Did you know this was released? Games that no one misses or remembers

[Yakumo1975]

2 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

The Brainies was developed in France but Power Piggs, for instance, was published by Titus but wasn't developed in France.

Power Pigs had a really long development cycle.  I remember playing an early alpha build years before the final game was released.  

There was a lot of potential with Power Pigs but it ended up being poorly designed from a level design point of view. 

[Tanooki]

Ok see now I've always liked Kendo Rage, knew it was a (for the time) edited the best it could game without ruining it from overseas, but had no idea there was some spinoff sequel of sorts.  Shame it's not another of the same style, but the fighter, just dug up a video.  It had a SFC release, shortly after (months) PS1 too both stuck in Japan except much later when it got some oddball PSN type release under some import label to download which I'm sure got ignored being just weird.

 

It looks like a good bit of fun, curious, after posting this I'll see what it goes for.  There are a few oddities I had at a time not known came to the system.

 

That said, I was thinking, and did you know aside from the usually known Neo Geo ports that we got to the SNES/SFC that there were a number of spinoff titles from the franchise, if not just sequels that annoyingly were not localized?  I keep forgetting to grab these as I know I'd enjoy them, and here's a top 3 of such things (in no interesting order.)

 

#1 Sengoku (Sengoku Denshou)

 

#2 Neo Drift Out (Super Drift Out) -- this one I looked up before, super cheap grab

 

#3 Art of Fighting 2 (Ryuko no Ken 2) -- also fairly cheap ($20 range)

 

There are others, but people are I think a bit more aware, just got 2 of them myself from a soon to be cheap to free lot of SFC titles online.

[Wayler]

Ports eh? I've got a double whammy on this department

 

Road Riot 4WD / Steel Talons

Why did I group these together you might ask? Well, to my knowledge (which is very, very limited towards this company), these are originally Arcade games made by Atari. The other is a 3D chopper flight sim and the other is a 3D racing game. Choppy is also a word one would use to describe the frame rate on these (the racing game does run a bit smoother to be honest). I have no idea how faithful these versions are but having watched through the longplays, I can say that the music is ear-grating and/or non-existent and the sound effects are horrible, so I'm fairly certain they got those spot on. Just don't listen to that engine noise for too long or you will go insane.

 

[Rhomaios]

On 3/26/2024 at 1:26 PM, Wayler said:

Super Valis IV is one of those games that I've known about but for one reason or another, never actually sat down and played. Seems like an enjoyable Castlevania-esque action romp.

 

******

 

Now for something different:

 

Cannondale Cup

I'm sure some of you are familiar with the extremely rare and weird Exertainment interactive fitness system, an exercise bike for the SNES. Only two games were released for it: Exertainment Mountain Bike Rally and Speed Racer. I was surprised to find out this game is actually the "normal" home version for the mountain bike game, released a whole year earlier. They made some superficial changes to the game for the exertainment release (don't really know why they bothered) that are listed here: https://tcrf.net/Cannondale_Cup. I was drawn to this by the rather nice and scenic cover art and didn't know about the origins until I did some research. The cover is weirdly serene because the game is full of 90's edgy attitude. You'd think they would have spray-painted the title at least to give it more groovy energy.

The game itself is a rather ambitious effort at a mode 7 racing game, with terrain elevations to boot. Sadly the SNES clearly can't handle this much tubular awesomeness as the frame rate is pretty bad and the game looks and controls like mud. This probably would have worked better for the next generation of consoles. Though I remember there was a small BMX craze in the 90s. Maybe the developer couldn't wait and collect that sweet, sweet money before the fad ran out.

 

 

Cannondale Cup looks like a rough Road Rash. I'm guessing it was inspired by it.

[Wayler]

King Arthur's World

 

Before Argonaut dabbled onto the Super FX chip and brought us Star Fox, they released this side-scrolling real time strategy game, which basically answers the question: "What if you dress up the Lemmings as knights?". And it's a damn good game if you like this sort of thing. Graphics are functional, the music is catchy (apart from the brain-draining training jingle) but the gameplay is key. Managing the mindless automaton soldiers is pretty simple even with gamepad, though I'm glad mouse support is there. And most importantly, you can make the troops stop in a spot unlike Lemmings, who just venture to their deaths. There are several kinds of troops, from archers and swordsmen, to wizards and engineers, all with their own skill. You puzzle-fight your way through from earthly medieval settings to more weirder locales (which is probably why they chose to go with those funky escher-stairs on the front cover) to rid the world from evil.

 

Perhaps the slow pace of the troops is annoying sometimes and it really needed a speed option (it does have a paws-button though......ha-ha-ha) but this is one of those low-key hidden gems that doesn't get talked about a lot.

 

 

 

Japan got this as Royal Conquest and it received a more realistic approach for the cover. The game's are identical as far as I know.