/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8297320
Nice thread

>"You shot up three lizards! Good job, McCloud."

>>8297807
Huh? Roll's been around since the very first game and never went anywhere in the US versions.

Issue #47

1993 and 1994 were truly the best years for 16-bit.

>>8297565

i loved whatever kit-bashed model of an arwing they used in feature art

>>8297958
Ah, the days whem nobody knew what a yokai was. I suspect the mention of Pocky being a "goblin" was a mistranslation on NP's part, but then the website for the upcoming remake also mentions it (as far as Google Translate can make out). I guess I'll see for sure when P&R Reshrined comes out. Hopefully soon.

Dat megaman.

>>8298048
>"Get him gone, McCloud!"

>>8298194
Oh man this would have helped me as a kid. I could never solve the puzzle to get that map piece

>>8298236
Totally not a sprite-swapped Mickey Mouse game. Honest!

>>8298279
Secret of Mana, before it broke off from the FF name.

More later.

>>8298287
Well, I'm hyped

>>8297882
>You're what's wrong

>>8297913
>I would eliminate the George & Rob section.
>Great idea!

lmao

>>8297783
Damn, Meena is thicc

>>8297336
>>8297337
>50% of the spread is just the logo repeating
Feels like padding.

>>8297952
Hey, Street Combat. That one Ranma 1/2 fighting game that had the anime scrubbed off.

>>8298440
I love how even with Nintendo Power selecting the letters, an overwhelming amount are just "god, please just get rid of Rob and George" in tone.

Time for announced but unreleased games.

Mr. F-X-It - Sunsoft (SNES)
Called "a promising NES title that never made it to market", revamped into an SNES game. I guess it wasn't all that promising, since there isn't so much as a screenshot or another mention of this anywhere. What cancelled NES/Famicom game this was, no one knows. Based on the name, I'm guessing it might have been an attempted 16-bit version of Mr. Gimmick, but no one knows.

Future Zone - ElectroBrain (SNES)
Called "a sprawling and impressive" action/adventure type game with sci-fi theming. Was shown off at the CES show, but not so much as a screencap has surfaced.

Dominus - ASCII (SNES)
Bit of a story on this one. The game was being developed by Visual Concepts for the SNES, PC, and Genesis. ASCII ran out of money and died, and Visual Concepts bought the rights to the game so they could finish and publish the PC version. They became a SEGA dev studio, and a Genesis version was made(unsure if it was actually released or just a proto was dumped). The SNES version was the first to be cancelled, and doesn't exist outside of a single screenshot.

Jaguar XJ220 - JVC (SNES)
Another behind-car view racing game originally made for Amiga. The SNES port was cancelled after a working prototype was shown off at CES, but it did eventually get ported to the Sega CD.

Continued in next post.

>>8299789
The Adventures of Pinocchio - ElectroBrain (Game Boy)
Not to be confused with Pinocchio by NMS Software that came out a few years later. Not really sure why this one was cancelled before release, but a prototype of it surfaced and was dumped.
https://edgeemu.net/down.php?id=234283

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - Ubisoft (Game Boy?)
Nothing is known, no screenshots ever appeared, pure vaporware.

Hit the Ice - Tatio (NES)
An enhanced port of a popular arcade game at the time, bringing an RPGish feel to hockey. Got cancelled AFTER it was approved by Nintendo, most likely due to the SNES. A mostly complete prototype was found and dumped in 2002. But as part of the Gigaleak, the final approved version of the game was found in the emails as an attachment. Prototype here: https://edgeemu.net/down.php?id=220006 Final approved rom here: https://archive.org/download/gigaleak-compiled-roms-1/email%20roms-20200728T002826Z-001.zip/email%20roms%2FNHI02%20-%20Copy.nes

Taz-Mania - Sunsoft (NES)
I guess they were going to try and port this one over to the NES for more sales, but abandoned the idea when they saw how quickly the NES was dying against 16-bit consoles.

And that's all for this go around.

>>8297332

You could become a Game Counselor at age sixteen!

>>8297335
Video & Arcade Top 10 from around this time, in a playlist of many other episodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWDPIpfiajE&list=PLksubP8_o5HwfVceBi472fig6VWuQvEfe

>>8297565
>The Arwing maneuvers smoothly and intuitively for some of the strongest play control ever seen or felt.

>>8297859
She was in the games, but she didn't exist at all in the Capcom USAs "Monsteropolis" backstory.
That might be what their referring to? I don't know.

>>8297859
>>8301798
Looking it up, it's like this
>Roll appears in the credits of Megaman 1, however is not mentioned by name in EITHER Japanese or US manual
>Roll doesn't get a name drop and illustration in a manual until Rockman 3. US omits her, and again she doesn't get acknowledgement until the credits.
>Megaman 4 is the first game to acknowledge both Rock AND Roll as names of characters. Roll as an on screen character does not appear in either version of the game and does not appear in either manual.
>by extension, the Ruby Spears Megaman cartoon uses this as a basis and thus is the first real media to do it all (show Rock and Roll, declare Rock is Megaman, etc) instead of one or the other.

Whether Captain N deciding to give Megaman a sister (in this case "Megagirl") because they saw the ending of the first NES game or just because it seemed like an easy enough story beat is unknown.

>>8301846
>Megaman 4 is the first game to acknowledge both Rock AND Roll as names of characters. Roll as an on screen character does not appear in either version of the game and does not appear in either manual.
Roll is briefly seen in the ending when Mega Man hops off the train.

>>8298287
So that's where the GBA Remake's title came from!

>>8298172
>Beat Metroid 2 in under 10 minutes

>>8301932
They didn't count on the Human Element.

>>8297742
>How do I beat Jawenko, the Lava Beast?

>You shoot it and don't get hit.

>>8297752

Street Fighter II has a "best ending"? I thought it only varied endings by character.

>>8302551
You have to set the difficulty to its highest point and beat the whole game without losing or switching characters.

>>8302551
>>8302575
After the character's ending cutscene, you get a different result screen. If you use a continue you get the standard "Congratulations! Thank you for playing / Capcom" on a black screen. If you don't use continues, you get this.

>>8297743
>fucking Mystic Quest gets 3 questions despite being an RPG for dumb babies

>>8302542
>>8302612
We joke, but being a game play counselor must have actually been a pretty hard job. You'd have to spend 8 hours a day dealing with god knows how many retarded kids calling you up asking the early 90s equivalent of "Why can't Metroid crawl?" without losing your mind.

>>8302612

It also had already had two questions in the preceding issue!

>call NP sometime in the late 90's
>saw about the hidden room in ALttP, and I wanted to know about it
>"Alright, so what game are you looking to get help with?"
>"Zelda, Link to the Past, SNES."
>"Ok, I have that info up, what part are you stuck on?"
>"I've already beaten the game, I just wanted to know about that Houlihan room thing?"
>*tells me this procedure to generate a glitch to force me into the room that sounds like total bullshit*
>"A-a-alright"
>hang up
>wonder if I just got scammed by a NP counselor
>try it out
>it actually works
It was the only time I ever called them, and it was worth it.

>>8302787
>Houlihan room

Fascinating https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7i2AHjvPMg

>>8297817

Poor NES getting Krusty's Fun House in there twice.

>>8297825

Look at Ryu getting snubbed! He's not American or a thigh goddess - he just doesn't have what it takes.

>>8297817
>TMNT3 and Darkwing Duck everywhere

high taste

>>8303465
His time will come...

>>8303465
>>8303756
Ryu is so snooze inducing he probably thinks a rice cracker is an exciting meal.

>>8297835

Monopoly still clinging to a place in the NES top 20.

>>8297840

Nintendo Power making a complaint about loading times in a cartridge-based game (Wayne's World)! You don't see that very often.

>>8305215

whats more telling. launch title Metroid is still on the top 10 years later.

so for all the people bitching about its difficulty, it didn't stop people from playing an having fun.

>>8297850

Break Time: so ordinary that it doesn't even need screenshots!

>>8305252
Pretty sure most of that is coming from Metroid 2 still going strong. Just wait until Super Metroid hits. The only con NP had for that is "Even 100MB of Metroid wouldn't be enough"

>>8305307
I'm honestly more tickled that the Learn-to-read Mickey Mouse game for prechoolers has a negative of "no game play or harder levels to make the game interesting for a wider range of players".

>>8297857

Mario's first use by a non-Nintendo company! And the result was not great.

It's thanks to Nintendo Power that to this day I still think the canonical colors of each system are teal, red, and purple.

>>8298274
I love that blurb about First Samurai. "This game is cool, you'll love it! But it's about samurai, ain't nobody in the US gonna buy that shit"

>>8297865

Final Fantasy Adventure II for the Super NES is on the way! And our first hint (I think?) that Final Fantasy III will exist.

>>8302787
i remember reading about this many years ago and learning that it was basically an error handling thing where if for some reason the game didn't know what room to put you in, it would default to that one. i distinctly remember reading from someone that you had "a better chance of winning the lottery" than getting it to happen. do you remember the method he told you?
also that was apparently some kid's prize for winning a contest where it was promised the winner would get a cameo in an upcoming nintendo game. what a gyp.

>>8305352
They did the same kind of thing with Sumo Fighter in >>8297843 - basically saying yeah it's a cool game, but who the HELL knows what that sumo crap is (meanwhile, Legend of the Mystical Ninja is fine somehow)

>>8305410
To this very day. I did it after I already beat Ganon and had everything, but as far as I know, all you really need are the boots and the Sanctuary as a starting point when loading.
Turn console on, load your game.
DASH out the door and to the West. Go as fast as you can running and dashing, I'm talking fucking speedrun.
Go South through the woods and East to the Castle Wall. Don't slow down, you need Sanic speed.
Go around the outside of the Castle until you reach the hole where you entered the Castle at the beginning of the game. FULL SPEED.
Punch into that hole like you are trying to penetrate the world itself.
If you were going max speed, you might fall into the hidden room instead of the sewers. I'd say in practice it's about 1/4th chance. If you don't enter the hidden room, reset and try again. NOT die and load save or anything like that, actually reset the console.

It didn't work until the 3rd time I tried it way back when, and it still doesn't work every single time I attempt it, but it does usually work with a few tries. I have no idea why this sequence of events seems to trigger the room, but I guess the NP counselors did. You can understand after hearing these instructions, I thought I was getting BS'ed. Sounds like crap, but it works.

>>8305450
Man, I can still remember when Nintendo Power was upselling Kabuki Quantum Fighter and Ninja Gaiden. It's like the magazine doesn't remember who it is anymore.

>>8305906
Look at the credits, the team has changed since the early days. Scott Pelland is the only member of the Editors still with the magazine. Howard Lincoln isn't a Senior Editor anymore, just a consultant, and he was busy with his new job back in those days. If you think this is bad, wait until the 60's, when the magazine undergoes one ugly makeover.

>>8299789
>Future Zone - ElectroBrain (SNES)
>Called "a sprawling and impressive" action/adventure type game with sci-fi theming. Was shown off at the CES show, but not so much as a screencap has surfaced.

This sounds interesting.

>>8297941
>We know how much you loved Street Fighter II, so here are a bunch more like it! Well, really two of them are more like Final Fight but that's the same thing almost! And none of them is actually as good as Street Fighter! Please please enjoy how hard they rock!

>>8298030

Ahh I loved this game. I got so far in it and (I think) finished all the scenarios... yet I never really understood it, and even now I'm actually learning something about the basic strategy of it by reading this very brief article on it. It was so clunky and broken and weird yet also awesome. I will play it again sometime.

>>8305929
The 1995 era of the magazine still had some oddball charm and devoted sections like RPG Corner, but it was quickly dying off with the SNES as the N64 loomed on the horizon. Once Future Publishing or whatever bought them out, that was it for everything.

>>8305893
sheeeeit, thanks anon. this is a mystery I've wondered about for literal decades.

>>8297871
There he is
John Dragon Warrior

>>8298072
>Soon, new Battletech Centers will be opening in approximately 20 U.S. cities, plus cities in Japan and Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CezKQ1MQhzI is how it was apparently

>>8298076
>Our Secret Agents have found more of

I wonder, does this mean they had them all as of the previous issue but didn't want to take up too many precious Classified Information pages with just one not-super-popular game? I guess it probably means that.

>>8308435
Most of the "Agents" were really the NP staff filling space with whatever they could get. Very few actually came from readers.

>>8297913
George and Rob are fucked.

>>8308475

Sure but that doesn't mean they had all the secrets for that game right from the start. Maybe their industry source for the information split it up for whatever reason. Or maybe they did have it all at once and just split it to even things out like I said. I don't think there's much to it, but somehow it still intrigues me whenever they talk about specific things their agents did. Yeah it's probably a lie in any given case, but what exact part is the lie and what part is true?

>>8298206

I like this article in which Nintendo Power tries to introduce people to an unfamiliar genre of game. That's more interesting than just displaying a bunch of stage maps for some game like Alien 3 or whatever that most people aren't even sold on playing yet.

>>8305906
>>8305929
We're already past the heyday of the magazine. And once it gets to the point where the formatting of articles no longer resembles the classic look is when it REALLY goes downhill.

>>8309297
That's why I miss the scores for the Players, Pros, and Dealers. This article talks about the reason they are bring attention to these games is because of how much the game counselors love them. The old Pro's scoresheet showed what games the really hardcore guys considered good. That's where you would see titles like Blaster Master, Battle of Olympus, Metal Gear, Legacy of the Wizard, The Magic of Scheherazade, The Guardian Legend, Wrath of the Black Manta, Crystalis, Solstice, and Faria.

>>8310767

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of using the Pros list that way. I never even looked at it as a kid... but then again, I was usually trying the kinds of games the Pros liked anyhow. I wonder how many kids actually used that list as a source of recommendations. I bet a lot of them just didn't pay attention to that page at all... maybe some did though.

>>8298257

What an odd minus for Pocky & Rocky. Also... isn't Pocky a girl? I realize they're disregarding the "shrine maiden" concept or whatever it is (I never played this myself but that's what Wikipedia says she is) but surely they realize she still looks like a girl in the pictures they themselves published?? Yet both this page and the main article on the game use male pronouns for both characters.

>>8297807
who's that in the picture holding the drawings?

>>8298269

Only four points for Star Fox in Graphics & Sound! That's that game's home category! I guess some raters really had a problem with the lack of textures.

>>8298279
>Over the geologic ages you'll be able to create a completely different being, say a human who can fly or a fire-breathing mouse.

Wellllll except not either of those things.

>>8311152
"Japanese shit be weird yo" really isn't that odd of a complaint for the time period, still strange they'd have that be the only "minus" and not the difficultly or something

And yeah Pocky is a girl, and is localized as such (I think she is just a "magician".. that happens to have a shrine, or something in the US version). I guess whoever was writing the copy for the articles just wasn't paying attention?

>>8311195
Hopefully, aside from Pocky and Rocky keeping their US names for marketing reasons, the remake will be localized a lot better. Like calling them yokai instead of goblins, for starters.

>>8311152
The theme of the game was too simple and strange for that NP reviewer to comprehend