KJ - I went to that site just now. Frankly, Seanbaby sounds to me like a colossal whiner. Nothing but tiresome rants. I wouldn’t bother bookmarking it.
Astar - Well. First time for everything, I guess. The point is, I’m so unbelievably sick of game after game that’s horribly, gut-wrenchingly, maddeningly difficult. Just played one now, Pac-Mania, on MAME. I still feel twinges of rage when I remember that companies used to pander to the microscopic minority of ultra-hardcore, degenerate, “challenge”-uber-alles addict players. (Memo to y’all: Jungly Steps is not “challenging”. It’s a programming error. The same goes for any other level which cannot be cleared by an actual human being.)
Er, not that I’m saying anything about you or anything. Really…
Ranma - Hey man, when I finally beat Castlevania with the help of a Game Genie (what, you think I had time to retry the final stage 999,000 times?), I was thrilled at the admittedly sparse ending…because I had finished the game. Sometimes, like when the final boss is about as hard to beat as a freaking demigod (which I suspected the Count may have been), any ending is good. No matter what it is, and no matter how I got there.
Speaking of which, to all you “honor” or whatever advocates out there: I’ll stop using my Gameshark as soon as you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers. Because, trust me, retrying a stage 999,000 times isn’t quite as fun as it sounds.
SPOOFE - Well, at least those deaths are relevant to the story. You wanna talk totally pointless, check out all the fighting game deaths.
Street Fighter’s Charlie is the absolute worst offender in this regard. He’s been offed a minimum of four times (including that thing in Cambodia which we never see), and every time Capcom found a way to get him back. I realize that they kinda miscalculated when they considered him a fringe character whom no one would miss, but you’d think that they’d at least have the decency not to repeat the mistake over and over. And now he’s in Gunspike, a game set in the future, so it looks like Guile had the wrong guy in his SF2 ending all along. :rolleyes: Really, now.
Nearly as bad is Nakoruru’s “decorporealization” in Samurai Shodown 2. SNK went through considerable lengths to make sure she bought it in a highly tearjerking fashion (including inventing a “disaster renewal” that doesn’t happen in any of the other endings). Why, I dunno; there was never really any big push to bump her off…hoo boy, is that ever an understatement…and she was fairly popular in the first and second game. What’s more, she appears, totally alive and well, in Samurai Shodown 3, and without so much as a word of explanation! Oh yeah, and if you’re one of those purists who claims that SS64 is the “true” sequel to SS2, sorry, but she’s there as well. And now, inevitably, there are all these bogus explanations, such as her being a “maiden of light” or a “wandering spirit” etc. etc…look, guys, why not just go with “we screwed up; we didn’t realize at the time that it would become an issue” and be done with it, and you can also knock off that continuuity-wrecking Special Stage in Art of Fighting 2 while you’re at it.
