Yes, was part of the reason it felt too easy as Guy's fireball motion special hit hard and didn't deplete your energy bar. Unusual inputs for the genre but it worked.

Knights of the Round's one of the best!

I credit fed through Knights of the Round with the daughters (supports 3 players). We had a laugh but it was pretty forgettable.

I wonder what the SNES version is like compared to the Arcade version.

Obviously it won't look quite as nice but home ports often fixed the coin guzzling difficulty of arcade games.

Final Fight 3 - SNES (1hr) 

I'd never played any Final Fight sequels.  I was under the impression they were a bit weak.  In hindsight that's probably just because by the mid-90s the genre was about as fashionable as having holes in your jeans, and multiformat mags refused to rave about them. Admittedly I didn't want to play 2D scrolling beat 'em ups at that point either.  Still, I was surprised how good this is.  It really does manage to feel like an arcade cab at home, and in terms of gameplay surpasses everything on the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle, imo.  Aside from the big ol' sprites and top drawer audiovisual wallop, one of the first things I noticed was how nippy it is.  I played as Guy (who wrecks, FYI) and he's so quick it felt like the game was running in turbo mode.   It's a breathtakingly easy game on the default difficulty, which is perfect for a whistlestop retro tour really, but it's unusual to find a game where you can stand over downed foes/enemies loitering off-screen and spam attack buttons without the risk of getting hit in return.  Factor in the handy specials that don't drain health and the ease of screen control via throws and it's probably fair to say it puts up the least resistance of any game of its type I've played.  It introduces new enemy types along the way, as all the best games of this type do, but one of the late additions - let's call him Full Kit Wanker Baseball Bloke - just felt like pure fodder, and I don't think any of them got their mitts on my Guy for the whole thing.  You start with five lives, and I still had three by the end of stage 5, so had to deliberately get pummeled just so I could use a continue to try a different character (I went for Haggar, who's quicker than you'd expect too).  I don't usually dabble with difficulty settings on these games, but I assume there are one or two higher than Normal available.  There's an option to play with a CPU ally, which is an unusual/interesting addition, but there slowdown was horrific when I tried to buddy up with Big Mike.  Perhaps this is because he's twice the size of most characters.  I hope the proper two player mode doesn't suffer the same fate, but I assume it does, which would be a shame.  Perhaps @retroking can confirm.  Either way this puts the original Final Fight port into perspective - it looks better, has plenty more characters on screen, gives you five to choose from, lasts a while and allows a second player to join.  It's great fun, and even had multiple routes in some (all?) stages.  I'm not quite sure where I stand on this vs Streets of Rage 3 (obviously it doesn't have to be a competition, but that hasn't stopped me trying to pick a favourite).  I gave that 80% earlier in the year, which feels like less than what I'm leaning to for this, but the disappointment factor was high for that one.  They're pretty much neck and neck in the A-tier of 16-bit scrolling beat 'em ups (along with the excellent Batman Returns), with SOR2 being the only true S Tier entry for me.  I'm not one for consistency, so even though I can't decide if this is better or worse than SOR3 I'm gonna give it 91% if the two player mode works with minimal slowdown, and 86% if it doesn't.

 

Knights of the Round - Switch (35mins) 

Played this in 2020 with retro.  My opinion hasn't changed.  It's just a masher, and not a good one at that.  The bosses pretty much mug you and the block (which I managed to find this time) is useless.  Plus the horses are annoying, because every time I mounted one I was instantly knocked off.  Very much of its time, and its time didn't last long at all.  I wouldn't even want to play this again in co-op, and it was shocking solo.  Looks nice. 43%



112. Golden Axe III - Mega Drive (1hr) 

I waited ages for the MD Collection to hit better than half price on Switch, assuming I'd only dabble with one or two titles, but it's currently one of my top 5 most played games on the console.  It might be missing certain heavyweights but it's a nice package.  All that waiting and I only saved the price of a sandwich, smh. This one comes with a heavyweight name, but it's generally considered to be a weak continuation (or even the death knell for the series).  So weak in fact that it only appeared outside of Japan on the Sega Channel in America, and even then it was two years late.  I was braced for bobbins, but it turns out there are dozens of worse examples of the genre on Sega hardware.  It's a bit budget for a first party game in a post-SOR2 world, dropping the iconic art style of the first two in favour of something that looks a bit like US Gold stole the license and outsourced their vision to Probe Software.  It does play reasonably well though.  The difficulty is toned down, partly thanks to the fact that enemies seem less eager to charge a distant player than before, but partly because there are a couple of extra moves that don't come with a health trade-off - a backward stab and a power attack.  There's also a block, performed in the same way as Knights of the Round (attack then quickly hold back), which is a weird coincidence as I've not seen anything quite like it in a belt scroller before.  Collision detection is a little off, but for the first half hour his was quietly shaping up into somehing better than okay.  It even has multiple routes to choose from (which lead to different endings, apparently). It drags on a bit in sp though, and the flaws did start to draw attention to themselves eventually.  There's a birdman boss who's an absolute prick, and a late enemy type that seems to trump any attack with a spinning lariat whenever it fancies knocking you down.  Certain opponents block your attacks too, and unless I'm mistaken there doesn't seem to be a sure-fire way to break their guard with attacks, and grabbing them on a busy screen can prove tricky.  The magic system is back to the all or nothing approach too, which is a shame, and some of the dragon mounts are about as useful as an axe made of gold.  Gillius isn't playable either, so it automatically loses a point.  Music bobs along but I'm in no danger of humming any of it.  There aren't enough holes to chuck people down.  It's not a classic for sure, but I can't work out how everyone joined the dots all the way down to disaster.   I expect this is well worth playing in co-op tbh (obvious caveat: for fans of the series/genre).  I know it's heralded as a stinker, but my mileage varied.  I reckon if I'd got hold of this in '93 I wouldn't have been entirely disappointed.  I definitely owned and enjoyed worse games. 79%

 

Okay that gif makes it look much worse than it is but it's the only one I could find....

Good stuff. Really want to play Revenge of Death Adder at some point, it's often referred to as the best one. The first game will probably always be my favourite though, for two players anyway. A natter & batter classic. Also has one
of the best classic Sega soundtracks.

Anyone ever play the Golden Axe versus fighter game that the Saturn got?

The Golden Axe track in Sonic Racing Transformed is a cracker.

davyK wrote:

Anyone ever play the Golden Axe versus fighter game that the Saturn got?

The Golden Axe track in Sonic Racing Transformed is a cracker.

Was a Saturn game I had when my collection was at its peak. Unfortunately like most ebay purchases in the early 2000s I only played it once to test it worked.

Thought I'd round off the 16-bit set too:

Golden Axe - Mega Drive (35mins)

I still love it.  Maybe it's because I played as Gillius today and Ax Battler when I played no.2 earlier in the week, but it feels much better than its supposedly superior sequel to me.  It's a nice length considering the limited moveset (adding an extra stage to the super short arcade game), it looks superb for 1989, the music is ace, controls are responsive, dragons are actually useful and there are plenty of holes to walk or lob fools into.  You can punt the thieving blue dwarves off edges on a couple of occasions too - win.  Plus the bald bigman hammer wielders are more GOLDEN AXE than the lizard things they were replaced with in no.II.

Great memories and something I always seem to enjoy when I revisit.  What a port this was.  I might check the MS version out next, just to see the sort of thing I happily put up with as a kid, but it might be best not to.  86%

Grabbed two from my Switch watch list in this week's sale. Castle Crashers Remastered and Mayhem Brawler. Was tempted with Final Vendetta but it can wait, £19 is still a bit steep even though I expect I'll enjoy it.

I quite liked Castle Crashers on 360 but didn't love it and don't quite understand all the love. Interested to see if I've changedy mind.

Mayhem Brawler is derivative SOR4 coattails stuff but last year's Xbox demo felt better than I expected and three player appeals for £10.

Any thoughts on ESWAT?  I think I've only played a stage or two of the MD version. Borrowed the MS version for a while as a kid.

Played the first level of that on co-op probably about 12 months ago and that was enough. Couldn't get over how long it took to kill that first boss. We knew we were going to struggle with the rest of it. Good while it lasted though.

Did you pick up Xeno Crisis in the end, retro?

I played it on game pass, was good. Seemed like it might be better suited to co-op though.

I remember playing ESWAT on the MD collection on PS3 in my Trophy hunting days.

It may very well have been level 3 I got to before getting the necessary trophy.

Was OK, bit of a Rolling Thunder/Shinobi mix from what I remember. Quite slow paced and methodical.

It's been a while though so I could be well off there.