Really happy to see Ufouria getting mentioned. It probably my favorite lesser-known NES game out there. Loved the music,the characters, the art style, the versatile gameplay and the pacing. I actually love it so much that I did a translation hack of it back in the day so I'm rather familiar with many of the smaller details in the game. Heck, when the original released on Switch recently (Under it's original name "Hebereke") I even set a world record speedrun at the time xD If you know what you're doing and know the route then you can definitely beat the game in an hour's time, no sweat. One important gameplay mechanic you sadly missed is that you can indeed jump on enemies, but you need to press and hold down to initiate the state where you'll actually hurt enemies. It's probably my biggest problem with the game cause it's not communicated well to the player at all an it's complicating something that should have been a simple mechanic. But I guess think of it as a lesser pogo-jump from Ducktales. When killed, the enemies can also drop health but it's random and most of the time they will instead drop that useless ball thing you use during showdows. which adds to the tedium. Had that stuff been addressed and fixed, then this game would be much more enjoyable for newcomers to play through. Something I would often find fascinating is that there are certain enemies that you might never see on even a normal playthrough as they only appear once in specific areas, which is kinda baffling that the developers would set the memory aside for something like that. Uforuia is a games that oozes with charm and personality and I would recommend everyone here to try it out if you want a different kind of Metroidvania. It's available to download from the Switch e-shop under the name "Hebereke" though it's sadly the Japanese version.
It has the Western version with the added bonus of translated slideshows for both versions, showing how different both versions are. City Connection made a stream about it a few weeks ago.
The Japanese original mentions the down jump in the Title Screen cutscene, which is never mentioned in the European version. Going on Ufouria 2 logic, this is called a "Butt Attack".
Hearing you describe the dojos in Kenseiden as stupidly difficult absolute terrifies me, considering how casually you glossed over Holy Diver's difficulty level.
The only thing that sucks about Moon Crystal is the tiny Sword/Knife syndrome that so many old games have... Here's looking at you Lagoon! 😅 It would of course make the game easier, but if the Sword were merely twice as long the game would be a lot more fun to play.
lots of these games look terrific! i would absolutely recommend a translated rom of Hebereke (JP) over UFouria (EU), because the characters have way more personality.
I'm not shocked, but I didn't know that Kings Bounty was 8-bit. That game is like the Heroes of Might and Magic granddaddy, at least that's how I felt it. Video is going to be wonderful.
indeed, i've only played Moon Crystal (last stage is infuriating), but knew about Kenseiden (i think anyone back then knew about it, was in EVERY magazine at the time), and had cosmic soldier on MSX. didn't played that one much, can't read moon runes.
Ah, Holy Diver. There was a cool-yet-shady-in-retrospect video store back when I was a kid that stocked lots of imports. the famous weird cartridges with the ribbon on them. but they went the extra mile and printed out fake "manual" leaflets and front/back slips, often with fake names invoking popular franchises like Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa being labelled as Baby Mario, and of course this being Castlevania: Holy Diver. I remember the back slip saying you're a belmont who beat Dracula but then followed his soul down to hell to finish him for good. It was suitably metal as fuck considering the game they'd put that fake storyline to.
So crazy that Ronnie James Dio had an entire Famicom game based off him and it was never originally released in the USA ! The country he's from! RIP Dio! 🤘🤘 Holy Diver!! (Update) Holy Diver was officially released world wide a few years ago by Retrobit
I always recommend Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. Crazy old Hudson adventure for the NES that goes into some weird places. You start out in a sort of fantasy setting as Sir Cucumber and go through Japanese nightclubs, fighting eight headed banana monsters, and have mech battles. It's not only a crazy, wacky, cartoony adventure, but one of the better games of that genre on the console. Also thanks for letting me know about the Ufouria sequel. That plus the upcoming Shadow of the Ninja remake seem like a good time!
I love how the ZX Spectrum has such a unique look to their games and it's interesting seeing how creative the developers and artists were with such limitations.
Wow, I don't think I've ever heard of any of these. I think the parallax on seraphima surprised me the most from a technical standpoint. Great video as usual
@@st1ka It's a weird case of showing just how far good game design can push the limits of hardware. but also... how good game design doesn't NEED 5k graphics.
As much as I love video games you're one of the few channels I subscribe to. You really put the work into this. I learn a lot about retro Media from you. Good job. Don't stop man!
I mean, I'd say Renegade is the 2nd best beat'em up on the Master System, as there's also a port of Streets of Rage for it, which's kind of... as good as the Mega Drive version? Altho it received a little downgrade on the graphics and sound
I... do feel the need to point out that Kenseiden (剣聖伝) is Japanese, not German, so its English-friendly pronunciation is ken-say-den; not ken-sigh'den. *goes back to watching the video*
While Shadow of the Ninja might turn out to be too difficult, the fact that there's an option to play as a kunoichi does make me more interested. NES games with (effectively) gender selection is a rarity.
The Heroes of Might and Magic game for Game boy actually shows some graphics from HoMM3. The goblin portrait and wolf rider portrait and probably even some of the hero portraits. Orcs using axes instead of crossbows is also HOMM3.
Loved the bit with the banana - start to finish - it's things like that, that keep me subbed to your channel mate, and separate you from 1000s of others doing exactly same thing. Excellent content brother.
Heh, well, Intellivision is a 16 bit console, but, I'll allow it, at least if it means you'll include PC-Engine games in the future under a similar loophole.
Yep, the neogeo pocket color is also 16-bit but I included it in this video because the games are closer to what we associate with 8-bit. Conversely, I include the PC engine in my 16-bit videos and the N64 in my 32-bit videos.
(Arcade) Renegade is also the first game in the Kunio-kun series, which at this point I'd say is more influential than it's connection to Double Dragon. Also Cosmic Soldier 2 and the first Megami Tensei game actually came out the same year. Not sure which came out first. Or did the first Cosmic Soldier have the dialog conversation system too?
Cosmic soldier predates megami tensei by a month or two. But from what I understand, the first megami tensei game didn't have the monster mechanic gameplay element
@@Cyril86 oh interesting. I never played the first game in the series. I was told it didn't have the monster collecting mechanic. I guess that's what the person meant
11:29 kenseiden looks insane. i would have sworn some of the background assets and sounds came from the revenge of shinobi if this game was not made before it. the dojos have a double dragon vibe to me as well haha.
Kenseiden mentioned!! Def one of my favorite SMS games. Love it so much I even ripped the FM VGM pack that’s on SMS Power as well as the title and stage 1 music being the first tracks I played on my vgm podcast! 11:21
@@st1ka it really is! I remember when I first noticed that his sword always stayed on his left hip and slashed with his right hand i kinda blew my kid mind.
i played kenseiden back in the day. but i didnt get very far. and then as an adult i beat the game..... it's an awesome game.... i'll have to try the others.
Fun fact: the Intellivision isn't actually an 8-bit system. It has a 16-bit CPU. ... It also has a d-pad, but mentioning that starts flame wars because everyone "knows" Nintendo invented that.
Interesting, that nes games - Moon Crystal, Holy Diver, Shadow of the Ninja and Banana Prince was known in late 90 in Russia. They was not very common, but all of them i play in school and can be bouch in stores or exchanges from friends and markets. God bless pirates, who give us games for Dendy.
@@Esirre Looking at the timeline, the song is from '83, the game from '89 and tbh the player character has long hair and a cape, similar to what Dio is wearing in the video so... my headcannon is that yes, definitely, this game was inspired by the awesome Dio song! 😁
Praise the algorithm, what an awesome video to stumble onto! Thanks for sharing these gems, I'm getting back into NES/SNES/Genesis era of gaming and now I have even more games to add to my collection!
Moon Crystal is great, I've been playing it on my AVS and I love it. Also for Ufouria, you just need to press "down" while jumping on an enemy, then you can kill them.
16, 8, 4, 0. The data bus of the main processor is not what dictates what kind of games are in a console. All of that was actually a terrible marketing strategy of the 90s that meant nothing and was a lot of BS. But, the damage is done, and now “8-bit”, quotation marks, collectively refers to a series of styles, music, genres and other stuff prominent on the 3rd generation of consoles and certain other contemporary consoles and microcomputers.
Yep completely agreed. Heck, the intellivision is 16-bit. The problem is if I said "3rd generation of consoles" it wouldn't be true either, because the neogeo pocket color isn't 3rd generation. So I just have to say 8-bit and lump the systems by what we associate with 8-bit
That bonus level in Delta's Shadow looks crazy. I have no experience with the ZX Spectrum, but I know that spec wise, the game is pushing it hard. As I don't have any nostalgia for the Spectrum, I would love to see the PC version in the near future *hint, hint, wink, wink. I may not have grown up with the Spectrum, but I started gaming on the Nes and Master System in 1986. Having said that, I have played three of these games. Specifically Power Blade, Kenseiden, and Renegade. Very, very good choices.
14:55 UFouria has been recently re-released on PC and Switch, along with its sequel. It's a very fun metroidvania game, if a bit grating at times. The first game is only in japanese, the workaround they offered was to drop a "translated" pic in the game menu. -Apparently, also, I learned it the hard way, but you can defend yourself at the beginning of the game. They incorporated a mechanic where you can jump on your enemies head by pressing the down arrow while in mid-air. It's easy to mess up. I played the entire first portion of the game not knowing I could do that.
Games you might not played before . Literally Moon Crystal was my childhood. That and Doki Doki Yuenchi. Took me about 15-20 years to find out the names of those games,since i didn't know them as a child. Had them on my Zhiliton (NES Clone). That thing had a power supply that got hot in hours and actually melted a few times.
@@st1ka it reminds me a lot of the Taz escape from Mars game. similar ideas about level design and objectives. The story is completely different obviously though. which does kinda make the difference in level progression structure needed. Taz is mostly just "kill all the Martian stuff". Except you're breaking walls, and hunting down items you need to progress.
Great video man, but the thumbs, it's getting sad, honestly. Thats not a kind of audience that you want, or need, just sayn. Keep up the good work tho,
Think of it this way. If it weren't for these thumbnails there's a Good chance you never would have found my channel because the algorithm wouldn't have even showed it to you 😅
@@st1ka I thought about this before writing, but i'm pretty sure they're getting more sassy, it's not a complaining tho just a head's up. However, your content is awesome, it's just a shame what the plataform makes the creators do in order to keep their content relevant (social media in general) and i know you gotta play the game.
@@decapitasom You know what? You make a good point. Decided to switch to something a little less unhinged. Same girl, but it's exactly how she looks in the game ^_^
I got a copy of Shadow of the Ninja as a kid and it's one of my favorite NES games. Couple things that weren't mentioned: Hold the attack button until the life bar flashes, then release for a lightning attack that clears the screen at the cost of health, does good damage to bosses too. There is a power up system for the weapons, if you keep picking up the sword or the grapple hook powerups (not switching between them) when you get the second one you will get a level 2 weapon with a bit longer range for the sword and faster attack for the hook. Taking too much damage knocks you back down to the base version though. There's also a third power level but it's hard to maintain because almost any damage will take you back to level 2. This system also affects the shuriken and bomb powerups, turning the shuriken to kunai at level 2 and homing stars at level 3, and the bombs will be thrown out in front of you at level 2 and 3 instead of dropped straight down. Bomb powerups are usually hidden near bosses if you know where to look too! Great game.
those mapper chips on moon crystal are POPPIN. we diddnt get games like that in the US because nintendo didnt let game devs use unautrhorized mapper chips like they did for the famicom in japan. ive heard thats why we didnt get mr.gimmic in america as well, another georgious famicom game
Not just truly care. You can only do so much with effort and intent. But also knows every in and out and more of the console and how to squeeze out the best of the last cycle of the CPU 😅
Good choices. I did Sylvan Tale on a jael broek 2DS and it was pretty good. Nice and colorful. Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue (One of the better season of the show) wasn't bad on GBC but getting the las boss is tricky, so I used a Password to face him after beating the rest of it. Holy Diver I had on a 150 NES Games GBA Pak and it was too unfair to finish. I got to the part with the Castle thing boss on the several platforms over the pit as you try to git him in the rotating face and try in vain to dodge his shots, there even with save states I couldn't beat him and after my save state f'd out, I saw it as a sign and had enough of it. Kenseiden was great and I did it on my 100 Master System/Game Gear Games GBA Pak and did beat I think 3 of the Dojo's. Shadow of the Ninja I did on my 2DS and it was tough but great, Taking place in the distant future year of 2029, the year of Robotech Season 2 and maybe Transformers Zone. Renegade was good and the bike parts were kinda tricky to kick the guys in the right spot, but I liked it. Might wanna try Moon Crystal (Not Sailor Moon's Imperium Silver Crystal) It looks pretty cool. The cutscenes remind me of Nadia The Secret Of Blue Water on Genesis with the character designs.
I played Shadow of the Ninja back in the day as a kid, renting it from Blockbuster. It was such an awesome experience and you're right. That games music was a huge hit with me. Every single track on it is amazingly good. They are even working on a modern remake of the game, Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn, like they did with Ninja Warriors for the SNES! I'm so excited to try it out!
From that description Black Widow really does sound like a much newer game with all of that mechanical complexity, it reminds me of Geometry Wars with its many types of enemies and that one came out in the 2000's.
Holy Diver's one I knew about, because it was recently given an official translation and re-release by Retro-Bit. (In a similar vein, Metal Storm is an NES game I highly recommend that Retro-Bit helped give a re-release to as well, this time with an all new translation. A game I highly recommend either version of.) Ufouria I'd seen before too, though never played. BTW, the game is on Steam under "HEBEREKE Enjoy Edition". Early metroidvania, good stuff. Shadow of the Ninja is on the Switch Online, if you have a subscription. The NES Renegade is available on the Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun Retro Brawlers Collection - sadly not the Master System version though, that's just a collection of the NES titles, including many that were never translated before. And this video is convincing me that I really missed out by not getting games in the Xbox Game Room back in the day.
Dude! Holy Diver! Fun fact, what spells you have determine what level you're on. When I was hacking the game, I artificially upped the number of spells you have. And that would jump me to a specific level.
Kenseiden is amazing. And yes one dojo is incredibly stupid difficult, but the best hour of training you can get for platforming and memorization. It was so satisfying to finish, even with no fanfare afterwards.
I also once took the challenge of passing all the training grounds, and it was a frustration/awesomeness loop for more than one or two hours, for every new pixel I could advance in the stage. I could beat it, but I don’t even remember what was the prize, as it was already useless to me for beating the game. It is The best SMS game, for me.
Some fantastic games here mate. I've been following the Kenseiden 16 bit remake which looks amazing. I'll have to look into UFOuria as it looks very much like WonderBoy Dragons Trap in some ways!
isn't neogeo pocket a 16bit system. I understand i would place it under 8bit als since it doesn't look a bit better them gamegear or such. But theres 16 bit on the box even.
@@st1ka i understand. i don't see anything on the neogeo pocket colour looking somewhat like a sega genesis. but the power within the system isn't within it's graphics. the extra processing power is used to animate those small fighter sprites on the system really well, better then any other 8bit system. But the graphics really don't move beyond anything gamegear mastersystem or gameboy colour. They have a certain charm tough.
Oh I tottally get what you mean. It's just when people say "8-bit" or "16-bit" they tend to think about the graphics and kind of forget the processing power. I have the same issue with the PC engine, 3DO and even the N64. It's like an intermediate system that doesn't fit cleanly into one generation, but I have nowhere else to put it
@@st1ka exactley. like you said. thye intellevision also had a 16bit processor. but the graphics weren't even on nes level. mostly the bit wars where a good indication. but also not. pc engine 8bit....it put snes and genesis to shame graphic wise at times.
Came here to say this. I love a Neo Geo Pocket being mentioned, but that's definitely not an 8-bit game, so the video title is not too helpful. And I'm not sure Battlantis is 8-bit either. I wasn't able to find any info on that.
Man I used to play Banana Prince as a kid! It was in Japanese, so when then quiz mini game popped i could not finish it... But those platforming levels were great!
