paleface [sys=NEO; cat=Fighting; reg=NA] |
| | Playing as secret character Ryo Sakazaki through Fatal Fury Special for NEOGEO AES, using the ROM from the PC NeoGeo Humble Bundle in MAME 0.253, with Unibios 4.0. Running from a shortcut with these command parameters: mame.exe fatfursp -nofilter -bios unibios40 -volume -14 Playthrough on Easy but probably didn't matter; I follow up with a bit of play at the hardest, "MVS" difficulty setting, and the AI still doesn't even try to block his fireballs--then I compare playing as Fatal Fury series regular Terry Bogard, whose fireballs they DO react to. So it looks like the developers just didn't bother telling the AI about Ryo's fireball. ; ) Single-player makes you fight all the other characters! ^ _^ That strobing at the start of Duck's stage is weird; frame-by-framing it from the video, the background switches to red, then blue, then mauve--kind of a mix of the two previous frames, I suppose--then the normal stage background, then back to red and cycles again. It isn't great, but it isn't as harsh as the unadulterated single-frame red flashes SNK would use elsewhere--and apparently it only happens for these few Duck-stage opening seconds in the entire game. Ah I found that tortuous old Terry playthrough I was thinking of, it was of Fatal Fury 3, the game after this one: https://youtu.be/1CkZ4NF6u5w A couple Japanese arcades with Garou Densetsu Special (that's the game's Japanese name, it means "Hungry Wolf Legend Special" according to Wikipedia) video sessions posted in the last 24 hours include Game Center Mikado https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4-crYn6CfA and Game Center Kouhatsu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPAOuEzOIdQ . |
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| | No super meter! Whee after having to charge power just to throw like more than three fireballs in Art of Fighting, Ryo is freeee to spam the projectiles this AI can't even see. He must have loved FF! ^ _^ |
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| | Characters have two colors: choose color 2 with HK. : P |
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| | Lvl 1 CPU just low jabs or sweeps out Terry's flying punch nearly every time. ;_; Tung Fu Rue's instant anti-airs every time I jumped. ;_; Almost puzzle-like AI similar to SFII except somehow more well-rounded, but still forcing you to come up with like the one thing that beats them: rising tacos vs Tung, neutral jumps to get Geese, specifically-spaced long-range jump-ins vs Axel Hawk. Billy Kane surprisingly easy, thank goodness! Would've been easier maybe if I could perform Terry's full move list but "three-eighths" circle flip kick (qcb+ub) and whatever that back and forth diagonal for his super is--no thanks! = ooo ; D And his fireball is extremely slow to get off and recover from; plus some jerk like Geese will just plane shift to dodge it and hose your inputs. ; D So basically a lot of jump kicks and sometimes tacos when all else failed! And you have to fight every single character--even yourself! = o (Okay but not AES secret Art of Fighting cross-over character Ryo Sakazaki, at least. : P) It's a super-long arcade mode: 15 matches! Imagine going through this in an arcade! = oo SNK must have been thinking OMG we're going to make SO much $$; yeah make the AI input-read even harder, haha we're practically minting our own money! But it STILL has an arcade following in Japan so something worked! It is just a brutally good game in its crazy way. = o It's super-beefy! Axel's Chicago stage is one plane only; I think Billy's is too--was watching some recent Japanese tournament footage ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwciIkVU7hE ) and a toss into those gears in the background with a heavy hit (C+D, others?) does extra damage! Only HK picks 2P color! |
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| | I think I said at one point that Axel Hawk has just two special moves--Joe's fireball, and a charging rush punch--but I was forgetting he can supposedly mash P for a punch flurry; however, I only really got that to come out, sort of naturally, while still mashing P after the rush punch (hold db, then f+P). Since his only longish-range non-dash attack is df+D (a heavy low punch), he seems intended as a turtle character! Which seemed to work for me, because I had a lot of fun just doing that. ^ _^ He's got a huge anti-air uppercut on df+C, which I pretty much completely failed to use--fortunately, only a few of the early opponents jumped in at me, really, so that didn't go as badly as it should have, and mostly I was able to fend people off with df+D, and go after them with jumping D when they seemed off-guard. His fireball can be really effective, but seemingly as part of his turtle design, you can't pop up from turtling to throw a fireball, because it will activate the charging rush punch instead, and there's a good chance you'll get blocked and counter-attacked. His jumps are slow but his jumping D seems pretty good, and will even hit twice, maybe if he gets in close enough with it or something; I was also often able to follow with another crouching D. Really satisfying to take someone out with those three crunching blows! I struggled slightly with him against a few faster, ranged characters, especially Jubei Yamada--but kinda stomped the bosses! Each time Geese tried to Raging Storm one of my jump-ins, that D just smashed him! Which was hilarious because it would hit him right after his "Raging Storm" vocal cue triggered, so he'd be getting crushed by this huge descending double-hit while still yelling "Raging Storm!" ;^D Taking a closer look at the cross-plane attacks, A+B jumps between planes, C+D is a strong attack that knocks the opponent to the other plane (or into the damaging background in Axel, Billy, and Laurence's stages; Axel's b+D throw apparently also does this), and each button does a different attack between planes, with forward and back on the stick modifying the attack to "short" and "back" versions, according to https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/neo/565656-fatal-fury-special/faqs/47969 ; the light attack buttons ("low") are faster leaps, and the heavy attack buttons ("high") are slower. The "short" and "back" versions MAY--based on my very clunky limited testing--not go the full distance to the opponent, so for my purposes I think I normally want to leave the stick in neutral before hitting a cross-plane attack button, which should then track the full way to the opponent. These attacks all count as overheads, apparently, which would mean they can't be blocked low. (At the beginning I think I was mostly hitting B+C for cross-plane attacks for some reason, and sometimes that would register the faster B attack, other times the slower C attack--and I couldn't figure out why the speed was varying, esp. because all of Axel's attacks are punches, rather than the usual of B being a fast kick and C being a slow punch. Then later I forgot I'd been using B+C--which wasn't really right anyway--and just got totally confused. ; ) According to https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Max#Story , the guy on the bike pacing Axel in the ending is Michael Max, a CPU opponent in the first Fatal Fury ("Fatal Fury: King of Fighters") and, apparently, Axel's student. |
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| | Jubei: https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/Jubei_Yamada Judo master. Throws cookies (funny-looking cookies in the game... : P). Jumps super high & fast, has air throw; counters jump-ins with ridiculous slide-kick or air throw. Has dash-throws that are generally too fast, long range, and damaging for Bear to turtle against. Bear's standing HK goes through cookies but is so slow you have to throw it out well ahead of time and hope. Jump-ins only not too dangerous at close to max range. He skips to the other plane nearly every time Bear tries his slow shoulder charge. Argh. =PPP Big Bear IS Australian: https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Bear He first (and most recently) appeared--in the first Fatal Fury--as the "heel wrestler" "Raiden." Bear has only three special moves: - db-to-forward+punch shoulder charge - hold HK for EIGHT SECONDS drop kick (you can do other stuff while waiting) - hit all four cardinal directions in some weird order to breathe fire ^ I can only do the first one, sometimes. : PPP But CPU Bear didn't use the other two particularly effectively against me, as far as I noticed. Wish Bear had a normal with slightly longer range. : PPPP Got some great throw animations. |
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