Hoy es uno de esos días especiales, uno de esos días en los que uno se levanta y sin saber muy bien el porque, termina haciendo algo que no esperaba hacer. Hoy, y debo reconocer que hace días que no me pasaba, he vuelto a ver la luz, parece que mi cabeza necesita a alguien que la impulse a actuar y hoy he encontrado esa “bombilla” (como yo lo llamo) en Wabo.

Tras esta pequeña reflexión voy a entrar en materia. Hoy en Cetra Land estamos de enhorabuena ya que inauguramos una nueva sección: Recuerdos de los Cetra. La sección en si no es que sea un nuevo descubrimiento ya que no somos los primeros ni los últimos en hacer una sección de estas características.

Un recuerdo es una vivencia o experiencia que se te queda grabada en el cerebro y que siempre (mientras no pase nada malo) estará esperando a ser recordada para volver a brillar. Esta sección vendría a ser una colección de recuerdos que se nos quedan grabados navegando por Internet.

Escribir en un espacio virtual (un blog, una web o un foro, por citar algunos ejemplos) no es fácil. Escribir un articulo puede costar incluso semanas, mucho tiempo se invierte en escribir un articulo y la mayoría de la gente que escribe lo hace de una forma desinteresada, es por este motivo que creo es justo reconocer el mérito a todos los que invierten su tiempo y su energía en compartir sus experiencias y conocimientos con los demás, es por eso que al final he decidido empezar con los Recuerdos de los Cetra.

En la primera entrega de los Recuerdos de los Cetra, recopilaré algunos de los artículos que se han quedado grabados en mi memoria, serán muchos los artículos que se quedarán a la espera, pero eso es lo bueno de los recuerdos, que nunca sabes cuando serán recordados

• El primer recuerdo es el mas reciente y el que ha originado esta sección, me refiero a Alfagamer Opina (I). Wabo se ha aventurado y ha hecho su primer articulo hablado. En esta breve pero solvente “actuación” nos da su opinión sobre L4D2.

• Si os digo Roland Perry, ¿sabríais decirme de quién os estoy hablando? Por suerte para todos (ya seáis de los que conocíais a Roland como a los que esta sea la primera vez que escucháis su nombre) LaGeller nos iluminó a todos con un articulo completísimo sobre El legado de Roland Perry.

• Andresito por su parte, aprovechando que Halloween fue hace pocos días, nos ilustró con una Recopilación de Juegos Zombi. En el artículo se mencionan juegos conocidos por todos como Resident Evil o Dead Rising pero también nos descubren juegos de los que seguramente ignorábamos su existencia.

• ¿Cuantas horas habré invertido con Final Fantasy? Es una pregunta de la cual desconozco la respuesta, pero si de algo me han servido todas esas horas han sido para ampliar mis horizontes musicales. Y esta semana en Desconsolados dedican sus Minutos Musicales a Nobuo Uematsu. No os perdáis el vídeo con el top 50 de canciones de Final Fantasy que nos ofrece GusKu.

• En Pixfans, Cellsius, nos muestra la historia y evolución de La Saga R-Type. Los “matamarcianos” un género que poco a poco está cayendo en el olvido pero que por suerte muchos de nosotros aún recordamos.

• ¡Que levante la mano todo aquel que haya jugado alguna vez en su vida a Diablo! Si eres uno de los afortunados que ha levantado la mano, quizás te interese recordar la historia de Leoric, el rey esqueleto. Un articulo de Epyros que ya tiene su tiempo, peor los recuerdos es lo que tienen, a veces son caprichosos y se remontan a tiempos mas lejanos.

• Y seguimos recordando juegos antiguos, esta vez de la mano de Gamboi que le dedico una Retrospectiva a Outrun. Outrun fue uno de esos juegos que marcaron un antes y un después y por ello esta retrospectiva ha dejado huella en mis recuerdos.

• Y ya para finalizar con los recuerdos de esta semana, os dejo con la entrevista a Tim Schafer que le hicieron los compañeros de Vidaextra. Una entrevista que merece la pena leer.

Estos son los primeros 8 recuerdos que han salido de mi cabeza, espero que os sean de interés los artículos. Muchos recuerdos se han quedado en mi memoria y seguramente hay muchos otros que ni siquiera he llegado a ver aún, es por eso que si tenéis un blog y queréis ser recordados, no dudéis en poneros en contacto con nosotros

“R-Type Final what? Irem is sort of returning to their roots with a R-Type shooter for PlayStation Home. R-Type: Flash of the Void“
source @ www.siliconera.com

R-Type is still alive. This is very good news! But I keep hoping for a new full R-type: Revival for the PS3, that would be even better! R-Type is the best!

~ The 3200s!

Well at present im still settling in, the lessons are tough, im currently learning HTML, XHTML, C# and Multimedia fusion. Im not genious, so i admit i am struggling to take onboard all these new languages and programmes, but yeah, im trying. I’m sorry not many video’s or reviews have been uploaded, but a gamer does have to make friends , for all the people ate retrogamer.net/forum, i will be back soon, i’m really just starting to weigh up my priorities, and at the moment, its lectures, making friends and Becky (the girlfriend for all whom don’t know).

Updates and posts will happen on a more regular basis, keep checking back! I promise for more interesting content soon!

I have also made my first game… i may upload it, infact i will, probably not till January, but its a very basic R-type like side scrolling shooter.

Back soon Ladies and Gentlemen.

p.s im soon to hit 1000 ps1 games…

Retrojc back soon, with some radical updates

Mittlerweile gibt es tausende gute Videospiele und ebensoviele schlechte.

doch was ist mit den ersten Videospielen passiert? mit den Perlen von damals?

Richtig!

Sie werden immernoch gespielt!

Viele Spiele sind gekommen und gegangen.

abgelöst von einem neuem Teil oder einem besseren ähnlichem Spiel.

Spiele wie R-Type die ein Riesenerfolg waren kennt heute kaum noch einer.

Spiele wie Tetris und Pong hingegen sind zwar extrem simpel, aber haben sich über die Jahre durchgesetzt, weil sie einfach EXREM GUT sind.

Natürlich sind andere Spiele, die mittlerweile in vergessenheit geraten sind zum teil ebenso gut.Aber das ist das oberste Gesetz: Der Stärkste setzt sich durch. Um viele dieser Vergessenen Spiele ist es Schade und um ebensoviele nicht. Deswegen werde ich mich in nächster Zeit damit beschäftigen, sowohl die guten alten Schmuckstücke auszugraben, als auch die “Zeitlosen Klassiker” und ihre tausend Klone unter die Lupe zu nehmen.

PONG

1972 veröffentlichte Atari das erste weltweit populäre Videospiel: Pong Im Frühjahr 1972 präsentierte in Burlingame, Kalifornien die Firma Magnavox ihr von Ralph Baer entwickeltes Magnavox Odyssey. Nolan Bushnell spielte hier zum ersten Mal das Ping-Pong Spiel des Magnavox Odyssey. Als Bushnell wenig später Atari gründete, beauftragte er seinen noch neuen Angestellten Allan Alcorn, zu Übungszwecken ein Ping-Pong-Spiel zu erstellen. Wie sich herausstellte, machte das Ping-Pong-Spiel so viel Spaß, dass Bushnell sich entschied, es zu veröffentlichen. Da der Begriff Ping Pong bereits geschützt war, einigte man sich darauf, das Spiel ganz einfach Pong zu nennen.

Als Magnavox von Pong erfuhr, informierten sie Atari darüber, dass für das Spielprinzip bereits Patente bestanden. Vor Gericht konnte Magnavox beweisen, dass Bushnell im Frühjahr 1972 deren Ping-Pong-Spiel gesehen und gespielt hatte. Ein Eintrag Bushnells im Gästebuch von Magnavox untermauerte deren Beweisführung. Atari wurde zur Zahlung von $700.000 zur Nutzung der Patente von Magnavox verurteilt. Für Atari war das eine gute Investition, da man bis 1983 weit über 8000 Pong-Münzautomaten verkaufte.

Pong gilt bis heute als Urvater der Viedeospiele. Es existierten vor Pong zwar schon Videospiele, aber der Klassiker von Atari brachte den Durchbruch. Seit 1972 wurde Pong stetig weiterentwickelt, geklont, verbessert und wieder verschlechtert. Sowohl Offiziel als auch inoffiziell existieren unzähöige versionen von Pong.

In der Grundversion spielten immer nur 2 Spieler, aber 1973 erschien Pong Doubles, das erste Spiel für gleichzeitig vier Spieler.

Ebenfalls entwickelte sich aus dem Spiel die ebensooft geklonte Variante Breakout.

Die Varianten der Neuzeit, versuchen den Arcade-Anteil zu vermindern und dem Spiel Spannung zu verleihen. Da die oft kritisierten Punkte bei Pong hauptsächlich darauf beruhten, dass das Spiel sehr langsam und daher recht einfach ist, wurden bei neuen Versionen höhere Geschwindigkeiten, Hindernisse, mehr Bälle, aufstachelnde Musik und Farbeffekte die die Hölle für Epileptiker sind hinzugefügt.

Ein Musterbeispiel für die neuen Pong versionen stellt das Spiel PWONG2 dar.

TETRIS

Tetris

Tetris wurde von dem Russen Alexei Paschitnow entwickelt. Das Einzige wirklich besondere geschichtliche Merkmal von Tetris ist das um das Patent ein Kampf zwischen Atari und Nintendo ausbarch. Ein Kampf den Atari verlor. Die Frima Atari, welche schon im vorraus immense Summen für Werbung und Vermarktung von Tetris ausgegeben hatte, musste im November 1989 Hunderttausende Spielmodule in ihrem Lager vernichten.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Das Prinzip von Tetris ist es, eine Auswahl an Steinen, welche vom oberem Bildschirmrand fallen,

Tetrominos

in vertikalen Reihen anzuordnen. Vollendete Reihen verschwinden.

Sollte das Konstrukt den oberen Bildschirmrand erreichen, verliert der Spieler.

Es wurden zwar viele Veränderungen ausprobiert, aber keine konnte sich gegen das Urprinzip von Tetris durchsetzen. Der bekannteste änderungsversuch, ist der der Einführung von neuen Steinen, welche nicht aus 4 sondern aus 5 Teilen bestehen. Ebenfalls wurde des öfteren eine 3D portierung versucht, bei denen die Steine in alle Richtungen gedreht werden können.

Bekannt geworden durch ihre eingängige Melodie ist die Musik der GameBoy-Ausgabe von Tetris (Music A). Es basiert auf dem Lied Korobeiniki, welches auf dem 1861 geschriebenen gleichnamigen Gedicht von Nikolai Alexejewitsch Nekrassow basiert

Das soll es fürs erste auch schon gewesen sein. Weitere Spiele und Klasiker werden im Laufe der Zeit folgen.

und bis dahin, immer daran denken: “RETRO rockt derbe”(das wollte ich schon immer einmal zitieren^^)

Zur Zeit habe ich wieder total Lust auf die guten alten Konsolen-Spiele. Das liegt vielleicht auch mit daran, das ich mir einen Nintendo DS Lite gekauft habe, und kurz darauf Bomberman 2. Ich komme kaum noch von dem kleinen Display weg, es sei denn, ich spiele gerade Sonic the Hedgehog, Gynoug, Rocket Knight Adventures oder TetattDS. Und genau dabei fiel mir eine Internetseite ein mit der ich vor längerer Zeit mal angefangen habe.

Wie es der Zufall so will, habe ich mich auf WordPress eingeloggt und wurde auch prompt mit einer Nachricht angeleuchtet.
“Registrieren sie sich einen weiteren Blog”
Ich denke der Rest ist für jeden klar. Also hab ich schnell die alte Seite aus ihrem Dreamweaver-Archiv befreit und weitgehend in WordPress umgesetzt. Das Resultat kann hier begutachtet werden. Über Anregungen oder Verbesserungsvorschläge freue ich mich natürlich.

Wenn ich euch jetzt erzähle, was ich so für Musik höre, haltet ihr mich vielleicht für bescheuert. Ich höre MIDIs und MOD-Soundtracks von alten Videospielen. Warum? Weil die Musik damals sehr im Vordergrund der Spiele stand, und maßgeblich zu deren Erfolg beigetragen hat. Wenigstens weis ich, das ich mit dieser Ansicht nicht allein da stehe. Die Songs von R-Type, Castlevania, Sonic, Global Gladiators und der gleichen werden von vielen Klassik-Spielern gern gehört. Und wenn man sich im Internet mal etwas umschaut, stellt man fest das es genug Menschen gibt die daraus Remixe machen, oder diese eingängigen Melodien für ihre eigenen Songs verwenden.

I øjeblikket spiller jeg en hel del R-Type Final. Old-school shoot-em-up, men med 3D-grafik og lidt andet glasur. Nok ikke noget for de fleste, men for sådan en gammel arkade-grillbar-nisse som mig er det perfekt.

Udviklerne Irem har formået at proppe hele 101 forskellige skibe ind i spillet, og det der overrasker mig mest er, hvor gode de har været til at sætte en unlock struktur op. Der er altid liiige et skib mere man er lige ved at låse op for. De er så særprægede og forskellige, at man altid er interesseret i at se, hvilke våben det næste skib er udstyret med

R-Type Final

Med 101 skibe – suk – så har jeg langt endnu (Men det er jo også rejsen, og ikke målet der er oplevelsen).

In the dark, cigarette-scarred bowling alley arcades in which I spent my youth, there was a community of sorts. A group of boys, aged 9-13, left to our own devices by bowling obsessed parents and seduced by the flashing lights and fantasy worlds of the arcade.

We spent our childhood together battling the undead, scorching down Californian highways and locked in dogfights with swarms of enemy fighters; anywhere, basically, but the beer, burger fat and lane oil whiff of the bowl.

But of all the bonds forged in those days, there is one friendship I remember most fondly. Played out against a backdrop of videogames’ golden age, the early console wars and the dawn of the 16-bit era, my friendship with Damian was at once familiar to anyone who grew up at the time and utterly unique.

For Damian wasn’t a normal boy, and my friendship with him put me nearer than any child could dream of being to the heart of that seminal period.

Damian was an awkward child, all limbs and thumbs. Older and taller than me, with a thatch of curly black hair perched on his head, Damian was possibly the clumsiest person I have ever met.

Like he hadn’t yet learned to control his lengthening limbs, there seemed to be no situation that didn’t result in a spill, trip or drop. He was a walking disaster. But stood in front of an arcade cabinet Damian was a god.

He could complete the entirety of Outrun without crashing once, he reached levels in Space Harrier we had never seen, and could gather crowds with his prowess at Afterburner. That he would do all this and then trip over his shoelaces as he walked away from the machine only made him more likable. To me anyway.

But not everybody felt the same. Damian wasn’t like the rest of us. Most of the boys that spent their time in the arcade were from the neighboring school.

Pretty much right next to the runways of Heathrow Airport, the parents of the kids we hung out with were just like mine, employed as baggage handlers, truck drivers and warehouse operatives.

Damian, however, was not local. He was from affluent borough of North-West London. He went to a posh private school. He was the polite, well-spoken Jewish boy whose Mum drove a Jaguar. The other kids did not take to him.

That he was named after the Devil’s son didn’t help, of course. In short, he was different, and different isn’t a popular quality among 10 year-old boys.

I spent more time with Damian than the rest of the group because my Dad and his step-father were in the same bowling team. This meant that we spent most weekends at tournaments up and down the country, shut away in the arcade together with time, coins and enemies to kill. Naturally, a close friendship blossomed.

This was the golden age of arcades. Far from the wasteland of Dance Dance Revolution and air hockey that makes up the current scene, new games would arrive almost weekly at the best spots. The two short years between 1987 and 1989 saw the release of Double Dragon, 1942, Contra, Final Fight, Double Dribble, Ninja Gaiden, Track and Field, Shinobi and Castlevania to name just a few, many of which remain classics to this day.

We didn’t have the internet back then, we didn’t even really have access to magazines, so each new tournament location, and therefore each new arcade, brought the promise of undiscovered wonders and experiences.

Each Saturday morning I would pile out of the car and head into whatever town’s bowling alley we were at, straight past the lanes and towards the arcade.

During the preceding week, while my Dad and Damian’s step-dad predicted the lane conditions, the opposition and the endless boring minutiae of the upcoming tournament, Damian and I would plan our weekend’s entertainment. By the time I finally arrived at the venue, I was bursting with feverish anticipation.

Often, Damian would arrive at tournaments before me. Dad and I were always late, an unwanted habit that has stuck with me in later life. As I burst through the front doors, Damian would invariably be waiting, a simple smile or shake of the head communicating whether or not we had struck gaming gold.

Dusty old Frogger cabinets would just not do it, we were connoisseurs. We expected the best.

In this way bowling alleys across the country became ranked according to quality. As 9 or 10 year-old boys faced with hours and hours trapped in a building with dodgy-shirted, weird shoed grown-ups, the arcades had the ability to make or break our weekends.

Of course, not every bowl had an arcade, something Damian and I discovered one day with highly vocal disgust. Even now, aged 30, I have an irrational hatred of Nottingham. Not just the bowling alley, but the City, it’s people, it’s sports teams – everything about the place.

Nottingham bowl only had fruit machines. I’ll take that disappointment with me to the grave.

So there we would be, lost in those rooms for hours and days, pumping coin after precious coin into the machines. At single-player games we patiently take it in turns, equally happy offering advice and abuse to each other as we were playing the game ourselves.

At 2-player games (this is before the term co-op caught on) we were a finely tuned team, working in unison to destroy scores of enemies, bosses and foes. It was heaven.

It was at these tournaments that I began to see the flaws in Damian’s superheroic skills. At some games, he was truly was a master, with reflexes that verged on precognition, even on titles we hadn’t seen in the arcades before. But inexplicably, at others Damian was a mere mortal.

While he was godly at Golden Axe, he was pathetic at Punch Out!!, awesome at Altered Beast, rubbish at R-Type. I never understood the wild fluctuations in Damian’s abilities and I certainly never questioned him about it. I just reveled in the opportunity to redress the balance.

It wasn’t until some time into our friendship that I discovered Damian’s astonishing secret and the truth behind this little mystery. The answer was enough to make him just about the coolest 10 year old in the world and the best friend you could ever wish to have. And it all started with an invitation.

> [Chapter Two]

< [Preface]

Hey! Where's the tutorial stages?

A nasty period earlier this year saw me hidden out in my spare bedroom in an (eventually futile) effort to confine the swine flu germs to one corner of the house.  As a consequence, I was downgraded from the face-melting pixel realism of the Xbox 360 and PS3 to the geriatric, flood-damaged Sega Megadrive that lurks like a stack of dog-eared pornographic magazines in the back of my wardrobe.  I have somehow managed to hold onto a large pile of game cartridges, and although I could easily pay up to ten quid a piece to play most of the same games on the Wii, Nintendo haven’t been bothered to market an authentic peripheral that proudly proclaims the 16 BIT POWER of your emulated games console, allows region-free gaming with the aid of a hot pen-knife or forces you to blow frantically on a simulated cartridge strip just to get Altered sodding Beast to load properly.  Any Virtual Console release of NES Ninja Gaiden (or indeed any NES game at all) will forever be hobbled by the missing ‘bonus’ difficulty omitted because the player is now unlikely to suffer a minor stroke whilst searching for the exact perfect angle required to correctly insert a game cartridge into any NES console more than three years old.

Too hard? Maybe you should take Little Nemo back to the shop and ask for a Kirby game instead

Whilst a good proportion of my hoarded cartridges now play like utter, total crap, the joy of forced retrogaming resolves into a endearingly low-res 50hz focus whenever I manage to discover a game that still pisses over most of software released for the current generation of frequently overhyped polygon shifters.  The Megadrive version of Contra does not hold your hand for fifteen minutes of patronising tutorial, offer a licensed skate-punk soundtrack or force you to suffer through the kind of steroid-enhanced CGI fratboy banter that makes modern-day action epics like Gears of War both infuriating and incongruously homoerotic.  No, by the time you’ve ‘interacted’ with 90-minutes of convoluted backstory in Metal Gear Solid 4, Megadrive Contra has had enough time to have repeatedly bludgeoned you out of your paltry three continues with wave after wave of killer robots, mean-spirited boss enemies and unremittingly sadistic level design.  Ghouls and Ghosts cannot hold your interest with gamerscore trophies or unlockable bonus outfits; instead it taunts you to come back for more with a difficulty level apparently designed by the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket.

Forget nostalgia: Altered Beast is still a sack of turds

This is not to say that the general standard of these games is actually much better than the games of today: any rainy afternoon spent trawling through an emulator rompack will swiftly remind you of the jerky horror of the unaccountably million-selling first Mortal Kombat game, countless woeful attempts to create lucrative Mario/Sonic clones or the fact that almost every driving game in pseudo-3D comes with the risk of an epileptic seizure.  The real point is that the massive technical limitations of early gaming systems meant that their best software sees ‘hardcore gaming’ manifested not in the desire to stop washing and join a Battlefield clan, but in a kind of ultra-condensed conceptual purity that seems to have become elusive or even forgotten by the paymasters of today’s enormous game-development teams.

However, whilst many AAA releases draw ever-closer to the tedious blockbuster cycle that powers the treadmill of the vacuous Hollywood event movie, the increasing importance of the downloadable, handheld and even ‘casual’ (read: ageing Nintendo owner and/or XBLA enthusiast) markets has allowed smaller teams and independent publishers to flourish.  If they manage to stand out from the foetid deluge of sub-par releases that clog a poorly regulated marketplace, these products will generally sink or swim on playability alone, and so amidst an arid desert of half-finished puzzlers, broken shooters and Wii-centric novelty shitware you might stumble across an oasis of small-scale video game design that transcends the presentational limitations of electronics and aspires to the compelling yet cerebral nature of meatspace cultural staples such as Chess, Backgammon or Pin The Tail On The Donkey.  Anybody who has ever obtained even passable competence at a title such as Asteroids, Ms. Pacman or (most recently) Geometry Wars will be able to articulate the same common experience: that otherwordly moment when graphics, sound and interface dissolve from consciousness to be replaced by a moderately creepy trance-like state that makes the player feel like Keanu Reeves floating through confusing wireframes in yet another tacky William Gibson ripoff.

In Soviet Russia, block stack you

Those goddamn communists took ten years of my life

Although the games I have picked above are mostly shooters, the most common example used to describe this zen gamerstate will always be that incorrigibly addictive Russian franchise: Tetris. Much has been made in academic circles of the Soviet origins of this masterclass in minimal software design, with one leading commentator (Julian Stallabrass) advancing the argument that playing the game might be the closest that the leisured classes come to the experience of stacking boxes in low-paid factory drudgery.  It is certainly true that the gradually increasing speed of the tetrominos quickly resembles the outflow of some nightmarish Stalinist productivity directive, but this does not take into account the manic pleasure that overtakes the player when they succeed in remaining focused as the game accelerates towards its inevitable conclusion of a bucket full of useless bricks.  The Stakhanovite activity of the hardcore Tetris player is a singular joy that involves physical reflex, the pure pleasure of the abstract puzzle and the scratching of that persistent mental itch that makes obsessive/compulsive tidying so oddly relaxing for many people.  Bar a few extra options, it plays almost identically well whether you bought it on a chunky monochrome Gameboy, Xbox Live or the iPhone 3G currently overheating in your pocket.  Tetris is not so much a piece of software as a flawless set of conceptual rules; a mental vocation; or perhaps some kind of cultural virus that merely requires an interface in order to squat eternally in your brain like herpes simplex.

Sado-masochism in electronic form

A confession: this fetishisation of Tetris is pretty much the retrogamer’s equivalent of those people who never stop talking about how much they miss Spangles, and so it is only fair for me to acknowledge that purity of game design does not necessarily mean that 2d ‘hardcore’ gaming is a category limited to abstract puzzlers and excruciatingly challenging danmaku shooters.  Take an hour or two to play through Prince of Persia on SNES; Super Mario World or R Type to savour the perfect combination of environmental design, control system and condensed play that makes these games so pleasurable even amidst today’s HD smorgasbord of readily available pixel-crack.  Maybe after you’ve towelled yourself down, treat yourself to copies of modern classics like Braid, N+ and Pacman: Championship Edition and then curl up like a tired puppy before the inviting hearth of developers who’ve clearly slaved to create a gaming experience every bit as compelling as the classic designers of the arcades, home computers and cartridge consoles.

This game is making sweet love to my mind

No doubt everybody reading this has their own favourites; there just wasn’t enough space for me to list them all.  Please flood the comments with your favourites, recommendations and outright objections, and I will gradually work through them as I add more articles to what I hope will be a long-running series.  So far, I’m planning a retrospective on run-and-gun shooters; a breakdown of the cutest and hardest games from Taito; and an exploration of how programmers made narrative work on primitive gaming systems of yesteryear.  In balance, I’ll also be writing about gaming experiences that just wouldn’t be possible without the kind of power that my Playstation 3 is mostly using to provide yet another half-arsed version of Tony Hawk’s Ageing Merchandise Juggernaut Part Nineteen.

NCS Preorder Synopsis
«©NCSX» Shooters such as R-Type aren’t normally genre-twisted into real-time strategy games but that’s exactly what Irem did with their classic shmup. In the original R-Type Tactics (R-Type Command for us Yanks), players marshaled a contingent of fighters into the heart of the Bydo Empire to do some damage. The game was played on tactical grids with turn-based battle sequences. In the sequel to R-Type Tactics which is subtitled “Operation Bitter Chocolate,” humanity has amassed an impressive arsenal of weapons after their war with the Bydo.

With all those weapons at their disposal and no one to use them against, man starts bickering against his fellow man. The bickering leads to battles which leads to further full-on military engagements where armadas are arrayed against opposing armadas. The Bydo were threatening the extinction of the human race and they were alien empire that could be eradicated without remorse. When man battles against man, the agenda isn’t extinction but domination. Or maybe some people are just mean.

Players marshal R-Type ships once again on tactical grids where weapons are blasted, ships are deployed, and the units are used in an intelligent manner so as to guarantee success against the enemy. In addition to attack ships, repair vehicles and refueling vessels are available for well-rounded tactical strategizing. Preorders are welcome to ship on October 29, 2009 at JPY4800 or US$53.90 from NCS.

Thanks to discoveries made during co-op I’ve also made progress in single player. Made it to stage 7 on a credit, though I still died on stage 6 few times. As suspected, stage 5 is ridiculously easy if one can get there fully powered up. It’s enough to park yourself to the upper left or lower left corner and only occasionally move out to take care of the few popcorn enemies now and then. With the Red weapon held all the way from stage 4’s start the boss falls quickly.

Stage 4 itself is still annoying. There’s so many small, yet fatal things that can go wrong there. Getting better at the boss, though. Rather silly that stages (and bosses) 5 and 6 feel easier than stage 4…or at least they have far less things to remember to watch out for. Though in stage 6’s boss room, where you want to (or I want to, anyway) put the Force to my back I gotta be real careful not to run into a wall doing that. I think Dimension’s 3D graphics are playing tricks on me there, it looks like there’s more space there when there actually isn’t. Lost two lives just to that. Didn’t get too far into stage 7, a large “thing” came out from the left and I took a laser blast at close range after a while. Rather reminiscent of Delta’s stage 6, actually.

Speaking of Delta, I just realized the other day that I never changed away from Red weapon while I was playing it. Not sure why, just didn’t seem necessary to. In R-Type I change weapons at almost every opportunity and there’s a good reason every time. ‘Course in Delta RX’s Force has homing capabilities which more or less does the same job as having a more spread-out weapons fire output like those of the Blue or Yellow weapons. Makes me wonder if Delta’s and the original’s level design have that different philosophies behind them, or if RX was just that good. I guess if/when I go back to Delta to the other ships I’ll really find out. Could certainly make that one bit in stage 6 a whole lotta easier.

Zaarock from the irc channel agreed to partner up for the co-op and we got to it. As we’re both located in Finland there’s very minimal lag, so that’s the technical side taken care of.

It’s almost like a whole different game with two players. At first we both basically played it like a single player game, which stops being a good idea at the midpoint of Stage 1. So, heavily revised tactics need to be made. Instead of trying to divide the power-ups evenly from the start, one player now collects most of the power-ups in stage 1, with the other getting the Force just before the boss. Works much better. The first two stages are pretty straightforward and simple  so there’s not much visible teamwork (until the second boss, anyway) but from stage 3 onwards there’s almost nothing else.

Dimensions has options for playing with player collision on or off, and being gluttons for punishment, we’re having it on. This means that the ships can’t overlap but they push each other around instead. Often into inconveniently placed wall or bullet. This is responsible for maybe third of our deaths. Playing the co-op game with player collision on means you not only have to look out for your own ship, but also be aware where the other ship is and is there anything fatal near it. Should make for fun times when we really get into stage 6 with its moving boxes and tight routes to follow.

We have made it to stage 6 on several occasions, but never at full strength. Most of our deaths happen in stage 4, and reaching stage 5 in an underpowered ship makes the stage so much harder. If we could both get there fully powered, it’d probably be the easiest stage of all.

I uploaded a video of one our more successful attempts (until the first death, anyway) to Youtube. I’m not going to post videos constantly about this, this was more a proof-of-concept thing to show people what co-op play looks like. Or looked like, we’ve already changed some of the tactics used in that video.

Been playing R-Type quite a bit lately. The first one, that is. Both on R-Types for PS1 and Dimensions on XBLA. At first I alternated between the two but then came to the decision that it might be better to focus on only one for now. Settled on Dimensions for two reasons: Firstly, R-Types has a far better (=more rapid) autofire so in playing Dimensions I can’t get dependant on it and hopefully will learn better tactics and routes.

Secondly, the main reason I bought Dimensions (a whooping -day- before it became deal of the week for a cheaper price, how’s that for timing?) in the first place was for co-op. I have delusions of grandeur plans to make a co-op superplay of at least the first game. Why? Because co-op superplays are pretty cool and there really aren’t that many of those out there. Hardest part here, it seems, is finding a suitable co-op partner. I tried it with szycag but the lag was quite insufferable for the one who wasn’t hosting. This could be due to us having quite a bit of distance between us, so I’m hoping to find one of the many, MANY finnish shmup players to partner up with.

That’s not going so well. Put up a notice at the biggest finnish gaming forum, promising glory and fame (as much as participating in a  superplay video gives it) but I haven’t got a single reply yet. The other way would be to get someone to play the game with me locally, which would also be nice for discussing tactics, but that’s even harder to accomplish. Only one guy I know plays shmups and he’s not one for R-Type. Either I need to learn brainwashing or cloning techniques.

As for how I’m doing in the game itself…I have good days and bad days. On a good day I can get to Stage 6. On a bad day, like today was, I can’t get past Stage 4. The boss is such a wild card. Even though I have his pattern down now he still kills me way too often. And on occasion he even breaks his pattern which messes me up. Stage 5, assuming I get there fully powered up, is basically a push-over, no problems there.

Also, I’ve tried R-Type II few times. So much harder than the first game from the very start and I’ve only made it to Stage 2. The stages feel so much more inventive and devious. Almost makes me want to switch to that…

“R-Type Tactics II: Operation Bitter Chocolate now has a Japanese trailer that you can sample — you won’t find any gameplay footage, but it’s difficult to impassion gamers with clips of hex-based, turn-based strategy.”

Source @ www.gamesetwatch.com
Release date: October 27, 2009 (in Japan)
Official site: www.irem.co.jp

I just started playing the 1st R-Type Tactics game for the PSP by iRem, and now a 2nd one is coming title R-Type Tactics II Operation Bitter Chocolate. I do like the attract movie showing one of the more heavy armored ships (The red Ship). I do wonder what does Operation Bitter Chocolate mean. The game comes out 2009.10.29 in Japan.

If you have missed the 1st one you can get it at Play-Asia.

[via]
http://www.psphyper.com/psp/r-type-tactics-ii-debut-trailer/
http://www.irem.co.jp/rtt2/index.html

In a desperate war against the mysterious alien race known as the Bydo, humanity sends wave after wave of fighters into Bydo space – none of which are ever heard from again.

Mankind’s main hope now resides with a lone commander, sent to lead a small armada on a mission into the heart of the Bydo Empire.

Low on fuel and forced to scavenge resources and equipment from tbeir surroundings, the commander must use all his wits if he hopes to succeed and make it home alive.

Buy Now with Amazon – PSP

When Brilliant William assigned me this game for review, he helpfully informed me that “GunForce is a Contra clone by the R-Type dudes”, as if to assuage my fears that this might be one of those terrible Super Scope light gun games (and I use the term “light gun game” lightly), necessitating hacker-level mouse-modding and other such nonsense.  Cool by association: in one sentence, the game is immediately connected with two games whose reputations precede them – Contra and R-Type.  Immediately, my pre-game assessment jumped from this might be terrible to this might be good.  But I don’t think Brilliam realised the brilliant wordplay of his original statement when he wrote it (nor did he realise I would use his email as stimulus material, much less quote it for this review – be careful what you wish for and whatever you do don’t look out the window).  See, the Latin root ‘contra’ means ‘different’* (or ‘against’, or ‘in opposition to’).  Substitute that back into the original sentence and you get something like this: “GunForce is a different clone by the R-Type dudes”.  I’d say it was a contradiction in terms, but that has the prefix of ‘contra’ in it and I’m against using a word to explain its own meaning, so try to come up with your own word and replace it with that.

OKAY THANKS FOR THAT

GunForce is a different clone.  Think on that for a moment.  And it is, you know.  It’s running and gunning and jumping to be sure, but it’s far more clinical than the balls-to-the-wall hypermasculine bravado you’ll find in any given Contra title.  And that’s okay.  It’s better than trying for it and missing the point.  What’s the point of Contra, you may ask?  Well, you’d be forgiven for not knowing it if your only exposure to the series was Contra 4, the first and only (and hopefully last) American-developed Contra game.  They missed the point.  When a big sweaty lump of manhood with tree trunks for arms somersaults nine times in the air every time he jumps, you’re not supposed to yell “BOO-YAH!” or “YEEEEE-HAWWW!!!” at the television screen, because, you know, that’s so fricken’ bad-ass; you’re supposed to LAUGH.  That, there, Joe American Gamer, is something ridiculous on purpose, not something to aspire to!  This is satire, and the joke’s on you, America.  It’s taking the piss out of y’all.

BADASS

GunForce doesn’t try to do that.

Does that make it a better game or not?  Well, I hate to get all Obi-Wan on yo’ ass, but that all depends on what you’re seeking from a videogame.  It won’t make you holler and pump your fists [like a 'hardcore gamer' [read: Xbox Live frat-boy]], but it won’t make you laugh either.  It’s fantastical to a smaller extent; you’re an armoured soldier of reasonable proportions; you don’t do nine somersaults every time you jump, in fact, you don’t even do one; but you can drive jeeps, pilot helicopters, fire cannons, and sometimes a combination of two of those at the same time (guess which two).  Being the “R-Type dudes”, they likely leaped at the opportunity to include controllable vehicles in this thing.  In many ways this is 2D Halo, and that’s kind of a cool thought.

Everything has a slower pace to it, too.  The music is something you’d expect to hear in a Mario game, and doesn’t really chug like it ought to (then again, maybe that’s the Contra-conditioning talking).  The bullets, the running, and the enemies are slower too; but on the plus side, this gives you more time to think, and consequently, a lower risk of dying every five seconds.  Unlike Contra, you may yet live to see the end of this game!  Here’s proof:

TAKE HEART LITTLE WARRIOR

That was the end of Mission 2.  And I’m sorry, but if you think making a beat-able Contra game is a bad thing, you are a dick.

Let’s recap to finish off, shall we?  GunForce is:

• “a Contra clone made by the R-Type dudes.”
• not as funny as Contra, but then again it’s not really trying to be.
• better than Contra 4, because not trying at all is better than trying too hard.
• 2D Halo sorta.
• easier than Contra AND HEY, YOU MIGHT JUST SEE THE END OF THIS ONE!
• not as fun to talk about as Contra.

Oh, who am I kidding?  It’s nowhere near as good.

* The other definition of ‘contra’ is ‘a member of a counterrevolutionary guerilla group in Nicaragua’, probably the intended meaning in this instance.

Welcome, dear reader, to the first of many blog entries of iPhone app developer, PawPaw.

This blog will be the place where we discuss future plans, plans we’ve started, plans we’re hoping to start but don’t have the time to and other, more normal, plans that won’t ever see the light of day.

Anyway, enough with the formalities. I wanted to start this blog with a little bit of information about why PawPaw exists and what we’re hoping to bring to the crowded (let’s face it) iTunes App Store.

You may be reading this as a fresh-faced youngster, grown up on a diet of McDonalds and PlayStations, in which case, the boggling amount of nostalgia in this blog entry may alienate you a little, so apologies in advance.

Alternatively, you may be the kind of person who’s grown up on Thundercats, Transformers (when it was a decent TV cartoon created to sell toys – not a loud excuse to show off Megan Fox in hotpants) and Wham. Then there’s those of the slightly older generation who, despite the haircuts and music of the ’70s and ’80s, have emerged as successful grown-ups with a penchant for video games (although always feeling slightly guilty about that Commodore 64 in the attic “ahh, she was so good to me…”).

If you find yourself in the last two categories, welcome to the PawPaw world.

The thing is, games have changed a lot. In fact, they’ve done exactly what the new Transformers movies have done – they’ve gotten more spectacular, sexier, louder, more confusing and more expensive. Game developers now have movie budgets with a development process spanning years with increasing focus on making every game before it look obsolete.

This all started around the same time the Amiga (bless her) died a death which, conversely, was because of ID Software’s fantastic Doom series. Suddenly we were in the games like never before; shooting things left, right and centre with our hearts pumping like we’re on the verge of an aneurysm.

Sensing the appetite for more textures, more pixels flying around in 360° and more polygons, graphics card makers pushed the envelope more and more to the point where we almost get computer games now that look (yes, I’m going to use the stereotype) like you’re in the movies.

This is no bad thing necessarily, but when the Amiga died, so too did the bedroom programmer. The guy or gal that, armed with a litre of Coke, spots, malnutrition and a copy of Basic, could churn out games positively dripping with playability.

15 years later and we have the iPhone. Anyone with a Mac can now make a game, get enthusiastic about the possibilities open to them and actually sell the thing and pay for their driving lessons or (for the oldies) their mortgage.

That’s where PawPaw comes in. We love games. We especially love those games of our past like R-Type, Out Run, Elite, Sensible Soccer and so on. The kind of games that broke our joysticks (that’s what controllers were called in the old days, kids).

Games with 2D graphics unfortunately don’t have much of a market on modern consoles – no matter how playable they are – but the iPhone and iPod has now opened up a new audience to games that are focused on playability first and whizz-bang effects later.

That’s what we at PawPaw plan to do; simple, playable, whimsical games that look great and keep you entertained for hours.

Allá en los 80 mi hermano mayor solía flipar. Había una vez una noche que Mad max 3 se pasaba en televisión española. Ni corto ni perezoso compró snacks varios y se tumbó en la cama a disfrutar de la pelicula. Tambien  solía dibujar piramides, ying yangs, caras en todas partes, etc… en España teniamos varios comics: cimoc, 1984, el vibora…todas ellas en el recuerdo. La ciencia ficción era un pilar de la cultura adolescente, chicas semidesnudas con tecnología en los pechos y bohemios eclecticos. Estos jovenes con granos, gruesas lentes en las gafas y camisa de cuadros vivian el gran cambio de cultura generacional de la transición. Una sociedad conservadora y atemorizada contra una cultura foranea, libre y perversa…oh si. Y bien, ¿que tiene todo esto que ver?  ¿Que puto rollo no? Bien, el juego que nos trae acá es un disco de videoconsola microsoft llamado Prey, desarrollado por humanhead Studios y Venom, y que rezuma ese tono ciencia ficción guarro que tan de moda estaba en todos aquellos comics, como las ilustraciones de Oliver Fray o Luis Royo. Tiene ese aire retro que lo envuelve y sugiere una buena dosis de ciencia ficción.

Y para flipar un rato: la introducción. Es ya un clásico en mi televisor: un bar de pueblo, de camioneros, con una jukebox y algún tema de judas priest saltando por ahi, y una alucinante ( 198x, siempre alucinante) escena: Platillo volante intrusiona con luces brillantes y se lleva todo terricola coleteando al viento imperio…y aqui empieza un fantastico recorrido por un mundo claustrofobico con referencias en H.R.Gigger y al papá de esto: Doom 3.

Ahora bien, todo con fundamento: Bioordenadores. Los bioordenadores es eso que los humanos necesitamos para abaratar costos de nuestra sociedad de la información, para dejar de rascar silicio de la tierra y evitar torres de pc nadando en las costas asiaticas. Es eso que está formado por bacterias que responden SI/NO y que se reproducen solas naturalmente sin tener que chupar silicio de vecinos y  fabricar toneladas de procesadores para drogadictos del media markt y demás white trash. R-Type ya narraba un mundo creado por estas bacterias. El imperio de Bydo. Y por ahí van los orificios.

Y bueno, el walkthrough, es denso. “Juego disparador en primera persona, monstruos baratos (pero muuy baratos y cutres), puertas, palancas y plataformas, armas con varios estilos de juego y posibilidades” chachi, volvamos a los 90. [...and I'm all out of gum]. Bien. Pues no. Este disco compacto SI tiene algo por descubrir. Uno, gravedad alterada, y Dos! Portales!.

Sobre la gravedad. La gravedad es eso que está ahí.El jugador en cuestión, sugestionado por la fantastica epopeya marciana que le ocupa, podrá activar y desactivar a proposito de resolver el puzzle. Las diferentes pasarelas no-gravitatorias con el proposito de hacerse paso en busca de su mujer. Esto trae su arte de flipar, pues en muchos casos se consigue una lograda sensación cabeza abajo y lo que es mejor, tiene su punto, por que visualmente obligan a que el jugador escrute su camino cual Samuel Jackon y piense hacia donde tiene que dirigirse una vez alcanzado el final de la pasarela una vez fuera de gravedades raras. Pero aún hay más, existen en las paredes unos dispositivos fenomenales que de un tiro te ponen el mundo patas arriba cambiando todo el sistema gravitatorio de la habitación. Si no te sientan bien los viajes en bus, esto tampoco.

…Pues bien, los portales son esos dispositivos dimensionales de teletransportación. Ud. saben que un ente físico se puede teletransportar utilizando el concepto clásico de puerta. ¿como crea esto buena jugabilidad? pues fantasticamente, tiene todo el potencial de una puerta dentro de un videojuego. Estos portales, esparcidos a diestro y siniestro por todo el mapa de juego están dispuestos aleatoriamente, demasiado diria yo.  No he conseguido adivinar que regla o premisa utilizan para establecer portales en el mapa de juego.

Y dadas estas dos características fulminantes del mundo de este juego vamos a comentar su estructura: La esfera Dyson.  Esta esfera sería, asi en plan conversación de bar, un caparazón del sistema solar o cualquier otro sistema planetario. De esta forma, el calor y luz de su nucleo (en nuestro caso sería el sol, que en julio me está dejando unas ingles a la vinagreta) sería aprovechado al máximo.  Se supone que esta esfera posee un nucleo que hay que alimentar con bichitos, entre ellos humanos… las minipimers son de varios tipos y durante el juego hay un buen tratado de trituración de humanos, asi como diversas technomutilaciones simpáticas, mirad que bello boceto:

Y hablando de los habitantes de esta esfera, que son de varias especies extraterrestres y la mayoria de ellos estan concebidos para matar a tu personaje, bien, son muuy malos, tanto en actitud como en inteligencia. Es fantastico ver a los enemigos darte la espalda, dar vueltas como una peonza, quedarse inmoviles… No son enemigos muy elegantes, además son pocos, no aportan mucho a esta faceta del juego, de todas formas en un todo, el disco en si aporta un buen ritmo de combate y puzzle.

Para disparar tenemos los siguientes modos de armas: francotirador, granadas de mano, bomba en parabola, metralleta y cañonazo. Todas ellos sistemas de disparar fantasticos y divertidisimos. Todas ellas armas extraterrestres, vivas y organicas, programadas y realmente curiosas por su viscosidad y sonidos.  Te sentiras como paseando a tu mascota preferida. Yo conocía una persona de mi ciudad que criaba arañas.

Otra gran caracteristica es el vehiculo del juego. Pues, ¡solo hay uno! aunque bastante curioso. En el momento que lo pilotas el HUD se transforma, y el juego se dinamiza convirtiendose en un vuelo entre checkpoints, resolviendo puzzles para abrir o despejar compuertas y pasadizos entre gigantes hangares con aspecto de garganta. Bastante potente.

Tenemos el espiritu también. Importante. En un momento del juego, el abuelo del protagonista, un indio cherokee, te lleva a un santuario y te suelta un rollo mistico. El juego se pone mistico si, rollo incienso. El espiritu es una de las partes de la jugabilidad que en mi opinion no ha terminado de cuajar en su grueso. Por un lado, es fantastico poder doblar tu personaje, teniendo dos sujetos con distintas habilidades, si uno no pasa por aqui, pasa el otro, si este puede activar esto el otro se desplaza juntandose asi ambos en otro nivel. Bien. Clásicos básicos. Pero algunas veces el empleo de estas acciones son demasiado obvias, y cuando lo son, no mola. No mola por que es tan facil que aburre. No me gustan los iconos en la pared. ” Aqui debes usar esta caracteristica de tu personaje” Ooooh, ya he visto la luz.  A mi me encantan los juegos con un avatar o personaje dual, con varias habilidades organizadas en un mismo elemento. Pero en Prey no he sentido que esto funcione. De todos modos, haciendo uso de esta dualidad del personaje, te envian al limbo cuando mueres, ese mundo mistico…y pasados unos segundos resucitas en el sitio donde estabas. Que si, que si… esto ya no es lo que era. Pero esto no está tan mal, y podreis decir: “falta el desafío”, de acuerdo, pero la noción de aventura no se pierde.

Por último, y no menos impotante el audio y banda sonora. La libreria de viscosidades que aqui se oye no tiene parangón. Desde las armas, los diferentes orificios y compuertas, los hazes y rayos de diferentes naturalezas, dispositivos y palancas… todo transmite el mundo alienigena en el que nos encontramos, la gravedad suena, y el jugador lo agradece. Integrado. Y su banda sonora, aparte de la jukebox de bar, desde clásicas bandas “del metal” a unos bien estructurados y oportunamente reproducidos cortes creados por Jeremy Soule, prolifico compositor de entre otras músicas: Elder Scrolls, Neverwinter Nights, Guild Wars…

Prey es todo lo que se explica en el principio de esta entrada: ciencia ficción alucinante con un jugabilidad sólida, con características nuevas y clásicas de un disparador en primera persona y que en su momento eran muy innovadoras y que han marcado pautas de juegos posteriores, merece la pena jugarlo.

Cosmic Rays are highly charged particles, born from inside clouds of gigantic exploded galaxies, and hurling through the universe at near light-speed. Cosmic Ray particles are passing through us constantly; their radiation causes cellular mutations which affect the development of life on earth. They pose a mortal threat to Interplantary astronauts, who once unshielded by the Earth’s atmosphere would be fully exposed to their super high radiation.
Cosmic Rays Of Death formed at the begining of 2008, recorded the ‘Of Doom’ EP at Gundry Audio and made their dynamic debut at Camp a Low Hum 2008.

http://www.myspace.com/cosmicraysofdeath

Made by Simon Ward
http://nz.youtube.com/user/aceburgers
and Don Brooker
http://www.donbrooker.blogspot.com/

R Type

Genre : Tactical RPG

Editeur / Développeur : Rising Star Games Limited / Irem Software

Sortie : 2008

Supports :

Versions : – –

Sauvegardes : Memory Stick

Nombre de Joueurs : 1 ou 2

Prix Payé : 10 €

Mon Avis : Pas encore joué.