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Post by soop on Oct 2, 2018 8:36:08 GMT
Bomberman '93 was the first improvement to the basic formula of Bomberman. Here we see an improved single player campaign, far more interesting with vastly different stage themes (and some awesome music btw, some of my fave on the system - fun fact, Slammin' Sea used to be my alarm tone, and it's great). Really entertaining boss fights, and that's just the single player! Now in Multiplayer mode, we have all new arenas, each with quirks to stop things from getting stale (and to increase the mayhem dramatically - especially the teleport stage). Perhaps the great thing about Bomberman is the fact that it's so easy to pick up, but the difficulty curve between beginner and expert is still pretty fair to beginners. I've been playing for years, and I still lose, I still make daft mistakes. Some say this is the best original Bomberman, and while I prefer '94 slightly, there's not a lot in it.
Gradius II, the only other of the series to make the cut aside from Parodius, is more of the same from the now established Konami franchise. This is a faithful CD conversion of the arcade game, and actually features some impressive graphics, I'm fairly sure are identical to the arcade. This time you get to choose different weapon configurations, a feature which would carry forward through the series. The PC Engine version also features an extra stage and multiple endings, making it arguably the superior version of the game. As always though, Gradius is very hard, so it's one for the hardcore.
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Post by soop on Oct 2, 2018 8:37:24 GMT
And there you have it - this is the final matchup of the second knockout stage. I'll lock the votes tomorrow, and we'll get a clear picture of our top 16!
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Post by Galahad on Oct 2, 2018 12:36:34 GMT
Tough choice for me as I like both games.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 2, 2018 14:35:46 GMT
I love both games, but this is my favorite Bomberman, and there needs to be a Bomberman at the top.
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Post by lukester on Oct 2, 2018 14:35:58 GMT
Gradius II is one of those games that just pushes the PCE to it's limits
Always had more of a soft spot for Bomberman 93 though
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Post by spenoza on Oct 2, 2018 14:51:19 GMT
Gradius II is an excellent port, but I'm not sure it necessarily pushes any limits... I guess I'd want to hear more about why you think that. Maybe I'm forgetting something.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Oct 2, 2018 16:29:05 GMT
Gradius II is an excellent port, but I'm not sure it necessarily pushes any limits... I guess I'd want to hear more about why you think that. Maybe I'm forgetting something. It may not do as much at once as some other PCE games, but it does handle more action/collsion/misc without slowdown than any SNES game and as much as or more than any Genesis game does without slowdown. With all of your Options, you're literally controlling 5 ships at once, all shooting large streams of bullets, separate from misc like missles. Unlike some shooters, you still have lots of environment to collide with. Plus sections with richocheting objects that explode into more richocheting objects. I'm not a hardware or programming expert, but I notice the kinds of things that wound up being the most taxing in 16-bit games. It could be a simple as an advantage of 8-bit code for some things, but I really don't know what goes on under the hood. When you look at how little some celebrated games like TFIV do in contrast while slowing down, it really puts it into perspective.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 2, 2018 17:13:35 GMT
Yeah, Gradius II does handle sprite collision code very well. It's very competent in that regard, certainly.
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