What have you been up to lately with your SNES/SFC?

[Tanooki]

Currently I think it would be best to start by saying I've been slowly chipping away at Earthbound for the first time in a good many years, slowly so I don't get annoyed at it, and got to burning the tent/zombie flypaper bit.

 

But then and this will turn into a whoa...finds post of sorts.  I've been tracking game sales, more specifically on the SNES and Genesis this year, and I noticed in the last couple of months prices have been plummeting on games around 25% or so on the sub-$100 stuff, the over $100 have been more like 33% or so, sometimes nearly half when luck hits.  These prices with this kind of blow out are beyond the garbage schemes of prices you found from all the pandemic pricing/wata price abuses.  There were games I would not touch because they got into the $150-200+ range, and well...this happened.

 

Ignoring Phalanx, it was part of a trade/cash deal, BAM was around 8-10 off normal, Wolfenstein and Kendo Rage were $20 off where it was.  The others though, the Knights and Run Saber were about $50 less, Demons was upwards of $70 at best less.  The big one was RT3, didn't expect that but it had been around $200-225 and I nearly got that one for 1/2 off on an open well setup auction and got it without a fight.

 

So I saved within those averages I said so I went for them because they hadn't been that cheap since give or take 2015.  So I've been picking away at these personally formerly lost gems I used to enjoy and given the total savings I picked off one after another on the bigger (100+ fish.)  Some of those over $100 games I got in the low/mid 90s even which surprised me.

 

BAM is a great conversion of the NeoGeo game so it's fun.  Phalanx is a pretty fun shooter, not average, but not AAA grade but the hillbilly really does it no justice how nice it is.  Run Saber is like a more fun version of Strider and yeah I meant it...it's good.  Kendo Rage is a cute henshin(ish) anime girl hack and slash comedy romp and is just fun.  Knights is along with King of Dragons(had it) the two grandaddies of their pair of excellent D&D arcade titles and they're just a pleasure.  Demon's Crest was personal, never could figure it out, get anywhere, and let it go early years ago when I had to and wanting it back I did and I'm slowly making a dent so it's fun being basically new.  RT3 that one the GBA game is shite, was very close to buying the SFC copy until that happened, one of my favorites...hard, still can't finish it, but the best of the franchise more or less.  And I'm sure some wonder about Wolf3D?  Yeah it's butchered with the nazism removal, but it plays great, the stage maps are a lot of fun, it's *NOT* a PC port so it's like a whole new game (like Spear of Destiny was on PC too,) it has a really useful stage map, and the additional guns (like a flame thrower and bazooka) are just a lot of extra fun variety added to it.

 

 

** and as nice as all that is, Sunday locally I topped the deal on got on RT3 with a really nice late NES release in town.

[raskar42]

I made the mistake of buying a clone console as a backup. It almost ate my starfox. The console is dead now but my starfox is ok 

[Kirk_Johnston]

Well, I've just been playing on my SNES Classic Mini, but recently I started playing Castlevania IV properly for the first time--crazy but true--and I've gotten through more of it than ever before and am really enjoying it. The overall atmosphere of how it looks, sounds and plays is just really great and feels very cinematic or something. It feels like I'm actually engaging in an experience rather than just playing a game.

[newtmonkey]

Castlevania IV is a great game for sure.  I'm always pleasantly surprised when I play it, because it's a pretty early SNES game but has really excellent graphics and (especially) music.  The atmosphere is fantastic, and becomes really quite chilling in the second half of the game.

 

---

 

As for me,

 

Mother 2

I've been putting a lot of time into this one lately.  Based on the number of melodies I've found, I guess I'm about halfway through.  The graphics are very charming, but I still feel that it's a step down in every other way (including soundtrack) from the first game.  I do like the rolling HP counter though; I didn't think it would matter much at first, but it has turned out to be a very cool mechanic.

 

I will give it props for having actual mazelike "dungeons" that require and reward exploration, which is something a lot of 16-bit RPGs seem to lack.

[Steven Pendleton]

3 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

Castlevania IV is a great game for sure.  I'm always pleasantly surprised when I play it, because it's a pretty early SNES game but has really excellent graphics and (especially) music.  The atmosphere is fantastic, and becomes really quite chilling in the second half of the game.

Except for when you go into the castle and the music sounds like you're at a damn baseball or hockey game.

[Kirk_Johnston]

7 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

Castlevania IV is a great game for sure.  I'm always pleasantly surprised when I play it, because it's a pretty early SNES game but has really excellent graphics and (especially) music.  The atmosphere is fantastic, and becomes really quite chilling in the second half of the game.

 

---

 

As for me,

 

Mother 2

I've been putting a lot of time into this one lately.  Based on the number of melodies I've found, I guess I'm about halfway through.  The graphics are very charming, but I still feel that it's a step down in every other way (including soundtrack) from the first game.  I do like the rolling HP counter though; I didn't think it would matter much at first, but it has turned out to be a very cool mechanic.

 

I will give it props for having actual mazelike "dungeons" that require and reward exploration, which is something a lot of 16-bit RPGs seem to lack.

If you've not played Mother 3 yet, I couldn't recommend that higher (with the brilliant fan-made English translation patch). I think it's the best game in the series and is one of the more impacting games I've ever played.

[Kirk_Johnston]

4 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Except for when you go into the castle and the music sounds like you're at a damn baseball or hockey game.

I presume you mean just the one soundbite as you enter or something, because that's not even close to the vibe I get from the main music. I think the music throughout the game is generally brilliant.

[Tanooki]

Honestly, directly, largely I haven't bothered.

 

I'm working on multiple anime discs in the evening currently.  But I did over the weekend find an easily overlooked SNES game of Super Bowling, Athena made it, they also made the disgustingly expensive N64 title of the same name, and also the even more obscenely (in the thousands) rarest port of Super Bowling to eh Virtual Boy in Japan.  It's a solid little game with a pretty well done system for setting you direction, spin, power and weight to the balls to get results.  Not the prettiest, but not the ugliest package as it gets the job done but it doesn't strive to blow your eyes away either.  It was worth it for me at $8, clean game, no ebay bs... win win.  Also finally re-acquire also Ranma 1/2 Hard Battle, still surprises me that got localized even if the sticker art is a crap representation, the game itself wasn't mauled to death visually.  Not a SF2 clone as it has more unique ways it works, and ti works well, if you know the moves...solid game with friendly well seeded nods to the anime and manga.

[newtmonkey]

Mother 2

I ended up putting a couple more hours into this the other night, without realizing it.  One of those classic moments where you intend to just play for 30 mins or so, but get into the game and before you know it it's 3am lol.

 

In hindsight, it doesn't seem like I accomplished much in those two hours.  I explored the new town I arrived at, followed the plot a bit, and did some mandatory backtracking.  There are some very fun locations in this game, but it still feels really random and surreal compared with the first game, which I felt was at times bizarre but way more consistent in tone.  I really do love the graphics in this game, though.  Each area looks unique and the tilework in this game is simply amazing.

 

The game stopped being difficult 10 hours ago, so there's little to keep me going other than seeing what the next area/situation will be.  At this point, I really feel like the first game was just a better game, as it was challenging but fair the whole way through.

[newtmonkey]

On a whim, I decided to try plugging my SFC into the Retrotink 5X via S-video, since I wanted to see how it looks with HDR support (I don't use SCART on the RT5X).  I was shocked to find that my SFC has a major issue with S-video (and so I suppose composite as well): really bad "ghosting" where bright colors create these nasty black shadows that extend to the right edge of the screen.  Ghosting/color bleed is a known issue with many or most SFC/SNES systems, but this was really bad!  RGB is not an issue, and I tried swapping in a different (official) S-video cable, so I think my console is dying.  To check, I ordered a used SFC off Yahoo Auctions, which was shown in the auction photos to put out a clear composite image.  It was pretty cheap because the shell is not in great condition... but if the internals are good, I'll swap the shells.

Edited September 11, 2022 by newtmonkey

[newtmonkey]

The replacement SFC came in this morning, and I gave it a quick check.  It was pretty filthy, but cleaned up alright.  The shell has some discoloration, but it's not bad so I won't bother to replace it.  It also came with a composite cable, genuine AC adapter, two controllers, and some Gundam game I'll never play.

 

I plugged in my S-video cable and was overjoyed to find that the picture was excellent!  On a whim, I also tried connecting a sync-on-luma RGB SCART cable that didn't work on my old SFC, and it worked fine too!

 

That means my old SFC (salvaged from my in-laws!) is on its last legs, so I'll either keep it around for parts or just throw it out, not sure yet.

[Tanooki]

I recently got Battletoads & Double Dragon and Super Double Dragon and started to scratch the surface.  But I have a gem coming in the mail hopefully by the weekend, but my luck probably next week I've wanted to play for years, decades(between forgetting about it.)  I made a nutty lowball offer on ebay for a game and the manual got included with it and the seller was generous, took it.

[Wayler]

I learned about proxy shopping from Japan / Yahoo auctions in the spring and have now made 2 combined purchases during summer. I sold my copy of Super Mario RPG to fund this endeavor. 

 

My main focus was in english-friendly, multitap SFC-games and some VGM music. I got most of what I set out to do. Here are some of them:

-Bomberman 1 & 3-5 (already had 2 and my kids love it) 

-Battle Cross (think Super Off-Road, but with max 5 players, super fun) 

-Sanrio World Smash Ball (Air hockey hybrid with Hello Kitty characters) 

-Rockman X3 (because I can't afford the english version...) 

-Konami's Battle Perfect Selection albums.

 

I was pleased with the experience, although the fees from the proxy service and taxes and shipping crept up to a higher amount than expected. 

[newtmonkey]

Star Ocean

I decided to resume my game-in-progress this week, and put three hours or so into it (in-game clock now is at 9 hours).

Honestly, this game is pretty dire so far.  It's very disappointing, because all the ingredients are here for a great game (as Star Ocean 2 would go on to prove).  The skill system is very cool, and I like how the game changes a bit based on your decisions, giving you access to certain characters but locking you out from getting others.  It also looks and sounds great, and I imagine the fully voice acted opening was pretty mind blowing back in the day.

 

The game sadly falls apart where it matters.  Combat is simply horrible; it's in real time, but you simply just mash the A button over and over, or mash A+L/R to use special moves during boss fights.  You don't even need to move around, but that's actually a good thing because moving is ridiculously counterintuitive; instead of being able to move freely around the battlefield, you need to hold a button down to bring up a cursor, which you then move using the d-pad to wherever you want to move the character.  It's bonkers.

 

Exploration is horrible.  There is no "world map."  Instead, the towns are connected by overworld areas that are basically corridors.  These corridors are very linear, but annoying to get through because they twist and turn and are full of rocks and other garbage preventing you from just running from one end of the screen to the other.  At one point, 8 hours in, the game forces you to walk all the way to basically the beginning of the game to see a spaceship that has crashed to earth.  The game is not huge, so it only takes, I dunno, 15 minutes to go back, but it's so annoying.  When you get to the spaceship, your characters basically just go "oh, so that's a spaceship."  Then you have to walk all the way back to where you left off, 15 minutes away, to continue the quest.  What is the point of this, other than to waste your time?

 

Having said all that, the dungeons are suprisingly good for a 16-bit RPG.  They're pretty large and have a lot of hidden secrets and gimmicks.  There's actually some decent treasure to find in these.

Edited November 16, 2022 by newtmonkey

[newtmonkey]

Star Ocean

My adventures continue.  I'm about 12 hours in, and it feels like I'm nearing the endgame; I've read that the game is roughly 15-20 hours long, so that makes sense.  Combat has gotten better, but only in the sense that my passive skills are now kicking in more often and making battles even easier and much quicker.  It's still a big mess and seems pretty random.  During the previous boss encounter I had, my entire party was immediately wiped out before I could do anything.  I reloaded, tried again, and without doing anything different, beat the boss without anyone taking damage.  Crazy!

 

The backtracking and overall world navigation in this game are horrible.  At one point roughly 10 hours in I had to go around and talk to all the kings throughout the land, just to get a emblem from each.  No new quests, no puzzles; just backtrack all over the world to talk to a few kings so I can unlock the next step of the quest.  Because the game doesn't have a traditional world map (it's just a bunch of corridors in between towns), you can't just jump on an airship or whatever and fly from one place to the next.  Instead, you need to tediously go from town to town on ships, and the only way to know where each ship goes is to talk to the captain of the ship.  It's public transportation simulator.

 

The dungeons are still a high point, probably some of the best dungeons in a 16-bit RPG.

[newtmonkey]

Lennus

This was released as "Paladin's Quest" in the US.  I've never played this one, and all I knew of it was what little coverage it got in Nintendo Power back in the day.  I remember being turned off by the "cartoony" graphics back then and wasn't very interested, but even if I did want to try it, I could never find it in stores or at our local rental places.

 

I've read it's not a very long game, so I decided to give it a shot, and have really been enjoying it over the last few days!  It actually looks great, and I enjoy the weird fantasy/sci-fi setting.  The pacing is also very good.

 

It's also mechanically pretty interesting, since there are no magic or spell points; all spells cost hit points to cast.  This sounds annoying, but in practice it's fine, and even adds a bit more to think about during combat.  Instead of healing with magic, you use multi-use healing bottles that can be refilled in town (basically, the Estus Flask from Dark Souls).  Each character also has a proficiency score in each of the several schools of magic, that increases through use and makes spells more powerful.  It's a good idea to cast spells pretty often so that you can slowly build those proficiencies up naturally.

 

You have two fixed characters in the party, and another slot is often filled with another character dictacted by the story at that time.  Otherwise, you are free to fill up any empty slots with hireable mercenaries.  You have complete control over mercenaries (they can even level up), but you cannot change their equipment, so it's usually a good idea to keep replacing mercenaries as you find better ones.

 

I do have a couple of complaints so far.  It's VERY linear and the world map seems tiny so far.  The story does give you interesting reasons to go where you're going, but it's still basically just, go to town, learn about their problem, go to the nearby dungeon to solve the problem, then head to the next town, etc.  The spell names are also very annoying; it uses a system similar to SMT or Phantasy Star, where the spells all have nonsense names that you just have to learn.  There's a system of prefixes (all spells that buff your party start with "Bai-" for example), but it's very annoying to scroll through a list of dozens of spells with names like Baidaderu, Baidadomu, Baishisu, Baishisada, Baimomobo and remember what any of those do.

[Bloodreign]

Recently purchased, and awaiting in the mail, the SFC Konami made Chibi Maruko-chan game (Mezase Minna no Island), which is basically just a game with mini games in it starring the cast of the anime. Reminds me of the Tiny Toons sports games in some ways for both SNES and Genesis, just without as many mini games as the SNES Tiny Toons Wacky Sports Challenge has.

[newtmonkey]

Some random comments and thoughts on SNES/SFC:

 

- I've got used to playing Mega Drive games over composite video connected to a Retrotink 5X Pro with a consumer TV-esque scanline filter, and was shocked when I booted up my SFC over SCART connected to a OSSC.  It was just too sharp and pixelated for me.  I decided to give S-Video connected to the RT5XP a try, and was quite pleased with it.  The RT5XP also provides a more accurate aspect ratio, which is a plus.  I'm not saying I won't go back to SCART RGB some day, but for now it's fun to play the SFC like this.

 

- I decided to take a break from RPGs, and played a handful of (mostly) action games the other night.  I basically just went through the USA library on a SD2SNES, playing the games I had back in the day.  I didn't spend much time with each game, just until I died or got bored (which was very quick, since I was also quite drunk).  Some of the games I remember playing:

 

Batman Returns - A surprisingly good "belt scroller" (ugh) beat'em up.  Great music and graphics with large characters, but suffers a bit from having so few enemies on screen at a time.  It plays great, though, with snappy controls and more moves than your typical entry in the genre.

Bubsy - This game gets a bad rap now, mostly because of its subpar sequels, but this game on its own is pretty decent.  It was actually highly reviewed back in the day, if you look at some old magazines.

Contra III - What a game!  Amazing graphics, music, and attention to detail, and it plays like a dream.  Konami was on fire during the 16-bit era.

Demon's Crest - Another amazing game.  Probably some of the best, most atmospheric graphics on the system.  Capcom was also on fire during this era; they are definitely in the top three third-party developers for the system (Konami, Square, Capcom).

Donkey Kong Country - I replayed and completed this game a couple years back, and loved it as much then as I did back in the day when it first came out.  Revisiting it now, it's just as good as I remember.  Probably the best looking game on the system, and not just because of the prerendered sprites; lots of parallax scrolling, lots of cool effects, without any helper chips on cart and no slowdown!  A masterpiece.

Drakkhen - The first RPG released on the system in the US, and I think it's still a pretty good game.  It's definitely the most unique/bizarre RPG on the system.  I remember finally "figuring it out" back in the day and becoming addicted until I completed it.  Since then, I've played the original PC version, and although this version suffers in terms of graphics, it more than makes up for it with its cool, moody soundtrack.

 

That's about as far as I got last night, but I had so much fun that I'll probbaly do the same tonight!

Edited February 23, 2023 by newtmonkey

[Kirk_Johnston]

Well, I just tried Bushi Seiryuuden: Futari No Yuusha and found it quite interesting. It's made by Game Freak and actually has a bit of the Pokemon presentation, look, feel and polish to it imo. It's pretty cool, but it has that thing where the character moves locked to a grid rather than freely, plus everything advances one step at a time, both in top-down and side-view. So that's a bit disappointing for me, as I'd rather have a bit more fast-paced and immediate, more akin to A Link to the Past in terms of movement and fighting. But, for anyone who's happy to overlook that and go with its unique approach, it would likely be fun to once through.

 

Also recently played the Magician Lord demo by Maxel/Maxwell, the Sonic demo by TiagoSC, an early version of the unnamed-snes-game by UnDisbeliever, and the Lizard indie/homebrew game by Brad Smith (it was the NES version, but the SNES version looks pretty much identical, so I got the idea).

 

Some interesting stuff overall.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Bloodreign]

Played the Chibi Maruko-chan game I bought a little while back. The dodgeball type game is fun, the game where you have to throw your opponents in the water is pretty fun (I have yet to figure out how to spin enemies and toss them at the screen Turtles in Time style, and automatically counts as throwing them in the water), but the damned Paint the Floor game, which plays like Snake, except the paint dries after a bit, and you no longer slip on it, I can't get grasped down at all. Outside of the 1 mini game I can't do well at, the game is gorgeous, and has a ton of options in it, such as playing each mini game stand alone, or even a Karaoke mode.

 

Outside of that, I tested to see which GBC games ran on my Super Game Boy, outside of the clear carts, because those don't run. Thankfully the black carts all do run nicely (R-Type DX automatically just gives you the GB versions of R-Type 1 and 2 to select, and that's all). This is one of those times I wish the Tokimeki Memorial GBC games weren't so pricey, they look gorgeous already on a GBC (or a GBA SP). They aren't as colorful understandably on a SGB, but the spritework is fantastic on both GBC titles for the series.

 

Also found my old composite cables for my SNES, image quality is much nicer looking than what I was using before.

[WavyGravy]

I've had to fall back on emulation for the moment as I got a new TV a while back(upgraded from a 32" 1366x768 RCA to a 65" 4K 120Hz TCL R646), but it doesn't support composite input without an adapter, so I'm emulating at the moment despite having two SNES systems. The old 32" is currently pulling monitor duty for my Atari 130XE while I work on my project for that machine to learn 6502 ASM to prep for 65816 and hopefully SNES development in the future. I did just start a new job with a pretty substantial pay raise, though, so I'll be able to look at either setting up a CRT and sound system in another room or having a scaler in the living room with an FX Pak Pro, so I'm really looking forward to how my SNES setup works out in the future.

[Tanooki]

Forgot this topic existed with all the other drama going on.

 

I guess a month or a little more ago I got Lufia II and I've been slowly chipping away at it at least once a week for a bit, keeping it on my desk as a reminder since I have a handheld next to it.  Quite a solid game, but haven't used much else having been tinkering between a new game gear and Switch a bit now again too.

[newtmonkey]

Played some random games tonight, and here are some quick thoughts:

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time

This is one I had back in the day, and I remember it really seeming like an arcade-perfect port back then.  It's actually still a very good port, with great graphics, music, and plenty of enemies onscreen (unlike many beatemups on the system).  It's still a fun game, and it plays great, with very precise controls and more moves than your typical entry in the genre.  I guess the major issue I have with this game is the enemy variety... it feels like 95% of the enemies you fight are just Foot Soldiers.  They do have different weapons/attacks, but it's not enough imo, and the game gets very repetitive quickly.  Still a good game, though.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters

This is another nostalgic favorite of mine, for a weird reason.  One Chirstmas, I ended up getting an amp/receiver/tuner and set of speakers.  Nothing crazy, but decent quality.  I remember stripping the speaker wire with a pair of scissors (not ideal!), plugging it all in, and being stunned at true "hi-fi" sound when listening to FM radio or watching TV.

Anyway, I mention this here, because the first game I tried with my new hi-fi was Tournament Fighters.  I went into the sound test and played the track from Raphael's stage, and was absolutely blown away!  I could not believe how good it sounded.  It was such a memorable experience, that I can still clearly recall how it sounded on those speakers to this day, and whenever I get a new setup I always play the Raphael stage track to test it out and compare.

Tournament Fighters is more than a sound test, though, it's also a pretty decent fighter.  Besides the fantastic soundtrack, you've got some excellent graphics and it controls well.  It even has Neo Geo-esque "desperation" attacks.  Konami could have half-assed this and sold a ton just on the license, but they instead put out a really decent game.

 

Nosferatu

I remember this getting some coverage in the mags back in the day, but it just kept getting delayed and delayed, and when it came out it seemed like everyone had just given up on it.  It's pretty cool, actually.  It's basically Prince of Persia, but in a horror setting.  It looks great with very smooth animation, and the atmosphere is fantastic; very creepy/moody.  The intro is also animated really nicely, and is worth a watch.  I didn't get very far, but I did begin to get used to the controls, etc., so I will definitely be giving this some attention.

[Kirk_Johnston]

1 hour ago, newtmonkey said:

Played some random games tonight, and here are some quick thoughts:

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time

This is one I had back in the day, and I remember it really seeming like an arcade-perfect port back then.  It's actually still a very good port, with great graphics, music, and plenty of enemies onscreen (unlike many beatemups on the system).  It's still a fun game, and it plays great, with very precise controls and more moves than your typical entry in the genre.  I guess the major issue I have with this game is the enemy variety... it feels like 95% of the enemies you fight are just Foot Soldiers.  They do have different weapons/attacks, but it's not enough imo, and the game gets very repetitive quickly.  Still a good game, though.

I've never felt that with Turtles in Time (TiT). I still consider it one of the best beat 'em ups of the entire 16-bit generation, right up there with Streets of Rage 2. And, I guess for me, beat 'em ups just generally have that thing where it feels like you're using the same handful of moves and beating up mostly the same set of three or so enemies over and over (interestingly, there's actually seven [maybe eight] different regular enemies in TiT--but your 95% foot soldier figure is probably not far off the mark), which I've never really been that bothered by so long as the moment-to-moment gameplay is fun and the level variety balances things out. That's certainly the case in TiT, where the levels are actually great and have a lot of variety and personality themselves, with some expertly breaking up the normal walking around punching and kicking affair. There's also many iconic characters from the show that appear in boss battles regularly through the game too, which mixes things up--and some of those boss battles really are very cool. Plus, having all four turtles to choose from is kinda neat, and obviously perfectly fits the show. And, if I'm being fair, I think the developers actually did really well with how many subtle variations of look and weapon/attack type they managed to get from those standard foot soldier enemies, which probably also make up 95% of the baddie time in the show too and is therefor pretty accurate/true to the source. I guess that's exactly what we wanted and indeed expected from them as kids--and they certainly delivered. It's also running in SlowROM and yet never skips a beat, even with two players and up to 8 enemies on-screen at times and all, which I just have to give major kudos to the developers for that achievement. And, actually, now that I can see all these 16-bit games in the grand scheme of things and the context of each other, I honestly appreciate everything TiT pulled off now more than I ever did as a kid. So, yeah, it's still right up there for me. Horses for courses, I guess. 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[+Biff Burgertime]

15 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters

This is another nostalgic favorite of mine, for a weird reason.  One Chirstmas, I ended up getting an amp/receiver/tuner and set of speakers.  Nothing crazy, but decent quality.  I remember stripping the speaker wire with a pair of scissors (not ideal!), plugging it all in, and being stunned at true "hi-fi" sound when listening to FM radio or watching TV.

Anyway, I mention this here, because the first game I tried with my new hi-fi was Tournament Fighters.  I went into the sound test and played the track from Raphael's stage, and was absolutely blown away!  I could not believe how good it sounded.  It was such a memorable experience, that I can still clearly recall how it sounded on those speakers to this day, and whenever I get a new setup I always play the Raphael stage track to test it out and compare.

Tournament Fighters is more than a sound test, though, it's also a pretty decent fighter.  Besides the fantastic soundtrack, you've got some excellent graphics and it controls well.  It even has Neo Geo-esque "desperation" attacks.  Konami could have half-assed this and sold a ton just on the license, but they instead put out a really decent game.

I had this back in the day and loved it, great game.

 

I remember being mystified by the screenshots in Nintendo Power, some of the stages looked different... it was hard to tell for sure in those low-res magazine pics, but Shredder's stage was definitely different. It didn't look unfinished, better, or worse - just different. I wondered if there was another version of the game out there.

 

Now I better understand the way those reviews were done. Magazines would be sent pre-release builds so they had a review ready to print when the game actually came out. Many such beta builds are becoming known just now decades later, and you know what? The TMNT: Tournament Fighters beta out there has yet another version of Shredder's stage! This time with a horizontal wave effect to mimic fumes:

 

But I bring it up because you mentioned the music. The beta has a bunch of different songs that weren't in the final version at all! and again, they don't sound unfinished or lesser, many could've fit right alongside the finished tracks. It's clear some would turn into what we heard in the final game though. [Playlist] In the beta, songs aren't tied to stages, they just change every round. That's the only part that does seem unfinished.

 

It's always fascinating when content gets cut like this for no apparent reason. It can be fun to speculate sometimes, but with this I'm just glad to get a little extra content from an old favorite. Maybe the "Nintendo Power" build will surface some day...