/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8421409

Nintendo Power you really don't have to do this

>>8421398
The T stands for Terribly Ugly

>>8421431
>Height: 7'7"
>Weight: 357 lbs.

Literally the definition of an absolute unit.

Issue #63

>>8421442
They can't be guessing with the special move names, so where is "Front Kick" coming from in place of Cannon Spike? At least they got the QSK pretty right.

>>8421752
I think this is literally it for the NES now.

>>8421965
I think there may be a short Wario's Woods coverage when it comes out but beyond that yeah it's definitely in its death throes.

>>8422063
>actually showing blood
I can only imagine how hyped this got people

We're getting into the year's best now.

More later.

>>8421463

whups, better paint out that cleavage, can't have that in 90s Nintendo USA

>>8421469
>>8421470
>>8421474
>>8421476

ugh the play it loud campaign, their response to the Sega ads. Didn't they use Butthole Surfers in a commercial at one point?

>>8421418
1994 and someone drew a Link THAT anime? Eric, I hope you had a strong career drawing porn later in life.
>>8421758
The Play it Loud era starts now.

>>8421398
You are the last good thing left in /vr/ maybe all of 4chan

>>8421694
>>8421695
7 fucking Soccer games, I guess they were hoping the "hype" from World Cup 94 (aka the USA one) would carry over to game sales

>>8422151
Even as the target demographic back then, I thought that shit was lame and desperate as hell. Seems to be looked back on fondly though, so what do I know?

My ranking of Nintendo Power comics thus far:

Star Fox
Super Mario Bros. (main part)
Howard & Nester
Mario & Wario
Nester's Adventures
Zelda
Metroid
Nester playing games with his dad that one time
untitled interstitial comic (dog boy versus robot boy, etc.)

>>8421574

Double Dragon V was preceded by Double Dragon 3... and not for NES but for Game Boy? Something may be missing from this history.

Are they trying to say that Battletoads & Double Dragon was actually Double Dragon 4?

>>8424945
NP forgot about the second Game Boy game (actually a reskinned Kunio game).

>>8421586

Is this the first mention of "Nintendo Ultra 64"?

>>8421590

I wonder how much Willie Morris, Jr. got paid.

>>8421616

This article is very strange.

>>8421619

It's a shame there was never a Nester's Adventures strip set in Wolfenstein 3D.

>>8424945
They also messed up the MK lore. Because of NP I went years thinking Sub-Zero was a different guy. I only learned the truth when MK9 came out.

>>8425204

Different from what?

>>8425221
In the lore there's two Sub-Zeros, the first one later gets replaced by his brother. They wrote the change happened in the wrong game.

Did I miss the issue with Donkey Kong Country? I could have sworn it got shown off already.

Time for announced but unreleased games. Oh god, another CES.

Freeway Flyboys AKA Uchuu Race: Astro Go! Go! - Seika (SNES)
A less than impressive knock-off of F-Zero that lacks the camera rotation F-Zero had. No fan translation exists, but I doubt one is really needed for a racing game.

Beauty and the Beast - Hudson Soft (NES)
While this game was actually made and released, it was only released in the EU for PAL systems. Emulate away.

Ranma 1/2 2: Anything Goes AKA Ranma 1/2: Chougi Rambuhen - Toho (SNES)
Yep, we were gonna get a second Ranma 1/2 fighting game for the SNES. Company went bankrupt, and that was the end of that. Fan translation exists: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/3516/

Monster Truck Wars - Acclaim (SNES)
From what screenshots have surfaced, this was a Mode 7 racing game like F-Zero. Game Boy and Game Gear both got games based on the same license, but this version was cancelled for reasons unknown. No prototype has surfaced yet.

Akira - THQ (SNES)
Oh boy, what a wild history this one has. Cancelled before completion, screenshots and snippets of video of gameplay have floated around since the CES show. A prototype of the Genesis version has surfaced and was dumped, but the SNES version was supposedly going to be a pure platformer, and not at all like the Genesis version. No prototype of the SNES version has surfaced yet. The devs involved say they sent the assembled roms directly to THQ via modem, so no prototype may exist at all.

Continued in next post because CES.

>>8425459
Powerslide - Elite (SNES)
Was supposed to be a racing game using the Super FX chip, but it got cancelled since the devs figured the cost of the Super FX chip would cut into profits too much. Prototype was found and dumped, but last I checked it was only supported by MAME's SNES emulator, though I haven't tested it in the last version of BSNES. https://hiddenpalace.org/w/images/e/e0/Power_Slide_SFX_%28Dec_4%2C_1994_prototype%29.7z

There's a few other titles mentioned that get renamed, like Blades gets turned into Street Hockey, and Hoop It Up gets turned into Looney Toons B-Ball. Fun fact: Sunsoft actually made a bunch of Hoop It Up shirts with Looney Toons characters on them to promote the game and gave a bunch out to their employees. Some basketball organization called Hoop It Up caught wind of it, and immediately hit Sunsoft with a C&D order, and they changed the name and demanded all the shirts back from the employees to destroy. This is known since some former employee put the shirt up for sale on ebay along with the details on how it came into existence.

Also of note is games like Future Zone, Impossible Mission 2025, and FireTeam Rogue are still being mentioned in the Pak Watch. They must have been in deep development hell.

>>8425459
>Freeway Flyboys AKA Uchuu Race: Astro Go! Go! - Seika (SNES)

This game is somehow faster than F-Zero even, but the camera is so off-putting that it prevents it from being a truly good game.

>>8425459
>Yep, we were gonna get a second Ranma 1/2 fighting game for the SNES.
Third if you count Street Combat.

>>8425326
Donkey Kong Country is around the corner, the ape is just starting to peak onto the scene now.
>>8421469
>>8422061

>>8425913
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv_YCSbWP78
ook ook eek eek

>>8421674
>Shooting down the UFO is easy, but scoring 300 isn't.

What does this mean? Can you shoot the UFO without getting points for it?

>>8421693
>Minus: Action gamers will have to slow down their pace.

They're forever struggling to accept the niche status of any kind of "thinking game".

>>8421697

Herein we learn that Theme & Fun is the ratings category primarily responsible for expressing "it's good, but it's still Street Fighter II, AGAIN," as Super Street Fighter II loses out in that category to Tetris 2, Breath of Fire, and at least two different soccer games, while scoring around 4.0 in every other category.

>>8421706
>Yeah, an actual new NES game for all you diehards out there.

The charade of continued NES support has all but crumbled

>>8421708
>the 32-bit system is completely self-contained, meaning that you won't need a TV or VR glasses

IT'S
HAPPENING

>>8427306
That game wasn't even released in the US it's PAL exclusive. But it doesn't look half bad, I need to play it.

I wish I had a precise release date for the game. Apparently it came out in Summer 1994 (July or August like the SNES game?) which would make it the 6th last game ever released on NES. In Europe the NES still had games officially released long after the US and Japan. The Lion King came out in may 95 if you can believe that.

>>8421745

I had this issue as a child. Is this where my subscription started??? I think it might be.

>>8421430

>>8421428
They definitely knew which part of Chun-Li to show off in this screenshot.

>>8427385
The effect is marred by proximity to Ryu (Extra Chromosome Edition).

That slightly androgynous Cammy on the first page is pretty hot though. >>8421420
It's novel to see a Cammy of this era drawn with a human-sized mouth. Artist must not have been Japanese

Some dude on retromags has scanned a shit ton of unscanned NP issues and they've been releasing one a day.

>>8421763
>General Pepper's space aces are taking a little break right now. Don't worry, they'll be back!

Well, eventually...

>>8421806
>Trolls and Balrogs lie ahead, but the final journey to Mordor must wait for Volume Two.

Poor hobbits, never getting where they are going

>>8429434
Not until Peter Jackson comes along.

>>8421815

This game has cool monster designs and sprites. I almost want to try it. It's probably not very interesting though.

I think the blue and orange scheme is being overused in this article, and maybe also in the game itself.

>>8421820

These Superman pretenders fascinated me when I was a kid. In particular, I had trouble understanding how some random dude named John who has to wear metal armor to be super could be a candidate for "possible reincarnation/reappearance of Superman". I mean the actual Superman isn't even human! He isn't called John, he has a weird space name!

Just now, I skimmed a bunch of wiki pages and felt that same fascination again, linked with annoyance at how silly superhero stories can be. On Steel, Wikipedia says this:
>Although Steel never claimed to be the "true Superman", Lois Lane seriously considered the possibility that he was a walk-in—someone who was now inhabited by Superman's soul.[5] Lois met all four "Supermen" that appeared after the apparent death of Superman, and while she never concluded that any of them was the one true Superman, she evinced less skepticism of Steel than she did of the others.

Like come on Lois, you trust soul transfer over cloning or cybernetic resurrection?? It's just all so dumb. Also I guess all four of them turn out to be fake? I don't know. Whatever.

>>8430289
I'm not /co/, but I've read a lot of the Reign of the Supermen comics from that era, so I can explain some things.

Steel got the trust because out of the four, he was the only one ACTING like Superman. He had no powers, but it didn't stop him from being willing to take on all the super-powered enemies Superman had. Superboy was too egotistical and trying to hard to impress others, the Cyborg was too distant and cold, and the Eradicator lacked the humanity and preferred to stick to himself. None of them acted in the same way as Superman, or seemed to hold the same ideals, only Steel did. Only Steel was acting heroic, Eradicator was just interested in stopping criminals, Superboy was interested in fame and popularity, and Cyborg was only interested in [spoilers]mass murder.[/spoilers] Lois knew Superman well enough to knew how he behaved and what his ideals were. It's not too surprising she would have believed Steel being the reincarnation of Superman's spirit over the other three.

Steel was recognized as a hero after Superman came back, to the point he was asked (and he did) to join the Justice League as a primary member. IIRC, he worked alongside Batman and Plastic Man during his tenure as a primary League member.

>>8431194
The only issue I ever read of that event was the one where Superman makes his return in full 90s mullet and black costume.

>>8431194
>Cyborg was only interested in [spoilers]mass murder.[/spoilers]
That's him! That's the REAL (Silver Age) Superman!

>>8431295
Ah, I see you understand why people thought the Cyborg might have been the real deal.

>>8431194

Well sure but... the more sensible explanation of that is that that one guy is just a cool guy. I mean none of them HAS to be the real Superman. Oh well it probably made more sense in the comics. But still I don't think I'd like it. There's too much smell of the story focusing more on "this person actually being closely connected to THAT person" than on anything really interesting. Like how in Star Wars recently people cared so much about "who Rey was" as if she wasn't already herself regardless of who her dumb parents were.

Superhero stories really irritate me.

>>8421869

That Nintendo Power art isn't doing poor Sonia any favors.

>>8421893

In Nintendo Power:
>It took 27 craftsmen four years to create this fine bow, which had a range of more than half a mile. It could penetrate even metal.

In the game:
It's just like the last bow but with a higher damage stat.

They actually boasted smugly about this article to that 50-year-old lady who wanted more RPG coverage ( >>8421418 ). I wonder what she thought about these insane Mana diaries with their fanciful lies about weapons and their near-complete lack of maps.

>>8421898

There, at the bottom right. Is that a Secret of Mana musclegirl???

>>8432643
Expanded silly lore dumps in Nintendo Power and such things are hilarious. Like in the official strategy guide for LttP
>Hyrulian carefully crafted even everyday objects like their earthenware pots and decorated them with elaborate designs that families passed from generation to generation.

In the game:
It's a pot you smash to see if there's a heart under it.

>>8432672
Here's your Secret of Mana musclegirl, bro

>>8432676

Well, that one's pretty cute too. But for once I think the weird artist Nintendo Power hired had the better idea.

What the hell was the deal with Dyluck, anyway? You only ever see him once in the game's beginning, and then at the very end when Thanatos is trying to steal his body. Meanwhile, everybody in the game makes such a big deal about him despite never being seen. Was he one of the many dropped parts of SoM?

>>8432802

He shows up in the last page of this diary article too... he resists Thanatos' control and helps you somehow, but he remains a captive of the villains. I think. Yeah he doesn't do a whole lot, regardless. I don't know what the deal is.

>>8421934

This Speed Racer game seems to use an unusual graphics engine in the racing sections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ-tn88LCbE
The ground looks Mode 7-ish, but it's got hills! The framerate is also apparently quite bad. I wonder what exactly is happening under the hood there.

>>8432643
>>8432673
The new lore was the best stuff. Made the worlds feel more alive. I don't care if it's officially canon or not.

>>8433418

I liked those Mana weapon descriptions as a kid. I agree, it added something. But it probably should agree with the game. Then again, in the case of Secret of Mana that may not even be possible, since the weapons don't make sense in the first place - why does "upgrading" the fabled Mana Sword in a smithy turn it into... some other weapon entirely, with it only becoming the real REAL Mana Sword once you've replaced it with completely different swords seven times? Why are seven other weapons you find in random places also the mystical Mana Sword, except without the "sword" part? Throwing into that mess some fancy talk about what mystical material the weapon was made from or how many years it took to craft (even though Watts made it for you in like a minute) isn't really gonna hurt anything I guess.

The one about breaking the Hyrulian pot that's been passed down for generations is much harder to accept. But then, I guess it's really just the elaborate design on the pot that's been passed down? Well that's fine then.

>>8433439
Were those descriptions claiming they had special effects on certain enemies just made up? Because it never seemed like they were any more effective on one enemy than another.

>>8433418
Here's another random lore filler from that strategy guide

>>8433507

I am wondering that myself. When playing the game, I only ever noticed the change in the weapon's numerical strength and in any status effect it could or couldn't apply. I guess that these weapon specialties are probably not strong enough to be highly noticeable. And the game is of course easy enough that you don't need to figure out that they exist.

Okay I just checked the largest guide on GameFAQs and found that many of the mechanical-sounding special features noted in this Nintendo Power article are actually (according to some guide author) in the game!
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/snes/588646-secret-of-mana/faqs/79331/guide#weapons
I see the weapon specialties, the status effects, and even the stat boosts. I guess that's nice. Gives Nintendo Power a little boost in credibility. I mean, assuming this guide author is telling the truth.

>>8433601
>>8432673
Literally the entirety of the Zelda timeline bullshit is built from these ridiculously made-up "lore" dumps. From what I understand, Japanese Zelda fans were unaware that there even "was" a timeline that people argued about until the Hyrule Historica came out. And seeing as BotW doesn't give a fuck about where it is in the timeline, it seems that even IT didn't seem to be important enough for them to care about.

>>8434176
My understanding was it was only online forum autists arguing over a timeline that eventually Nintendo realized they could make some cash off them by selling a book about it. I doubt NP's little blurbs contributed to it.

>>8422014

This game looks pretty cool. Not so much that I'll try it though.

>>8422034

This poll is pretty entertaining. I want to see what the results were... I'm disappointed that my own choice for how to spend the day with my favorite female hero would have to have been a write-in.

>>8436052
Just emulate.

>>8422041

You read it here: The official price of arcade play is one dime per minute.

>>8422050

I wonder whether that guy maxed out the R.C. Pro-Am score. Does it really stop at that value, or did he really end his game just before one million? Maybe it flips at the million mark and he was just trying to get really close? I don't even remember that game having a score...

>>8436078

I wasn't even considering getting a physical copy. The question is whether I'd want to spend time trying it, when my backlog, like everybody's, is already impractically long.

>>8436102
it's very much possible that it overflows. I was trying to max out the score in Jackal but turns out that it overflowed before I could even take a screenshot

though I know for a fact that Battletoads (same dev as RC Pro Am) doesn't overflow

>>8421956
So much work for this piece of shit. That's why the animation looks so good.

>>8422057

Ms. Pac-Man is not as good as Dragon Warrior IV, but it's better than all other Dragon Warrior games.

>>8422061

I think I remember being really impressed with this DKC preview as a kid? My subscription started here (probably?) so this may have been my first glimpse of the game. That screenshot with the forlorn-looking wooden walkway and the lonely light hanging over it especially captured my imagination for some reason. It didn't look at all like something from a simple action game. I have no idea what I thought actually happened in this game, though. It just... could have been anything. It's crazy how much effect a superficial graphical technology change can have on a kid. These shots don't even look that great without any motion, but they do look very different from other Nintendo games, and that's what counted apparently.

Meanwhile, half the appeal of the game ended up coming from David Wise, who had been doing similarly good work on NES games for years already. But the graphics completely steal his thunder!

>>8422063

Wow, and they STILL don't explicitly mention the blood! Nothing but coy references ("drop for drop"), outside those two screenshots that actually show it. Is there still some behind-the-scenes policy keeping the naughty word "blood" out of print, or was this particular writer just being a bit playful for no special reason?

>>8422067

And Earthworm Jim too, right after Super Punch-Out!! What a powerful Pak Watch this is.

>>8436837
Yeah I get it, I felt the same way seeing the first Yoshi's Island pics NP published. It looked so surreal for a platformer, I couldn't even tell what or where the platforms were. It just seemed like it was some weird infinite drawing you could get sucked into.

>>8436102
I checked by editing the rame to give myself a score close to highest: it does overflow and go back to 0

>>8421428

>>8421428
It always filled me with ENDLESS RAGE that Ryu got the flaming fireball and Ken got the flaming dragon punch. RYU'S FUCKING VICTORY LINE WAS ALWAYS "YOU MUST DEFEAT MY DRAGON PUNCH TO STAND A CHANCE"
It's also the more martial-arty of the moves. Throwing fireballs like bullets fit the american ken better
fuck, still pissed

>>8421541

>>8421593
kino

>>8425065
Travelogue of a play session, accompanied by art and weapon lists. This was the kind of shit I lived for. It's no weirder than watching some streamer's first play.

>>8421698
CAAAAAAARNAAAAGE RUUUUUUULES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gevm2wPbC6Y

>>8421895
Have you ever played Super Street Fighter II for the SNES my dude? She literally says "Front Kick" when using the move.

>>8425459
I always remember an early sneak development preview of Body Harvest looked way cooler than what we got... I was a big fan of Hunter for the Atari ST/Amiga in the pre-GTAIII open world genre and it looked like their initial plan was going to be a lot more ambitious like that.

>>8432643
>he doesn't like flavor text
It was fun. Hell, trying to figure out which bits of text in the manual or NP/strategy guide writeups were legit hints and which were baseless rumors, and then telling your friends that you knew the secret, was half the fun.

>>8438365
Because Ryu is the practical one and Ken is the flashy show off one, so fire fights Ken's theatrics better while Ryu just does stuff by the book and is all down to business because he's super serious and doesn't need or want that extra flair.

>>8422080
>Capcom's announcement that they were starting a U.S. development group [that] will work on titles specifically designed for U.S. players

What did this group end up making?

>>8439074
Don't quote me but I heard Capcom USA mainly was in charge of SFV. I'm not sure exactly how management went especially with all the outsourcing to smaller studios.

>>8421698
Based.

>>8439074
Capcom Digital Studios. They made a tangram puzzle game for Win3.1 in 1995, then Final Fight Revenge in 1999. After that, they did two Maximo games and another Final Fight.

>>8440336
DON'T YOU KNOW THAT CARNAGE RULES