The Coop

You know, sometimes it's amazing the difference between versions of a game. I recently found a cheap copy of Sunset Riders for the SNES. Now, I have the Genesis version, and I thoroughly kicked it's ass. And I've even gotten good at getting through the SNES version... up until the final boss. His name is Sir Richard Rose, and he's a pain in the ass to get to. First, he's behind a balcony that you have to destroy to get to him. While you're blasting away at this thing, there are four men who appear on the top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right respectively, all coming out blasting for you. If you shoot one, he's replaced a few seconds later. So now you're hopping around trying to shoot the balcony and the guys. If you get rid of balcony, then Sir Richard begins his attacking along with the continual flow of helpers he has. Now you're jumping all over the damned place. Sir Richard is blasting away at you as he jumps around, and you're trying to hit him while avoids bullets and men. Now if you're fortunate enough, you knock him down. YOU'VE WON!!! Guess again... He gets up, and reveals that he had a chest plate under his shirt. Now you get to do the whole battle all over again... assuming you still continues and guys in reserve after going through it all the first time. Don't know what the ending is like on the SNES version yet. I just can't seem to get a pattern working long enough to knock him down a second time for the win. Couple all this with the fact that there's no auto fire, and you've got a damn tired firing thumb by the time you get to end... as well as a burning hatred for Sir Richard Rose

Looks like Gray's been spawning again

I've beaten him on 8 stars. I believe you have to in order to see the full ending on SF II. If memory serves, playing "turtle" works well, in that you wait for him to attack first, then use a move to counter it (like a roundhouse kick or dragon punch if he jumps into the air). I remember getting my ass beat regularly by him when I was the one doing all the attacking. But then I switched tactics a bit, and started being patient until I saw an opening... and then attacking. Also, if you hit him out of the air or knock him down, throw a fireball so it's timed to hit him as he lands or gets up. It's a fifty-fifty chance that it'll hit him, but even if he blocks, it's at least a little more damage to him and it knocks him back a little as well. Oh... and fireballs work really well against his psycho crusher attack (the one where he dives across the screen while eveloped in blue flame). Again, it comes down to timing. Good luck As for me, I have a new story to tell, but it'll have to wait until I get back from classes later this afternoon. A definite cuss-fest inducer, this boss is. But I gotta get some sleep now. Edit: As promised... I've been playing a game by Irem called Image Fight. Not the NES version, but the Saturn port of the arcade version. It's not an easy game, but there's a boss on stage 5 that is just flat out... prickish. Remember the giant brain with an eye and claws from Life Force? It's a little like that. There's a huge body that makes it tough to move around the screen, two homing orbs that follow you as you move, and a giant set of pinchers at the top that block all shots. If the pinchers open, you can get at the eye that opens and closes on the body behind the pinchers... as long as you have orange lasers. See, there are two laser types. Blue, which only fire forward, and orange, which fire in the opposite direction you're moving. You NEED the orange lasers to have any hope, and you NEED more than one. Now, as you move about, those two blobs are out there. One is outside of the body slowly coming at you, and the other is behind the pinchers, bouncing back and forth slowly above the eye. They're indestructible, and if you shoot them, they stop right where they are and continue to block your shots. So let's say you get there with two orange lasers, dodge the body and outer blob, and get set up right above the pinchers. They open, the eye opens, and THAT is when the blob between the pinchers is right in front of the open eye. You shoot, it stays there continuing the block the shots. You wait for it to move, and the eye closes back up, followed by the pinchers. Now the outer blob has caught up to you, and you begin the whole "lure it away" thing again. I'm normally good at shmups, but I have not been able to find a pattern to beat this boss... or hit it more than a couple times before having my ship blasted apart. You need a lot of shot power to really have a chance at winning, but if you die at the boss, you get sent back a bit where there are only two shot powerups to grab... and one of them is placed in the worst spot. I've beaten every Irem R-type game, their In the Hunt submarine shmup, and several others. But this... this one boss is frustrating the hell out of me.

Look at the topic type again, these don't time out OMG THERE IT IS!!!! Huh. I hadn't noticed that. I'm so used to these few threads being stickies, it had become almost instinctual to bump them after the last couple months. Nice to see they've been given a more permanent status.

A little nudging to fight off the deletion fairy.

Man, I hate Shao Kahn in MK Trilogy. My cousin and I just can't beat him (might have something to do with the fact that I suck at MK). Just out of curiosity...Did you ever find Motaro (MK3) difficult to beat ? I haven't played MK3 in a long time, and I didn't even play it much back then. My guess is, I never even faced him. If he's anything like Khan in Trilogy, then I guess I'd find him difficult. I think I'm going to try it when I get home today. From what I remember, Motaro was pretty susceptible to jump kicks and combos (combos usually hit him at least once). He's not a push over, but there have been plenty of times where I was able to beat him with little trouble. His attack that's a big pain is his tail shot. Otherwise, he's not too hard to beat. Edit: I just remembered. One of the best ways to hurt him, is to jump in the air and kick him whenever he jumps in the air. It's virtually a guaranteed hit every time. if he gets on a jumping spree, you can beat him easily with this. Also, stay moving. His warps are a pain, but if you jump around with a purpose (i.e., not randomly like a spaz), you can hit him when he warps back in quite a bit too.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm not good at Diablo. In fact, it could be easily argued that a suck at it. Now, I know what you're thinking... Diablo isn't that hard. Well, he was hard enough, but he's not the boss in question. The Butcher is. I kid you not, I don't know how many times I've died on that guy. You open the door, out he comes with his taunt, and then he just proceeds to chase you around. He can't throw anything, he can't cast spells... he doesn't even have a projectile weapon. But I'll be damned if I could beat him... for a good while. By the time I got to him, I always seemed to have very little in the way of life replenishers, and I could never get more than a single swipe or arrow in on him before I had to turn and run again for a while. It was getting to point that I kept expecting the Benny Hill theme to start playing. Now yes, I did eventually beat him, but not before I had every last bit of my Diablo dignity beaten out of my gaming pride.

Since we lost one of the sticky thread again, I felt the need to bump this.

Testis. Testis. One, two... three?

I hate this guy. For those not familiar with Painkiller, it's a FPS. Not a bad game, won some awards, and is generally entertaining. It got an expansion pack called Painkiller: Battle out of Hell, and it really only has one boss... but what a pain in the as he is. Besides being absolutely huge, he's got a number of attacks. Fire that spreads out from him when he hits the ground, the ability to just stomp on your tiny ass, summoning fireballs from the sky that track you... fun stuff. Somehow, someway, you have to kill him. And that's where we get to a bump in the road. I have literally run out of ammo firing at this guy, only to see him unaffected. I've learned all sorts of nifty tricks to avoid him, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what to do to hurt him. There's a series of "pads" around the level you fight in. Some are just there at times it seems, while others have little glowing orbs rising off of them. I'm thinking there's a connection between them and being able to beat the final boss, but nothing's come from any of the things I've tried. I'm not surprised really, as most of the bosses in the regular game have little hidden things you have to do to beat them, and even the mid bosses in BooT (especially the last mid boss) have a trick to being able to hurt them. But right now, I'm damn near out of ideas to beat this damned boss.

... going old school isn't always a good thing, as it shows you not all 8-bit classics age well. I was playing Thunder Blade on my old Master System yesterday. A fun little game... until you reach stage 3. Then you get into a canal that's nearly impossible because the bullets that the enemies shoot follow you... all of them. BUT WAIT... there's more. Then you get to stage 4, and you're bobbing and weaving, trying to avoid the bars going across the area you fly in. And finally, you reach the last boss of the game. Basically, it's a big metal structure with many guns. It fires like there's no tomorrow, and it's damn sturdy. The bullets follow you as you move. Not literally, but rather in a way that makes them "hook" rather than travel a straight line. Your helicopter doesn't exactly move very quickly, so as these things hook, they just barely miss you the entire time. So now you're trying to lure then around the screen and not get cornered by the constant barrage so you can get some shots in on the final boss... which takes a lot before you hit it enough times to actually win. This thing must have inspired such insanely bullet riddled shooters as the Donpachi and Giga Wing series. Now, why did I mention stages 3 and 4? Because these stages generally suck up every last continue. Shots that don't visually hit you, still kill you. Because of this interesting use of collision detection, you're left trying to find little areas to move to where there aren't any bullets when enemies come on the screen... even thought it doesn't matter, because you'll still get hit even if they miss. While stage 3 doesn't have anything to run into, stage 4 does. The same odd collision detection seems to make bars that you're currently right in the middle of make you explode. It's almost like the game doesn't want you to discover the dark secret that's at its end... not because it's a hard game or programmed to be one, but because it knows after all the hell you went through to get to it, the ending'll piss you off more than the cheap shots dealt out by the two last stages and the final boss ever could. What that secret is, I won't say beyond... "Don't blink". Anyway, it's a game that actually doesn't try to be hard, but instead becomes cheap. And it succeeds nicely at it. It's a shame too, as it had a lot of fun qualities for it's day. Good thing they didn't pull the same stuff in Super Thunder Blade though

Aye, Unmod is a scary place. That's why I rarely ever go in there. It's only scary if you let it be that way.

Samurai Shodown. Amakusa. Cheap. Cheap cheap cheap. This is an SNK game that teases you. The first few characters are pretty easy, no matter who they are. But once you hit the halfway mark, the game starts getting pissed... even if you've continued a dozen times up to that point. But when you reach Amakusa at the end... God help you. First off, if you get thrown, you are screwed. AS throw from this guy, even on easy, does quite a bit of damage. If he hits you with the rapid fire bitch slap he dishes out if you're too close, you watch that health meter drop like a man's chances of getting sex after he called his date a slut. His "screwy controls" attack, is cheap. His normal electro ball, hurts. This thing with this boss is, his warps result in many missed attacks on your part. And when he's not warping out of the way, he warps back and forth, closing in on you each time he stops... even if you jump around, he still homes in on you. He blocks like mad, even on "1" difficulty. And of course, all his attacks do more damage than any comparable attack you can dish out. Then, once in a great while, it's like he just stops trying. You kick his ass like a red headed step child. The next round, he hands your ass to you. And if you won the first round, he hands you your ass again in round three, smashing you lofty dream of "victoly". SNK is notorious for making bosses that seem to be impossibly powerful, or stupidly quick, or cheap as hell... or all three. Amakusa in SS1, is no exception.

And here's a bump to keep this thread from vanishing... again.

After having my time taken up by a lot of school work, this Christmas break gave me a chance to get back to a few games I was in the middle of enjoying... one of which, is named Alien Hominid. Besides having a great visual style and fun, old school gameplay, this game also has a few bosses that can be a real pain... one of which, is the one I reached before I had to put it down for school work. On stage 3-3 if I recall, there's a huge two armed robot that moves on tank treads. It's got six variously sized guns long it's top and shoulders that fire different types of ammo (all of which must be destroyed), it's rather large hands are great at pounding you into the ground and flattening you between them, and it fires quite a bit as you're hopping around trying to avoid being grabbed (which is easy to get out of), shot, burnt, squished and generally killed. It's a fun battle, but goddamn did I have to redo that boss quite a few times because of its head blocking my shots. The other boss, is the final boss. I won't say what it is, but know that it takes place on several battle grounds, and while I enjoyed it, it was hard. Just when you think you've won, you got a whole new battle to endure. It's probably one of the longer, and more diverse, boss battles in a game like this. On the ground, in the air... it's a fight to be sure. I'd love to tell about it, but I know it's a new game, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone. So, just know you've got a fight waiting for you... especially if it's on anything above "Easy" Edit: Spelling Edit2: Even more spelling

Since it's getting close to that two week mark, I give a bump for the newbies out there.

Sorry for not being there this past weekend. I was in the middle of trying to get a serious amount of work done and there was no way for me to hop into the AIM chatroom and get work done... because, well, productivity and AIM don't go together However, thanks for giving my mix a little airtime lovin'

I'm not the best gamer when it comes to actions titles. I admit it. Most of my gaming prowess comes with shmups. But, I'm not a newbie at the genre either. I've beaten some tough games. But there's one old school game that just bugs me to this day. While I enjoy the Shinobi series, and can readily whoop the asses of Revenge of Shinobi, Shadow Dancer and Shinobi III, the original Shinobi on the Sega Master System has a final boss that I've only ever beaten once. First, he has a barrier around him. You can only hurt him at certain times (I believe when he lands on the ground). He jumps around, trying to hit you, all the while being impervious to your attacks. Should you manage to hit him a few times, then he changes his attack. During this phase, you can only hit him up close. Not too bad. But his third phase is mean. Here, he starts hopping around again, except when he hits the ground, he make a clone of himself... and that clone starts attacking you as well. And unless you can time it so you hit him before he hits the ground again, you're going to have clones all over the place attacking you. But, if you should get through all that, then he goes apeshit. His attacks are hard to dodge, and the only way you can hurt him is by hitting him in the back. While this boss doesn't do really any more damage than other bosses, he does the damage a lot faster. It's just frustrating as hell, as his attacks come so fast and frequently, it becomes... maddening. All I gotta say is I'm glad the bosses in the rest of the Shinobi series aren't like that final one, in that being skilled is somehow replaced by just being lucky.

So... Who do I have to bribe to get my remix "Descent to the End" a little airtime?

Nah. + + = Triplets? For those just joining us, that's Larry, Paul Goodloe of the Weather Channel, and "The Coach" from WWE, in that order.

Whoa. Just saw that the second "How To" thread here just got axed. Giving this a bump... just because.

Don't suppose... um... that uh... "Descent to the End" falls in that area

Way back when, back in the days of the Amiga, a friend of mine had a game called Shadow of the Beast. Very pretty game, great music, and hard a hell. Having never owned an Amiga, I was happy the day the Genesis version of SotB came out. It looked just as good, was just as hard, but the sound suffered. Still, I enjoyed it. A couple years later, Shadow of the Beast II arrived on the Genesis. With better sound quality (though worse tunes) and nice graphics, it was the challenge of this game that was killer. SotB II was twice as hard as the first game. Everything had to be done in a precise order throughout the game (like the first one), but now the enemies were tougher, there were more traps to kill you, and dead ends that couldn't be gotten out of until you died. It was a mean spirited game... and I loved it. But while the boss at the end of SotB was a wuss, the boss at the end of SotB II, Zelek, was anything but. He had few attacks... namely, a fireball shot if you were further away from him, and a downward flame stream if you were below him. He bobs around in the air, floating back and forth in the area where you fight him. If a fireball hits you, it does a nasty amount of damage. If the flame stream hits you, your health vanishes steadily at a quick pace (and in this game, you don't have much in the way of health). If you come in contact with the boss, it drains your health just as quickly as the flame stream. To hit him, you need to make sure you grabbed a special weapon in one of the areas earlier in the game. If you missed it, you can't win. If you did get it, you still have to jump up in the air and fire it to hurt him... as he follows you back and forth. You have to be far enough away to jump so he can't touch you, and time it between fireball shots so you don't get hit. It seems simple, and at heart it is... but with how fast you lose your health on this final boss, the fact that at most you get a couple life replenishers (and that's assuming you didn't use them up just getting to the final boss), and no continues too boot, this makes this "simple" patterned boss a real pain.

Getting close to that infamous two week mark, so I'm giving another nudge to this thread. And Lavos, I can see where you're coming from, but most threads about a favorite console are made on purpose by someone being a smart ass because it's a topic that they know will degenerate quickly. Favorite remix and remixer threads on the otherhand, usually get made by newbies that don't know the tiresome aspect of the topic on OCR, and wander into the fire unaware that they're about to get burned.

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