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Starting the Steam version of "Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name" on PC and rushing to the arcade games as fast as I could--turns out early forced main story mission "Find a place to have a smoke" sends you right past hole on the wall Game Center Sasaki, in E. Tsurukame Alley, w/ all of Gaiden's Sega arcade games in it, even Sega Racing Classic 2 aka Daytona 2, a previously unported Sega Model 3 arcade game. Also this may have got me back into Virtua Fighter 2(.1).
The mandatory CRT scanline filter on the emulated arcade games is about as subtly & attractively done as possible; didn't hate it.
Sega Racing Classic 2 drives very differently from what I remember of Daytona USA on PS3: PS3 USA's emphasis on drift-turning seems largely pushed aside in favor of just driving & drafting, & the steering feels smoother, even just on d-pad (I set d-pad to simulate left analog in Steam Input). I'm all in favor of this; in retrospect the twitchiness of the earlier game is probably a big part of what put me off it.
In 2, multiple voices talk at you as you race, & the medium & hard tracks (still only 3 tracks!) go wild, one like an amusement park & one a big city downtown. = ) The AI rams you lots, at times like a wreck-'em battle. Into it.
Motor Raid (Sega Model 2A; was in the earlier "Judgment") is awful, steering pinned-insect-like around the mid point of your space bike; release the gas during a turn & the world lurches oddly around you, also lurching if your bike veers off-track--it bonks off invisible walls. You're supposed to fight off rivals but the control is again bizarre: 1 button kicks left, another awkwardly weapon-strikes right. The sci-fi tracks are awful brown & polygonized.
Fighting Vipers 2 (Sega Model 3) is colorful, shiny, & noisy; thought the flashing FX would mess /w my eyes but maybe wasn't TOO bad? Was on pad rather than stick so don't really know yet how well it plays; felt sort of fun in a mash-&-sparkly-stuff-happens way.
The Digital Foundry analysis of the Gaiden port of Sega Racing Classic 2 https://youtu.be/4IgcEeK40Qg said they felt input delay in this FV2; didn't notice on pad but was just mashing.
It's still got the blow-their-armor-off cheesecakery of FV1. ; P
Sonic the Fighters was maybe less motion-sickness-inducing here than on PS3? Probably just didn't play enough. Colors felt even MORE saturated!
Virtua Fighter 2.1 felt...good? Had got turned off of the PS3 port but now I'm thinking it was probably from being obsessed w/ trying to beat it by spamming throws--but 2's throw mechanic is mysterious & difficult; if I DON'T obsess about throwing this might be a cool game as long as I don't mind hitting a wall vs the CPU at some point. Should probably try the EASY cabinet. On PS3 I stuck to Jacky as the 1 character w/ whom I didn't have to fight in sister Sarah's lighting-laden Coliseum, but maybe that flashing isn't so bad; picked NORMAL & Akira here & had no idea what I was doing & couldn't beat Pai, who seemed to be toying with me. Still want to play more.
Gaiden's mobster combat felt better than what I remember from Yakuza 6, but still soft, mashy, formulaic, & not my thing. Had to switch to EASY to pass 1 boss fight before the arcade.
There were a couple "Like a Dragon" games in the series prior to this 2023 entry: 2020's "Yakuza: Like a Dragon," w/ turn-based combat, & earlier 2023's medieval Japan spin-off, "Like a Dragon: Ishin!" w/ action combat. Gaiden is considered a spin-off too--back to Kazuma Kiryu & action combat.
Kept saying this loaded lots faster'n Yakuza 6 on "my old laptop"--forgetting I'd played that on PS4, not PC.
GAH & I think I said Daytona 2 was Tetsuya Mizuguchi but he was Sega Rally (& the better-received game Motor Raid was an upgrade kit of, Manx TT Superbike); Daytona was Toshihiro Nagoshi, who of course started the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series (& Monkey Ball!). |
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| | | | Put an animated gif of the shiny spinning morphing brass SEGA logo from Motor Raid here: https://smbhax.tumblr.com/post/745161507558604800/the-sega-animated-logo-in-sega-model-2a-arcade |
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| | | | I'm gonna have to give Motor Raid another try! Not sure if it was because I now have my d-pad mapped as left analog in Steam Input, or because I picked a different driver, but the steering actually felt okay now; plus, I noticed that it's just the default kick/weapon attack animations that seem side-specific; if there's actually a target on the other side, they'll attack that way instead. So while initially confusing, the controls actually AREN'T all janky. Ah! = o |
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| | | | Oh yeah also I belatedly realized (after going back and seeing the somewhat more obvious button mapping option for the arcade games in Yakuza 6 again) that yes there's a button remapping menu for each arcade game accessible from the pause menu (touchpad), so I didn't have to use Steam Input to switch gas/brake from the triggers to the bumpers, for instance. ^ _^ |
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| | | Bug with screen borders in the arcade games:
Normally the three non-Sega-Model-3 arcade games in Gaiden--Virtua Fighter 2.1, Sonic the Fighters, and Motor Raid--run without top and bottom screen borders.
However, if you play one of the Model 3 arcade games--Sega Racing Classic 2 or Fighting Vipers 2--which do have top and bottom borders, and then play one of the non-Model-3 arcade games in the same session, the non-Model-3 game will have Model-3-style top and bottom borders.
This will persist until you exit Gaiden and restart.
(Ran into this with VF and was scratching my head over it until I found corroborating details on r/likeadragon by Reddit user wizzyone https://www.reddit.com/r/likeadragon/comments/1ad0kvi/like_a_dragon_gaiden_strange_glitch_that_made/ . Reported it in the Gaiden bug thread on Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2375550/discussions/0/3958161899233805787/?ctp=18#c7607215340154656897 |
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| | | | Also kind of sucks that the Model 3 games are always bordered, I wonder if that's a bug also or if it was just what they had to do to get them running at a decent speed on their min spec system or something. |
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| | | | I'm not sure the Model 3 games always having top and bottom borders really could be for performance reasons; seems more likely it was accidental and is part of the bug. |
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| | | | Not sure if it's related, but from what I can see of videos and screenshots of the three arcade games in "Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth," which are all Model 3 games, those games also run with similarly sized top and bottom borders--but with an elaborate bezel frame covering the border area, so their size must be intentional; in Gaiden, the frames are plain black, so the intended size is less clear. |
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| | | I've set [] as Accelerate and O as Brake for SRC2, using Steam Input to set [] as a toggle so I don't have to hold it down. : D
This doesn't work at all for Motor Raid though because Brake doesn't work if Accelerate is being held down; also you can't activate the Turbo (double-tap of Accelerate) if Accelerate is set as Toggle. So still have to hold gas to play Motor Raid. ; P
In Motor Raid, if you hold Punch for a while, your rider throws their weapon; after that, the weapon is gone and Punch actually punches. KLOV says you need to attack as well as place well in the races to get a good score.
And there are three stages to the boost, according to Wikipedia: "a short blue boost that is ready when the boost gauge fills to 100%, a stronger green boost that requires the boost gauge to fill up to 200%, and an extremely powerful orange boost that can only be unleashed when the boost gauge fills to the maximum level of 300%, and will allow the character to knock out opponents" (that's the red "SPECIAL" text and spinning whirlwind effect I think). |
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Demonstrating the Gaiden arcade game border bug.
((While I'm at it I may as well also say that I sure hope they ditch the mandatory fake scanline filter over all of the arcade games in Gaiden; there should at least be an option not to have it there. This is the only way Sega makes these games available these days and they deserve to be able to be seen unimpeded by fake effects.))
(((It would also be nice to be able to set them to their higher difficulty levels!)))
((((Come on Sega, do your classic games justice!!)))) |
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| | | | RE: Gaiden's arcade game border bug, I also just found that in specifically the Steam version of Yakuza 6--PS4 Yakuza 6 is fine--the classic arcade games there display at the wrong aspect ratio: see entry 1779. |
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Clearing Motor Raid on EASY & NORMAL, even with an S Rank with one of the characters.
Also, trying a silly don't-have-to-hold-the-gas-button control toggle scheme using Steam Input for Sega Racing Classic 2, and pretty much failing to make it work. = P
I had bounced hard off Motor Raid in my first attempt; I felt like the controls just weren't set up well / weren't responding well. Since then I learned that well the attack buttons will auto-target to either side, so that's nice; and you can do stuff like hold Punch to throw your weapon in a lock-on attack, charge up and punch with no weapon to power-grab someone else's weapon, and that you have three stages of boost, the highest being that red attacking tornado effect around you. (Riders also sometimes do various flips--might be connected to "SP.ATTACK: Continue pushing the weapon button" mentioned in the game's demo?)
Also, I think you just hafta lean ie turn into the turns more than I'd expected to have to, so what I read as unresponsive was just...not turning hard enough! Anyway I think I've got it now. Even S ranked it with the uh fast guy I think it was, no the NORMAL cab. No hard cab. Hrm. Well I can go for S ranks with the other characters, doesn't feel like that should take that long. Then...scores? Hm. It feels like a really short arcade-mode run-through.
There's lots of cool details I was too steering-apoplectic to see before, though. Got my helmet knocked off by an opponent! The huge spider AT-AT hulking over part of the snow stage! Sluicing along the snow stage! Oh and if you really want some control take the girl with the max GRIP stat or whatever it is and check out her cool kick turns; the way riders will put one foot down briefly on a hard turn is a nifty touch.
I'd come up with an elaborate set-gas-as-toggle control scheme using Steam Input that was gonna save my pwecious precious old joints from having to hold down that mean mean Accelerate button all the time; doesn't work in Motor Raid since a) you need to pump Accelerate to trigger boost and b) brake doesn't work in this game with Accelerate held down.
I'd thought it DID work in SRC2 but nah it doesn't really, I mean it does but only if you toggle gas off before hitting brake if you really need to do a drift thing--which actually seems like something you want to do--drifting I mean--very frugally here and I haven't figured out the right balance of drifting vs not drifting. But anyway you don't have full braking in SRC2 while gas is held and toggling the gas toggle around braking when I still don't quite get the drifting was baffling me so I'll probably have to give up on that whole scheme for this game, too. (It's much easier in say Super Hang-On where brake works just fine while gas is on.) And in this session my silly ol' wrist wasn't bothered at all by the end of it so hey well who needs toggling anyway now that I got a more ergonomic DualSense--or something, I dunno. Joints joints joints.
The transparency of the smoke clouds from cars in SRC2 is probably being rendered wrong in Gaiden's Model 3 emulator--they clip themselves out rather than overlapping.
(At the start I was talking about how Gaiden doesn't give you a difficulty option above NORMAL for the games, specifically when I was talking about Motor Raid; while I do know that for instance Virtua Fighter 2.1 has harder difficulty settings in a similar port Sega did of it on PS3, I don't actually have another port of Motor Raid to compare with this one, so I can't say for sure that the actual arcade version has harder difficulty settings; but if it's like the difficulty levels available in Sega's PS3 ports of some of their other arcade games--VF2, Fighting Vipers 2, and Super Hang-On, for instance--then it probably does.) |
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Fighting Vipers 2: Charlie, and hidden lucha Del Sol; plus a play-through as returning but newly blonde pixie power-puncher Jane!
Charlie's bicycle theme is probably a bit silly, but luchador Del Sol is rad, even if I'm not good enough to land his fancy throws; I wonder why he's hidden off-screen in character select, alongside the Dural-like blank gray guy whatsisname. Jane's armored fist is HUGE now, it's like she's in a powered exoskeleton. ^ _^
The game's newly added combos and additional power moves, and new short chain, ground and wall combo system (oh huh VF got ground and wall combos after this, in VF4, didn't it? I wonder if this was a test bed for that, or at least became one) feel like just what the series needed, really improving the flow of combat and adding fun unpredictability from funky clashes and interactions. And the combos aren't long and repetitive, just light, flexible, and fun. (Although I am not great at combos so I won't be shocked if they can be abused into ridiculous boring chains by combo masters.) This could be just about my favorite combo system in a fighting game; in any case, it sure worked well here.
There's a new "SUPER K.O" instant-win attack (f plus PKG) you can try once per match, when your armor's gone; didn't try it since I never had all my armor broken off, but looking at FAQs now I see you can voluntarily take your armor off (f,b,f,b PKG)--that remove armor move was in the first game too but I can't tell from FV1 FAQs if there was any reason to do it there aside from seeing the characters wearing less clothing. Or as an intentional handicap, I suppose. Hm pressing the three buttons together is also used for various power moves in both games, it looks like.
After playing this I took a peek at the DC version, which I never got back in the day for some reason even though I was buying all DC fighting games back then, particularly imports--maybe I associated it with VF3tb whose low-poly grayness had really turned me off at the time. Anyway, in fabulous, input-lag-eradicating DC emulator flycast, FV2 just rips! It feels so much more lively and responsive that it just makes it clear that while you know I guess it's great for Like a Dragon players that they get these bonus arcade games, Sega is doing the games and their fans a disservice by not bothering with proper standalone ports anymore; with probably additional input delay, no move lists, no high difficulty options, and now shrunken screen sizes and obscuring graphic overlays, LAD is NOT a great way to experience these fighting games (or any games really but they don't have any standalone ports of the driving games here, dang). I am gonna play FV2 again but it'll be the DC port.
(Man now I wish DC had ports of VF 2 and 4. ; ] Alas it only got 3 and its sweep-spammable CPU. 'p')
Got tripped up trying to use my Hori Real Arcade Pro V5 in the game; Steam's Controller test reads its touchpad and Share buttons just fine, but they weren't being read by the game; if I switched the stick from PS4 to PS3 mode, the touchpad and Share buttons worked--but the regular buttons kept switching back and forth between two separate layouts! So I was using it in PS4 mode but couldn't pause FV2 when the large, spring-crazed spider was marauding at me during my Jane vs boss struggle. : P Afterwards I found a working set-up: stick's hardware switch on PS4 mode, touchpad mapped right joystick in Steam Input (and then when I need to walk around the virtual arcade as Kiryu I can switch the stick's d-pad to "LS"--left stick--mode), Share button mapped to "Select" in Steam Input; that seems to cover the needed bases. |
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| | | | I'm told by loki https://selectbutton.net/t/games-you-played-today-the-nonbiri-express-09-galaxie-500x2-1-9-9-9-look-i-made-it-longer-the-power-of-one/14496/1106 that in Fighters Megamix at any rate, when at least a certain character there took off their armor, they were suddenly a lot faster and more agile--so maybe that's what it does here. Hafta try that some time (and you also get access to the insta-win move). |
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| | | | SRC2 really doesn't want you pressing Accelerate and Brake at the same time: you get really weak braking and almost no turning ability. So I set just a plain Accelerate toggle, and toggle it off, then brake as long as necessary, then toggle Accelerate back on; depending on the timing, this may send you into a bit of a drift, but not often, and the drifts are pretty linear. |
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| | | | Tried the Expert car briefly: it accelerates a bit faster, I think, but is harder to steer and more prone to spinning out than the Easy car. |
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| | | | SRC2 is...not that compelling? At least, not in this emulated version when played on a pad and with my silly accelerate-toggle scheme to save me from having to hold a button down constantly. Even on the Expert course, the corners don't feel particularly challenging--unlike Daytona USA on PS3, I suppose, where nearly every corner felt challenging, perhaps aggravatingly so; there's a lot of rumbling along in a big pack of AI cars and getting smashed into constantly and having various voices talking about you getting smashed into. I was mostly playing with the Easy car which I suppose is maybe like playing w/ training wheels on or something for all I know; did try Normal car just now and didn't seem particularly more lively to drive--but it did suddenly smash and spin around a few times, so whee. |
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