Favorite Namco PCE game?

[crazydean]

I didn't vote because I haven't played a lot of these games.

Galaga is a surprise, though. Not that it's a bad game, but it's just outdated. Do you guys who like this game think it's good for a Namco game or that it's a top shooter on the system?

The original Galaga will never be outdated in my eyes, and Galaga 88/90 is just an expansion of that same formula.

With that said, I feel the original Galaga is the better game, as it's more straightforward, which seems to work better with this type of game.

I understand feeling this way about stuff like Space Invaders, but Galaga, come on! You must be a millenial, post generation X'er, right?

I was born in '88. So, Galaga has always been around, and I still see it as a rehash of an older game. Namco in particular is guilty of this as they are the ones putting out the same old "arcade collection" generation after generation.

The NES has also been around my whole life, and I am able to find many of its titles interesting and fun. For example, Blaster Master and Bionic Commando are both old, yet they don't feel dated to me.

I've only been a PCE/Turbo fan for about two years, and didn't play many shooters before then. However, in that time, I have played several on this system and found Galaga 88 to be about as plain Jane as the genre can get. The game is solid and challenging, but there's just nothing there that makes me want to come back.

[Michirin9801]

Are you turned off by Mega Man's inability to duck or shoot up?

Yes! But to be honest, I'm turned off by almost everything in Mega Man, let's just say I'm not a big fan =w=';
Mega Man X on the other hand, that's a gaming masterpiece if I ever saw one ;3
Yeah, I know you can also not shoot up or duck in that game, but that's more than made up for with your added mobility, being able to dash and wall-jump changes everything and makes the game a lot more dynamic and fast-paced! Also, the music in Mega Man X wipes the floor with regular old NES Mega Man music, which I think is overdone as hell, but I also think Mega Man 7's music is way better than NES Mega Man music so... I guess Capcom was just better at making music on the SNES...

[nopepper]

Are you turned off by Mega Man's inability to duck or shoot up?

Yes! But to be honest, I'm turned off by almost everything in Mega Man, let's just say I'm not a big fan =w=';
Mega Man X on the other hand, that's a gaming masterpiece if I ever saw one ;3
Yeah, I know you can also not shoot up or duck in that game, but that's more than made up for with your added mobility, being able to dash and wall-jump changes everything and makes the game a lot more dynamic and fast-paced! Also, the music in Mega Man X wipes the floor with regular old NES Mega Man music, which I think is overdone as hell, but I also think Mega Man 7's music is way better than NES Mega Man music so... I guess Capcom was just better at making music on the SNES...

We definitely have different tastes in regards to music and sound chip sound, as I think most Capcom music on the SNES sounds awful and lacks teeth. I also love pretty much all Mega Man's in the NES, as well as the NES's overall sound when in good hands, which more often than not, Capcom was. To me, the SNES is only good for orchestral type stuff that Square was great as.

At least we can agree that Mega Man X is a masterpiece, particularly the first one. That is one of my go to games that I never get tired of. But I can say the same thing about Mega Man 2, 4 and 6...oh, and Galaga (among many others)!

[nopepper]

I was born in '88. So, Galaga has always been around, and I still see it as a rehash of an older game. Namco in particular is guilty of this as they are the ones putting out the same old "arcade collection" generation after generation.

The NES has also been around my whole life, and I am able to find many of its titles interesting and fun. For example, Blaster Master and Bionic Commando are both old, yet they don't feel dated to me.

I've only been a PCE/Turbo fan for about two years, and didn't play many shooters before then. However, in that time, I have played several on this system and found Galaga 88 to be about as plain Jane as the genre can get. The game is solid and challenging, but there's just nothing there that makes me want to come back.

How do you feel about pre-NES arcade games in general? Stuff like Robotron 2084, Defender, Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong? Do you find those too plain jane as well?

Just wondering if the issue is not so much graphics but the fact that the allure of these games is mainly score chasing, something that was kind of lost, at least as the main gameplay hook, once the NES came along.

And yeah, Bionic Commando is another Capcom masterpiece, at least the NES version. Blaster Master has great music, but I've never really enjoyed that game much, as I always get bored about halfway through. Just seems too repetitive.

[Michirin9801]

We definitely have different tastes in regards to music and sound chip sound, as I think most Capcom music on the SNES sounds awful and lacks teeth. I also love pretty much all Mega Man's in the NES, as well as the NES's overall sound when in good hands, which more often than not, Capcom was. To me, the SNES is only good for orchestral type stuff that Square was great as.

At least we can agree that Mega Man X is a masterpiece, particularly the first one. That is one of my go to games that I never get tired of. But I can say the same thing about Mega Man 2, 4 and 6...oh, and Galaga (among many others)!

That's fine... Personally, I'm not very fond of Capcom's NES music, I think Hudson, Konami, Natsume and especially Sunsoft did a much better job than them handling the system's soundchip, also Tim Follin, but yeah, I understand and respect that a lot of people love Capcom's NES sound...

The Mega Man games are perfectly fine too, it's just that they don't quite do it for me, I'll pick Batman, Shatterhand, Castlevania and Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu over Mega Man any day...

[crazydean]

I was born in '88. So, Galaga has always been around, and I still see it as a rehash of an older game. Namco in particular is guilty of this as they are the ones putting out the same old "arcade collection" generation after generation.

The NES has also been around my whole life, and I am able to find many of its titles interesting and fun. For example, Blaster Master and Bionic Commando are both old, yet they don't feel dated to me.

I've only been a PCE/Turbo fan for about two years, and didn't play many shooters before then. However, in that time, I have played several on this system and found Galaga 88 to be about as plain Jane as the genre can get. The game is solid and challenging, but there's just nothing there that makes me want to come back.

How do you feel about pre-NES arcade games in general? Stuff like Robotron 2084, Defender, Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong? Do you find those too plain jane as well?

Just wondering if the issue is not so much graphics but the fact that the allure of these games is mainly score chasing, something that was kind of lost, at least as the main gameplay hook, once the NES came along.

And yeah, Bionic Commando is another Capcom masterpiece, at least the NES version. Blaster Master has great music, but I've never really enjoyed that game much, as I always get bored about halfway through. Just seems too repetitive.

There's a definite divide between pre and post-NES, and I'd say that there are few games I like which came prior. However, I can appreciate the design of games for their era, like the ones you mentioned. Even though I don't enjoy playing most score-based games.

Had Galaga '88 been an early release on the Famicom, I would be more appreciative. But, it came out the same year as R-Type on PCE. To me, it's clear that Namco was still focused on the past.

A game series needs to grow and struggle to stay relevant. Anyone who likes the NES, will likely place Super Mario Bros 3 in their top 5 games. While the first SMB was a great game, too, Nintendo added a ton of new features for that release. On the other hand, Galaga '88 didn't do enough to update the gameplay.

[Black Tiger]

I was born in '88. So, Galaga has always been around, and I still see it as a rehash of an older game. Namco in particular is guilty of this as they are the ones putting out the same old "arcade collection" generation after generation.

The NES has also been around my whole life, and I am able to find many of its titles interesting and fun. For example, Blaster Master and Bionic Commando are both old, yet they don't feel dated to me.

I've only been a PCE/Turbo fan for about two years, and didn't play many shooters before then. However, in that time, I have played several on this system and found Galaga 88 to be about as plain Jane as the genre can get. The game is solid and challenging, but there's just nothing there that makes me want to come back.

How do you feel about pre-NES arcade games in general? Stuff like Robotron 2084, Defender, Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong? Do you find those too plain jane as well?

Just wondering if the issue is not so much graphics but the fact that the allure of these games is mainly score chasing, something that was kind of lost, at least as the main gameplay hook, once the NES came along.

And yeah, Bionic Commando is another Capcom masterpiece, at least the NES version. Blaster Master has great music, but I've never really enjoyed that game much, as I always get bored about halfway through. Just seems too repetitive.

There's a definite divide between pre and post-NES, and I'd say that there are few games I like which came prior. However, I can appreciate the design of games for their era, like the ones you mentioned. Even though I don't enjoy playing most score-based games.

Had Galaga '88 been an early release on the Famicom, I would be more appreciative. But, it came out the same year as R-Type on PCE. To me, it's clear that Namco was still focused on the past.

A game series needs to grow and struggle to stay relevant. Anyone who likes the NES, will likely place Super Mario Bros 3 in their top 5 games. While the first SMB was a great game, too, Nintendo added a ton of new features for that release. On the other hand, Galaga '88 didn't do enough to update the gameplay.

This might make some sense if you weren't talking about the masses of people enjoying these games decades later while dismissing a game for not being different enough than a game released years earlier.

The SMB3 comparison is particularly hilarious, since that 8-bit looking and sounding game was released a year after R-Type and Galaga '88.

[nopepper]

There's a definite divide between pre and post-NES, and I'd say that there are few games I like which came prior. However, I can appreciate the design of games for their era, like the ones you mentioned. Even though I don't enjoy playing most score-based games.

Had Galaga '88 been an early release on the Famicom, I would be more appreciative. But, it came out the same year as R-Type on PCE. To me, it's clear that Namco was still focused on the past.

A game series needs to grow and struggle to stay relevant. Anyone who likes the NES, will likely place Super Mario Bros 3 in their top 5 games. While the first SMB was a great game, too, Nintendo added a ton of new features for that release. On the other hand, Galaga '88 didn't do enough to update the gameplay.

This might make some sense if you weren't talking about the masses of people enjoying these games decades later while dismissing a game for not being different enough than a game released years earlier.

Ha, that is true, not to mention that Galaga and its ilk keeps getting re-released, remade, copied, etc., and still gets played or at least fondly remembered. Then you have games like Robotron, which has spawned entire an entire subgenre, and copycat games with only graphical differences are still getting played by the masses.

But I think the main divider is whether you are into score chasing or not. Most modern games, either through achievements or score, place this goal in addition to the end game as a motivating factor to the gamer. This is smart in the developer's part, as it ensures their games have a wider audience by appeasing to different tastes.

Finally, as a side note, I would not place SMB3 in my top 5 NES games. Hell, I'm not sure it would be top 10. In fact, I think the original SMB is the better game; more concise, infinitely playable and approachable, and every single level is expertly crafted around it's obstacle course philosophy. SMB 3 is just more of the same, but it diluted that formula too much for me, so it's more of an adventure than an arcade action experience, drawing out the action among all the map hopping and mini games. Still a great game, but I just love the purity and perfect level design of the original, and it's the one I always go back to when I want to romp through the mushroom kingdom, old school style.

[spenoza]

That's fine... Personally, I'm not very fond of Capcom's NES music, I think Hudson, Konami, Natsume and especially Sunsoft did a much better job than them handling the system's soundchip, also Tim Follin, but yeah, I understand and respect that a lot of people love Capcom's NES sound...

Retro Game Audio did a bit on Capcom's NES era audio. Capcom always focused solely on composition and did very little custom programming and manipulation with the NES sound hardware. So while a lot of Capcom's tunes sound pretty good, they never used the sample channel for bass or percussion or used any of the other neat tricks companies like Konami, Natsume, and Sunsoft did. Basically, if a Capcom track sounds good, it's because it was well composed and used very careful instrument selection and that's it.

[spenoza]

As for Galaga 88/90, it's definitely not simply a rehash of Galaga. There are definitely some classic Galaga-style levels, but there are also scrolling levels and bosses. I think it's an artful and well-thought advancement of the original Galaga model, unlike some of what they tried with Pac-Man over the same time span.

[nopepper]

That's fine... Personally, I'm not very fond of Capcom's NES music, I think Hudson, Konami, Natsume and especially Sunsoft did a much better job than them handling the system's soundchip, also Tim Follin, but yeah, I understand and respect that a lot of people love Capcom's NES sound...

Retro Game Audio did a bit on Capcom's NES era audio. Capcom always focused solely on composition and did very little custom programming and manipulation with the NES sound hardware. So while a lot of Capcom's tunes sound pretty good, they never used the sample channel for bass or percussion or used any of the other neat tricks companies like Konami, Natsume, and Sunsoft did. Basically, if a Capcom track sounds good, it's because it was well composed and used very careful instrument selection and that's it.

That makes sense. I've always found Capcom's stuff in SNES to be well composed, but lacking in instrument selection. From what I understand (which is not a lot from a technical standpoint), SNES uses samples as opposed to NES actually using the chip, so maybe Capcom should have just sampled the NES chip and called it a day.

I also like Konami and Hudson stuff, and Sunsoft to a lesser degree in NES. I think Follin's Solstice's opening tune is masterful, but that game pisses me off so much, the in game music eventually grates, so I find it hard to appreciate.

[spenoza]

It seems to me that while the NES sound hardware was very well utilized by some developers, with all sorts of awesome tricks to exploit all its capabilities, the PCE's sound capabilities are still somewhat open to further exploration and exploitation. The CD came too soon for the little Engine that could, meaning people jumped to Redbook (to great effect) and stopped exploring the wavetable goodness.

[Gypsy]

As for Galaga 88/90, it's definitely not simply a rehash of Galaga. There are definitely some classic Galaga-style levels, but there are also scrolling levels and bosses. I think it's an artful and well-thought advancement of the original Galaga model, unlike some of what they tried with Pac-Man over the same time span.

Concur. It's pretty different. I will play Galaga 88 randomly, and it's actually pretty beatable. I have no desire to play the original Galaga.

[gojira1954]

As for Galaga 88/90, it's definitely not simply a rehash of Galaga. There are definitely some classic Galaga-style levels, but there are also scrolling levels and bosses. I think it's an artful and well-thought advancement of the original Galaga model, unlike some of what they tried with Pac-Man over the same time span.

Concur. It's pretty different. I will play Galaga 88 randomly, and it's actually pretty beatable. I have no desire to play the original Galaga.

Me too galaga 88 is one game that I always go back to on the pce, one of my top 5 games on the system.
In my opinion it plays better than the arcade version, graphics have taken a minor hit in the conversion but it plays really evenly and the transition from tate to yoko is spot on

[Michirin9801]

Retro Game Audio did a bit on Capcom's NES era audio. Capcom always focused solely on composition and did very little custom programming and manipulation with the NES sound hardware. So while a lot of Capcom's tunes sound pretty good, they never used the sample channel for bass or percussion or used any of the other neat tricks companies like Konami, Natsume, and Sunsoft did. Basically, if a Capcom track sounds good, it's because it was well composed and used very careful instrument selection and that's it.

The instrumentation is precisely what turns me off about NES Capcom music, it's true that the songs are very well-composed, and I'll never tell you otherwise, but the instrumentation is just so generic and lazy-sounding, it sounds like "any NES music", it doesn't pack the same punch that Sunsoft music did on the system, not even remotely close...

... so maybe Capcom should have just sampled the NES chip and called it a day.

Eww, that would have been rubbish >w>';

Personally, I think it was on the SNES days that Capcom really found their own "sound identity", their SNES games for the most part sound incredible! Other than the first two Final Fight games their SNES soundtracks are all amazing! That's when they had both the composition AND the instrumentation to back it up! So much variety! So much charm! So much punch! You don't get soundtracks like those anymore, Final Fight 3 still has one of my favourite soundtracks in gaming!

If you think otherwise, eh, what can I do? You do you, I'm just telling you what I think =w=';