Open Thread

Open Thread #365

Aaron "Sleazy" Elias

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46 thoughts on “Open Thread #365”

  1. I kicked back with some fighting games over the last few days, getting an 1CC on Street Fighter Zero with Ryu and, more interestingly, another 1CC the first time (!) I played Vampire Savior 2, with Morrigan. This game just clicked with me. I would not say that it is particularly easy but if you have decent-enough fighting-game fundamentals, it’s a great experience. Before that, though, I played the very first game in this series, Darkstalkers (Vampire: The Night Warriors in JP), a few times. Today, I managed to play through that game too, but it took a few credits. Interestingly, this is a game a lot of people consider very difficult. Yet, with a good grasp of spacing, showing some patience, and being able to punish the CPU for mistakes, it is quite doable. I figured out the final opponent within four matches or so. That match-up was a really interesting problem to solve, and it was some of the greatest fun I have had with a game in a while. In my first fight, I hardly got any hits in and was not able to spot any weaknesses but in my last match, I won with a very healthy margin.

    The more I am playing classic Capcom games, the more I appreciate them. They are very well-made, and they are clearly targeting players as well as arcade operators. This is in stark contrast to SNK. Their game designers seem very fond of the idea of making the last half of a game, or at least the last quarter, quite unreasonably difficult, and you often get an “SNK boss” at the end. There is a good reason SNK is only celebrated by a relatively small hardcore fanbase and even these people may not really play their games.

    Reply

    2. “On a somewhat related note, I recently came across an old internal Capcom document on human anatomy”

      Nice. I miss the perfectionist kind of mindset of the gen X Japanese game devs. It was like the Samurai mentality but instead applied to game design.

      Congrats on your 1CC! I’m sure that didn’t come easy. Especially if you factor in all the legacy skill you’ve acquired and the time it took. I’ve been working on a 1CC for Gun Vein for quite a bit now, btw.

      What are your thoughts on SNK v. Capcom?

    3. Gunvein is not an easy game. How far do you get on one credit at the moment? SvC is not great, neither in absolute terms nor relative to the time it came out. Backgrounds are static, characters have few frames of animation, the controls are average. Fighting the AI is not a great experience, which goes back to the old problem that SNK gives the CPU unfair advantages, and overdoes it. I played through the entire game with Ken a few months ago, for the first time, but did not feel the urge to go back. The biggest draw of SvC is seeing Capcom’s characters drawn by SNK’s artists. As a game, it is forgettable. Capcom’s take on the formula is worth checking out, however. I had a lot of fun with both Capcom vs SNK games back in the Dreamcast days. The first one I played on PSX earlier this year and still really enjoyed it.

    4. The creator of Gunvein, Bog Hog, has a YouTube channel on which he talks about arcade design concepts:
      https://www.youtube.com/@boghogSTG
      The content is more technical than MarkMSX’s but seeing that you have gotten deeply into shmups, it is probably worth you while.

    5. Speaking of unfair CPU advantages, didn’t old Mortal Kombat seem kind of bullshit? I just remember the CPU basically read and countered all your inputs at certain difficulty levels.

      I can get to the TLB on normal difficulty with Ship C (Gun Vein), which is kind of a gimmicky ship. The game is balanced around ship A, but I find C easier to work with. I’ve found that a more aggressive play style works best, as you can use its special relentlessly to play towards the top of the screen and help keep it clear, though a good bit of memorization helps with this approach (the solid practice mode is extremely handy for this).

      Are you familiar with Jaimers youtube channel? He was really helpful in helping get this far: https://youtu.be/w7JPDYfAMXU?si=vMCTCzh942-L5ruF

    6. The Mortal Kombat games were ridiculous. The only way to reliably win was to sweep your opponents off their feet, over and over, and time this so well that they could never get up. This worked in Mortal Kombat on the SNES. I do not have a lot of memories of MK II, but I recall that the fireball/flying kick combo of Lui Kang worked extremely well against the CPU.

      I am aware of Jaimers. There is another guy you might appreciate, Iconoclast. Both are expert gamers who play a very wide variety of games. There are not a lot of people with this level of breadth around. Normally, I follow people who play at best a small handful of games, normally just one or two, but do so extremely well. Examples include fufufu (DDP DOJ), Magolor9 (Ketsui), Pablo Bert (Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Mr Driller), bwv1079 (TGM3), kashiwa0903 (TGM2), or 777 (TGM). For games I actively play, I follow not just the top one or two people but also very strong players who still actively play as I find it inspiring to see their progress, such as omu kae (TGM2).

    8. Fighting games by SNK are infamous for their final bosses. As doable as KoF 98 may seem, its final boss is one of the toughest to beat in the entire portfolio of fighting games of this developer.

      Capcom has an interesting take on the trope of extremely challenging final bosses: In Street Fighter Alpha 3, you get one chance to beat the final boss and if you lose, you get a bad ending. The final fight is thus simply treated as a bonus fight. I think that Virtua Fighter does something similar. I find this more palatable than an almost insurmountable wall of difficulty.

    9. Hmm yes quite the Hard Bastard that Rugal B ! My bad, it wasn’t KOF ‘98..but another. looking thru my old MAME, and can’t find now. (There’s too many KOfs!) grr, maybe PS2. The character was King , it’s nicer 2D graphics and it’s very fun and beatable. Im on a mission to find it now.

      Why Ryu for SFZ .. Ken is the cooler wild man.
      Btw anyone know the translation of Ryu/Ken’s Spin Kick phrase ? Do those special move phrases mean anything

    10. King made her debut in Art of Fighting, which is also a pretty difficult game, but largely because the controls are so clunk. I just saw that she was also in Capcom vs. SNK. Could this be the game you were playing?

      Capcom differentiated Ryu and Ken in later games. I use ha-do-kens/fireballs for spacing, not the dragon punch. While both can perform these moves, Ryu’s fireball is stronger, and his dragon punch weaker, but the latter does not affect my style of play. Here is as page on the hurricane kick. The names of the special moves have a meaning.

    11. Thanks. “Rising Dragon Fist” and “ Dragon Twister” are pretty epic names for those moves 😎 👌 and us kids did wonder who “Sheng Long” was back in the day.. I thought it might have been another name for Sagat from SF1.
      “Tatsumaki Senpukyaku” ->: “Tornado Whirlwind Leg”. Which is supposedly the phrase the character says.
      Very hard to decipher the pronounciation tho.

      https://youtu.be/Z_VNXMGoZF0?si=8NYqMYYMb9tcr2h4

      https://youtu.be/higHYtspRWg?si=ig6NHX4VAvjKfkkv

      https://youtu.be/3pAfYtqT50A?si=7_VkI0sC5DKTZoeb

      The funniest explanations I came across were
      “Ryu says “ha plak plak ploo plak” during the helicopter kick in SF2” and “ flapjack whirljack” 😆

    12. “The creator of Gunvein, Bog Hog, has a YouTube channel on which he talks about arcade design concepts…”

      Nice! Thank you. I’m always looking for stuff like this to have going while I’m doing chores etc. I find myself replaying certain technical analysis or review videos multiple times.

      “Examples include fufufu (DDP DOJ), Magolor9 (Ketsui), Pablo Bert (Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Mr Driller), bwv1079 (TGM3), kashiwa0903 (TGM2), or 777 (TGM). For games I actively play, I follow not just the top one or two people but also very strong players who still actively play as I find it inspiring to see their progress, such as omu kae (TGM2).”

      Speaking of DDP DOJ, I picked up the M2 Switch versions of DOJ and ESP Ra.De a few months back. I have not gotten super deep into them, but I can 1CC the mobile version of DOJ on hard difficulty (due to being able to make extremely evasive maneuvers with swiping). I’ve been more so focused on Gun Vein and Blue Revolver. The latter of which, by the way, has some good videos featuring the developer discussing game design similar to Bog Hog:

      https://youtu.be/XcpGHm-_YNU?si=_ukkYFi3awBeQZG8

    13. Mark_MSX seems to like three doujin shmups a lot: Gunvein, Blue Revolver, and Zero Ranger. (Technically, Crimzon Clover is also a doujin, but it had a proper arcade release.) I am barely familiar with any of the first three, but I will check out that video and see what the developer has to say about the design of shmups.

    14. Congratulations on your 1CC! I was not aware of there being a mobile version of DOJ. Presumably you are referring to the iOS version. Interestingly, as I just learned, CAVE also released several games for phones in the 2000s, and even better is that you can buy two of them on Steam. One of them supposedly diagnoses weaknesses in your bullet-hell skill set. I am quite curious to check out both, even if only for the novelty.

    15. “One of them supposedly diagnoses weaknesses in your bullet-hell skill set.”

      Nice!

      “Mark_MSX seems to like three doujin shmups a lot: Gunvein, Blue Revolver, and Zero Ranger.”

      I have all three, though my initial response to Zero Ranger was very positive I have not bothered getting deep into it. There is this really neat existential sort of philosophical vibe to it that is very apparent soon after you boot it up for the first time that left an impression on me

    16. “Congratulations on your 1CC! I was not aware of there being a mobile version of DOJ. Presumably you are referring to the iOS version.”

      Yes indeed. I also have DFK which has a mode specifically for mobile, but I don’t appreciate it a lot other than the novelty of it here and there. Here’s a list of mobile shmups I own for iOS:

      •DDP DOJ (there is a free version with ads)
      •DDP DFK
      •DDP MAX (made for mobile, seems to be arranges of DFK with a virtual aesthetic)
      •Strikers 1945 (free with ads)
      •Death Smiles
      •Touhou ThousandNightAnamnesis
      •AKA TO BLUE (!)

      The last game in the list, AKA TO BLUE, is specifically designed for mobile by former CAVE staff, and can get pretty relentless to compensate for the fact that your mobility is off the charts. The bombing system is pretty addictive on the more dense levels as well, as the more bullets and enemies your bomb absorbs the more in turn it charges back up. You can launch bomb after bomb if you are strategic enough. Also, turning off the autobomb feature is basically like converting the game to very hard mode.

    17. I looked into Aka to Blue a while ago. To my great surprise, there seems to be virtually no content on it on YouTube. The game looks pretty nice, and the only reason I have not bought it yet is because my backlog is enormously large. Years ago, there were also iOS versions of the two Mushihime-sama games, which were given the name “Bug Princess”. This probably affected sales negatively.

  2. I just finished watching the first part of the final season of Cobra Kai. It’s pretty ironic that it’s the revival of a franchise that was getting pretty tired by the third movie (I’ve never even bothered with the fourth), but managed to successfully salvage characters from that weak entry – Terry Silver, Mike Barnes – only to now veer right back into tiredness.

    *spoilers*

    First episode contains the first of many unnecessary and pointless conflicts. Kenny – the young black kid who for most of the series has been Anthony LaRusso’s nemesis, isn’t too keen on joining Miyagi-Do. But Robbie and Miguel insist that it’s for the best that he does, despite the fact that he’s keeping to himself and not causing trouble for anyone. It culminates in Kenny and his older brother duking it out with the Miyagi-Do’s in a baseball batting cage. After going away to lick his wounds, Kenny does a complete 180 and ends up joining.

    Other plots, in not as much detail: Chozen – Daniel’s former Okinawan nemesis from KKII turned ally, is still hanging around, sulking because Kumiko didn’t return his message, but other than that having little to do. Daniel discovers Mr. Miyagi had a few dirty secrets in his past when he finds a chest under an obvious trapdoor in Miyagi’s house that he’d somehow missed all these years. Hawke and Demetri end up beefing again because Hawke doesn’t want to go to MIT like they’d always wanted to do since they were kids. Kreese re-recruits Kim Da-Eun, despite the fact that she was humiliated last season, to enter the Sekai Taikai world karate tournament in an effort to have their revenge against Miyagi-Do.

    Overall, it’s mostly just retreading old ground. The only loose thread in season 5 was Kreese escaping from prison. Seems like everything could have been wrapped up in an extra 10 minute epilogue added last season. At this point, it’s just a Netflix cash-in.

    Reply

    1. Cobra Kai came up a few times in the past on this blog. There are a few conversations in some Open Threads. I also wrote a blog post about the fake-cleft lip guy in that TV show:
      https://blog.aaronsleazy.com/index.php/2022/06/08/woke-facing-is-the-new-black-facing/
      This TV show did not keep my attention either. I liked the premise, though. My assumption is that this show did better than expected so instead of giving it a graceful ending, they drag it out until everybody gets tired of it. This is how TV shows used to work in the past, and I was under the impression that after The Sopranos, the medium had moved on to long-form story-telling instead of churning out content in the hope of maximizing ad revenue and streaming income at all costs.

    2. @Parker,
      I didn’t read your post because I’m still considering reestablishing my Netflix account and watching the last season. Is it worth the watch?

      Weird how they are breaking it up into two different release dates.

    3. @Aaron,

      The first couple of seasons were great. Like I posted in the thread you linked to, it lost me when Daniel and Johnny formed an alliance. And making Creese human with more Vietnam flashbacks would benefit the show.

      Still, Daniel and Johnny wind up fighting every season, with each fight getting progressively more intense. With hope, the finale has Johnny knocking out Daniel right in front of his wife lol.

    4. I found the first season great. The plot idea is special: „the story of the first movie is bs, Johnny wasn’t the bad guy“. On top of that it had two great characters (Johnny and LaRusso), great humor (often aimed against wokeness) and plenty of 80s nostalgia.

      The other seasons are not bad, but just very mediocre. The main problem is that the writers don’t have the material to pump out that many seasons. They then resort to filling the screen time with too many characters, most of whom are boring, and pointless drama.

    5. @GoodLookingAndSleazy

      Well to be fair, by today’s entertainment standards, it’s not that bad. It only fails in that it doesn’t live up to the higher standards of the earlier seasons. I would say give it a watch.

    6. I find it amazing how the LaRusso girl got fatter over the seasons. Her career earnings will be so much lower by being a chubby girl instead of a fit one. Isn’t that enough incentive to put in some effort?

    7. In woke Hollywood, it could well be that she would have lost her role had she not fattened up. Hollywood is full of ugly men and women nowadays. I wonder if there is nowadays an enormous influx of ugly people into L.A., hoping to break into the industry. The good-looking men and women probably all start their own gig on Instagram or Only Fans.

    8. Thanks Parker. I’ll check it out. Might as well finish the job. We’ll discuss later.

    9. I enjoyed the first season of the show quite a bit and was rooting for the underdogs. However, I just got side tracked and quit watching after that one season ended with someone breaking their back or neck during a huge school fight.

      Few series are able to remain consistent throughout their run cycle, I believe.

    1. I am not interested to listen to either guy. With Musk, my problem is that he seems to be Janus faced. Sometimes, he bringds up the JQ, yet he was Netanyahu’s guest in Congress the other day. Twitter also does not embrace free speech as much as you may think, based on his statements. Arguably, his guy is one of the most talented grifters the world has ever seen. Tesla is currently in free fall. It is only held up by import levies on Chinese EVs and government subsidies.

    2. Musk is a man who often goes a little astray. Nevertheless, you have to give him credit for founding SpaceX, a very successful private space company. His “Starship”, which is currently under development, will rival and surpass the Saturn 5 moon rocket.

      Peterson, on the other hand, is a money-hungry vulture and opportunist. Peterson rarely commits himself and has no clear edge as he does not want to offend his god-fearing fans.

    1. The comment above was stuck in the moderation queue. It seems that mentioning God triggered it.

    1. Sorry for the double post. Didn’t know it got hung up in the moderation queue. But I had to get that off my chest.

    2. This is completely fine. I wonder if the WordPress spam filter had been more lenient if you had referred to Yahweh or Moloch instead of God. Supposedly, that speech of the king of the Jews got the most standing ovations in Congress ever and if not that, then his speech was close to the theoretical maximum of standing ovations:
      https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/congress-applauded-netanyahu-once-every-minute-during-his-sp
      Imagine not being able to speak for more than one minute without yet another round of applause! The powers that be seem to thin that such behavior demonstrates how truly popular the Israelis are but the real effect is probably a bit different.

    3. Thanks Aaron. I’m just incredibly frustrated with my government. I live in a nation where people live under crumbling bridges. Yet our money goes to a war criminal regime.

      I would fire everyone in Congress in a heartbeat.

  6. Two years ago, a good buddy of mine met a German woman with Russian roots. Six months later they moved in together (rental apartment), and a few months after that they decided to move into my buddy’s inherited house, including a complete renovation for € 170,000. My buddy hadn’t actually intended to move into this house, but to rent it out permanently, but life took unexpected turns. A year later, actually this month, they got married.

    It all happened pretty quickly. My mate is good-looking, but only 168cm tall and a simp. I wonder if there’s any danger of her taking the house off him….

    Reply

    1. No, there is no risk. She will not take the entire house. She will only force him to sell it during divorce so he gets to keep about half, minus the costs for the lawyer and alimony for the rest of her life. I have a friend who got so royally screwed during his divorce that he seriously considered getting room mates at 40, just to make ends meet. He moved out and got a cheaper place, but life is still pretty rough for him.

    2. Well, if it’s just that ;=)

      I can’t judge the woman myself because I don’t know her well enough, but my buddy is known for being manipulated and directed by women. In Germany we call such people ”Fotzenknechte”.

      But it’s also possible that she’s a lovely girl and they’ll live together happily ever after.

    3. There is an interesting equilibrium because as much as women may want to subjugate such men, they cannot go all-out because if the guy kills himself, she will lose the monthly income stream.

    4. Both are civil servants (public management), higher intermediate service, 3-year dual study program.

    5. Russian? She’ll be ‘rushin’ to take half that house, that’s for sure 😀
      A hardy, cold-hearted race of ladies by all accounts. I wouldn’t mess around with them, let alone marry one.

    6. She is a German with Russian roots. She speaks Russian and came to Germany as a child.

    7. So she is a Russian turned German then..?
      Born there and has Russian looks I’ll presume.
      is she Hot..can u describe pls. I have a fantasy of a gorgeous Russian girl wearing the fur hat and jacket and not much else. Like a James Bond russian chick. They can be quite stunning the Ruski’s 👌

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