]
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2532
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 4:08 pm Reply with quote
Battle Cossack wrote:
On Data East: I'm glad you've found another game of theirs you like. I was surprised you chose to pick on them a few weeks ago, as they seem like the sort underdog you'd like.


Data East bashing was more or less a common thing around the 00s, mainly because a lot of what the company made was derivative in some way, and people like easy targets. That being said, the company wasn't known for making bad games, per se, and the past few years have seen the company be given more credit than it had in the past, which is great.
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Battle Cossack



Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 87
Location: Bay Area, CA
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 5:27 pm Reply with quote
Lord Geo wrote:
Data East bashing was more or less a common thing around the 00s, mainly because a lot of what the company made was derivative in some way, and people like easy targets.

I don't mean to come off as an apologist, they've definitely made their share of crap. You'd be hard-pressed to see me play Lethal Enforcers, Super Real Darwin, or Tattoo Assassins. Thankfully, modern retrogaming has the advantage of hindsight, and I try to give the benefit of the doubt when remembering a bygone developer.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2532
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 6:27 pm Reply with quote
Battle Cossack wrote:
Lord Geo wrote:
Data East bashing was more or less a common thing around the 00s, mainly because a lot of what the company made was derivative in some way, and people like easy targets.

I don't mean to come off as an apologist, they've definitely made their share of crap. You'd be hard-pressed to see me play Lethal Enforcers, Super Real Darwin, or Tattoo Assassins. Thankfully, modern retrogaming has the advantage of hindsight, and I try to give the benefit of the doubt when remembering a bygone developer.


Oh, they weren't perfect by any means, but Data East is nowhere near the crap-filled developer that they were sometimes made fun of as in the previous decade. Still, I'd love to see Tattoo Assassins be given an actual proper release; that game looks amazing in all the wrong (right?) ways.

Also, just to nitpick, Lethal Enforcers is a Konami franchise.
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Battle Cossack



Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 87
Location: Bay Area, CA
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 7:08 pm Reply with quote
I'd buy an Iron Galaxy release with GGPO netplay.

Lord Geo wrote:
Also, just to nitpick, Lethal Enforcers is a Konami franchise.

That's what I get for trusting my memory. Let's just say I also don't like Dashin' Desperadoes and call it a day.
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toddc



Joined: 23 Jul 2007
Posts: 164
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 8:16 pm Reply with quote
Battle Cossack wrote:
On Data East: I'm glad you've found another game of theirs you like. I was surprised you chose to pick on them a few weeks ago, as they seem like the sort underdog you'd like.

I think Data East's output is enough to warrant more the minimal preservation they've seen. Metal Max and Glory of Heracles series have seen continuation over the past five years, Magical Drop got a buggy sequel on Steam which includes a Ghostlob mode, and Rhoga has been released as Wolf Fang on PSN by MonkeyPaw. Some of the more visible entries have been represented in Virtual Console releases and a half-hearted collection, but the best of the bunch have have languished in obscurity. It's fair to say their legacy is almost completely unmarketable at this point, which is quite a shame.


Data West certainly made some decent games, and I have a bad habit of forgetting stuff like Edward Randy and Night Slashers. I also like Act-Fancer. It's not great, but I appreciate its dedication to cramming the screen with as much Giger-inspired grotesqueness as an arcade game could allow.

Yet Data East never really hooked me, and I think it's because they didn't have a signature series or a striking visual style. Irem games have that amazing grimy, detail-dense look, and SNK stuff from the Neo Geo onward has a distinct atmosphere. Even companies like Westone and Toaplan have their major creations and semi-recognizable motifs. In contrast, I've never played something and thought "this feels like a Data East game."
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WingKing



Joined: 27 Apr 2015
Posts: 617
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 10:07 pm Reply with quote
Data East was definitely on the "B" list of game developers during the arcade era, but they still put out some fun stuff here and there. I remember playing a lot of Robocop and Bad Dudes when those games were out, and Captain America & the Avengers was one of the few four-player beat-em-ups that was good enough to compete with Konami's crown jewels in that genre (TMNT and The Simpsons). And in the realm of more obscure games that were just a hell of a lot of fun, Nitro Ball, Gondomania, and Bump n Jump are all old favorites of mine. Unfortunately you can't really play Gondomania well in MAME, because it used a rotary joystick like Ikari Warriors and Heavy Barrel, but I still fire up a game of Nitro Ball or BnJ every once in a while.

I've never even heard of Dragon Gun, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing I would've played anyway. I never liked FPS games very much.
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Battle Cossack



Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 87
Location: Bay Area, CA
PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2015 10:43 pm Reply with quote
toddc wrote:
Yet Data East never really hooked me, and I think it's because they didn't have a signature series or a striking visual style... I've never played something and thought "this feels like a Data East game."
That's a pretty fair point. Data East never offered much as a brand. I guess that's part of their appeal to me, since you wouldn't expect a developer with such a mundane reputation to make so many quirky games. In modern terms, maybe I'd compare them to Monster Games. But there's certainly no confusing Data East with the arcade greats of the 90's.
WingKing wrote:
Captain America and the Avengers

Fond memories of this one, and couldn't be more timely.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4463
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2015 2:30 am Reply with quote
Out of curiousity, did Nintendo pay for the expensive Ferrari license for the Rad Racer sections of Ultimate NES Remix or did they have to make cosmetic changes to the car like Sega did with OutRun 3DS so as to avoid the same legal hassles that Sega faced with the original Out Run (although Sega did have the Ferrari license for a while for F355 Challenge and Out Run 2/SP/2006 Coast 2 Coast, but it would seem to have expired).
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2015 3:49 am Reply with quote
As far as amazing Data East games go, it isn't a video game, but I really liked The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends and is the single best thing I've ever played from that company. It helps that its lead designer, Tim Seckel, is a fan of the show, and this is evident everywhere in the game. I almost paid $2,400 last year for an arcade machine of Rocky & Bullwinkle to keep in my garage. I liked it that much.

I did manage to play Trio the Punch though. Boy, that was WEIRD.

belvadeer wrote:
Yooka-Laylee: Watch as people hate on it for being too kiddy-looking. Heck, that was the first thing people ripped on it for when Playtonic Games was showing the first batch of screenshots for it.


Some things never change, do they?

Banjo-Tooie was my favorite 3-D platformer for that generation. If this can even come close to the level design Banjo-Tooie had, then I'm putting Yooka-Laylee on my wishlist.
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