NFGworld! News http://nfgworld.com/mb/ Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:40:13 GMT FeedCreator 1.8.0-dev (info@mypapit.net) Iphone: Dodonpachi Resurrection http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/923-Iphone-Dodonpachi-Resurrection Espgaluda 2 was the best shooting action to be found on the iphone.  Well, now I'd like to assure you that Cave's Dodonpachi Resurrection is now the very best shooting action for the iphone.

This is a short review, 'cause I want to get back to playing it, but let's get to the pretty bits right away:

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-DDPR1.png] [Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-DDPR2.png]

The game runs very smoothly indeed.  Cave's learned a lot from Espgaluda, and starting a game has about five fewer menu screens as most options are set, weirdly enough, in the options so you don't choose them every time.  Once playing, the game is relentlessly great.

The game features two main modes, Arcade and Iphone.  The former's just like the arcade, with a chaining multiplier that increases with each enemy killed, but resets if you wait too long between kills.  This means you're constantly on the lookout for slow patches, and dragging out kills or rushing to destroy something before the counter (and your score) drops.

Iphone mode features a very cool gimmick: the S & M gauge.  When you destroy an enemy, the gauge shifts towards Slaughter, and when you scrape close to a bullet (or more often a stream of bullets) it shifts towards Menace.  When you're in slaughter mode your multiplier is constantly dropping, so while annihilating fields of popcorn enemies bumps it up, any slowdown in the frenzy sees it steadily decline.  In Menace mode the multiplier doesn't decline, so you're faced with an insane requirement: stay close to the enemy's bullets to maintain your multiplier.  Play it safe and your gauge starts to shift towards S, and when it crosses the central line, your multiplier starts dropping very quickly.

Maxing your multiplier at 1000 and acing a level and its boss is very rewarding.  =D

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-DDPR3.png] [Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-DDPR4.png]

And now, please, let me mention the music.

The music is awesome, the very best shooter music since Raiden DX, and that's saying something.  It's catchy, it's fun, it's a little bit frantic, and while playing it last night I was wiggling my feet.

I want the soundtrack and I want it now.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-DDPR5.png]

It's $4.99 ($5.99 AUD) for a limited time.  It's worth twice that price, but get it while it's cheap and live extra happy!

NFGapproved!

iTunes link
Developer site ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:46:53 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/923 Iphone: Castlevania Puzzle http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/902-Iphone-Castlevania-Puzzle
And so now we have an iPhone Castlevania.  Unlike Java-based phones, which got a real platform Castlevania game, the iPhone game is a remake of Konami's old arcade game Taisen Puzzle Dama.  Created back when PuyoPuyo and Columns and a hundred other falling block Tetris-alike games were drowning players worldwide, it was re- and re-re and re-re-re-released  under many different names: the Twinbee shooting series had a Puzzle Dama release, so did the Tokimeki dating sim series, and so did the Pop-n music series.  Konami has a long history of flogging this concept, and now it's Castlevania's turn.  And this time there are RPG elements stacked on top with level-ups and weapon-gets and fruits and gems and medals and shit stacked so high you might forget the game itself is pretty average.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-TaisenDama.png] [Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-TokkaeDama.png]
Left: Twinbee Puzzle Dama for PS1 (stolen from HC101)
Right: Tokkae Puzzle Dama arcade game (stolen from System16.com)

As you might expect, re-hashing this much material results in a game that is far less than the sum of its parts.  It's hugely disappointing in fact, and shows all the hallmarks of a rushed product built from scavenged pieces. 

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-3.png]
It's exactly the same, but different. 
It looks a lot like Capcom's Puzzle Fighter, but this series predates it.

The graphics are completely random. Some of them are glorious and more or less authentic, ripped from SotN and looking great.  Others are decidedly less so - some screens have badly stippled images that look like they've gone through one or more too many colour reduction filters.  When you start a match there's a too-long-to-fade-in segment where Alucard faces off against the opponent. Alucard is nicely rendered in high res, but the opponents are made of large pixels. Now, I love pixels, I literally wrote a book on pixels, but this sort of inconsistent treatment is jarring. Why is one of them high res, the other not?

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-2.png]
Thankfully you can skip these slow-ass screens.

The music is comprised of short, looping tracks. They don't end well or segue into each other, they just fade out and start again, and tracks with long intros get annoying, 'cause the boring intro is a significant amount of the overall track time.  While you're adjusting your stats between rounds you'll probably hear the menu music loop two or three times.  It's perhaps expected on a downloaded game, but it's no less disappointing.

The controls are fiddly and I'm not sure I'll get used to them.  There are several things that piss me off: swiping your finger down in a large motion drops the current crystal pair swiftly, but if you're even the tiniest bit sloppy with your vertical movement, you'll fling the falling crystals left or right so you can never be confident about their eventual destination (especially when you're under pressure!)  If you do a quick short swipe, they drop immediately. Ultimately I feel this is a bit too random for my taste - I think I'd probably be happy if I could turn off the left/right slide while dropping with a long swipe.  Otherwise, it's fine.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-1.png]
You navigate through the familiar castle, now with random battles.

Do you remember 90s-era games that would have the warning "Made with Macromedia" on the back of the box? That's what this feels like: it's basically a product cobbled together from scattered pieces and the whole never really gels.

Even the menus annoy, selecting some options with your little cursor bat shoots off a full two-second fireball, so you're just waiting while they show off their nice little fireball animation from one side of the screen to the other.  The graphic style is essentially random as well, with hard-to-read fancy fonts and carefully rendered buttons mixed with what appear to be fillers, plain square buttons with a regular old font inside.  Did they run out of time?  Was the budget maxed out and placeholders left in? 

The sliding of gems isn't smooth, the sounds rarely change, the voices don't seem to match the theme, the font's hard to read, etc etc etc. There's an absolute ton of content here, but it seems like they took an average game and heaped stuff on it again and again until, by sheer weight of stuff, it justified the price tag. 

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-4.png]
There's just so much shit trying to distract you from the core game.

And it's so dull! I've played more than 20 rounds, gathered some unremarkable armour and a half dozen fruits, and I've never come close to losing a round. Map navigation is clunky and ugly too. Argh, it's just a thousand tiny cuts, really. No real show stoppers, but nothing really awesome, and a core game that's just average.

So ultimately I cannot recommend it.  Perhaps if you're a puzzle-loving RPG fan, you might be happy, but I am not.  It's the first time I feel I've wasted my money on an iPhone purchase.


Konami's touch dev blog
Euro iTunes link
US iTunes version ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:21:00 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/902 Iphone: Mobigame's EDGE http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/881-Iphone-Mobigame-s-EDGE
[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/mobiedgelogo.png]

The goal is simple: roll your cube from the start to the end of the stage, collecting any glowy things, and trying not to fall off.  You're ranked based on the number of glowy things picked up, and the number of times you plummet to your doom. 

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Edge01.png]

The joy of the game comes from the tricky things you've got to do in order to reach the goal.  There are the standard platform dangers - moving bits, touch-and-drop panels, springs and so on, but then the game gets clever.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Edge02.png]

When your cube is rolling, the edge in contact with the wall or floor is locked in place.  This allows you to, for example, roll up and hover by tapping against gravity.  As long as you're stuck to the wall or a platform edge like this, you accumulate 'edge time' which counts against your stage time.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Edge03.png]

This same trick allows you to stick to the side of a moving platform, or hover against a wall with no floor, waiting for the floor to come back.  The thrill of trying to balance against the side of a moving platform, where nudging your cube the tiniest bit too much or too little will drop you into deep space is palpable.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Edge04.png]

The on-screen d-pad works as well as you'd hope, though you can also use a swipe-and-hold control which I don't really like.  There's a ton of levels, chiptunes for a soundtrack (download here!) and gorgeous minimalist graphics.

If it's not the best iphone game, it's pretty close.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Edge05.png]

Developer site
itunes link ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:57:12 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/881 Iphone: Last Gladiators Pinball http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/876-Iphone-Last-Gladiators-Pinball the sequel (Necronomicon) first, and it was superior in many ways.  Now though, Last Gladiators gets all my play time, for two simple reasons:
  • It's available on the iPhone
  • It's far better than the Saturn version.

Basically, BeXide fixed all of the annoying things in the game: no more long gaps in music playback as the CD flicked from track to track, no more giant 'aim here!' boxes covering parts of the playfield, and a tweaked table that was more predictable with better flow.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/lg972.png]
This is SO ANNOYING!  I get it, go away.

Now, instead of an anemic-sounding game that never really felt right, it's a solid, fast pinball game that's free to taste (to buy all three extra tables costs $15).  The music is awesome, the sound effects satisfactory, the graphics as good as the original (though lower res, obviously) and - overall - it's fantastic.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/lg20101.png]
Ahh, this is good stuff right here.

You might recognize this table: BeXide released the identical table with an Ultraman theme a few months ago.  This one is much better than the Ultraman release, for many reasons.

Note too that I'm comparing this new release to the Version 9.7 Saturn release, which was a tweaked version of the original game.  So, it's the third revision, and it's finally awesome.  Highly recommended!!

itunes link
publisher (Bexide)

Screenshots!

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/lg2010.png]
(Click for the Saturn table)

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/lg20103.png]
(Click for the Saturn screen)

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/lg20104.png]
(Click for the Saturn screen)

]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:49:14 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/876 Iphone: Espgaluda 2 http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/848-Iphone-Espgaluda-2
[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Espgaluda.png]

And now they've released their first iphone game.  Espgaluda 2 is the sequel to, as you might suspect, Espgaluda.  It's not important.  What you need to know is this: It's fucking great.

To be clear: I don't like Cave's games anymore, and I think this is stunning. 

It's a bullet-hell game, which means it's you versus every ammunition-maker in the universe, all showing off their bright pink and blue wares by trying to kill you.  Most of the screens look like this:

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Espgaluda-4.png]

If you've played Taito's Space Invaders Infinity Gene you'll immediately understand the controls.  You slide your digit around the screen and your on-screen player responds appropriately, no matter where it is.  This is the only way to do it: you keep touching the bottom of the screen and you control your player without covering it up.  It's surprising how many other games get this wrong.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Espgaluda-3.png]

There are two game modes (Arcade and the easier iphone setting), three characters (with different shot powers), three difficulty settings, three control schemes (simple, tricky and too-many-buttons) and as an extra bit of kindness on Cave's part, you can put the buttons on the left or right side of the screen.  You can also choose the screen size, giving you more or less room beneath the game to slide your thumb around.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Espgaluda-7.png]

It's five bucks, and utterly, totally worth it, and the main reason is the controls.  Unlike most other iphone games that saddle you with a shitty on-screen d-pad, the finger-sliding control is sublime.  You can slide and fling your player around with pixel-perfect control, as quickly or slowly as you like.  This is not only better than most other iphone games, it's far and away better than most console based games.  From the first game I felt far more comfortable playing Espgaluda 2 than any other shmup in recent memory.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Espgaluda-3.png] [Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Espgaluda-2.png]

Stunningly too, the game is smooth.  It doesn't bog down with the onscreen mayhem.  It's absolutely the most accomplished game I've seen on the iphone so far.  I have high hopes this will lead to a renaissance of solid shmups for the system.  I get tingles when I think of a Raiden trilogy, made with this kind of attention to detail.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Espgaluda-5.png] [Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/Espgaluda-6.png]

Attention game publishers: Cave has raised the bar.

Cave's Espgaruda 2 page

iTunes link ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:29:11 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/848 Iphone: Kaze's Ultraball http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/803-Iphone-Kaze-s-Ultraball
Anyway, imagine my surprise when it turned out that Kaze was behind this free pinball game based on some new Ultraman movie.  Kaze!!  They haven't made anything in half a decade, wow!  So I tried it out and...  It's not bad!

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-ultraball.gif]

There's only one table, and it's quite easy, but it's very well crafted and fun to play.  There's no questionable physics or moments where a ball just wanders off on its own, and as a whole the table interaction is quite solid.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-ultraball1.png]

Unusually for a pinball game, the table background changes as the game progresses.  The game loves handing out multiballs, and when you get 2, two characters appear in the background.  When you get more, the whole team shows up.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-ultraball2.png]

The sounds are straight out of Kaze's Last Gladiators pinball (A Sega Saturn game).  The effects and music aren't layered deep like the Saturn games, but there's no cause to complain overall.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-ultraball3.png]

The game is free to download, but if you want to get the full version, it's a few extra bucks.  The demo doesn't last long.  The game is in Japanese, but it's pinball.  You won't be confused.

It may be more expensive than a lot of other high-quality iphone games, but all things considered you could blow four bucks on a lot less.  If you're a fan of Kaze or Ultraman, get this.  If you love pinball games, get the demo and see how you like it.  It ain't a difficult table, but it's enjoyable.

What's really strange is how this game appears to be basically released and ignored by everyone, including those who made it.  None of the developer sites mention it, the publisher's site is mostly broken and has only one page that works...  That's kind of been Kaze's problem for years, but it's weird to see two other companies collectively not giving a shit.

Kaze's site, which is basically shit.
Bexide site doesn't mention this game at all...
Publisher's half-assed site
itunes site ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:45:48 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/803 Iphone: Dragon's Lair http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/799-Iphone-Dragon-s-Lair
My local arcade was called Electronic Encounters, and they had all the classics.  Joust, Super PacMan, Lost Tomb, Pengo, Wizard of Wor, Gravitar.  Every time I could, I'd walk to the mall and play the games.  Check this out, this is pure gold:

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/goldenage1.png]

I mean, these games were cutting edge.  Compared to the crappy games we were playing at home, they were staggering technological displays from the future.  Look at this stuff!

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/goldenage2.png]

And then,

one day,

you come to the arcade looking for the new machine your friend wouldn't shut up about.  It's like a cartoon he said.  Yeah, whatever. 

How good could it be?

Oh.

Oh my fucking god, what is this?

This, my friends, is Dragon's Lair.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-dragonslair0.jpg]

LOOK AT IT!

When this came out, it was literally mind blowing.  Running on a laserdisc (like a huge, slow, low-res DVD) this game didn't really offer a lot of gameplay.  It was, in fact, the very same game style that would ruin the SegaCD system, full-motion-video bullshit where the 'player' tapped the joystick once in a while but was otherwise uninvolved.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-dragonslair5.png]

BUT LOOK AT IT!

There's not much point in talking about the gameplay.  There isn't much of it.  Hazards happen, you tap left or right or hit the sword button on cue, and the game progresses.

What's amazing, literally stunning, is that this entire game is available on the iphone, with cleaned-up graphics.  It's all there, the lizard king and the black knight and Daphne, the vapid busty princess you're trying to save.

It works perfectly, it sounds perfect, it looks even better.  It's the single greatest thing any nearly-forty gamer could buy for his iphone.

Fuck yes, Dragon's Lair.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-dragonslair3.jpg]

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-dragonslair2.jpg]

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-dragonslair1.jpg]

itunes link

I'd link you to the developer, but EA sucks cock and I can't actually find it, so here is the developer's site.

Also, check out Don Bluth's site.  He's the ex-Disney animator who did the animation for the game. ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:56:10 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/799 Iphone: Star*Burst http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/792-Iphone-Star-Burst
Mark Stephen Pierce was one of the two guys who made Klax, and his game company, SuperHappyFunFun Inc, recently released StarBurst (Star*Burst?) for the iphone.  I bought it without hesitation. 

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/ip_klax2.jpg]

The problem with this game is simple: It's fucking hard to control.  You can slide the paddle or tap the column (there are five) to jump to, and then tap the paddle to launch a tile skyward.  The problem is it's all too easy to tap the paddle when you meant to move to the next column, or move when you meant to launch a tile.  It's maddening to play, and that really pisses me off 'cause the game is super in every other respect.  It looks good, sounds good, and is a shining example of how to polish a product and still make it virtually unplayable.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/ip_klax.jpg]

Perhaps someone with smaller digits can make it work.  I know it's a game that I want to play, but simply cannot, and that makes me sad.  Klax was great, I think I'll go play that.

[Image: http://nfggames.com/system/arcade/arcade.php/y-klaxa/z-0/dbl-2/x-it%20is%20the%20nineties,%20and%20there%20is%20time%20for...]

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/ip_klax3.png]
The original Klax (img stolen from here)

itunes link
developer site ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:28:34 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/792 Iphone: Neo Nectaris http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/791-Iphone-Neo-Nectaris Xbox 360.  There was a sequel, the only official sequel by Hudson, called Neo Nectaris.  It had some new units, graphics, and maps, but the same rock-solid hex-grid gameplay.

And now it's out on the iphone, with sumptuous redrawn sprites.

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/ip_neonectaris.jpg]

At first you'd think the iphone would be the ideal platform for a game like this: touch unit, move, attack!  And it almost works perfectly.  It seems though that the game is a rush job: the hex grid looks sloppily overlaid on the map, the map graphics don't quite line up seamlessly, and the response lags a little bit when you touch things.

The music loops poorly, with noticable gaps when it ends and restarts.  The timer doesn't stop when the game's doing things outside your control like drawing menus or fading the screen in and out, so it's basically useless.

But it's still Nectaris, and it's not at all bad to play.  As is the norm for this series you can either turn the battle animations off entirely and not get any indication of your success in battle until you re-highlight a unit, or you can turn them on and get bored while they play out, but get all the fancy animations and results.  A middle ground would be nice, the X360 version popped up little numbers when the battle ended so you could see what happened.

A little more attention to detail, a few more days of polish, and it'd have gotten an unqualified recommendation.  As it is now, it's hard to recommend to anyone who doesn't already like Nectaris.  It works, it's good, but is that good enough?  At five bucks it's expensive, compared to other iphone games.  I kind of hoped for more.

Come on Hudson, pull out the stops and make an old fan extra happy instead of just pleased.

itunes link
Neo Nectaris.com
Hudson (developer) site ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:00:38 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/791 Iphone: Dark Nebula http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/790-Iphone-Dark-Nebula
Short version: It's great!

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/darknebula1.jpg]

Basically, you tilt the iphone/pod to control a sliding, slippery puck of a thing from one end of a long vertical course to the other.  It doesn't scroll horizontally at all, but there's a lot of sideways tilting as you zig and zag down a course, avoiding lasers and spikes and precipitous drops.  The emphasis is on speed, but the puck's max speed is achieved almost instantly, and it's not that fast.  The player is therefore tasked with efficiency, and it's soon second nature to grab bonuses with the utmost restraint.  Get the orb and get back on track before the sliding pusher comes back and interrupts your flow.

It has global rankings and facebook updates, but I keep coming back to it for the gorgeous visuals, smooth animation, and challenge. 

[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/darknebula2.jpg]

itunes link
developer site ]]> no_email@example.com (NFGworld.com - NFG) Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:34:58 GMT http://nfgworld.com/mb/790