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I've been playing Life Force on the NES for years. Love it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgfTC3UVCVs
But then I tried it on the PC Engine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMgdSrd8nY4
I was blown away by the music, scrolling effects, graphics, and overall gameplay.
Comparing the two, can you believe that there are people out there, that consider the PC Engine as part of the 8-bit generation?
Until the other day I had no idea Shinobi was released on the PC Engine either, I prefer it to the Master System version.
Seems there is so much I don't know about just hiding on that console.
Salamander isn't quite the same game as Life Force, but I believe that the Famicom version is based on Salamander. The PC Engine ports of Salamander and Gradius are solid, but could have had more parallax and voice samples if they weren't put on smaller HuCards. Gradius II is more of a showcase for the PCE and the source material makes better use of the hardware. The Famicom version is still amazing, even though it uses an enhancement chip.
Shinobi is okay on PCE, but pretty disappointing as a port and missing too much content. It's still cool and fun because it's Shinobi, but it's not across the board better than the SMS version.
There are ports of Ninja Warriors for Mega-CD and PCE HuCard. The PCE version is very tame on a small HuCard while the Mega-CD port is similar quality to the CD port of Final Fight.
There is a PCE port of Black Hole Assault which looks almost identical to the Sega-CD version, except almost everything is reproportioned (nicely) for 256 pixel wide resolution, some background layer elements are lost and one or two are added. I haven't played it in years, but I don't think it has any parallax in the stages.
Some other 16-bit ports many people aren't aware of:
Dragon Slayer LoH 1 & 2 for MD, SFC, PCE
Shin Megami Tensei for MCD, SFC, PCE -MCD version is the most advanced
Popful Mail is on all 3
River City Ransom is on PCE CD
Burai is on all 3
Tatsujin/Truxton is on PCE
Dungeon Explorer II was ported to SFC as Crystal Beans
New Zealand Story is on MD & PCE -MD version seemed better, can't remember which is arcade faithful
The PCE port of Rainbow Islands is supposed to be the best, but the MD version is very well done for a cart game.
Syd of Valis is an SD version of the Turbo/PCE version of Valis II.
The PC Engine is kinda like the Saturn, we North Americans got the crappy end of the deal.
Lords of Thunder PCE is a million times better than the Sega CD version, and it's not the colors or music I'm talking about. The SCD version has the difficulty all messed up and the game suffers unexplainable slowdown.
BITD PC Engine Salamander did get some appreciation, but because it wasn't a domestic release it's kind of been forgotten about.
I've considered getting a PC Engine just for this game and Raiden.
Or I could regain an SNES. Tough decision.
PC Engine ports are usually king as far as shmups are concerned. It is the shmup system of that era especially when you're talking the the CD games. The Genesis/Mega Drive comes close but no cigar.
Life Force is not without its charms though.
I've been eying PC-Engine Salamander since I got my region modded DUO/R years ago. I never want to pay the asking price, and once I found out that Life Force is kind of its own game I just picked that up. One day I hope to find Salamander on PC-Engine and Saturn for a price I can't say no to though. I can't stand Gradius in any version though.
The only one I like is the X68000 one, and even that took a while to warm up to.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
Checkpoint based shooters tend to frustrate me in general because although I love the genre I suck at it and like to use respawn invincibility periods to cheese through difficult segments.
Is checkpoints the biggest difference between Gradius and Salamander/Life Force? I'd be surprised if that is why I don't like it as R-Type is my all time favorite shooter. There's just something about Gradius that bores me to tears. Life Force's speed and 2-player made it probably my favorite NES shooter.
Most shmups = puke. Most of the time you fly vertical killing things, most of them basically all look the same, I mean how much Saturn, DC, TG shmups are different ? I don't like shmups or rpgs mostly, but I play good ones like Lunar or R Silvergon but most is the same yes ? R Type horizontal ones are okay too but still "oh I'm in a ship and have to defend my planet, I'm last one left like the other 99,999 shmups".
:(Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
Life Force is still my favorite NES shooter. Played it since 1998.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
But that doesn't really mean much.
Nintendo consoles, aren't really something that you play shooters on.