Late Nights Without Friends

22nd February 2013

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Undercover Cops (Arcade, 1992)

So this is the first in an on-going series I’ve been meaning to start for a while.

I was going through some rom sets and clearing out multiple dumps, and I found this game for SNES. It was pretty amazing, so I wanted to look up more about it, found the arcade version which is even better. Also there’s probably going to be A LOT of SNES beat ‘em ups in the series, so might as well go arcade when possible.

Here’s the description from Wikipedia:

“Players control “city sweepers”, a police agent-like group who fight crime by destroying thugs in New York City of the year 2043.”

That’s it. I mean it’s a beat ‘em up, but that’s all it is. It goes on to describe the game’s style and such, but that’s the ENTIRE plot. The characters have pretty standard back stories:

“Zan Takahara  - a scruffy Japanese former karate master, banned from formal tournaments after killing a man in self-defense. 

Matt Gables - an American ex-gridiron player turned city sweeper after a false accusation of murder.

Rosa Felmonde - a tough British blonde female vigilante whose lover was murdered by thugs.”

Also: just fucking LOOK at this

Dude is wielding an almost-screen-length concrete pillar, which gets shorter as you smash people in the face with it. The music is pretty amazing too, which is why I wanted the Japanese version (the US one has lamer music, from what I read).

I mean, it’s a beat ‘em up. It’s pretty great, but also there’s only so much you can do with a beat ‘em up. But this is highly recommended. Grab that shit, son!

Tagged: arcadeartofthebeatemupIrem

10th December 2012

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SNK vs. Capcom - SVC Chaos Plus (Neo Geo MVS, 2003)

First, a bit about the platform: This was released for the Neo Geo Multi Video System, which are those arcade cabinets you used to see with multiple SNK games in them. It’s also available on the AES, which was basically a console version of the arcade cabinet, and was one of the most powerful, and expensive, home consoles of its time.

Okay, so we’ve all played Capcom vs. SNK (unless you’re a total jerk). The CVS series is basically Capcom making a fighting game by licensing out SNK’s characters (probably, I don’t know how that shit works). This is the opposite.

SVC Chaos takes SNK and Capcom characters and puts them into some straight up 1-on-1 battles, in a fighting engine real similar to KOF ‘02. The SNK standard ABCD controls apply here.

New to the series are Exceed moves (basically desperation moves, but they can only be used once per match, when your health is below 50%),  and also a new power gauge system. There’s 3 levels to it, but once you hit level three, your gauge says MAXIMUM, and there’s a countdown timer. While it’s active, you can cancel almost any move, and super special moves / guard cancel attacks take up half the timer. Once the timer is out, you return to 2 levels.

The Plus version adds all 12 secret fighters to the player select screen (including Mega Man Zero, which is the main reason I wanted this version). Every round starts with dialog between the two characters, each possible match up has its own set of dialog.

36 characters in all from Dark Stalkers, Demon Crest, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, Mega Man Zero, Metal Slug, Red Earth, Samurai Shodown, and Street Fighter.

- SNK: Iori, Kyo, Geese, Mai, Terry, Mars People, Mr. Karate, Ryo, Goenitz, Choi, Kim, Orochi Iori, Shiki, Serious Mr. Karate, Earthquake, Kibagami, Athena

-Capcom: Zero, Ryu, Ken, Dimitri, Chun-Li, Guile, Dan, Dhalsim, Akuma, Violent Ken, M. Bison, Sagat, Shin Akuma, Vega, Balrog, Red Arremer, Tessa, Hugo.

The SVC Chaos Plus version doesn’t seem to work on most MAME emulators, but works perfectly on the MVS emulator I’ve got on my PSP. Try something like Kawaks with this. This is the version of SVC Chaos that works the best on a MAME emulator. It’s also available for PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

Tagged: CapcomFighterArcadeSNKNeo GeoMVS/AES

18th October 2012

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Scurge: Hive (GBA, 2006)

Scurge: Hive came out for both GBA and DS. I uploaded the GBA version cause it’s smaller, and the DS version basically only added a map to the touch screen.



I’m not really even sure what kind of game this is. It’s sort of like the SNES/GBA Metroid games, but in an isometric, 3/4th view.  You go around an abandoned space station, your suit becomes infected, new upgrades help open up new areas / unreachable parts of old areas, a computer helps you through all of it. It’s a LOT like Metroid Fusion, actually. But it’s really good, and the gameplay itself is fairly original. On top of that, the soundtrack is done by Jake Kaufman, AKA Virt, who’s also done games like Contra 4, Retro City Ransom, and Mighty Switch Force.

Anyway, here it is. Go nuts, kid.

Tagged: UncategorizableGame Boy Advance

23rd August 2012

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Cave Story (Various, 2004)

This one is pretty well known already, but sometimes I just like throwing something out there in case you managed not to hear about it.

Cave Story is a game made completely by one guy (“Pixel”). He did everything, coding, graphics, and even made his own music engine to write the soundtrack. (He also created another set of music tools called px Tone collage, which is more advanced, and most notably used by George and Jonathan)

I started playing this again because I was dicking around looking for stuff to put on my PSP and found a port of it. I never forgot how great it is, but I did forget how addictive it is. Once you get into it, you won’t want to put it down until you’ve beaten it.

Cave Story is about a robot who wakes up in a cave with amnesia (or memory leak? is that a good joke?). You quickly find your self helping a village of Mimigas (kind of like little rabbit people), who are being kidnapped by The Doctor. He’s looking for Sue, a human that’s been turned into a Mimiga (which either was never explained or I just forgot the part where it was), and he needs her for his plans. There’s a lot of story revealed through gameplay, so I don’t want to give too much of it away.

It’s available in a ton of formats, including Windows, OSX, PSP, GP2X, Linux, TI-83/84, and more, and there’s an HD version available through WiiWare and DSiWare.

Tagged: PlatformerHomemadeWindowsGorgeousPSPGP2XOSX

23rd August 2012

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Mother Collection (Various)

Now, the only one of these I’ve managed to play completely through is the last one, but I know enough about them to understand how important they are, as a whole. Mother 2 is the only one to make it to the US, under the name Earthbound.

I’ll admit that the graphics and battle systems aren’t amazing (although Mother 3 has a really interesting one). Graphically you can compare it to an early Pokemon game (blegh), but the thing that makes these games so good is the story. It’s one of those rare gems where you care more about where the game is going than what’s actually going on as your playing.

 Written by Shigesato Itoi, who, before getting into video games, was a famous copy writer. I don’t even think there’s such a thing here, but apparently over in Japan, he was extremely well known, and the slogans he came up for with ads were quoted as often as popular song lyrics (I’m sorry for stealing from you, Wikipedia). He’s even been a judge on Iron Chef a few times (Seriously Wikipedia, I’m so sorry.)

There’s a few things that set the games apart from most RPGS. For one they aren’t set in the medieval ages, where dragons and magic would be a national pastime. They’re very modern, based in modern towns in America (or at least, what the Japanese assumed modern American Towns were like.)

And second, these games are extremely emotional. The tagline for Mother 1 was “No crying until the end.” The promotional video for the re-release of Mother 1 and 2 on GBA had a quote from someone, saying “This game made me miss my real parents.” Mother 3 kind of left me a wreck. Not completely, but close enough.


So for this update, I’ve included all of them. First is the GBA re-release/ports of Mother 1 + 2. Only Mother 1 has been translated in this (since Mother 2 is available in the US). There’s a translation of the original for the Famicom, but I’ve always had problems getting it to load for some reason. If you’re interested in that, you can try looking for the “Earhbound Zero” ROM. But for me, the GBA version adds a run button, which makes it much more bearable.

Earthbound, or Mother 2, is the one most people are going to be familiar with. You play as Ness (who looks a LOT like Ninten from Mother 1, but is somehow a different character.) (Actually it seems like you’re using almost the same group of people, but it’s not) who youngins will recognize from Smash Brothers. I actually had to explain who the characters were to some younger relatives that were playing Smash Brothers Brawl about a year ago. This is the one everyone sort of knows about.

And Mother 3. My personal favorite. I always had trouble getting started with Earthbound, and at some point in Mother 1 I got stuck. But jesus christ. It took me about a week to play through Mother 3, and that was mostly because I forced myself to put it down more often, because I didn’t want it to end. This one has a really interesting battle feature that doesn’t exist in the other two. I can’t remember the exact name of it, but basically, you can do more damage (up to 16 hits) if you can hit the attack button along with the beat of the background music. There’s a couple dozen different songs for battles, some are simple, and some are designed to mess you up. Luckily, if you can put an enemy to sleep, I guess you can hear their heartbeat? Which is the rhythm to the song playing. God dammit this one is so good. I almost cried at the end.

This download contains Mother 1 + 2 for GBA, Earthbound for SNES, and Mother 3 for GBA, along with a copy of the Earthbound Zero rom for NES. I wouldn’t recommend that version, but if you really want to try it, I’ve included it. Also included were the fan translation patch readme files, even though they’re pre-patched. Go to http://mother12.earthboundcentral.com/ and http://mother3.fobby.net to read more about each one.

Tagged: RPGNintendoAwesomeHALSNESGame Boy Advance

16th August 2012

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Jesper Kyd - The Adventures of Batman and Robin (Sega Genesis, 1995)

One year, for Christmas, my dad got me a present. It was a gigantic box, and had a series of smaller boxes inside of it. The final one was tiny, and inside was a note saying “IOU one sega game.”

At first this might sound like a lazy gift, but it actually made a lot of sense. Back then, adults knew nothing about videogames, and instead of spending 60 bucks on something I might not like, he let me pick it out, without ruining the surprise on christmas morning. This is the game I got.

It might’ve been a poor choice. The game is visually amazing, but brutally hard. It’s much different from the SNES version by Konami. It’s much darker, done by a company called Clockwork Games (a division of Psygnosis, who are really only known for the Lemmings series, as far as I can recall off the top of my head), and unlike the SNES version, which had music based on the animated series, this soundtrack was 100% original, and it fit the mood perfectly.

The music was done by Jesper Kyd, who started off in the demoscene, writing for the Commodore 64 and Amiga, and went on to score numerous games and films. The Genesis/MD had two soundchips. The first was 6 channels of 4-op FM synthesis, with one channel having the ability to play back samples. The second was a simple portable sound generator, capable of 3 square waves and pseudo-random noise. You could also sacrifice one of the square channels to change the pseudo-random noise into periodic noise. That’s not really important, I just didn’t want some one as equally as nerdy as me to call me out on it later.

The thing that IS important,  is that this was done without the PSG, and without sample playback. The entire thing is 6 channels. And jesus christ it’s hard to get a decent snare out of 4 sine waves modulating each other.

The songs are pretty long too. It’s sort of like if the ravey-dance stuff from the Streets of Rage series got way darker. I let each one play at least twice (only more for the shorter tracks), the shortest one is around 6 minutes (besides the continue screen music, which only needed to be 10 seconds long), the longest one is 12. 18 tracks, clocking at 2 and a half hours. It’s a hefty ass download (almost 270mb), but totally worth it. 

Tagged: Jesper KydSega GenesisOSTsMega Drive