The Coop

You know, there have been a lot of Breakout clones over the years. There's one on the Genesis called Devilish, which has a number of interesting qualities. A story, decent graphics, some rather nice tunes... and one of the cheapest final bosses around. The game's hard enough since the ball doesn't quite obey the laws of physics as we know them. It might go where you're aiming, it might not. Your two paddles might be detected when the ball hits them, they may not. But when the time comes and you finally reach the big bad boss at the end (assuming you haven't thrown the game away in frustration), you get treated to a very unfair game of "try and get the ball to hurt me". So here you are. There's a big heart in the middle, and then three figures appear around it and start rotating their way around the heart. You have to get the ball between the figures to hit it. From time to time, the figures stop, and produce many balls that look like yours. Now, the whole goal is to do damage to the heart, but you have only a limited amount of time to do it. Run out of time, and you start over. 30% of the time, your ball with tap the heart once and fly away. The other 70% of the time, it hits a figure. There will be times when you don't get to do ANY battling against the boss for a good minute, because the ball is bouncing side to side off the screen edge and the figures, or off your paddle and the screen edge... and you can't get it to bounce off anything at an angle. This pretty much spells doom for you, as again, the battle has a time limit. The attack patterns of so simple it's sad, but the ball physics just eat your patience alive during this fight. Now, just for the sake of argument, let's say you somehow manage to beat the boss (it takes many, many hits to do this... pray the ball gets stuck between the heart and a figure). Then you have to hurry up and guide the ball to the exit. Run out of time as you do this? Yep... you start over. It's mind numbingly frustrating, because you're seemingly barely in control of the ball, and it'll pass through your paddles when you are in control of it. Breakout and Pong gave you more control, and they're some 15-plus years OLDER than Devilish... and they had better hit detection.

I was out and about the other day, and I decided to stop off and pick up some cough drops (an ongoing hack I have from allergies, which the cough drops stop for a little while). I'd never been in the store before, but when I went into the little lobby area just inside the sliding doors, what did I see? Karate Champ. I used to play this game pretty regularly when I was a kid. Thankfully, the moves list on the machine hadn't been completely scratched up beyond readability. So, after I bought my cough drops, I figured what the hell. I popped in a quarter, and gave the game a try for the first time in about ten years. I'll admit, I got my ass kicked by the third fight. I gave it another whirl, and eventually a third whirl. Something must have clicked into place, because I started handing the CPU character it's ass. I went through round after round, scoring full points and half points without taking a full point's worth of total damage. I was smoking... until I reached the character in the black Gi. I got MY ass handed to me. That bastard was fast, and I just couldn't adjust to the big time increase in speed over the previous fighter. He also never got a half point on me. It was always two "full point" moves and out. I gave the game two more tries, and got to the black Gi wearing character both times... and lost in ten seconds both times. It was sad, and a bit humbling. I was getting beaten by a game that was older than a good portion of the people visiting this site. But, I picked up my plastic bag, and walked away. Nothing quite like having your ego trip punctured by a heavily pixilated, black Gi wearing little douche bag. ... At least I got the high score though.

Yeah, I know. I didn't listen to more than a couple shows during this season and the previous one, as such, I have little room to say much. Blame it on my dial up connection. Being trapped in a slow stream and a heavily lagged chatroom kind of ruined the whole experience for me. But the time I got my half cable connection... well, the two seasons of being constantly fifteen-plus minutes behind what everyone else was listening to (and talking about) just got to me. As such, I ended my time listening and chatting with VGF. When I got half cable, I'd not been listening for some time, and by then I'd just... given up the show. Call me an ass, call me whatever, but there's why I rarely came around in these last two seasons. Regardless, you made quite the run Larry. The late nights I was there were usually worth a laugh in the chatroom, and you did give my remixes some air time. For that, you're efforts, and your desire to always try and make up lost time when a technical problem arose, I thank you. It's a shame to lose your show, but as the old saying goes... all good things must come to an end. So kudos Larry, and of course...

I have to admit... sometimes, the simplest and correct way of beating a boss, completely eludes me. Case in point, the second Hunter in Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil. He's a tough looking SOB, with electricity as his weapon. Now, I figured that the "Hell Time" option of the artifact needed to be used. As such, I used it. As I moved about him, blasting away with everything I had in my arsenal, minutes went by. I kept emptying shot after shot into him, dodging his electricity balls and his larger electrical attacks. I ran under the floor picking up what ammo and health was down there. I mean, this went on for good stretches of time before he'd eventually get the best of me. I was having flashbacks to the final boss in Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell... no matter how much I shot the guy, regardless of what type of weaponry I was using, nothing made him go down for the count. I spent so much time avoiding the Hunter's attacks and trying to stay alive, that I missed a very important clue about how to kill him. Now, I won't say what that clue is on the offhand chance someone's playing the game and hasn't gotten there yet. But, I will say that when I figured it out, I beat the demon on the second try. It was so simple, that I didn't see it... much like how to beat the final boss in Quake.

I still rock out to Silverhawk Legacy.... Hurry up and pick a song, old man! Thanks, but... sorry Myth. After listening to the whole soundtrack, there's one song that struck an idea in my head. However, that song's been taken. Add to that, the fact that I apparently didn't pay enough attention to all of Shael's text (the idea was orchestral, and from what he wrote, that's not an appropriate genre... especially considering the idea I got), and it looks like I'll be staying out of this one. I'll submit the idea to VGmix when (if?) it gets done. Good luck guys. Is this my Cammy track? Cause at this point, it's the only one taken... You want it? No. I wouldn't feel right causing someone to start over, regardless of how they felt about it. As I said, it's orchestral... slow orchestral, and certainly not high energy. That's not in line with what Shael described. I didn't read everything as thoroughly as I should have, and that was mistake on my part. If I had, I wouldn't have posted in here in the first place. Anyway, don't worry about it, Myth. You've got a good start going with your mix so far, and I'm not about to fuck with that

I still rock out to Silverhawk Legacy.... Hurry up and pick a song, old man! Thanks, but... sorry Myth. After listening to the whole soundtrack, there's one song that struck an idea in my head. However, that song's been taken. Add to that, the fact that I apparently didn't pay enough attention to all of Shael's text (the idea was orchestral, and from what he wrote, that's not an appropriate genre... especially considering the idea I got), and it looks like I'll be staying out of this one. I'll submit the idea to VGmix when (if?) it gets done. Good luck guys.

I appreciate the sentiment GL. While I do still feel my last remix ("Descent To The End") was one of my best pieces compositionally and emotionally, it's nice to hear my older works still get some lovin' Edit: Nevermind. That song's already taken.

An interesting project. I might be interested, but seeing as the samples at my disposal are not particularly liked, and my equalizing abilities still aren't that great, I'll have to refrain from entering this.

Who's the russian guy with the gallon of vodka next to him? He looks kinda like Boris Yeltsin, only fatter. Welcome newbies. Welcome to OCR island, where remixes and tubgirl flow daily and the goatse still run wild on the plains. But do watch the skies. There's a good chance of sarcasm showers today with spotty flame storms.

I was sitting back, relaxing with a game of Ghouls and Ghosts on my Genesis. I say "was", because it's been quite a while since I played the game last... which brought me to a certain boss in that game which I had forgotten about in regards to how brutal it can be. That boss being, the giant fly-like demon Beelzebub. It's bad enough that you HAVE to play through the game twice to get the most powerful weapon from the goddess. But trying to hang onto the best armor so that said super weapon can destroy enemy shots is a real pain... especially through the section of level five where all those skeletal dragons are coming out in large quantities. Anyway, I get to the bug boss, and what happens? I get me ass kicked... again, and again, and again. I couldn't make it to the thing with the best armor, which meant a lot of running, jumping and trying stupid things so I can keep hitting him. But all that was for nothing, because I think I must have gotten locked into some kind of vicious pattern. Beelzebub would appear in the middle of the fight area, I'd hit him a few times, and then I'd run away. The thing turns into it's long line of swarming flies, and come right at me. I'd be in the left corner of the fighting area, firing upwards because the boss formed right above me. I'd hit him a few times, and then I'd haul ass to the right. I'd reach the other half of the fight area, and that's when it'd all go wrong. Over, and over, and over again, the swarm of flies traveled completely across the screen, hitting me. If I had armor, it was knocked off me. If I didn't, the heroic knight bit the dust right there. If I was lucky enough to survive, the boss formed so high up, that the super weapon couldn't reach him. Then he'd go into a fly swarm again, and no matter where I was, he'd hit me. Stay in the corner? I got hit. Run across to the left side of the fight area? It'd travel completely across. Run the middle? It'd travel completely across, forcing me to run to the left side and die. It has to have the single most mean spirited attack pattern I can recall seeing in Ghouls and Ghosts. Loki at the end is a completely predictable and easily beaten puss compared to that damned Beelzebub when it gets going with one of it's patterns.

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