| paleface [sys=NGPC; cat=Fighting; loc=JPN] |
| | | I won't bother going in to what makes this incredibly packed game so great, since that's all covered in plenty elsewhere. Suffice it to say that it is by far the most impressive fighting game on the system; indeed, it isn't even stretching things to say that it is one of the most brilliant and complete fighting games ever made.
So enough of that, let's talk about the little things that bug me about it--after all, if it's really one of the bestest games of all time, why don't I play it more? Basically, there are a couple thigns that nag at me.
First is that the difficulty curve isn't there. It's more like a difficulty right-angle: I cruise my way right through to the end without breaking a sweat, I mean I'm dizzying the opponents and they aren't even fighting back, and then WHAM! You run smack in to not just one of the cheapest bosses of all time, but two of them, tag-team against you. And then once you beat them, you've got to take down an incredibly juiced-up "evil" version of one of the regular characters. I guess it isn't much different that normal SNK boss syndrome but it seems extra insulting because not only do you have three bosses with the disease, you've also got a rather boring and ultimately misleading cakewalk up to that point.
Another thing: the control is a little stiff. Or to put it more precisely: the console is very precise. You've got to be pretty spot-on with your commands to get special moves out, which is just fine, but that becomes much, much harder to do during any kind of slowdown, and brother is there some slowdown here at times, especially during those darn boss battles. Maybe it's the animating backgrounds, or the lovely music and rich sound effects all going off together, or all the supers and so forth, but you can really get your thumb bent out of shape trying to stay in control when the game is throwing everything it has at you and the framerate is taking a nose-dive.
Aside from those to things, it's a brilliant game. It would be super-awesome if it could somehow be hooked in to an arcade cabinet for some large-screen Vs. play. I suppose thanks to the wonder of emulators it could be, sorta, but that's not quite to my taste. So I'll just keep dreamin' there, and maybe playing it by myself now and then on the ol' NGPC when I think I can bear to try those bosses again. |
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| | | Download added: cover_back.jpg (67673 bytes)
"Cover photo (Japanese)."
The cart is multi-language, of course, so it doesn't really matter which cart you buy as long as you have your NGPC switched to English mode. |
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| | | | As with a fair number of NGPC games, the Japanese cartridge will display full English text if your NGPC is set to English language preference. |
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| | | | Ah well I deleted that video ^ as part of my YouTube purge of possibly seizure-inducing full-screen flashing effects in SNK fighting games (esp in KOFs 94-97; later KOFs have them too but you can turn them off with the "FLASH" option). |
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| | | | MotM IS pretty flashy, even on the small screen; a super like Ryo's circle back, circle forward + P causes a rapid series of white screen flashes, ech. (It didn't flash at all in R-1!) |
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