#198x

[primaljort]

When a lowlander says something so stroopwafel you just have to hit him with the Luparic stare

[redwingpilot]

In honour of the Knights of the Blast Shadow getting their standees done today:

[bbs-backlog-challenge]

Fin or Bin: 198X

Gonna pronounce it ‘nineteen eighty ten’ just to be obnoxious.

A short and sweet one here so I’ll try to keep the review the same. What appears at first glance to be a compilation of retro arcade-style games is in fact more of a visual-novel type affair, telling a story of wasted potential and feeling stuck, hints of a queer awakening, and finding escape through videogames. The arcade games are woven into the narrative and help push the story along, rather than being the main attraction; if you’re looking mainly for arcade thrills you may be left cold.

The games themselves are all actually fantastic, and will resonate strongly with anyone who was born or grew up in the 1980s (imagine that). It’s honestly a shame they are single-level affairs because they all play wonderfully and are genuinely fun to burn through as the story takes place around them. A Streets Of Rage style belt scroller opens the show but the into-the-screen racer steals it, in my opinion. A lot of care and attention has gone into making them feel authentic to the time period but there’s just enough modernisation to make them playable in today’s world, and of course the difficulty has been re-tuned significantly from the coin-gobbling days of old.

Unfortunately the story ends on a To Be Continued just as things are getting interesting, and the package as it stands is only around 90 minutes long. Hopefully a sequel is arriving soon (though I don’t know if I can stomach another game titled X-2).

Fin or Bin:

I would estimate there is a fairly narrow band of people who will get it, and anyone outside of that band will fail to get it at all. For myself, I’m an absolute mark for this kind of thing. I didn’t have arcades growing up but I did have home computers with arcade conversions and I was catapulted back in time to sitting in front of my Atari ST playing Lotus 3 and messing up all the disks because I was six years old and didn’t know how sensitive they were (RIP Space Crusade). But what I’m really a mark for is the gosh-danged MUSIC!!! 80’s VGM style synthwave tunes is my bread and butter AND jam. It didn’t take long to Finish, and I wish there was some way to replay the games separate from the story, and for some of them to be longer, but I’m definitely on the waiting list for part two should we ever see it.

(Steam)

[redsamuraiii]

After playing Streets of Rage 4, I hope they'll make a new Super Shinobi game too, maybe titled : Return of the Shinobi.

As much as I love Ghost of Tsushima and Assassin's Creed, I love an retro type of games which reminds me of old school SEGA games.

What I love about Streets of Rage 4 is that it is something familiar with a touch of nostalgia of the original but new and refreshing.

Imagine if they were to do the same with Super Shinobi, with similar art style and same music composer as the original.

But this time it takes place across all prefectures of Japan instead of going from Japan to America.

Joe Musashi, the legendary Shinobi returns beginning his journey from Aomori Prefecture all the way down to Kyushu.

So gamers feel like they are traveling across Japan themselves, fighting various villains against the familiar backdrops.

First mission starts of at Aomori Castle where the villain ninja, Neo Zeed, attacked his dojo, killed his master and kidnapped his fiancee.

Then he goes to Sendai, the city of Date Masamune, where he fought with his descendant who sides with the villainous ninja.

Then he goes further down to other prefectures, eventually going to Kansai where he fights female ninjas at Dotonbori, Osaka.

Then he goes Nara prefecture to fight a Onna Bugeisha, a female Samurai.

Then the bamboo forest of Kyoto to fight a Yokai disguised as a Miko or Shrine Maiden or Gion to fight a Yokai disguised as a Geisha.

Then he proceed to other places like Aizu, Tokyo, Hikone, Lake Biwa, Mount Koya, Kobe, Chinatown, Himeji, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc.

Each prefecture with its own unique songs, theme, villains, backdrops and history.

The final stage is at the city of Fukuoka, going up the high rise building to confront the Neo Zeed himself.

Maybe Neo Zeed is a descendant of a Samurai warlord who wants revenge against the Shinobi's clan since the Sengoku Jidai.

I'm surprised that no game studio have made this by now. There's a lot of potential to develop to get both new and existing fans.

[kingjeremy77]

[mika-shion]

Any of y'all grow up in the 80's?

Wanna know what it was like?

Come explore that world with me and Kid~

[cursedprince08]

I actually quite like this game ESPECIALLY the ending game I loved it so much

[7-7cave]

i love his locs sm; abstract class

he really got the dogs just out, tho

Artist and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat in his studio. New York City. 1985.

[bylrndgm]

If Mike asked Will to be his friend on the first day of kindergarten, that means he asked him in 1976. From my research, I understand that even in the 1970s, kindergarten was for 5-year-olds. So, if Mike and Will were born in 1971, they would have turned 5 in 1976.

Therefore, if this is all true, when Mike asked Will to work together, as friends, best friends, it would have been in 1986, exactly TEN years after he initially asked to be his friend.

I know many might have pointed this out before, but it just occurred to me, and I think I need a moment.

[swedebeast]

Interesting. This recent trend of artists making war games is very much to my liking - in this case by Rifle Infantry, and here is a link to the rules themselves, including two WIP army lists.

[primaljort]

chasseurs the second you drop smoke:

[dbug113]

minor typo, argument invalidated. "ebon fost". what comedy, what foolishness. you claim to represent the lupines of the ebon forest, yet you cannot spell their name. Curious is it not? furries and doggirls cannot stand up to the might of the federal government.

I CAST

298 BANTAMS!

Big woof.

BOOF

[redwingpilot]

So, I've been getting into a neat little game by the name of Firelock 198X, a really fun concept, "fantasy cold war"

[deathwise]

Uradech found himself suddenly keenly aware that he was unable to make his feet move, coming to a full halt in spite of his need to keep going to escape the looming Federal advance. He was surprised at himself, his ears pinning back against his skull as he tried to source the sudden growing sense of unease in the pit of his gut. His conscious mind caught up to his senses seconds later.

The soft breeze rattled the leaves of the trees, the bushes and undergrowth swaying with what little wind made it beneath the canopy here, and he caught it. A shifting in the greenery. A smell of evaporating spit and, faintly, blood.

Uradech tried to keep calm in the face of this spike of adrenaline. Could it be his unit, or a neighboring one? No, if it were members of the army, other men of the ear tag, they would have called out on seeing him immediately. Clan retinues, perhaps? They might capture someone important but a chasseur of no renown would be worth nothing but whatever they could extort from him, if they would even be so patient as to talk to a lone soldier.

The chasseur’s stomach sank as the likely options dwindled. He took a step backwards, and the greenery became a sudden flurry of movement as bodies flung themselves at him, the spell keeping things in stasis broken.

Feral men. Lost to their emotions, beyond words and kinship. There had to be at least twelve of them, all heads and spare arms and twisted asymmetry. At this distance, Uradech was already a dead man, but even a dead man can gouge the corpse-collector’s eye.

His training asserted itself as he shouldered Mitra, jaws flapping open to keep the pressure equal in his ears as he fired a long, fat burst of .30 rounds up along the line of approaching mutated and hungry attackers. Four fell down the center, and the rest split on either side, forcing him to pick one side and be savaged from the other.

Never make your enemy deal with a problem when you can present them with a dilemma instead, his instructors once told him. The irony of having it turned on him by men who were not even truly his enemy was not lost on him as he was forced to choose.

The service rifle swung left as he laid down another burst, felling maybe two of them in the worse visibility off of the road before he snapped his vision right to see how much ground the side he had not picked had gained on him.

He was just in time to throw himself out of the way of a pounce, the feral man taking Mitra from his grip and threatening to break his fingers in the trigger guard. A second following right behind leapt into the air just as Uradech freed his thirty inch machete and gashed him savagely across the primary head.

Perhaps it was the better understanding of what a machete represented, or perhaps it was the chaos the machine gun caused, but the attacks stopped for a moment, wild men backing off to circle Uradech from all sides. Farthest in the back, several gorged themselves on the first to die, no longer interested in him.

Four, perhaps? Uradech considered while he had the breathing room, face contorted into a snarl he had to believe was as intimidating as the doublets and triplet heads on the feral men. I’m doomed. I can’t take four at once with just a knife.

The chasseurs did not have long to agonize. A sudden shift of the bush and he whirled, catching a pounce with the rounded tip of his machete, blade scraping across bone before finding a gap to sink into, puncturing fully through the yowling feral man as Uradech shoved him aside and kicked to free his machete.

It was all too slow, and he knew it. He was knocked off of his feet from the side, face stinging from a raked claw, arms shooting up to protect his neck and the lifeline it presented, a part of his accepting his death but looking to claw out teeth for the trouble --

There was a burst of automatic gunfire, the mutant atop him slumping over, and then another, and then another, and then silence.

The earthy hues of a robed man cradling a rifle stepped into his peripheral vision.

“Are you well, wayward son of the Regent?” they asked, untroubled by the violence.

If there had been any growing desire in Uradech to tear into the men attacking him with his teeth, crack their rib cages open and feast on their insides, it evaporated immediately.

Waykeepers had saved him.

[mndvx]

Ian is MEEEEEEE

[kingjeremy77]