The Problem with Duck Tales

Duck Tales is great, but it has a huge design flaw that proves glaringly obvious after years of absence--the pogo mechanic. 

Before I get any further, I want my games to be tough as coffin nails, but I also want some standard of living: customizable controls, decent options, good hitboxes, etc. Duck Tales offers none of this. At the other end of the spectrum we have Super Meat Boy, an amazing game with incredible difficulty, but extreme care taken to ensure that the experience (often called "quality of life" in a game, is extremely high). In Duck Tales, the hit boxes are far too large for most things, but even this can be worked around. I'll leave the hit boxes alone for now, and get back to the point.

There is no reason to have to press down on the D-pad to activate the pogo stick. You only have to do this on the first bounce, then you can just hold B. This causes problems when you are pressing diagonal-down and the pogo stick disappears at the last minute causing you to take a hit. The only thing this does is make the game worse, if you think this adds challenge or difficulty...not sure what to say. They could have used controls similar to Castle of Illusion, just hit B in the air to start the pogo. Instead they copied Commander Keen, and the game is worse for it.

If B actually did something in the air, I could see the need to press down. But it doesn't. If B made you run, like in Super Mario, then this would make sense. But it doesn't. Again, you have to press an extra button for no reason.

I like my difficulty to come from level design, insane challenges, and precision timing. Not much of that here.

This problem is easily fixable if playing on a PC emulator, but it is a little complicated. You have to map the down arrow on your keyboard to the down arrow for your emulator, then, using Joy 2 Key assign both the down arrow on your d-pad and the B button to also activate the down arrow on the keyboard. If you did it correctly, you should be able to bounce without ever pressing down on the d-pad. This isn't without one small change: if your pogo stick misses a ledge, but only slightly, Scrooge will stick to the ledge and be ducking down. Not a huge deal.

Before you say this is cheating, just be aware that in the speedrunning/highscore community choice of controller, monitor, button mapping, control configs, etc. are all perfectly legal and fine. I consider this customizing the controls, but you might not. If you like how the game is now, then by all means, just ignore this topic. If you've ever been frustrated at the pogo stick disappearing milliseconds before you make contact with thr ground, however, then you might want to try out this trick. 

If you don't like this setup, however, this is another option if you have some trigger buttons. It's much easier to activate the pogo if you map the right trigger to down as well. Now you can't say there is an advantage in mapping two buttons to the same button, and you are firmly in the realm of customizing the controls. The major downside is, of course, having to play on an emulator and not being able to use your cartridge.

It appears that the creators of the remastered version also agree with me, by the way, as it appears you do not have to press down in the new version to activate the pogo stick. 

In the end, Duck Tales is still an amazing game.

Where is Mega Man 11?

2008 saw the release of Mega Man 9, possibly the greatest installment in the entire classic Mega Man saga. Shortly after, Capcom followed up with Mega Man 10, which smoothed the formula even more.

Endless Attack modes in each provided an awesome new mode of platforming that has significant potential. You can already find about a dozen "endless attack" romhacks online. Proto Man and Bass provided the variety and challenge necessary for keeping the interest of the hardcore players. I still rank beating Mega Man 9 and 10 on hard with Protoman as some of my greatest gaming achievements.

Years later, however, I'm left wondering: where is Mega Man 11? Maybe the Wii is just coming to a close, or maybe Capcom is hesitant to continue the classic series without Inafune. Maybe that's it for Mega Man.

I recently purchased Mega Man X7 on a whim, but I've never really considered the MMX series all that great when compared with the classic NES and Wii 8-Bit adventures. 

I'm sure Starship Mega Man 55 or whatever else Capcom is putting out is equally good, but I just can't get motivated to play the other games in the series. The platforming always felt sloppy and the game always felt like it was marketed to younger kids or people seriously into techno and mohawks. Only with classic Mega Man does one need to be badass mother fucker to achieve victory, without the artificial dark and gritty "edge."

The edge comes from the game itself, and if you don't have serious nuts you might as well go cry at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project

There are video games, and then there are video games that define one's childhood. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project is undoubtedly one of the latter. I never owned the game as a kid, but I often rented this masterpiece. Not that it mattered: several friends owned a copy and TMNT3 was one of the first games I ever beat, shortly after it launched in 1992.

The Turtles were my heroes growing up. I knew, watching the cartoon, that I wanted to be a trash-talking slacker who ate pizza at every opportunity and spent his free time fighting crime and playing video games. Eventually I abandoned the fighting crime aspect, but I like to think that I have been successful in the rest.

I distinctly remember staying up until 5:00 a.m. beating the one night because we had to return the cartridge to the rental store the next day. That's the kind of gaming pressure one simply cannot simulate as an adult, and with the internet and its access to everything interesting ever conceived.

Playing through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project again over the last few days totally recaptured some of the mondo times playing turtles games, collecting the action figures, or watching the cartoon religiously. I still have over a hundred TMNT action figures, but with no place to display them they just sit tucked away in my closet, a quiet metaphor for the lost magic of the 1980s.

Even though I own the cartridge, I decided to play through the game on an emulator so I could take screenshots (which you can see below, I've posted the best 19 of the 50-something shots I captured). Even on an emulator, the second I saw the epic sprite flicker and garbage columns on the left and the right, I knew I was home.

TMNT3 is your basic brawler, with a lot of polish and flair for the NES. Konami had been making killer beat 'em ups for years at this point, and the influence of other games (notably Konami's Crime Fighters and especially Capcom's Final Fight) has left a positive aura of perfection on this cart. The only downside to the gameplay is that, by Level 8 you'll start to feel the pressure of the repetitive enemies, some of which seem to hit you no matter what.

The bosses, likewise, can be tedious. Most of the bosses take--and I'm not exaggerating--over 100 jump-kicks to kill. Leonardo's special move proves to be a lifesaver in these situations, and can pretty much destroy any boss you come across.

Despite some minor flaws, TMNT3: TMP is totally worth your time. You haven't played the NES until you've played this game. I just beat the game this morning, but I had to use the secret code to restart Stage 8. After I hit post, it's time to ditch the emulator, turn off all the lights, and sit in front of my giant CRT and NES until Shredder & co. eat dirt.

Section Z NES Manual Scans

Section Z is the overlooked Capcom classic for the NES. Luckily it's rather common so you should be able to track it down if you're into awesome space shooting games. Most arcade players will already be familiar with Section Z, but the NES game definitely holds its own.

Great music, nice graphics, multiple weapons, tons of enemies, and a maze-like exploration mechanic combine to form something like S.C.A.T. or Abadox meets Air Fortress.

Whether you've played this game before, threw out the manual as a kid, never want to play it, or picked it up today, you can at least enjoy the ridiculous story and creative drawings. Overall this is a damn nice manual, and I like the materialistic design. It's over 20 pages, and I didn't post some of the legal copy. All the good stuff is in-tact.

Ghosts 'n Goblins Arcade and Wii Virtual Console

Ghost 'n Goblins remains one of the true classic early platformers. It exists as an example of what platformers were before Mario: brutal arcade machines with clunky controls demanding intense memorization. Ghost 'n Goblins on the Arcade, Wii, and even NES is no exception. The is now available for download on the Nintendo Wii for 800 points. I highly recommend it, but you should know what you are getting yourself into, so MAME might be a good idea at this point. Alternately, you can grab the arcade port in Capcom Collections Vol. 2 for the Playstation 2.

You play Arthur the Knight, and you were about to make sweet love to Princess Prin-Prin when some demon named Astaroth abducts her. As a video game hero, this is your idiom. You collect different weapons to spam at bad guys, like daggers, shields, and fireballs. Get hit and you'll lose your armor and run around in your boxers. Get hit again and you die. Like Mario, you can collect extra lives, but you do have unlimited continues. And you'll need them.



The game is brutally difficult, but you have unlimited continues in the Arcade. When real money isn't on the line, learning to play the game can be great fun. The levels vary in subject matter; you'll fight through Ghost Towns, Graveyards, Caves, Forests, Ruins, and the Pandemonium Palace of Hell. Between every stage you'll see your progress on the map, a convention later adopted by many arcade and NES games. The design is amazing, the music fits the tone of the game well, and despite the difficulty, the game is quite beatable.

Unfortuneatly, to get the real ending one must play through 2 loops of the game--a rather underhanded tactic. Still, many gamers put the game down after the first loop. I certainly did after beating Satan on the NES (oh yea, the Final Boss is none other than the Dark Lord Satan himself, so good luck). Other gamers, like doctorx0079, can beat both loops without dying. Watching videos can certainly be a useful tool for advanced players, but don't rob yourself of the experience of playing through the game initially!

The VC port offers gamers the ability to customize the settings as per usual arcade emulation. The game always ran in Horizontal Alignment, so you won't have to worry about black bars (unless playing on a widescreen TV). Unfortunately, Capcom had the NES version of Ghosts 'N Goblins pulled from the store, which is a shame. The NES version remains very much a classic, but doesn't offer the visual, auditory, or customizable experience of the arcade port. The move appears to makes sense from a "business-meeting" perspective, but honestly these games are all old news now and Capcom wouldn't hurt anyone by leaving the NES version for sale. They fail to account for hardcore fans of the series, who would purchase BOTH games, and they (presumably) lose all the money they've earned from the NES VC release (all $200!).

Like 1942, Capcom ported the game to many home consoles (especially in the European market) including the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST, IBM PC, Commodore 16, Sharp X68000, Game Boy Color, GBA, NES and Apple's iOS. The game spawned sequels at the arcade and SNES, which was recently remade for the PSP. Gargoyle's Quest, an RPG series, would result in a spin-off series arguably better than its source material (check out the NES Gargoyle's Quest!).

The Virtual Console release, in any case, remains exciting because, as I mentioned in The History of the 194X Games, Capcom will be releasing arcade classics on the Wii. This also establishes a possible price-point for 1942. In addition, the precedent has now been set for the removal of NES games if an updated version is released, so expect the NES 1942 to leave the VC this year.