Name: Dragons Crown Pro - All Stages, No Deaths (Infernal / Amazon) @iconoclast575
Uploaded: 2026-09-19T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: Dragons Crown Pro - All Stages, No Deaths (Infernal / Amazon)

Dragons Crown Pro - All Stages, No Deaths (Infernal / Amazon)

iconoclast 2026-09-19 | Dragons Crown Pro - All Stages, No Deaths (Infernal / Amazon)

Mayhem Brawler - Legend Difficulty - No Death Clear (Alley Witch / Route B)

iconoclast 2023-05-29 | Mayhem Brawler is a beat 'em up from Hero Concept, originally released in 2021. Since then, it's had some major updates. The latest one, and perhaps the last, includes the new playable character Alley Witch. This is a full Arcade mode playthrough with her.

I played this game when it first came out and I wasn't a big fan of it. The combat was very simple, and very tedious - especially on the higher difficulties. Since then, they revamped it with the "air supremacy" update that added air combos (among other things). This made the game a lot more fun to play! I still think the enemies are too damage spongey, and your special meter regenerates too slowly, but the game is definitely much better nowadays. I've always liked the branching path design, and the graphics and animation are very well done, so overall I think it's become a solid beat 'em up. For $20, it's not a bad pick up for fans of the genre.

0:00 Level 1
5:24 Level 2
12:40 Level 3
19:10 Level 4
26:40 Level 5
37:09 Level 6
48:22 Level 7

You can buy Mayhem Brawler on all major platforms for $19.99.
heroconcept.com/mayhem-brawler
store.steampowered.com/app/1306720/Mayhem_Brawler
nintendo.com/games/detail/mayhem-brawler-switch
store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP4493-CUSA27616_00-MAYHEMBRAWLER001
microsoft.com/store/productid/9ppjfkl9w1c3

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

SHINOBI NON GRATA - No Death 1CC

iconoclast 2023-05-26 | Shinobi non Grata is a new ninja action game from indie developer picopico (twitter.com/picopico256). It seems like Ninja Spirit is its biggest influence, but it's a much easier game than Irem's classic. The game design is also a lot different. Stages are short, and it's packed with bosses. In that sense, it feels closer to Contra: The Hard Corps to me, which isn't a bad game to be compared to.

I've kept an eye on this game ever since I first came across it on twitter; I'm a big fan of the aesthetic, and its obvious inspirations made it look like exactly the type of game I'd like. And I'm happy with how it turned out! My biggest complaint is that it's just too easy. It's still fun, but I was able to clear it in just a couple hours. I'd be happier if it were tuned more like an arcade game, and if the bosses were a little more complex, but it's still good as it is. It just won't end up being one of my favorites. (Although I really do like the aesthetic, they nailed the style they were going for. The music is nice too.)

Shinobi non Grata is currently available on Steam for $14.99. I believe PS4 and Switch versions are in the works, but I don't think they're not out yet. I've enjoyed playing it and would recommend it to fans of these games.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:39 1-1
1:45 1-2
2:55 1-3
4:10 1-4
6:25 2-1
7:32 2-2
8:52 2-3
10:22 2-4
13:21 3-1
14:53 3-2
18:21 3-3
19:57 3-4
21:51 4-1
23:32 4-2
25:22 4-3
27:41 4-4
30:06 5-1
33:20 5-2
36:14 5-3
38:11 5-4
40:57 Credits & Ending
Score: 4,309,900 (? I can't tell 8s from 0s)

The scoring system seems easy to exploit so I wouldn't recommend taking it seriously. It's nice to rack up combos and get the no damage and katana finish bonuses though.
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

G-DARIUS HD - 50,891,440 Points 1CC (Omicron)

iconoclast 2023-05-23 | G-Darius is a shoot 'em up from Taito, originally released in arcades in 1997. In 2021, Taito and M2 released this excellent HD remaster, which includes several different versions of the game. G-Darius is the fourth mainline game in the Darius series, but it's a prequel to the original Darius, which canonically makes it the starting point of the Darius Cinematic Universe.

The key mechanics in G-Darius are its capture system, and Alpha Beams. You can throw capture balls at any enemy in the game and use them for additional firepower. You can even capture the midbosses (known as captains), which not only have a lot of health, but they can also do special moves with fighting game inputs. Every enemy behaves differently when captured, so be careful about who you grab.

Beyond that, there are the Alpha Beams. After you've captured an enemy, you can convert them into a super powerful beam attack by holding the shot button. Bosses have their own version of this called the Beta Beam, and if your beams collide, you initiate a beam duel. If you mash shot fast enough, you'll absorb the boss' Beta Beam and power up your Alpha Beam, which of course does even more damage and gives you a higher score multiplier. It's pretty satisfying.

I've been playing this for the last few weeks and I finally put together a high scoring run that I'm pretty satisfied with. I probably lost half a million points from various mistakes, but most of this was pretty clean. Just some quick notes: I die intentionally on the last boss to refill my capture ball stock, which lets you continue the fight and score a lot higher. I also kept all of the default gadgets on. None of them are particularly useful to me now, but if you're trying to learn the game, being able to see how much HP you want everything to have at certain points will be helpful when you're working out your strategies.

G-Darius is a great game, probably the best one I've played this year, so of course I'd recommend it to anyone who likes shmups. You can buy it on PC, PS4, and Switch. I'm playing the PC version here. It goes on sale pretty often too, so keep an eye out for that. And hell, get the Darius Cozmic Collection while you're at it!

0:00 Prologue
2:08 Zone Alpha
6:26 Zone Gamma
12:38 Zone Zeta
19:32 Zone Kappa
26:36 Zone Omicron
29:55 Great Thing
38:16 Epilogue
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Streets of Rage 4 (2023 Update) - Mania+ S-Rank 1CC (Axel)

iconoclast 2023-04-22 | I've been playing with Axel on and off over the last week or so, and I finally got a decent S-rank clear with him. At first I was mostly using his default moveset, but after switching some of them out, I found this setup to be much better. His dragon punch does a lot of damage, and you have enough invincibility on landing to chain it into his roll attack - which is also invincible. So you can repeat that loop over and over to get through big groups of enemies, as long as you hit someone with your roll to refill a bit of your health. And honestly, while this is still fun, I'm starting to feel like they messed up the balance in this game. Fundamental beat 'em up skills have been minimized in favor of overpowered invincible attacks that you can just spam repeatedly. Maybe earlier versions would end up like that anyway once you got really good at it, but I felt like they hit the balancing sweet spot a while ago, and they've veered off course with the last couple updates. Mania+ exacerbates this too with all of the extra enemies in it.

But really, this is just a small complaint, because like I said, this game is still fun as it is. The scoring almost necessitates such powerful characters too because one mistake can cost tons of points. And I'm going to keep playing anyway, lol.

I'd like to do S-rank runs with all of the main characters (& SOR3 Roo), hopefully it won't take too long. This run still had some huge mistakes and bad strategies, but I'm getting more comfortable with everything the more I play (of course).

0:00 Stage 1
7:45 Stage 2
16:45 Stage 3
22:06 Stage 4
28:17 Stage 5
37:27 Stage 6
47:00 Stage 7
51:13 Stage 8
58:47 Stage 9
1:06:48 Stage 10
1:13:56 Stage 11
1:24:21 Stage 12
1:38:37 Results

Streets of Rage 4 Mania Playlist (All Characters): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOfLBkf5BzI0s95A8nVZHEK

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】SIFU - All Arenas, All Gold Stamps

iconoclast 2023-03-27 | Sifu's Arena update is out! When they first announced an Arena mode, I thought it would just be an infinite survival mode in a few different maps, and I was excited for that. As it turns out, Sloclap had much bigger plans. This is a very substantial update that's more like Ninja Gaiden's Mission Mode, or Metal Gear Rising's VR Missions. It contains eight different maps, and there are five unique missions in each of them, all mixed up with various objectives and modifiers. You have your basic wave-based survival missions, "Performance" missions that grade you by your score, Manhunt missions where you only have to kill specific enemies, time trials, and missions where you have to capture specific zones on the map (which is similar to King of the Hill modes in FPS). They do a very good job mixing everything up, and some missions are quite challenging to get the highest rating on. For me, "The Rookie" was definitely the hardest... which is kinda ironic.

Sifu was a great game on the day it came out, and it just keeps getting better and better. At this point, I'd say it's one of the best action games ever made, and it doesn't look like they're done working on it just yet. I can't wait to see what's next!

Huge thanks to Kevin at Sloclap for giving me early access to the Arena update!

Chapters:
0:00 Night Call (Under 6 Hits)
2:42 Street Fighting Club (Under 1:20)
4:37 Praise the Sun (Under 6 Hits)
7:42 A Grand Master (Over 8000)
11:17 I Know Kung-Fu (Under 6 Hits)
16:11 Ruthless (Over 5800)
18:52 Danny?! (Under 6 Hits)
23:15 Party Crasher (Under 6 Hits)
28:28 Gang's Revenge (Over 9500)
32:00 Fire Trial (Under 6 Hits)
34:53 Cleaning Checklist (Under 2:40)
38:00 Workplace Hazards (Under 3:30)
41:50 Compliments to the Chef (Under 1:20)
43:43 Crazy 87 (Under 3:20)
47:38 The Tree Warden (Under 2:55)
51:32 Above Skyscrapers (Under 6 Hits)
54:15 The Woman in White (Under 1:20)
55:54 Perseverance (Under 6 Hits)
59:35 Under the Projectors (Over 10,000)
1:02:39 Aerial Fighting Club (Under 1:40)
1:04:34 Raiding the Block (Over 11,500)
1:08:52 Building Caretaker (Over 10,000)
1:12:06 Two Fists of Steel (Under 6 Hits)
1:15:18 It Is Not a Game of Death (Under 2:15)
1:18:13 Bloodsoaked Walls (Under 2:25)
1:21:19 It's a Trap! (Over 7500)
1:24:34 Old Guy (Over 8300)
1:27:50 Spiritual Elevation (Under 6 Hits)
1:32:52 The Last Exam (Under 1:20)
1:34:32 Bloodthirst (Over 9500)
1:38:59 Rusty Business (Under 2:30)
1:42:01 The Rookie (Under 0:45)
1:43:12 On the Edge (Under 2:45)
1:46:23 The Square (Under 3:45)
1:50:26 Stunt Furniture (Under 4:30)
1:55:21 Just a Walk in the Park (Over 11,000)
1:59:51 Teaching Lessons (Over 7900)
2:03:52 Returning Curators (Under 1:45)
2:05:48 Maybe Not Just a Walk (Under 3:40)
2:10:10 An Inch From Death (Under 6 Hits)
2:14:44 Rush: The Squats (Under 6 Hits)
2:19:15 Rush: The Club (Under 6 Hits)
2:23:29 Rush: The Museum (Under 6 Hits)
2:27:52 Rush: The Tower (Under 6 Hits)
2:32:23 Rush: The Sanctuary (Under 6 Hits)

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Streets of Rage 4 (2023 Update) - Mania+ S-Rank 1CC (Blaze)

iconoclast 2023-03-16 | It's 2023 and Streets of Rage 4 just had another big update! I don't know all the details, but they altered character balance, added co-op attacks, and tweaked Mania+ a bit. Now there are "cursed" arcade cabinets, that spawn a boss from one of the previous games. Defeating the boss drops an extra star, so it's worth clearing all of them out. If you activate them at the right time, they're pretty easy to deal with (aside from the Lisas in stage 11, they're a pain). If you accidentally activate it while dealing with a big group of enemies, though... that can be a problem. I did that with Souther in stage 10 - you should hit the cabinet before killing both of the Donovans. If you do that, the next wave of enemies with the Koobos won't spawn until Souther is dead. Bosses also spawn mini-bosses and extra enemies at two different intervals as well. It seems like they come in at 70% and 40% health, but maybe it varies a bit. It makes some of them quite a bit more difficult to deal with.

Beyond that, the S-rank requirement for Mania+ has changed since I last played this game. I'm not sure if that's new, but before, it had the same requirements as the regular Mania, which made the S-rank pretty easy to get. Now they bumped the requirement up, to scale with all the extra enemies in this mode. I don't know the exact number, but I'm pretty sure it's at least 600,000. So you have to build up at least a few good chains to make it. I lost a lot of big combos in this run, but still managed to get well above 600k, so it's still not terribly strict. I think they struck a pretty good balance this time.

Streets of Rage 4 was already an excellent game when it came out, and it's only gotten better and better with every update. It's safe to say it's one of the all time great beat 'em ups at this point. Hopefully this team is working on a new game!

0:00 Stage 1
7:31 Stage 2
14:42 Stage 3
19:32 Stage 4
26:09 Stage 5
35:30 Stage 6
45:22 Stage 7
49:39 Stage 8
57:17 Stage 9
1:05:01 Stage 10
1:12:27 Stage 11
1:23:17 Stage 12
1:37:26 Results (699,528)

Streets of Rage 4 Mania Playlist (All Characters): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOfLBkf5BzI0s95A8nVZHEK

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Wo Long - Lu Bu (No Damage / Naked Level 1 / Rising Dragon)

iconoclast 2023-03-12 | I've been playing Wo Long since it came out, and it's an excellent game. Rising Dragon is a higher difficulty mode that unlocks once you finish the story. Enemy placement doesn't seem to change, it's just a basic stat increase for the enemies. After finishing Rising Dragon, I thought it would be fun to try doing it at level 1. You lose the stat scaling damage boost for your weapons and usually die in one hit, so it's almost like playing on the next difficulty level.

It seems like the curved sword is the best weapon type in the game, so that's what I'm sticking with. It's fast, does good damage, and build up your meter pretty quickly. I'm just using a random 4 star Qiang Scimitar, fully upgraded. I didn't bother changing its embeds, I just chose this one because it has two skills I like (especially Star Fall; Drifting Cloud wouldn't be my ideal second choice, but it's not bad). I keep hoping I'll get a nice 5 star curved sword, but that hasn't happened yet...

Played on Xbox Series X.

0:00 Lu Bu
4:47 Cinematic
5:26 Character Equipment
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Double Dragon (Arcade) - No Elbow, No Death Clear

iconoclast 2023-03-01 | Double Dragon is a 1987 beat 'em up developed by Technos Japan. It's a spiritual successor to Technos' previous game, Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun (Renegade), and is commonly viewed as the starting point for the beat 'em up genre. This is a no death clear of the game, without making use of the back elbow attack. It's strong, safe, and just overpowered, so I thought it'd be more fun to play without using it.

That said, I still didn't like this game very much. Kunio-kun is vastly superior in my opinion. I'm willing to cut Technos some slack for being trailblazers, but the combat isn't very fun, the constant slowdown is annoying, and the last stage is horribly designed. The game does become a bit more fun once you understand how to read the AI, though. When you fight multiple enemies at once, one of them will eventually try to move behind you, and they won't attack or try to avoid anything you do to them. You can use this to your advantage to get a full combo in, or a quick smack with the baseball bat.

But even then, there's no saving the last stage. The first part with the extending bricks isn't *that* bad; you can react to everything until you have to move up onto the narrow path. Just hope the last section doesn't pop out right in front of you. The real garbage is in the next area with the statues. Their attacks are random - sometimes they'll spam attacks repeatedly, other times they'll wait a few seconds in between. The problem is if they attack as fast as possible, your window for getting through might not even exist. And they can kill you instantly, in just one hit (the damage also seems random). After practicing for a while, I found this to be the safest way through. Standing on this *exact* pixel, then jumping forward. There's still a chance you'll get hit and die, but I had more success with this method than anything else, at least.

The rest of the stage isn't bad. The battle against the final boss can be pretty tense too, because if he shoots you, you're dead. So I did have some fun with this game, but hopefully the sequel is significantly better.

Chapters:
Mission 1: 0:00
Mission 2: 2:45
Mission 3: 5:36
Mission 4: 13:44
Ending & Credits: 21:49

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Hi-Fi RUSH - Rhythm Master S-Rank - Tracks 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 (Part 3)

iconoclast 2023-02-24 | PART 1 (Tracks 1 & 2) : youtu.be/7-BT80EEaHU
PART 2 (Tracks 3-7): youtu.be/SEnlfMy9Xn0
PART 3 (Tracks 8-12): youtu.be/cRVvxxmOC_s
Rhythm Tower (S-Rank): youtu.be/WAk-xf6R9rM

Chapters
0:00 Track 8
38:07 Track 9
42:11 BOSS: Mimosa
50:54 Track 10
1:20:30 BOSS: Roquefort
1:29:14 Track 11
1:53:42 Track 12
1:56:32 BOSS: Kale
2:02:14 Ending & Credits

And that wraps up my first Rhythm Master playthrough. I loved this game; it's unique, creative, and a breath of fresh air. That said, I wouldn't call this one of my absolute favorite action games, but hopefully the sequel will be. They have to make one, right?

(There's a bad cut in Roquefort's second phase. I didn't like how the fight went and wanted to redo it, but there's a checkpoint after he goes back to human form that I didn't know about...)
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Hi-Fi RUSH - Rhythm Master S-Rank - Tracks 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Part 2)

iconoclast 2023-02-21 | PART 1 (Tracks 1 & 2) : youtu.be/7-BT80EEaHU
PART 2 (Tracks 3-7): youtu.be/SEnlfMy9Xn0
PART 3 (Tracks 8-12): youtu.be/cRVvxxmOC_s
Rhythm Tower (S-Rank): youtu.be/WAk-xf6R9rM

Chapters
0:00 Track 3
26:04 Track 4
56:45 Track 5
1:27:20 Track 6
1:43:45 Tack 7
2:15:20 BOSS: Korsica

Just five chapters left, so I'll probably put them all in my next video. Hopefully that'll be up tomorrow!
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Hi-Fi RUSH - Rhythm Master S-Rank - Tracks 1 & 2 (Part 1)

iconoclast 2023-02-20 | PART 1 (Tracks 1 & 2) : youtu.be/7-BT80EEaHU
PART 2 (Tracks 3-7): youtu.be/SEnlfMy9Xn0
PART 3 (Tracks 8-12): youtu.be/cRVvxxmOC_s
Rhythm Tower (S-Rank): youtu.be/WAk-xf6R9rM

This is my first playthrough of the Rhythm Master difficulty. The encounters don't change between difficulties, just the enemy's health and stun gauge, so the only real difference on Rhythm Master is that you'll instantly die if your style meter drops to a D rank. This is really only a problem at the start of a fight, like if you get hit before doing anything, or have limited options and aren't sure what to do. Otherwise it's pretty easy to build up your style and keep it there.

I'm not necessarily trying to get S-ranks in every category for every fight, or doing them without taking damage. Just going for the overall S for the most part. You can actually still get an S-rank for the entire stage even if you die or get an A in some fights. It's very generous. I believe getting an S on everything gives you a "special" S-rank though, with the little crown on it. So that's what I'm going for.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
7:20 Track 1
29:56 BOSS: QA-1MIL
35:11 Track 2
1:03:47 BOSS: Rekka

I took way too long to start uploading this. That's partly because I'm juggling so much right now, partly because I didn't want to post anything until I was sure I'd be able to upload it all back to back, and partly because I'm just slacking.

I thought I'd do this a little differently, too. Rather than upload a video of each chapter and have 12 in total, I figured I'd put a bunch of them together (capped off by a major boss), and just have 3 or 4 videos. That seems better to me, but I'm not sure what most people prefer. Let me know in the comments!

I'll do Wanted: Dead next (week?). I've been playing that lately and it's a lot of fun.
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Hi-Fi RUSH - Rhythm Tower S-Rank

iconoclast 2023-01-31 | Story mode playthrough on Rhythm Master difficulty:
PART 1 (Tracks 1 & 2) : youtu.be/7-BT80EEaHU
PART 2 (Tracks 3-7): youtu.be/SEnlfMy9Xn0
PART 3 (Tracks 8-12): youtu.be/cRVvxxmOC_s
Rhythm Tower (S-Rank): youtu.be/WAk-xf6R9rM

Hi-Fi RUSH is a new action game from Tango Gameworks, creators of The Evil Within & Ghostwire Tokyo. It was announced and released on the same day for PC and Xbox, just under a week ago, and I've been playing it ever since.

This is structured like a typical Devil May Cry type of action game, except the twist in this one is that you time your attacks to the beat of the music for extra damage (and score). No matter when you press a button, your attacks will always land on-beat (visualized by your floating cat friend, 808, and various other things in the world... even the UI), so you should always be trying to time your button presses right instead of mashing. It's a unique concept that they've executed brilliantly. And of course the graphics are fantastic, the animation is incredible, the characters are likeable, the story is enjoyable - everything is just great.

This is a run through the Rhythm Tower, this game's equivalent to Devil May Cry's Bloody Palace. The only criteria that matters for an S-rank is your time remaining (you need around 8 minutes), so don't spend too much time trying to build up your combos. You gain time by timing your finishers and parry followups correctly, and killing enemies and clearing floors with a high style ranking. You can exchange time for items in Korsica's shop, but I don't use it.

I use the Pick Me Up and Hibiki skills in this run. PMU is good for healing, and Hibiki is a super powerful AOE attack that'll make quick work of any floor. I'm sure there's a more optimal setup once you're super familiar with everything, but that's a good, all-purpose combo to start out with.

As for my chips, I'm using the two that give you a 20% chance to get reverb and healing items for each parry (both at level 1), and the chips that power up Peppermint's electric shot to stun additional nearby enemies and increase how long they're stunned for.

I'll start doing a full S-rank campaign playthrough on Rhythm Master next.

(Will add chapters in a few hours)

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Ultra Toukon Densetsu - No Death Clear

iconoclast 2023-01-23 | After watching Shin Ultraman a couple of weeks ago (great movie), I wanted to play some Ultraman games. Banpresto released some for the arcade in the early 90s, and one of them is a beat 'em up called Ultra Toukon Densetu. Roughly translated, I guess the English title would be "The Legend of Ultra Fighting Spirit". Of course I had to play it eventually.

This isn't the greatest game. Its quality really depends on which character you play as, though. Naturally, I would've preferred to use Ultraman instead of Taro, but Ultraman really sucks. His charge attack is weak, his combo is slower and gets interrupted more frequently by bosses, his running attack is a takedown grapple - which isn't too bad, but it's not nearly as useful as Taro's knockback - and even his bomb is less useful. Taro doesn't have any of those problems, and he makes this game a lot more fun to play. Though I still wouldn't recommend this to anyone but Ultraman fans. The pixel artwork is fantastic, but that's by far the best thing about this game. Nothing else is particularly good, and the "soundtrack", if you can even call it that, is downright awful.

The no death clear can be a little challenging. If you don't bomb when you're in a bad spot (which is practically any time you're surrounded, since you can't walk through enemies), or let a boss sneak in an attack, you can die before you know it. Some of the enemies can kill you in one combo, in just a couple of seconds. Still, it's not that hard once you have some strategies down.

One quick note: Redking seems to be bugged in this game. Sometimes when they appear, they'll be completely invincible until you either bomb them, get hit, or make them whiff an attack. It can be dangerous to try and bait them if you're low on health, because they hit really hard. I figured I'd mention that in the off chance anyone else ever plays this game. Lol.

Played via MAME.

0:00 Intro
1:27 Round 1
4:06 Round 2
6:14 Round 3
10:22 Round 4
16:03 Round 5
21:03 Round 6
28:56 Ending & Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider - 100% S-Rank Playthrough (No Deaths)

iconoclast 2023-01-11 | Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider is a new side-scrolling action platformer from JoyMasher, the creators of Blazing Chrome, Oniken, and Odallus. It will be available on January 12th on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Amazon Luna for $16.99.

I enjoyed Blazing Chrome a lot, but there's no doubt, Moonrider is my favorite game from these guys so far. It's great, and it kicks 2023 off with a bang. Thanks to Andy at Streamforge for the key!

This is a complete playthrough of the game, where I collect all of the hidden chips, and finish each stage with an S-rank. The requirements for each rank aren't totally clear, but basically, you just have to finish the stage fairly quick and not die. Damage taken doesn't matter, and score doesn't seem to either. Most of the times are pretty easy to reach, but I did have to hustle a bit on Asura's Fleet and the final stage.

Most of the special weapons you gain from each boss are quite good, but I think the tentacle and dash are a cut above the rest. The tentacle does massive damage, it will let you take out bosses and midbosses very quickly. The dash on the other hand gives you tons of invincibility frames while dishing out a good chunk of damage to any enemy it passes through. So instead of sticking with these two weapons the entire time, I thought it would be more fun to use all of them. Every time you clear a stage, you automatically equip the new weapon you just unlocked, so that's what I used, until the last stage. It makes you think about your stage order a little more.

For the chips, I just kept the double jump and mana regeneration for the entire game. Soul Eater (regain MP after killing an enemy) can be good as well, but the passive mana regeneration chip is especially useful on the vehicle stages. Soul Eater doesn't work in those areas, and you want all the missiles you can get to burn through the tanky enemies as fast as you can.

The game isn't perfect, of course. I'm not a big fan of the vehicle stages. They play fine, but they're too long, and they have too many stretches where nothing happens. The game balance could use some work, too (the special weapons are super strong), and the ranking and scoring system are a bit sloppy, but none of this is a big deal. It's still a great game. It looks great, plays great, and sounds great, and is well worth the $16.99 it's launching at for any fan of classic action-platform games.

Quick note: Technically, this isn't a 100% complete file. In order to get the final chip (which increases your armor), you have to lose all of your lives and get a game over. I kept replaying stages trying to figure out where this missing chip was, until I finally realized that I couldn't get it without dying. Just lol.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:20 Bioweapon Lab
5:52 Lost Ruins
14:36 Asura's Fleet
23:12 Laser Research Base
32:39 Iwondonilo City
40:29 Desalination Facility
48:20 Fallen City
54:34 Duas Space Elevator
1:01:56 Penralese Space Station
1:05:54 Ending
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

River City Girls 2 - Full Game & Story (Nightmare Mode / All Characters / NG+)

iconoclast 2023-01-08 | Why not kick off 2023 with a new video? I'm very late uploading this, despite having played it since before it was even released (huge thanks to WayForward for sending me a code!). There's a reason for that, besides pure laziness, which I'll get to in a moment...

But first thing's first! River City Girls 2 has finally been released, and it's bigger and better than the original in almost every way. The combat feels great, the pixel art and animation is really well done, with stages that are packed with detail, and the soundtrack is fantastic (one of my favorites of the year). Even the storyline, characters, and writing are enjoyable. Overall, this could be my favorite WayForward game. But it does have one gigantic flaw that I'm hoping will be fixed soon... You can only play New Game+ once. If you want to replay the story after completing a second playthrough, you have to start a new file from scratch. RCG1 didn't do this, so I have absolutely no idea what they were thinking with this change. It's awful. It almost ruins the game for me. I lost interest in playing after that, and I was kinda rushing through the game in this video, since I had to start over. I'd love to see them go in the *opposite* direction - NG++ should get even harder. I want a difficulty that's balanced around your characters' stats being maxed out - put more enemies in each encounter, more dangerous enemies, higher rank enemies, etc. That's when the game is at its best.

With that disappointment out of the way, I'd still recommend this game. I enjoyed the hell out of it in my first two playthroughs. It is a little expensive at $39.99, but personally I think it's worth the price. I put 40-50 hours into it by the time I was done recording this video (across four playthroughs), so it can keep you busy for a while. It's a lot of fun to play.

0:00 Opening
3:55 River City High (Misako)
20:00 BOSS: Ken
30:34 Uptown (Kyoko)
1:10:00 BOSS: Provie
1:19:00 Technos Headquarters (Ken)
1:49:55 BOSS: Tsuiko
1:59:15 Downtown (Riki)
2:27:09 BOSS: Marian
2:36:58 Flatirons (Provie)
3:02:27 BOSS: Blaire
3:14:27 Ocean Heights (Marian)
3:50:45 BOSS: Primo
4:04:17 River City High (Kyoko)
4:35:10 BOSS: Ken
4:43:50 Bomb Rescue & Sanwakai Tower (Misako)
5:19:21 BOSS: Sabu
5:24:40 Ending
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Shovel Knight Dig - No Death Clear

iconoclast 2022-09-24 | Shovel Knight Dig is the next platform action game in the Shovel Knight series from Yacht Club Games and Nitrome, and it was just released today on Switch, PC, and Apple Arcade (Playstation and Xbox versions are launching later). It's not a traditional level-based platform game like the original Shovel Knight, however. Instead, it has roguelike elements, with random levels and upgrades to grab in each run. It's almost like a mix of the original Shovel Knight and the puzzle spinoff, Pocket Dungeon. Regardless, it's a really fun game.

This is just a basic clear of the game. There's a bunch of secret armor recipes I haven't found yet, and I hear there's even a secret last boss, though I'm not sure what the conditions are to reach it yet. I'd like to make another video once I know how to get the true ending.

One of the most important things you need to know about the game is how important the cog wheels are. In each section, there are three cogs to find - if you grab all three, you can choose between a random powerup at the end of the area, or a full health refill. If you only get two, you get one random healing item (the weakest only restores 0.5 HP, I think) and some jewels. One cog won't give you any health back. So it's pretty important to grab all of them.

Being a roguelike, the difficulty is naturally going to vary depending on which upgrades you find. If you can stack a bunch of survivability powerups, like max HP increases, or items that revive/save you from death, it makes clearing it fairly easy. You also have the option of taking riskier paths (which have better rewards), or choosing powerups instead of health refills like I mentioned before, so you can also control the difficulty a little yourself.

The red armor I'm using reduces the damage you take and lets you carry over one powerup after dying; the downside is that it reduces the amount of jewels you find, but I honestly don't think that really matters. It's probably the best armor to use while you're learning the game.

Thanks to Yacht Club Games for sending me a key! Seeing it randomly pop up in my inbox, trying it out, and finding a really fun game is just what I needed right now to be honest. So I'd definitely recommend it to action/platform fans, as long as you also enjoy roguelikes. There are no practice or stage-skip options (as far as I know) so you'll have to start from the beginning each time you die. I can see that turning people off, but I love arcade games, so that's more of a positive than a negative to me. The randomization is well done, since everything feels intentionally designed, it's just pieced together in unpredictable chunks. I especially like how the bosses have a whole bunch of different arenas - some of them change the fights quite a bit, so you can't just robotically follow the same pattern every time.

EDIT: There actually are stage skip options. One of the NPCs in camp sells the tickets for it. Good to know!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:57 Mushroom Mines
6:46 BOSS: Spore Knight
7:48 Smeltworks
15:58 BOSS: Tinker Knight
19:05 Magic Landfill
29:32 BOSS: Scrap Knight
32:36 Drill Knight's Castle
45:31 BOSS: Drill Knight
47:09 Ending & Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Hyperstone Heist - Hard No Death Clear (Cowabunga Collection)

iconoclast 2022-09-01 | The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection has finally arrived. If you haven't heard about it, Konami and Digital Eclipse put together a compilation of just about all of the classic TMNT games, from arcade, to console, and even the Game Boy. They've included some enhancements for some of the games as well. It's a nice follow up to Shredder's Revenge.

Hyperstone Heist is the Genesis' "answer" to Turtles in Time. It's not as well known as TiT, and that's probably because it feels low budget in comparison. It recycles graphics, enemies, bosses, and music from not only TiT, but the original arcade game as well. It has some unique content, most notably the Japanese stage and its boss, Tatsu. The balance is a bit different, too, with the biggest difference probably being with the slam throw. It doesn't instantly kill every enemy it touches any more, but it's still insanely strong anyway. Some enemies and bosses behave a little differently too, but it's basically just small tweaks here and there. In the original game on the Genesis, your third button was used for run, instead of the attack+jump macro in SNES TiT. That made the game control a bit better, but since the Cowabunga Collection adds that function to Turtles in Time, this game loses the control advantage when comparing them. It's still a fun game though, even if it kinda feels like a romhack.

A no death run basically comes down to how well you know the last stage. It has no healing items at all and goes on for quite a bit, so if you're not careful you'll eventually get whittled down through attrition. The Stone Warriors are probably the most dangerous enemies here, but you can just play safe by dive kicking them a bunch of you really want to. I try to bunch them up and get a full death combo on them, but it can be hard when they're dashing all over the place.

I'm playing the PC version, which has a stuttering issue at the moment. It's pretty frustrating trying to record a decent run, then it just starts chugging along. What's really annoying is that the first time I finished a no death run, I didn't get any stutters at all, but I wanted to record a cleaner run since I barely knew what I was doing on the early stages lol. Then the game would stutter in every single attempt after that. So if you're interested in playing this, I'd recommend buying it on console for now. I hope they fix the PC version soon.

Chapters:
0:00 Cowabunga Collection
0:23 Title / Intro
2:02 Scene 1 - New York City
9:43 Scene 2 - A Mysterious Ghost Ship
18:02 Scene 3 - Shredder's Hideout
25:20 Scene 4 - The Gauntlet
32:14 Scene 5 - The Final Shell Shock
44:33 Ending & Credits

I'm slowly working my way through this collection. I'll probably play Tournament Fighters next. I've never uploaded a fighting game clear before, so I guess this'll be the first one.
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Turtles in Time (SNES) - Hard No Death Clear (Cowabunga Collection)

iconoclast 2022-08-31 | The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection came out earlier today. If you haven't heard about it, Konami and Digital Eclipse put together a compilation of just about all of the classic TMNT games, from arcade, to console, and even the Game Boy. They've included some enhancements for some of the games as well. It's a nice follow up to Shredder's Revenge.

For the SNES versions of Turtles in Time, you can now run by pressing a single button. I think that's a big improvement for this game, because the dash didn't seem to work consistently when I playing this on an emulator earlier (maybe real hardware is better?). But unfortunately, you can't change which button the run is mapped to. By default, it's the right trigger on an Xbox controller. That's where I'd put it on a game pad too, but that doesn't work very well on most arcade stick layouts. I hope they add that to the button mapping menu. (Side note: you need to keep dash on "auto" in the options menu for it to work; manual disables it) There's also no longer a macro for attack+jump, which the SNES version has in several of its control schemes. That's not a big deal, but it's a weird oversight to leave it out.

I'm playing the PC version. Right now it has a stuttering bug, which you can see at 14:04 - 14:12. That was an especially bad instance of it, and it doesn't happen in every run. I was able to play for hours without it happening at all. But it's still an annoying issue that needs to be fixed. As far as I know, the console versions don't have this problem.

About Turtles in Time itself, the SNES version is pretty easy to clear. The most dangerous part is probably Slash - he's only vulnerable when hit from behind, he moves very fast, and he hits really hard. Starting out behind him lets you burn through most of his HP with dash attacks. You can even kill him before he can do anything, but I'd recommend just practicing the fight normally first to understand how he behaves. Once he gets pushed to the wall, he'll jump towards the other side of the screen, which you can punish when he lands. Once he gets down to two health bars, instead of jumping away, he'll do a quick spin attack. You just have to get a feel for when it's coming, because it hits you pretty fast. Other than that, there are some notable differences between the turtles. Raph is the fastest and does the most damage, but he has the lowest health. Mikey has twice as much health as Raph, but his damage isn't as good and his initial attack is pretty slow. Don and Leo are more all-rounders, with Don sacrificing a bit of damage for extra reach.

Chapters:
0:00 Cowabunga Collection
0:30 Title
1:45 Big Apple, 3 A.M.
4:20 Alleycat Blues
6:56 Sewer Surfin'
9:16 Technodrome
13:34 Prehistoric Turtlesaurus
17:36 Skull and Crossbones
21:17 Bury My Shell at Wounded Knee
24:37 Neon Night-Riders
28:14 Starbase - Where No Turtle Has Gone Before
33:23 Technodrome - The Final Shell-Shock

I haven't played the other games yet, but so far this seems like a decent collection with a bunch of really good games to play. It has some neat extras like concept art and game design documents to check out too, which I'm always a fan of. The collection is a bit pricey at $39.99, but if you want to get good at all of these games, it'll keep you busy for a long time.
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Michael Jacksons Moonwalker - No Death Clear (Arcade)

iconoclast 2022-08-21 | Moonwalker is a run & gun that Sega released in arcades in 1990, based on Michael Jackson's film of the same name. They also released a different version of the game on the Genesis, which is probably the game that most people played. But I think the arcade version is quite a bit better. It's a really good game, and still pretty unique as an isometric shooter. There isn't much else like it.

The gameplay is pretty simple. Holding the attack button charges up MJ's magic, getting progressively stronger and gaining more range as it powers up. But if you hold it for too long, it resets back to its weakest form. I like that, it adds a bit more strategy to the game since finding the best time to start charging your attack can make some of the more difficult sections easier to deal with.
You also have a full screen bomb, which plays out with Michael doing some of his dance choreography. You can actually choose which bomb you use by inputting a direction at the same time. The noteworthy thing about this is that the left/right + bomb attack does more damage to any enemy that Michael hits with his hat, which is very useful against bosses and minibosses.
And finally there's Bubbles, Michael's pet chimpanzee. He appears at set points throughout the game, and picking him up makes Michael transform into a robot, which lets you shoot lasers and missiles. RoboMichael can also charge his attack, which shoots out a laser and some missiles. This charges a lot faster than the attack in your regular form, so you can essentially spam this on bosses for massive damage.

And that's all there really is to it. It's a fairly simple game and it's not that difficult to clear. You have to be careful once you get to the zombie area of stage 4 though, because there's only one healing item left for the rest of the game. Thankfully stage 5 is pretty easy with a bit of practice. Give it a shot if you like run & guns or are a fan of Michael Jackson! I'd hope that covers most of the world's population. 🐵

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:25 Round 1 - Cavern
1:26 Round 2 - Amusement Quarter
5:55 Round 3 - Night Street
11:18 Round 4 - Graveyard
17:48 Round 5 - Evil Fortress
23:13 Ending & Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Jitsu Squad - Master Mode 1CC (Hero / Yamagiwa)

iconoclast 2022-08-11 | Jitsu Squad is a beat 'em up from Tanku Creative Studio that came out a couple of months ago. I'm finally getting around to playing it, and it's really fun. The combat feels great, and the art and graphics are amazing (although it can get very busy visually, which makes it hard to see what's happening). This game has a million references to classic arcade and console games too, I can't even begin to list all of them. See if you can spot them all?! (Good luck)

Master Mode is the highest difficulty in the game at the moment. I think they're still updating it and have an even higher difficulty coming out, as well as a new playable character and new modes. Master adds more enemies to each fight compared to Normal, and the boss AI might be more aggressive. Ultimately it's not that hard to clear though. You get a lot of lives throughout the game (one on each stage? I'm not sure how the 1UPs work, to be honest) and your character has a lot of powerful tools to take advantage of.

I'm pressed for time right now so I'll write a bit more later. I'll just cap this off by saying this is a really fun game and I'd absolutely recommend it to beat 'em up fans or even fans of 3D action games, as it's pretty similar to those too.

For now, Jitsu Squad is only available on PC, but it should be coming to Switch, PS4, and Xbox later this year.
store.steampowered.com/app/1522080/Jitsu_Squad

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:17 Stage 1 - Sakura Hills
13:35 Stage 2 - Neon Boulevard
26:18 Bonus Stage
27:27 Stage 3 - Pirate Bay
35:57 Stage 4 - Castle Hellstorm
48:51 Bonus Stage
50:02 Stage 5 - Infernia
1:05:46 Stage 6 - Frostjaw Fortress
1:16:27 Bonus Stage
1:17:29 Stage 7 - Primal Rage
1:28:58 Stage 8 - Realm of Rogue
1:46:24 Ending & Credits

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】NINJA GAIDEN 3: Razors Edge - Ultimate Ninja - Day 8

iconoclast 2022-07-27 | CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
3:50 Gameplay
28:35 Test of Valor
47:08 BOSS: Fiend Genshin
49:34 Cutscene
51:17 Gameplay
54:08 Cutscene
57:04 BOSS: Cliff
57:12 BOSS: Regent of the Mask
1:02:14 Gameplay
1:18:34 BOSS: Theodore / Regent of the Mask
1:21:30 BOSS: The Goddess
1:02:45 End Screen
1:28:49 Ending
1:32:11 End Screen
Razor's Edge playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOT7AWWvthAWSJ72quHlVTH

It took ages, but I finally finished this playthrough. Thank you to everyone who watched these videos! This game has a million little flaws that can really get under my skin, but ultimately I still have more fun with it than most other action games. Ninja Gaiden just has the best combat.

Regardless, this chapter is long and hard. The Test of Valor might be the toughest one in the game, but it's definitely not the most annoying. It takes strategy and some careful decision making, and it's capped off by one of the good bosses. It's a fun challenge, but not one I'd one to repeat too many times. On a side note, I didn't do it in this video, but you should probably Cicada Surge Genshin's dash attack after he jumps back. I guess I didn't want to risk screwing it up and dying at the very end, so I just ate damage from it a few times.

The last boss kinda sucks, but at least the Lunar works very well against her. It builds ninpo quickly and can consistently delimb the minions in the first phase. The last phase is very simple too, it just has constant fireball spam that can chip away at you. I forgot it had a mid fight checkpoint though; I would have liked to reset and do it all in one go, but it is what it is.

I would like to do more Ninja Gaiden videos, but I don't know when I'll get around to them, to be honest. I'd even like to do more Razor's Edge videos with Kasumi, Momiji & Ayane. I'll just be sure to finish whatever I start as soon as I can from now on...

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】NINJA GAIDEN 3: Razors Edge - Ultimate Ninja - Day 7

iconoclast 2022-07-24 | 0:00 Intro
5:56 Gameplay
19:03 Test of Valor
25:58 BOSS: Alexei
28:17 Gameplay
39:31 BOSS: Steel Spiders
41:47 BOSS: Ashtear Higgins
45:33 Gameplay
57:12 BOSS: Regent of the Mask
1:02:45 End Screen

Razor's Edge playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOT7AWWvthAWSJ72quHlVTH

The Test of Valor in this stage is a huge pain. Alexei is a much better boss in NG2 as well, they kinda ruined him in this game. Oh well.

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】NINJA GAIDEN 3: Razors Edge - Ultimate Ninja - Day 6-Ayane

iconoclast 2022-07-23 | 0:00 Intro
0:56 Gameplay
13:14 Test of Valor
22:20 BOSS: Genshin
23:50 Gameplay
37:45 BOSS: Goddess Prototype
41:09 End Screen
Razor's Edge playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOT7AWWvthAWSJ72quHlVTH

I'm finally finishing this playthrough. Sorry for taking so long! Tomorrow I'll have Day 7 up, and hopefully I'll have Day 8 finished by Monday... I haven't started playing that one yet, but I really want to minimize the gaps between my uploads. I hate leaving stuff unfinished, especially because it sucks for anyone that wants to see the whole thing.
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Spidersaurs! - Full Story, No Deaths - Rare/Hard Mode (Victoria)

iconoclast 2022-07-15 | Spidersaurs is a "new" run & gun from WayForward, the creators of Contra 4. It plays exactly like Contra. This was originally released on Apple Arcade in 2019, but now WayForward has brought it to all modern consoles and PC. If you're looking for a new Contra style game, then this is right up your alley.

This is a full playthrough of the Story mode. I included almost all of the dialogue, though there are some extra scenes if you quit out of a mission and reload your save. I don't think you'll see everything if you play straight through, if that's something you're interested in. I like the world and characters of this game well enough, it helps give it some flavor.

There's also Arcade mode, which plays exactly like Story mode with unlockable powerups after each mission, except it doesn't have any of the dialogue and cutscenes. And there's Speedrun mode, which gives you all of your abilities right away. I appreciate the variety of modes, although I really don't like how you always have to play Mission 0. It's a tutorial stage with nothing to engage the player, it just wastes your time. Other than that, the game is pretty decent. I'm not the biggest fan of it to be honest, it's solid, but I never felt too motivated to keep playing. Maybe other people will like it more than I did. I do think Contra fans should at least give it a try, new run & guns don't come along too often nowadays and this one is fairly well made.

Chapters
0:00 Opening
1:02 Intro
5:58 Mission 0
10:02 Mission 1
16:53 Mission 2
24:35 Mission 3
33:18 Mission 4
44:43 Mission 5
56:41 Mission 6
58:54 Ending & Credits

Thanks to WayForward for the review key!
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Cuphead DLC - All Bosses Expert S-ranked (No Damage) + Full Story

iconoclast 2022-07-01 | Cuphead - The Delicious Last course is finally out! And it only costs $7.99! Isn't that too cheap?! But I'm happy; I've been looking forward to this for four years, and they delivered some high quality content.

The DLC introduces a new storyline where Cuphead and Mugman travel to Inkwell Isle IV, where they meet Chef Saltbaker. He tells them they can make Ms. Chalice "as real as can be" if they collect the ingredients to make a Wondertart. And so they set off, killing everyone they can find in the hopes of making Ms. Chalice real.

In addition to all of the new bosses in the DLC, you also get to play as Ms. Chalice. She works a little differently than Cuphead; for starters, in order to play as her, you have to equip the Astral Cookie charm. This means you can't use any other charm, so no more smoke bomb or extra health. Ms. Chalice has one extra hit point, though, which means you can get hit once and still S-rank a stage. She can also double jump, and she parries by dashing into things. She also has a crouch dash, but I haven't made much use of it. I find her more fun to play as, thanks to her extra mobility - and I like how she can't rely on the smoke bomb to dash through things. It keeps you honest.

There are a few new weapons, too. In this video, I use the Crackshot and Converge here and there. I especially like the Crackshot, the turret it shoots out as its special attack can be very useful. There's also the Whirlwind, but I'm not sure what boss it's especially useful on yet. I'll have to experiment with it.

Naturally, I'd say if you enjoyed Cuphead, then don't think twice about grabbing the DLC. It makes an already great game quite a bit better.

I think I'll go through the main game with Ms. Chalice next.

0:00 Intro
1:53 Moonshine Mob
3:50 Esther Winchester
5:34 The Howling Aces
7:16 Mortimer Freeze
9:24 Glumstone The Giant
11:18 Chess Pawns
11:51 Chess Knight
12:41 Chess Bishop
13:40 Chess Rook
14:15 Chess Queen
15:04 Angel and Demon
16:41 Chef Saltbaker
19:26 Ending

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Final Vendetta - No Death Clear / All Stages S-Rank (Hard / Claire)

iconoclast 2022-06-28 | Final Vendetta is a new beat 'em up from Bitmap Bureau & Numskull Games. It was heavily inspired by Streets of Rage and Final Fight and has many similarities to both of them (more-so SOR). One thing that's different about Final Vendetta, though, is its combat. It gives you a lot of freedom to cancel and chain your attacks together to create super powerful combos. So in that sense it feels closer to Streets of Rage 4 or Final Fight 3, instead of the older games. You have a pretty large moveset, and it's a lot of fun to play around with it, trying to figure out the best options for each situation.

Hard is the default difficulty. Despite the name, it's actually relatively easy to clear since you get tons of lives. You start with five, there's a hidden one to find in every stage, and you get extends at 1 million and 2 million points. But enemies can still do a lot of damage and trap you in a bad spot, so you can still die pretty fast. That's what makes going for a deathless run fun.

There's also an unlockable Ultra difficulty mode. I've only tried it a couple of times, so I'm not sure what the exact differences are. It seems like enemies do a bit more damage, you only get one extra life, and there's no warning for any of the traps. I'll probably move on to that now that I got a good score for Hard mode.

Speaking of which, the scoring and ranking systems seem pretty good in this. It has a similar combo chaining system to Streets of Rage 4, except instead of losing your chain when you get hit, you only lose it when you get knocked down. It doesn't calculate score based on the damage you've done to enemies either, it just goes by the number of hits you did. So the two fast characters are probably going to score a bit higher than the slow and heavy grappler by default. It's maybe a bit too simple, but it seems to work well enough, and it helps make the game more fun. The grade ranks, on the other hand, are kinda harsh in comparison to the chaining. In order to get an S-rank, you can only get knocked down once through the entire stage. Unless you've built up a 200+ hit chain - that lets you take one extra knockdown. That can be hard to build up on some stages, so you really need to be careful if you want those S-ranks.

The developer has been updating the game pretty frequently since its release last week, adjusting the balance and fixing exploits. I've been busy with TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, so I'm just getting around to this. I haven't played the previous versions, but the game feels like it's in a pretty good state right now. I hope they won't go overboard with changes. Personally, all I'd really like to see is a bit more hit-stun on the jumping down+attack for Claire and Duke so they can transition into a grab more smoothly. Enemies recover really fast from that in comparison to Final Fight or Streets of Rage for example. Same for Claire's running+special attack (the knee), a bit more hit-stun to easily follow it up with a grab would be nice. But other than that, I hope they'll just do small quality of life improvements, and not mess with the balance too much. The game's great as it is. I'd definitely recommend trying it if you're a fan of the genre. The price ($24.99) might be a hard sell to casual fans, but it's well worth it in my opinion. I've been enjoying the game a lot. It's currently available on all major platforms.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:45 Stage 1 - The Streets
3:46 Stage 2 - The Underground
7:41 Stage 3 - The Elevator
11:30 Stage 4 - Dockside
15:48 Bonus Stage
16:17 Stage 5 - Club Tigre
21:19 Stage 6 - Manor Grounds
27:49 Ending & Credits
Final Score: 4,116,450
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Gnarly No Death Clear (April ONeil / Arcade Mode)

iconoclast 2022-06-25 | TMNT Shredder's Revenge is finally out! This is a brand new beat 'em up developed by Tribute Games, which was heavily inspired by Konami's classic arcade games, and the early 90s era of the series. I grew up on this stuff, so it's nostalgic seeing all of the references to the cartoon, movies, and games. They packed so much into it, that they ended up with a run time of nearly 2 hours, making this one of the longest beat 'em ups I've ever played. That'll be somewhat polarizing, but I don't mind the length, personally.

April is the fist character I cleared the game with, so I wanted to go back and do a no death run with her now that I've learned everything pretty thoroughly. She's still super fun to play, and I love her speed - especially after playing Splinter and Don back to back, lol. She's a beast, the only things she slightly struggles with are the heavy enemies, like the dinosaurs and rock guys in stages 13 & 14. They're still not a big issue for her, as long as you can single them out (or cleanly group them together) and get some combo resets or juggles in. But she's still one of the strongest characters, regardless. (I think Raph and Casey are still a bit better fwiw)

This will probably be my last Shredder's Revenge video for now. I'll be back if they release a significant update, or do some DLC. My wishlist would be a much more robust scoring system - even a direct copy of Streets of Rage 4's would be great. A playable Shredder would be cool, too, even if it makes no sense story-wise. And maybe some different colors to choose from. It'd be cool if you could match the color scheme of the live action movie turtles, for example. But the game is still awesome as is. If you're a fan of the classic turtles, you have to play it. It was made for you!

I'll be back with more TMNT once the Cowabunga Collection comes out, at least. I'm looking forward to that.

Shredder's Revenge is available on all major platforms, including Xbox/PC Game Pass.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening
2:30 Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News
6:55 Episode 2: Big Apple, 3PM
11:31 Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway!
16:30 Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo
22:29 Episode 5: King of the Spill
28:03 Episode 6: Mall Meltdown
33:03 Episode 7: Roof Running Reptiles
38:24 Episode 8: Panic in the Sky
42:40 Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island
48:21 Episode 10: A Few Screws Loose
55:14 Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede!
1:01:02 Episode 12: It Won't Fly!
1:07:29 Episode 13: Technodrome Redux
1:15:52 Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies
1:21:38 Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids
1:29:52 Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady
1:35:31 Ending

TMNT Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOEGhJuaUUwMhHyK6Ux4HFf
April O'Neil (No Deaths): youtu.be/WVo9eHEm0K8
Splinter (No Deaths): youtu.be/-_Y5Zmc9woI
Donatello (No Deaths): youtu.be/9XLj9XU9zsk
Raphael: youtu.be/D87BDbwo0PM
Michelangelo: youtu.be/thbyE3HCMbM
Leonardo: youtu.be/87m9HF5ipT4
Casey Jones: youtu.be/7dqqAV8t1Zw
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Gnarly No Death Clear (Donatello / Arcade Mode)

iconoclast 2022-06-24 | TMNT Shredder's Revenge is finally out! This is a brand new beat 'em up developed by Tribute Games, which was heavily inspired by Konami's classic arcade games, and the early 90s era of the series. I grew up on this stuff, so it's nostalgic seeing all of the references to the cartoon, movies, and games. They packed so much into it, that they ended up with a run time of nearly 2 hours, making this one of the longest beat 'em ups I've ever played. That'll be somewhat polarizing, but I don't mind the length, personally.

Don is alright. I'm not really a fan of how he plays, he just seems like a worse Splinter to me. His range is good, and his attack speed isn't too bad once you realize you should almost always start with forward+attack, instead of his neutral attack. The forward move is much faster. His biggest problem is how his combo knocks heavy enemies down on the third hit, and the 4th hit is usually too slow to hit them before they become invulnerable. So it just whiffs. This really sucks against bosses, where you want to maximize your damage whenever you can. But other than that, he's not too bad. His charge attack is really good, his neutral super is probably the best one in the game, and the rest of his attacks are fine. He's just not my style in this game.

I can clear Gnarly without dying pretty consistently now. In the run just before this, I got to the statue in stage 16 without dying. When she moved in to shoot her laser, I tried to do a combo and use the evasion kick to quickly reset it... What happened is the kick auto-aimed right into her laser, which is an instant kill. I had never been hit by it before, so that was a fun way to learn how dangerous it is. In this run you can see me being incredibly careful when she moves in, lol.

Just to reiterate from my Splinter video, Captain Zorax is pretty annoying until you figure out how he behaves. Once you understand the strategy, he's not that hard. All you need to do is go on for a combo, back off to avoid his punch, move down/up to dodge his gunfire (he shoots 3 times at first, then 6 times when he's below 50% health), and go back in for another combo. You should also make sure you have a super ready for his stampede. When he does that, the first dino that runs out seems to go straight at you, so most of the time you can move to the top or bottom of the screen and get a quick taunt in. You'll want that super to instantly kill the dino that stays behind. And that's all you really need to do, he's not too dangerous if you play safe and reach him with most of your health intact (so you'll have the extra pizza for backup).

Chrome Dome is still pretty dangerous. You need to keep track of the timing for when he's going to punch you, otherwise one good smack could lead to the end of your no death run. In this run I tried throwing some soldiers at the screen to move it along a little faster, and I wound up taking a bunch of damage because of it. I think it's safer to just clear out the soldiers, most of the time. Then you can hit the barrel when it drops to bring Chrome Dome out.

The rest of the game isn't that hard once you understand what to do. For now, I think I'll do one more no death run with April, then call it a day for this game. Maybe they'll update it, or add some DLC (playable Shredder would be cool, even if it makes no sense story-wise). That'll get me playing again.

Anyway, this is a great game. If you're a fan of the classic turtles, you have to play it. It was made for you!

Shredder's Revenge is available on all major platforms, including Xbox/PC Game Pass.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening
2:28 Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News
7:02 Episode 2: Big Apple, 3PM
11:48 Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway!
16:56 Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo
23:35 Episode 5: King of the Spill
29:03 Episode 6: Mall Meltdown
34:42 Episode 7: Roof Running Reptiles
40:24 Episode 8: Panic in the Sky
45:17 Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island
50:55 Episode 10: A Few Screws Loose
57:25 Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede!
1:03:05 Episode 12: It Won't Fly!
1:10:04 Episode 13: Technodrome Redux
1:18:49 Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies
1:25:00 Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids
1:34:27 Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady
1:39:45 Ending

TMNT Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOEGhJuaUUwMhHyK6Ux4HFf
April O'Neil (No Deaths): youtu.be/WVo9eHEm0K8
Splinter (No Deaths): youtu.be/-_Y5Zmc9woI
Donatello (No Deaths): youtu.be/9XLj9XU9zsk
Raphael: youtu.be/D87BDbwo0PM
Michelangelo: youtu.be/thbyE3HCMbM
Leonardo: youtu.be/87m9HF5ipT4
Casey Jones: youtu.be/7dqqAV8t1Zw
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Gnarly No Death Clear (Splinter / Arcade Mode)

iconoclast 2022-06-23 | TMNT Shredder's Revenge is finally out! This is a brand new beat 'em up developed by Tribute Games, which was heavily inspired by Konami's classic arcade games, and the early 90s era of the series. I grew up on this stuff, so it's nostalgic seeing all of the references to the cartoon, movies, and games. They packed so much into it, that they ended up with a run time of nearly 2 hours, making this one of the longest beat 'em ups I've ever played. That'll be somewhat polarizing, but I don't mind the length, personally.

Gnarly is the name for this game's hard mode. The normal difficulty is very easy to clear, and while Gnarly seemingly had very minor adjustments, it's quite a bit more difficult. From what I can tell they basically make you take twice as much damage, and bosses have twice as much health. I think some enemies also move faster or can be more aggressive, but I'm not really sure tbh. Still, you get 1UPs every 200 points, so you've got a lot of breathing room for mistakes.

Splinter is really strong. I'm not sure if he has higher DPS than Raph, since his attacks are slow, but he hits like a truck. The third and fourth attack in his combo do extra damage, and his running attack does 3 points of damage - the highest in the game. His supers aren't that great, but they get the job done.

So I managed to clear the game without dying. The biggest roadblock was Captain Zorax, but he's not a problem once you understand how he works. I was overthinking it until now by trying to be super aggressive, but all you need to do is go on for a combo, back off to avoid his punch, move down/up to dodge his gunfire (he shoots 3 times at first, then 6 times when he's below 50% health), and go back in for another combo. You should also make sure you have a super ready for his stampede. When he does that, the first dino he sends seems to be straight at you, so most of the time you can move to the top or bottom of the screen and get a quick taunt in. You'll want that super to instantly kill the dino that stays behind. And that's all you really need to do, he's not too dangerous if you play safe and reach him with most of your health (to keep the extra pizza for backup).

Chrome Dome is still pretty dangerous. You need to keep track of the timing for when he's going to punch you, otherwise one good smack could lead to the end of your no death run. I also think it might be safer to just clear out all the Foot soldiers and hit the barrel when he drops down, instead of tossing one of them at the screen. That leaves you open for a moment, so you have to be really careful about doing that.

The rest of the game isn't that hard once you understand what to do. I gotta admit though, I thought I was dead after I got hit on the statue, then took some more dumb hits on Super Shredder. That was too close for comfort.

PS. There's a cut right after Leatherhead. I had to go to the bathroom and just let it run for a bit, I think I edited it together pretty cleanly though. Just pointing it out if anyone sees it and wonders why it's there.

Anyway, this is a great game and I'll be playing it a lot more. If you're a fan of the classic turtles, you have to play this. It was made for you!

Shredder's Revenge is available on all major platforms, including Xbox/PC Game Pass.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening
2:27 Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News
6:51 Episode 2: Big Apple, 3PM
11:49 Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway!
17:03 Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo
22:33 Episode 5: King of the Spill
28:21 Episode 6: Mall Meltdown
33:15 Episode 7: Roof Running Reptiles
38:30 Episode 8: Panic in the Sky
43:23 Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island
49:06 Episode 10: A Few Screws Loose
55:57 Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede!
1:01:04 Episode 12: It Won't Fly!
1:07:25 Episode 13: Technodrome Redux
1:16:02 Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies
1:22:01 Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids
1:30:35 Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady
1:35:42 Ending

TMNT Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOEGhJuaUUwMhHyK6Ux4HFf
April O'Neil (No Deaths): youtu.be/WVo9eHEm0K8
Splinter (No Deaths): youtu.be/-_Y5Zmc9woI
Donatello (No Deaths): youtu.be/9XLj9XU9zsk
Raphael: youtu.be/D87BDbwo0PM
Michelangelo: youtu.be/thbyE3HCMbM
Leonardo: youtu.be/87m9HF5ipT4
Casey Jones: youtu.be/7dqqAV8t1Zw
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Arcade Mode - Gnarly 1CC (Michelangelo)

iconoclast 2022-06-22 | TMNT Shredder's Revenge is finally out! This is a brand new beat 'em up developed by Tribute Games, which was heavily inspired by Konami's classic arcade games, and the early 90s era of the series. I grew up on this stuff, so it's nostalgic seeing all of the references to the cartoon, movies, and games. They packed so much into it, that they ended up with a run time of nearly 2 hours, making this one of the longest beat 'em ups I've ever played. That'll be somewhat polarizing, but I don't mind the length, personally.

Gnarly is the name for this game's hard mode. The normal difficulty is very easy to clear, and while Gnarly seemingly had very minor adjustments, it's quite a bit more difficult. From what I can tell they basically make you take twice as much damage, and bosses have twice as much health. I think some enemies also move faster or can be more aggressive, but I'm not really sure tbh. Still, you get 1UPs every 200 points, so you've got a lot of breathing room for mistakes.

I think Mikey is the worst character in the game. The "tiers" are pretty compact, so it's not a big deal, but the way his dive kick bounces off enemies makes it hard to get in from the air. I don't like his running jump attack, either. He spins on his shell, but the hitbox and range on it makes it a really weak approach. Other than that, he's fine though. He seems to build supers a little faster than the other characters thanks to his more frequent hits. I guess that's one point in his favor, lol.

After playing more, I've got a better approach for Captain Zorax. I've been overthinking it by trying super aggressive strategies, but just understanding how he works and playing clean makes him easier to deal with. This run is pretty sloppy and has some dumb deaths in it, but I should be able to get a no death run done soon.

Anyway, this is a great game and I'll be playing it a lot more. If you're a fan of the classic turtles, you have to play this. It was made for you!

Shredder's Revenge is available on all major platforms, including Xbox/PC Game Pass.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening
2:33 Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News
7:36 Episode 2: Big Apple, 3PM
13:00 Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway!
18:18 Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo
24:50 Episode 5: King of the Spill
31:44 Episode 6: Mall Meltdown
38:06 Episode 7: Roof Running Reptiles
44:28 Episode 8: Panic in the Sky
49:20 Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island
55:33 Episode 10: A Few Screws Loose
1:02:09 Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede!
1:08:10 Episode 12: It Won't Fly!
1:15:21 Episode 13: Technodrome Redux
1:23:16 Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies
1:29:15 Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids
1:38:45 Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady
1:44:06 Ending

TMNT Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOEGhJuaUUwMhHyK6Ux4HFf
April O'Neil (No Deaths): youtu.be/WVo9eHEm0K8
Splinter (No Deaths): youtu.be/-_Y5Zmc9woI
Donatello (No Deaths): youtu.be/9XLj9XU9zsk
Raphael: youtu.be/D87BDbwo0PM
Michelangelo: youtu.be/thbyE3HCMbM
Leonardo: youtu.be/87m9HF5ipT4
Casey Jones: youtu.be/7dqqAV8t1Zw
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Arcade Mode - Gnarly 1CC (Casey Jones)

iconoclast 2022-06-21 | TMNT Shredder's Revenge is finally out! This is a brand new beat 'em up developed by Tribute Games, which was heavily inspired by Konami's classic arcade games, and the early 90s era of the series. I grew up on this stuff, so it's nostalgic seeing all of the references to the cartoon, movies, and games. They packed so much into it, that they ended up with a run time of nearly 2 hours, making this one of the longest beat 'em ups I've ever played. That'll be somewhat polarizing, but I don't mind the length, personally.

Gnarly is the name for this game's hard mode. The normal difficulty is very easy to clear, and while Gnarly seemingly had very minor adjustments, it's quite a bit more difficult. From what I can tell they basically make you take twice as much damage, and bosses have twice as much health. I think some enemies also move faster or can be more aggressive, but I'm not really sure tbh. Still, you get 1UPs every 200 points, so you've got a lot of breathing room for mistakes.

Casey is unlocked after finishing Story Mode. He's really good, too. It's hard to pick who the best character in the game is, but he's probably in the running. I think his only downside is that he's a little bit slower than some of the other characters, and his taunt seems to take a little bit longer (not sure, but Casey is the only character I've had trouble taunting Slash with - which isn't a big deal). Other than that he's got really effective combos with no annoying knockback or knockdown properties on them, and he deals good damage. He's a beast.

Anyway, this is a great game and I'll be playing it a lot more. If you're a fan of the classic turtles, you have to play this. It was made for you!

Shredder's Revenge is available on all major platforms, including Xbox/PC Game Pass.

On a side note, I think I've figured out a good strategy for Captain Zorax. You can basically see it in this video, though I have a better understanding of what to do now. Chrome Dome can also be annoying, but I think a no death clear should be coming soon. Maybe with my Donatello or Splinter runs. If I screw it up with them, I'll get it done with one of my favorite characters.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening
2:25 Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News
7:09 Episode 2: Big Apple, 3PM
12:25 Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway!
17:36 Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo
24:11 Episode 5: King of the Spill
29:45 Episode 6: Mall Meltdown
34:54 Episode 7: Roof Running Reptiles
40:50 Episode 8: Panic in the Sky
45:47 Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island
51:33 Episode 10: A Few Screws Loose
58:34 Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede!
1:03:22 Episode 12: It Won't Fly!
1:11:10 Episode 13: Technodrome Redux
1:20:06 Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies
1:26:51 Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids
1:35:00 Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady
1:40:33 Ending

TMNT Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOEGhJuaUUwMhHyK6Ux4HFf
April O'Neil (No Deaths): youtu.be/WVo9eHEm0K8
Splinter (No Deaths): youtu.be/-_Y5Zmc9woI
Donatello (No Deaths): youtu.be/9XLj9XU9zsk
Raphael: youtu.be/D87BDbwo0PM
Michelangelo: youtu.be/thbyE3HCMbM
Leonardo: youtu.be/87m9HF5ipT4
Casey Jones: youtu.be/7dqqAV8t1Zw
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Arcade Mode - Gnarly 1CC (Raphael)

iconoclast 2022-06-20 | TMNT Shredder's Revenge is finally out! This is a brand new beat 'em up developed by Tribute Games, which was heavily inspired by Konami's classic arcade games, and the early 90s era of the series. I grew up on this stuff, so it's nostalgic seeing all of the references to the cartoon, movies, and games. They packed so much into it, that they ended up with a run time of nearly 2 hours, making this one of the longest beat 'em ups I've ever played. That'll be somewhat polarizing, but I don't mind the length, personally.

Gnarly is the name for this game's hard mode. The normal difficulty is very easy to clear, and while Gnarly seemingly had very minor adjustments, it's quite a bit more difficult. From what I can tell they basically make you take twice as much damage, and bosses have twice as much health. I think some enemies also move faster or can be more aggressive, but I'm not really sure tbh. Still, you get 1UPs every 200 points, so you've got a lot of breathing room for mistakes.

Rafael is really strong. Both of his running attacks do two points of damage and lead directly into a combo. His dragon punch has a good hitbox on it too. The only thing I don't like about him is that his dropkick sends the enemy flying back. It does two points of damage, but I think every other character can follow up their evade attack with a combo, so the knockback on Raf's isn't as useful. Other than that, he's great.

Anyway, it's a great game and I'll be playing it a lot more. If you're a fan of the classic turtles, you have to play this. It was made for you!

Shredder's Revenge is available on all major platforms, including Xbox/PC Game Pass.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening
2:28 Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News
7:05 Episode 2: Big Apple, 3PM
12:08 Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway!
18:00 Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo
24:10 Episode 5: King of the Spill
30:31 Episode 6: Mall Meltdown
35:54 Episode 7: Roof Running Reptiles
41:45 Episode 8: Panic in the Sky
46:30 Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island
52:11 Episode 10: A Few Screws Loose
59:00 Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede!
1:03:49 Episode 12: It Won't Fly!
1:10:32 Episode 13: Technodrome Redux
1:19:31 Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies
1:25:17 Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids
1:34:55 Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady
1:40:34 Ending

TMNT Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOEGhJuaUUwMhHyK6Ux4HFf
April O'Neil (No Deaths): youtu.be/WVo9eHEm0K8
Splinter (No Deaths): youtu.be/-_Y5Zmc9woI
Donatello (No Deaths): youtu.be/9XLj9XU9zsk
Raphael: youtu.be/D87BDbwo0PM
Michelangelo: youtu.be/thbyE3HCMbM
Leonardo: youtu.be/87m9HF5ipT4
Casey Jones: youtu.be/7dqqAV8t1Zw
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Arcade Mode - Gnarly 1CC (Leonardo)

iconoclast 2022-06-19 | TMNT Shredder's Revenge is finally out! This is a brand new beat 'em up developed by Tribute Games, which was heavily inspired by Konami's classic arcade games, and the early 90s era of the series. I grew up on this stuff, so it's nostalgic seeing all of the references to the cartoon, movies, and games. They packed so much into it, that they ended up with a run time of nearly 2 hours, making this one of the longest beat 'em ups I've ever played. That'll be somewhat polarizing, but I don't mind the length, personally.

Gnarly is the name for this game's hard mode. The normal difficulty is very easy to clear, and while Gnarly seemingly had very minor adjustments, it's quite a bit more difficult. From what I can tell they basically make you take twice as much damage, and bosses have twice as much health. I think some enemies also move faster or can be more aggressive, but I'm not really sure tbh. Still, you get 1UPs every 200 points, so you've got a lot of breathing room for mistakes.

Leonardo is pretty good all around. I like using his double jump attack (the spinning blade slash) more than the rest of the characters' floaty air smack, but it does leave him vulnerable on landing for a second. I think you can get around that if you go straight into a super, but I usually don't. Otherwise all of his moves are pretty good; his supers don't seem as effective as some other characters, but they still get the job done. For now he's probably my favorite turtle, but I haven't played the other ones much.

Anyway, it's a great game and I'll be playing it a lot more. If you're a fan of the classic turtles, you have to play this. It was made for you!

Shredder's Revenge is available on all major platforms, including Xbox/PC Game Pass.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening
2:34 Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News
7:13 Episode 2: Big Apple, 3PM
12:36 Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway!
18:24 Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo
24:59 Episode 5: King of the Spill
31:16 Episode 6: Mall Meltdown
36:57 Episode 7: Roof Running Reptiles
43:12 Episode 8: Panic in the Sky
48:15 Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island
54:07 Episode 10: A Few Screws Loose
1:00:29 Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede!
1:06:34 Episode 12: It Won't Fly!
1:15:11 Episode 13: Technodrome Redux
1:24:00 Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies
1:30:27 Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids
1:40:15 Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady
1:46:10 Ending

TMNT Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOEGhJuaUUwMhHyK6Ux4HFf
April O'Neil (No Deaths): youtu.be/WVo9eHEm0K8
Splinter (No Deaths): youtu.be/-_Y5Zmc9woI
Donatello (No Deaths): youtu.be/9XLj9XU9zsk
Raphael: youtu.be/D87BDbwo0PM
Michelangelo: youtu.be/thbyE3HCMbM
Leonardo: youtu.be/87m9HF5ipT4
Casey Jones: youtu.be/7dqqAV8t1Zw
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Arcade Mode - Gnarly 1CC (April ONeil)

iconoclast 2022-06-18 | TMNT Shredder's Revenge is finally out! This is a brand new beat 'em up developed by Tribute Games, which was heavily inspired by Konami's classic arcade games, and the early 90s era of the series. I grew up on this stuff, so it's nostalgic seeing all of the references to the cartoon, movies, and games. They packed so much into it, that they ended up with a run time of nearly 2 hours, making this one of the longest beat 'em ups I've ever played. That'll be somewhat polarizing, but I don't mind the length, personally.

Gnarly is the name for this game's hard mode. The normal difficulty is very easy to clear, and while Gnarly seemingly had very minor adjustments, it's quite a bit more difficult. From what I can tell they basically make you take twice as much damage, and bosses have twice as much health. I think some enemies also move faster or can be more aggressive, but I'm not really sure tbh. Still, you get 1UPs every 200 points, so you've got a lot of breathing room for mistakes.

I wanted to do my first clear with one of the turtles, but April is so fun to use, and so powerful (she might be the best character in the game), I ended up clearing it with her. This run was going really well in the first half, but it really started falling apart towards the end with one stupid death after another. I've learned how to deal with most of the bosses at this point, but Captain Zorax is still a problem. In the run I played before this one, I stood on top of him attacking the entire time, and he never summoned his dino stampede, which makes the fight WAY harder. It didn't work this time and I ended up getting wrecked. Hopefully there's a way to consistently do that. I think the rest of the sloppiness is just a lack of familiarity and memorization, so that'll get ironed out as I play more.

Anyway, it's a great game and I'll be playing it a lot more. If you're a fan of the classic turtles, you have to play this. It was made for you!

Shredder's Revenge is available on all major platforms, including Xbox/PC Game Pass.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening
2:34 Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News
7:18 Episode 2: Big Apple, 3PM
12:42 Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway!
18:12 Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo
24:35 Episode 5: King of the Spill
30:31 Episode 6: Mall Meltdown
36:17 Episode 7: Roof Running Reptiles
42:05 Episode 8: Panic in the Sky
46:55 Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island
53:03 Episode 10: A Few Screws Loose
1:00:07 Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede!
1:05:52 Episode 12: It Won't Fly!
1:13:38 Episode 13: Technodrome Redux
1:23:01 Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies
1:29:20 Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids
1:39:21 Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady
1:46:03 Ending

TMNT Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvOEGhJuaUUwMhHyK6Ux4HFf
April O'Neil (No Deaths): youtu.be/WVo9eHEm0K8
Splinter (No Deaths): youtu.be/-_Y5Zmc9woI
Donatello (No Deaths): youtu.be/9XLj9XU9zsk
Raphael: youtu.be/D87BDbwo0PM
Michelangelo: youtu.be/thbyE3HCMbM
Leonardo: youtu.be/87m9HF5ipT4
Casey Jones: youtu.be/7dqqAV8t1Zw
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】FURI - Onnamusha Full Game S-Rank (Furier Mode + One More Fight)

iconoclast 2022-06-02 | A new DLC character came out for Furi a couple of weeks ago. I figured I'd upload an S-rank run through the story mode with her. It's a pretty basic playthrough without many tricks or exploits to steamroll bosses tbh.

Onnamusha is a bit more complex than the regular character, but the game is still very simple, so I don't think it's a huge difference or anything. Basically she has two different styles you can swap between - a speed mode, where you do pitiful damage, but can move and dodge freely, and a power mode, where you can hardly move at all, but can do decent damage. She also has a super move that gradually fills up as you dodge and damage the enemy. Activating it combines both of your stances for a short period, and gives you a drastic power boost. You can use your gun while this is active to melt an entire phase of a boss in seconds if you time it right.

Onnamusha is on sale for $7, which might be a bit much for a single character tbh. I think she's more fun to use than the default character though, so if you liked the game, it might be worth buying her and revisiting it.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
3:11 The Chain
13:10 The Strap
25:34 The Line
35:04 The Scale
45:49 The Hand
54:15 The Song
1:04:57 The Burst
1:16:50 The Edge
1:24:24 The Beat
1:28:42 Credits
1:38:30 The Star
1:45:15 Ending
1:46:41 The Flame
1:53:18 Bernard

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】SIFU - Master Mode - Full Game / No Deaths / True Ending (NG / Chinese VA)

iconoclast 2022-05-11 | Last week, Sloclap released a new update for Sifu that adds a bunch of new features to the game. They've added a training mode, an easy mode, new costumes, and most importantly to me, a higher difficulty called Master mode. Of course, I had to check it out.

Master mode has some significant changes. For starters, you have less health, and a smaller structure meter - pretty standard stuff, it just means you can't make as many mistakes and need to be careful about how often you block without evading. They also adjusted the enemy AI, making them more aggressive, which means they no longer wait for their "turn" to attack. If you fight a group of enemies, they're going to gang up on you. Combine that with your smaller health and structure bars, and you'll find yourself dying very quickly if you aren't careful in group battles.

Bosses also have more intricate attack patterns. A few of them can now cancel and extend their combos, making them more unpredictable instead of always following the same patterns, as they did before. They also finish their combos with random high or low attacks that you'll have to evade on reaction. Successfully avoid it, and you'll be able to punish them with a quick combo (most of the time...). This makes bosses a lot more dynamic and fun to fight against - they keep you on your toes now instead of letting you autopilot through predictable patterns. Although the difficulty balance is all over the place.

The first boss, Fajar, is easily the hardest one in the game in my opinion, at least if you're going for the true ending (or Wude end, whatever people are calling it). He's not that hard if you're just going to kill him - you can drain his health pretty quickly in a few different ways, especially by abusing the charge heavy punch. But if you want the true end, you need to break his structure and keep his health intact. So the strategy I use for his second phase in this video is pretty effective for that. Knock him down and grab a stick ASAP - this not only helps a bit with parrying, but it lets you get a small punish in after parrying his sweep. Just press the light attack when he backs away, and your combo should intercept whatever he tries to do, getting one quick hit in. I think you can follow that with a heavy attack, which he'll block, then you can back away and wait for him to come at you again. Just focus on dodging his spin kick and parry everything else, because that move is extremely dangerous.

Sean is still pretty easy. He'll interrupt his combo with a sweep pretty often, but it has a long start up, so you have plenty of time to react to it once you get used to the animation.

Kuroki is a little tricky, but I have a stable strategy for her second phase. When she comes at you, she'll attack twice, then either go for a sweep, her dropkick, or continue her regular combo. So after parrying her first two attacks, just pretty RT to backstep. This gets you away from her sweep and regular attacks, and gives you time to react to the dropkick. And that's all you really need to beat her.

Jinfeng is easy to abuse. Stay at mid range, and she'll do two attacks, then either go for a high or low. If she does the overheard, it has a lot of recovery, so you can run up to her and charge your heavy punch to start a combo. Her sweep recovers a lot faster, so I don't go for anything besides a quick running attack. Just rinse and repeat.

Yang has exploitable AI. The first phase is very simple - evade two of his attacks, and he'll stop attacking. Try hitting him, and he'll counter you with two quick swipes. You can evade those and punish him. Just do that over and over. His second phase has a little more going on, but it's similar. If you evade two of his attacks, he'll always go for a sweep. You can parry it to slowly break his structure, but I play it a little bit riskier. If he starts attacking you with the step kick, parry that and his next attack, then he'll go for one of his punishable combos. He has a few different ones, but you can react to them all with a bit of practice. When he comes at you and starts with his fist attack, I just evade twice to make him sweep and reset.

And that's Master mode in a nutshell! It's not perfect, but it's a great update that helps elevate an already excellent game by making it more intense and engaging. Give it a shot!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
3:27 BOSS: Sifu
6:00 Opening
9:45 The Squats
19:44 BOSS: Fajar - The Botanist
23:38 The Club
38:36 BOSS: Sean - The Fighter
42:57 The Museum
58:30 BOSS: Kuroki - The Artist
1:05:00 The Tower
1:18:54 BOSS: Jinfeng - The CEO
1:22:50 The Sanctuary
1:31:41 BOSS: Yang - The Leader
1:36:51 Ending
1:39:44 Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】TREK TO YOMI - Kensei Mode (Full Game & Story)

iconoclast 2022-05-08 | Trek to Yomi is a new side-scrolling action game, developed by Flying Wild Hog (best known for the Shadow Warrior reboot series). Set in the Edo period of Japan, the game follows a samurai by the name of Hiroki Goto who embarks on a quest for revenge on the people who destroyed his village.

The game was heavily inspired by classic samurai films, especially those from Akira Kurosawa. The comparisons between this and Ghost of Tsushima are inevitable, so on that subject, I'll say I think this game is a better tribute to the samurai classics, while Tsushima is a better game. Trek to Yomi nails the aesthetic perfectly; the static camera frames the action like scenes from a movie, and the artists did an amazing job getting the look of the game just right. The only knock against it, for me, is that the animation is not especially smooth, it can look a little janky even. I'd imagine that they just didn't have the budget and scope to make everything flow perfectly. It's not a big deal for me, anyway.

This is a playthrough on the unlockable "Kensei" difficulty. It's the highest difficulty in the game, but it's a bit of a gimmick mode. You die in one hit, but so does every enemy, besides the bosses. Honestly, the combat in the regular game isn't particularly great, so killing everything in one hit helps speed up the pace. I'd say that's a positive overall for me. The checkpoints are pretty generous too, so I wouldn't say Kensei mode is hard, either. Not that that's a bad thing, I still enjoyed the game. I'd certainly recommend it to fans of Akira Kurosawa's classics in particular.

Trek to Yomi is currently available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. It's also on Game Pass on both PC and Xbox, which is how I played it.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:34 Chapter 1
18:32 BOSS: Kagerou
24:32 Chapter 2
41:15 BOSS: Sadatame
45:17 Chapter 3
1:02:09 BOSS: Kagerou
1:05:40 Chapter 4
1:27:15 BOSS: Aiko Demon
1:31:47 Chapter 5
1:55:39 BOSS: Sanjuro Demon
1:58:32 Chapter 6
2:16:12 BOSS: Ara-Mitama
2:19:18 Chapter 7
2:29:15 BOSS: Kagerou Demon
2:31:40 Ending
2:33:12 Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined - Hard, No Death Clear (Ikazuchi / 4,081,910 pts)

iconoclast 2022-04-30 | Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is a brand new remake of the 1992 SNES game by Natsume. Following Wild Guns Reloaded and The Ninja Warriors Once Again, the original developers have once again returned to one of their classics and completely overhauled every aspect of it. As usual, they've done a fantastic job with all of the changes and improvements they've made. They've added new playable characters (all with unique weapons and special attacks), new stages, new mechanics, and they even seem to have implemented a good scoring system, complete with online leaderboards. I just wish they'd create separate leaderboards for Normal and Hard mode; mixing them together is dumb.

This is a playthrough of Free Mode with one of the new characters, Ikazuchi. She's by far the most popular character at the moment. Her red shot is incredibly strong, so scoring with her is probably easier than it is with the other characters. Her dash lets her safely jump over enemies and objects too, which can be really useful. She's not my favorite character to play, but I've warmed up to her more since I started trying to record a good run.

This playthrough also shows how to control which items you get from each shop. When you activate a shop, the last number of your total coin count determines which item you'll get. To quickly summarize it, from the shops that cost 50 coins, you'll want to trigger them when your last digit is either 3 or 8. This guarantees a shield. For the shops that cost 100 coins, you'll want to activate them when your last digit is either 4 or 9. That guarantees a 1up. You'll want to avoid any other combination, basically. This discovery increases the scoring potential by quite a bit. Thanks to Sumez on the shmups forum for finding this!

This game won't be out in America for at least another month (for PS4 and Switch), but if you don't want to wait, you can get it right now on the Japanese PSN or eshop for around 4100 yen, fully translated into English (and without the censored character portrait, lol). I'm playing on the PS5, by the way.

If you want to check out the original game for the SNES and compare the differences, you can watch my no death playthrough here: youtu.be/qo7kThNmTZM

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:26 Stage 1 - The Haunted Shrine
3:48 Stage 2 - Enchanted Forest
12:15 Stage 3 - An Ancient Land
17:07 Stage 4 - The Underworld
23:09 Stage 5 - Cursed Airship
30:28 Stage 6 - The Burning City
32:10 Stage 7 - Battle With Black Mantle
39:07 Stage 8 - The Final Battle
40:45 Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined - Hard, No Death Clear (Hotaru Gozen / 3,502,690 pts)

iconoclast 2022-04-27 | Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is a brand new remake of the 1992 SNES game by Natsume. Following Wild Guns Reloaded and The Ninja Warriors Once Again, the original developers have once again returned to one of their classics and completely overhauled every aspect of it. As usual, they've done a fantastic job with all of the changes and improvements they've made. They've added new playable characters (all with unique weapons and special attacks), new stages, new mechanics, and they even seem to have implemented a good scoring system, complete with online leaderboards. I just wish they'd create separate leaderboards for Normal and Hard mode; mixing them together is dumb.

This is a playthrough of Free Mode with one of the new characters, Hotaru Gozen. He's a bit different from the rest of the characters since he's melee oriented, so his primary attack doesn't have long distance. He's still very strong though. His swipe does a lot of damage and has a wide arc, so it tends to keep you safer than anyone else's wand attack. He can shoot some arrows when you need a long range attack too by rapidly tapping the shot button - this can be really useful on some parts, especially the final boss. The red arrows are really good against him, but I screwed up and accidentally picked up blue while throwing his spinning blade. That's another really good move of his though. I picked up a few of the hidden items I missed in my previous video, so the bonus points from that made up for some of my sloppiness, lol.

This game won't be out in America for at least another month (for PS4 and Switch), but if you don't want to wait, you can get it right now on the Japanese PSN or eshop for around 4100 yen, fully translated into English (and without the censored character portrait, lol). I'm playing on the PS5, by the way.

If you want to check out the original game for the SNES and compare the differences, you can watch my no death playthrough here: youtu.be/qo7kThNmTZM

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:21 Stage 1 - The Haunted Shrine
3:45 Stage 2 - Enchanted Forest
11:29 Stage 3 - An Ancient Land
16:44 Stage 4 - The Underworld
22:06 Stage 5 - Cursed Airship
30:02 Stage 6 - The Burning City
32:33 Stage 7 - Battle With Black Mantle
41:06 Stage 8 - The Final Battle
44:53 Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined - Hard, No Death Clear (Ame-no-Uzume / 3,169,050 pts)

iconoclast 2022-04-25 | Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is a brand new remake of the 1992 SNES game by Natsume. Following Wild Guns Reloaded and The Ninja Warriors Once Again, the original developers have once again returned to one of their classics and completely overhauled every aspect of it. As usual, they've done a fantastic job with all of the changes and improvements they've made. They've added new playable characters (all with unique weapons and special attacks), new stages, new mechanics, and they even seem to have implemented a good scoring system, complete with online leaderboards. I just wish they'd create separate leaderboards for Normal and Hard mode; mixing them together is dumb.

This is a playthrough of Free Mode with one of the new characters, Ame-no-Uzume. She can float above pits and water, and her dash can go through enemies and bullets. Her weapons and abilities are really strong too, so she's pretty easy to use. This run also shows a bunch of the hidden items that I wasn't aware of in my previous Story Mode playthrough. All of the secret 1UPs, healing items, bombs, and shields are important if you're aiming for a high score. I got most of them in this run, but there are at least a few more that I missed.

This game won't be out in America for at least another month (for PS4 and Switch), but if you don't want to wait, you can get it right now on the Japanese PSN or eshop for around 4100 yen, fully translated into English (and without the censored character portrait, lol). I'm playing on the PS5, by the way.

If you want to check out the original game for the SNES and compare the differences, you can watch my no death playthrough here: youtu.be/qo7kThNmTZM

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:25 Stage 1 - The Haunted Shrine
3:06 Stage 2 - Enchanted Forest
9:37 Stage 3 - An Ancient Land
13:35 Stage 4 - The Underworld
18:05 Stage 5 - Cursed Airship
24:42 Stage 6 - The Burning City
27:18 Stage 7 - Battle With Black Mantle
34:25 Stage 8 - The Final Battle
36:21 Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined - Story Mode, No Death Clear (Hard)

iconoclast 2022-04-22 | Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is a brand new remake of the 1992 SNES game by Natsume. Following Wild Guns Reloaded and The Ninja Warriors Once Again, the original developers have once again returned to one of their classics and completely overhauled every aspect of it. As usual, they've done a fantastic job with all of the changes and improvements they've made. They've added new playable characters (all with unique weapons and special attacks), new stages, new mechanics, and they even seem to have implemented a good scoring system, complete with online leaderboards. What more could you ask for? (Online play?)

This is a playthrough of the story mode, on hard difficulty. In story mode, you have preset characters for each, but if you want to play through the game with just one character, you can do that in "free mode." That's probably what I'll be doing next. This game isn't very hard to clear, so most people shouldn't worry about the difficulty. You get several 1UPs from the shops throughout the game, and plenty of bombs to help you through difficult sections. The scoring system seems good at first glance, so that could keep you busy after you clear the game.

This won't be out in America for at least another month (for PS4 and Switch), but if you don't want to wait, you can get it right now on the Japanese PSN or eshop for around 4100 yen, fully translated into English (and without the censored character portrait, lol). I'm playing on the PS5, by the way.

If you want to check out the original game for the SNES and compare the differences, you can watch my no death playthrough here: youtu.be/qo7kThNmTZM

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:27 Stage 1 - The Haunted Shrine
4:47 Story Scene
6:36 Stage 2 - Enchanted Forest
13:24 Story Scene
16:30 Stage 3 - An Ancient Land
21:45 Story Scene
23:38 Stage 4 - The Underworld
29:45 Story Scene
32:55 Stage 5 - Cursed Airship
39:51 Story Scene
43:12 Stage 6 - The Burning City
46:14 Story Scene
51:10 Stage 7 - Battle With Black Mantle
1:01:19 Story Scene
1:03:30 Stage 8 - The Final Battle
1:07:26 Ending & Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

[SNES] Pocky & Rocky - No Death Clear (Hard)

iconoclast 2022-04-18 | Pocky & Rocky, known in Japan as Kiki Kaikai (奇々怪界) is a free-scrolling shooter created by Natsume for the SNES. It's the sequel to the 1986 arcade game from Taito. The series follows the adventures of a young Shinto shrine maiden, Pocky (Sayo-chan), and her tanuki companion, Rocky (Manuke), as they fight through a variety of monsters based on Japanese legends and mythology.

This is a no death clear of Hard mode. The game doesn't change too much between Normal and Hard. It just seems like basic stat increases: enemies movie faster, have more HP, and shoot faster. You start with one less life and less bombs, I think. It's not a hard game either way.

The remake will be out in less than a week, so I had to stop procrastinating and play more of the original games. I'm glad I did, because not only is this game pretty great, but it helps you appreciate all of the changes and improvements they're doing for the remake. I watched the trailers again after playing this, and it makes the new game look even better. I think Natsume was one of the best developers on the SNES, and Tengo Project is one of the best developers around today. These guys don't miss.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:37 Stage 1
6:55 Stage 2
15:30 Stage 3
23:21 Stage 4
31:00 Stage 5
39:10 Stage 6
45:58 Ending & Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】Dawn of the Monsters - All Missions S+ Rank + Full Story

iconoclast 2022-03-15 | Dawn of the Monsters is a new kaiju beat 'em up from 13AM Games and WayForward. There aren't too many kaiju games out there, so fans of giant monster battles have something fun to dig into with this one. Best of all, it's available on all current platforms for $29.99, so you can play it no matter which system you've got (even Stadia!).

0:00 Intro
CHAPTER 1 - Toronto, Canada
2:43 1: Into the Breach
15:03 2: Scavenger Hunt
23:04 3: Boxing Match
29:44 4: Shocking Developments
36:09 5: Downtown
43:22 6: A Big Distraction
47:25 7: The Toronto Nest
52:56 8: BOSS: Torgahra
CHAPTER 2 - Iguaçu, Brazil / Argentina
1:00:16 1: Bem-Vindos
1:06:26 2: Nephilim Flood
1:12:00 3: Outfall
1:16:55 4: Upriver
1:22:49 5: Search for the Source
1:30:07 6: Research and Destruction
1:36:33 7: The Iguaçu Nest
1:42:27 8: BOSS: Sednagon
CHAPTER 3 - Cairo, Egypt
1:48:58 1: In the Shadow of the Pyramids
1:56:25 2: The City of a Thousand Minarets
2:01:51 3: A Discovery
2:10:23 4: Gone Rogue
2:15:46 5: Cleaning the Streets
2:23:41 6: The Giza Nest
2:27:53 7: Into the Sandstorm
2:35:11 8: Silence
2:42:07 9: BOSS: Gaiacras
CHAPTER 4 - Tokyo, Japan
2:50:41 1: Tokyo Twilight
2:56:19 2: A Frog in a Well
3:03:56 3: The Atoms and Us
3:12:21 4: Volcanic
3:19:30 5: Spilled Water
3:25:46 6: The Fuji Nest
3:30:33 7: The Setting Sun
3:40:43 8: BOSS: Agnitor
CHAPTER 5 - Bermuda, North Atlantic
3:50:43 1: Down Dark Depths
4:01:07 2: Storming Syncor
4:12:01 3: Final Four
4:23:51 4: BOSS: Azrael
4:29:48 Ending & Credits

I've been playing this for the last week or so (thanks to WayForward for providing me with a key!), and I'd recommend it, albeit with some reservations. I'm a (very casual) kaiju fan, and of course if you're familiar with my channel, you know I love beat 'em ups and action games. So this game aligns with my tastes very well. I've had a lot of fun playing this, but I'm not sure how much a more casual beat 'em up fan would like it, because I feel like its biggest flaw is the lack of replay value. There are a LOT of different colors you can unlock (many of which are references to other characters; I recognize Ultraman, Mega Man, Spider-Man, Cell (DBZ), X-Men, Evangelion - I'd like to see people point some out in the comments!), but the grading system is very lenient, so S+ ranks are not hard to get. It's not a hard game to finish either, and there are no difficulty options to keep progressing through. So there's just not much left to do once you've collected all of the colors, other than replay your favorite missions just for the fun of it.

The combat is the highlight of this game for me, and they've done a great job with it.. You've got 4 different characters to choose from, who all have different playstyles and fun combo potential to play around with. There's a pretty good amount of enemy variety, too, with most archetypes fully covered. They do a good job of mixing them up from mission to mission, and I like to cycle through the different characters in between each mission, so it never feels repetitive or gets boring for me.

The art, graphics and animation are really well done too, and the story does a good job of moving you from area to area. And there's quite a bit of story; there are plenty of optional "chat" scenes you can find in the main menu that I didn't include in this video, as well as a bunch of back story and archives to read up on if you're interested.

I just really hope they'll expand on this game with updates or DLC. I would especially love to see an arcade mode, with predefined stats and abilities, above all else. For me, that could elevate this game from "really good" to "great" if they nailed the balance. A survival mode could be cool too, like the one in Streets of Rage 4's Mr. X Nightmare, for example. I still like this game as-is, and it's worth the $29.99 to me, but I can understand if other people would want to wait for a bit of a discount. YMMV.

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Kiki Kaikai (Pocky & Rocky) - No Death Clear + Guide

iconoclast 2022-02-21 | Pocky & Rocky, or Kiki Kaikai, is a free-scrolling shoot 'em up from 1987, developed for arcades by Taito.

The game follows the adventures of "Sayo-chan", a young Shinto shrine maiden living in Feudal Japan. One night, while Sayo-chan is fanning a ceremonial fire, she is visited by the Seven Lucky Gods, who warn her of a great, impending danger. Suddenly, a band of mischievous youkai appear and kidnap the gods, quickly retreating to a faraway mountain range. Sayo-chan, determined to help the gods, sets off on a journey across the countryside, where she confronts a number of strange creatures from Japanese mythology, including obake, and yurei. After defeating several powerful youkai leaders, Sayo must battle their leader, the ancient serpent Orochi.
(credit: wikipedia)

A new Pocky & Rocky is being released in a couple of months, so I thought it was a good time to go through the original games. I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I expected to - the balance between the random and preset elements is really good, and helps keep every credit interesting.

I was really surprised by the lack of English info about this game on the internet. It's so old, but I couldn't find anything documenting the essential tricks for clearing it. That made me want to try making a "guide" that explains some of it. I don't think I did a particularly good job to be honest, but I at least covered the two most important things you'll need to know: how to manipulate 1UP spawns, and farming powerups from the enemy spawners. And I wanted to show how to complete the final stage without using the freeze glitch (as well as explaining how that works), since dying after the last blue orb means you won't be able to use it.

Anyway, I definitely recommend giving this game a shot, it's more fun than it looks. I played the PS4 Arcade Archives release on my PS5, but it's also available on the Switch.

PS4: store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0571-CUSA03721_00-HAMPRDC000000001
Switch: nintendo.com/store/products/arcade-archives-kiki-kaikai-switch

Chapters:
0:00 Stage 1
1:39 Stage 2
3:01 Stage 3
4:37 Stage 4
6:57 Stage 5
8:54 Stage 6
11:44 Stage 7
14:07 Stage 8
15:18 Ending & Credits
16:01 Extra 1UP (Stage 3)
16:34 Extra 1UP (Stage 4)
17:13 Extra 1UP (Stage 6)
17:41 Stage 8 Freeze Bug
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】SIFU - Full Game / No Deaths / True Ending (NG / Female MC)

iconoclast 2022-02-14 | No shortcuts, no permanently unlocked skills, and single segment of course. This is essentially the entire game with the true ending. The only requirement for that is to spare each boss instead of killing them, which you can do by breaking their posture gauge twice.

I uploaded a no death run with the male main character a couple days ago, this time I used the female MC. There's no difference in their gameplay (as far as I know), it just changes a few lines of dialogue when the enemies refer to your gender. I'm getting better at the game, so this run is a bit cleaner than my last one.

SIFU is a new action game from Sloclap, and it's absolutely excellent. If you're a fan of beat 'em ups, or 3D action games in general, SIFU is a must play. It's one of the best games in years. I just wish they would have communicated what the game actually *is* a bit better (or maybe I wasn't paying enough attention), because I didn't know what to expect out of it. It's actually a game made exactly for someone like me. It's full of action from start to finish, with no filler or superfluous elements whatsoever - just a (relatively) short, infinitely replayable, combat focused action game. What more can I ask for?

I'm playing the PC version here. It's alright, but it needs some work. Unfortunately, it stutters a bit when it transitions to a new environment, which is probably the worst thing about it. I'm tempted to buy the game again on PS5, assuming it doesn't have this issue. The best perk of playing on PC would be high framerates if your monitor can handle it, which makes the game feel even better than it already does at 60 fps.

SIFU is currently available on PC, PS4, and PS5. Hopefully it'll come to more platforms in the future, so as many people can play it as possible.

PC: epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/sifu
PS4 & PS5: playstation.com/en-us/games/sifu

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
3:33 BOSS: Sifu
6:06 Opening
9:37 The Squats
19:19 BOSS: Fajar - The Botanist
24:18 The Club
38:58 BOSS: Sean - The Fighter
44:09 The Museum
59:31 BOSS: Kuroki - The Artist
1:05:25 The Tower
1:19:42 BOSS: Jinfeng - The CEO
1:24:37 The Sanctuary
1:32:48 BOSS: Yang - The Leader
1:39:02 Ending
1:40:44 Credits

FYI: I recorded the intro stage from a new file, and played the rest of the game on an older file with a complete detective board (with no permanent skills unlocked). This way I could access some extra areas and fight more enemies without "extensive" backtracking, and skip the cut-ins when you pick up new keys, and so on. I basically just wanted to make the game as smooth as possible.

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

【4K】SIFU - Full Game / No Deaths / True Ending (NG)

iconoclast 2022-02-12 | Master Difficulty (No Deaths, True Ending): youtube.com/watch?v=7z2oygYRZRc
Arena Mode, All Gold Stamps: youtu.be/NdsFL4wACZ8

No shortcuts, no permanently unlocked skills, and single segment of course. This is essentially the entire game with the true ending. The only requirement for that is to spare each boss instead of killing them, which you can do by breaking their posture gauge twice.

SIFU is a new action game from Sloclap, and it's absolutely excellent. If you're a fan of beat 'em ups, or 3D action games in general, SIFU is a must play. It's one of the best games in years. I just wish they would have communicated what the game actually *is* a bit better (or maybe I wasn't paying enough attention), because I didn't know what to expect out of it. It's actually a game made exactly for someone like me. It's full of action from start to finish, with no filler or superfluous elements whatsoever - just a (relatively) short, infinitely replayable, combat focused action game. What more can I ask for?

I'm playing the PC version here. It's alright, but it needs some work. Unfortunately, it stutters a bit when it transitions to a new environment, which is probably the worst thing about it. I'm tempted to buy the game again on PS5, assuming it doesn't have this issue. The best perk of playing on PC would be high framerates if your monitor can handle it, which makes the game feel even better than it already does at 60 fps.

SIFU is currently available on PC, PS4, and PS5. Hopefully it'll come to more platforms in the future, so as many people can play it as possible.

PC: epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/sifu
PS4 & PS5: playstation.com/en-us/games/sifu

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
3:33 BOSS: Sifu
6:07 Opening
9:30 The Squats
19:24 BOSS: Fajar - The Botanist
24:07 The Club
38:58 BOSS: Sean - The Fighter
43:51 The Museum
59:20 BOSS: Kuroki - The Artist
1:05:53 The Tower
1:19:47 BOSS: Jinfeng - The CEO
1:24:42 The Sanctuary
1:33:11 BOSS: Yang - The Leader
1:38:36 Ending
1:41:26 Credits

FYI: I recorded the intro stage from a new file, and played the rest of the game on an older file with a complete detective board (with no permanent skills unlocked). This way I could access some extra areas and fight more enemies without "extensive" backtracking, and skip the cut-ins when you pick up new keys, and so on. I basically just wanted to make the game as smooth as possible.

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Final Fight LNS Ultimate - MUSOU Mode 1CC (Ryu)

iconoclast 2022-02-08 | Final Fight LNS Ultimate is a fan game created with OpenBOR, featuring nearly 70 playable characters from Capcom's beat 'em ups and fighting games. They've even included SNK characters, because why not?

And best of all, it's free to download! You can find it here:
fflnsultimate.firebaseapp.com/descargas
Here's a link to a save file with all characters already unlocked:
mega.nz/file/QZIQiZJT#jBMjl9dGrpHiEbObMVxr11Vmheiq72CxTmySn5EI8aw
Just place it in your saves folder and you'll be all set.

Ryu is pretty strong. Unlike Akuma, he gets all of the damage from his special attacks on the first hit, so he doesn't have to let the tatsumaki go on or cancel late on the dragon punch, etc. He's pretty simple to use. I like more combo oriented characters, so he's not one of my favorites, but he's fun enough.

0:00 Intro
0:31 Stage 1 - The Slum
4:34 BOSS: Damnd
5:44 Bonus Stage
6:08 Stage 2 - The Subway (Lower Path)
14:53 BOSS: Sodom
16:23 Bonus Stage
17:10 Stage 3 - The Park
23:46 BOSS: Edi.E
25:03 The Park - Part 2
30:31 BOSS: Abigail
31:56 Bonus Stage
32:22 Stage 4 - Industrial Area
33:50 BOSS: Freddie
35:39 Industrial Area - Part 2
41:35 BOSS: Rolento
43:23 Bonus Stage
44:13 Stage 5 - The Bay Area
49:16 BOSS: Balrog
50:01 The Bay Area - Part 2
53:42 BOSS: Vega
55:22 BOSS: Sagat
57:14 BOSS: Akuma
59:38 Ending?
59:55 Extra Stage - Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
1:06:15 BOSS: Slice
1:07:30 Bonus Stage
1:08:26 Extra Stage - Captain Commando
1:16:08 BOSS: Blood
1:17:38 Bonus Stage
1:18:05 Last Stage - Final Fight
1:27:35 BOSS: Black
1:29:18 BOSS: Belger
1:32:39 End Screen
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Final Fight LNS Ultimate - MUSOU Mode 1CC (Balrog)

iconoclast 2022-02-06 | Final Fight LNS Ultimate is a fan game created with OpenBOR, featuring nearly 70 playable characters from Capcom's beat 'em ups and fighting games. They've even included SNK characters, because why not?

And best of all, it's free to download! You can find it here:
fflnsultimate.firebaseapp.com/descargas
Here's a link to a save file with all characters already unlocked:
mega.nz/file/QZIQiZJT#jBMjl9dGrpHiEbObMVxr11Vmheiq72CxTmySn5EI8aw
Just place it in your saves folder and you'll be all set.

Balrog is a beast. He's easy to use and he hits like a truck, so he's got to be one of the best characters for a beginner.

This time I did The Punisher stage. I like it because it's relatively short, and it has a nice aesthetic. Kingpin can be a little annoying, but he's not too bad if you can set up the score items to give you a level up when your health/mana gets low. The downside is that this stage has copyrighted music, so it's a little troublesome to post on YouTube.

0:00 Intro
0:31 Stage 1 - The Slum
4:24 BOSS: Damnd
5:10 Bonus Stage
5:35 Stage 2 - The Subway (Lower Path)
13:37 BOSS: Sodom
15:09 Bonus Stage
15:59 Stage 3 - The Park
22:05 BOSS: Edi.E
23:20 The Park - Part 2
28:22 BOSS: Abigail
30:15 Bonus Stage
30:44 Stage 4 - Industrial Area
32:19 BOSS: Freddie
32:26 Industrial Area - Part 2
39:30 BOSS: Rolento
41:28 Bonus Stage
42:17 Stage 5 - The Bay Area
47:34 BOSS: Balrog
49:37 The Bay Area - Part 2
52:44 BOSS: Vega
54:19 BOSS: Sagat
56:20 BOSS: Akuma
59:21 Ending?
59:41 Extra Stage - Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
1:06:40 BOSS: Slice
1:07:49 Bonus Stage
1:08:45 Extra Stage - The Punisher
1:13:53 BOSS: Kingpin
1:15:04 Bonus Stage
1:15:39 Last Stage - Final Fight
1:24:22 BOSS: Black
1:26:24 BOSS: Belger
1:31:03 End Screen
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Cotton Fantasy - 214,454,900 1CC (All Story Scenes)

iconoclast 2022-01-26 | iningames.com/games/cotton-fantasy
cotton-rock-n-roll.success-corp.co.jp

AKA Cotton Rock 'n' Roll. This is a brand new Cotton game from Success and Studio Saizensen, who's best known for their work on the Umihara Kawase games. They hadn't worked on a shmup before, so it may come as a surprise to some that this game is excellent. It's one of the most fun shmups in years, and quite possibly the best game in the Cotton series. It was released in Japan at the end of last year, and it's coming out in the west this spring for the PS4 and Switch, with a Steam version arriving a little later. Strictly Limited Games also has a collector's edition up for pre-order with a ton of extras, by the way. I bought the Japanese LE, and the Nendoroid and history book it comes with are really nice.

This game is packed with content. There are a lot of different characters to choose from, and a bunch of stages you can tackle in any order you want. I'm only playing the stages that are in the original arcade version in this run, but in the console version, each character has an unlockable stage that's related to the series they come from. So Cotton has a throwback stage for the original Cotton game, Ria has a Psyvariar stage, Kawase has an Umihara Kawase stage, and so on. It's a really cool and ambitious idea, and I'm glad they pulled it off.

The scoring system is the real highlight of this game for me, though. It's really fun to play around with, figuring out which magic is best on each section, where you should die for a magic refill, where to use your bombs, and which stage order is ideal for your character.

I've been playing this game for the last couple of weeks, and so far I've only used Cotton. I haven't even tried the other characters or any of the console stages yet, so there's still a ton of stuff for me to dig in to. This run had a lot of mistakes in it, but I'm starting to feel like trying out the rest of the game. Maybe I'll come back to her later.

Chapters:
0:00 Title
0:49 Intro Scene
3:22 Field A - Castle Garden
6:45 Story Scene
7:53 Field F - Blue Sky
11:22 Story Scene
12:20 Field D - Royal Tomb
16:42 Story Scene
17:11 In the Clouds
18:25 Field E - Twilight
22:00 Story Scene
22:40 Field B - Riverside
27:09 Story Scene
27:44 Field C - Ancient Ruins
31:43 Story Scene
34:17 First Contact
35:34 Field G - Space
39:07 Story Scene
40:46 Field H - The Last One
44:46 Ending
48:16 Credits

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Final Fight LNS Ultimate - MUSOU Mode 1CC (Juri)

iconoclast 2022-01-04 | Final Fight LNS Ultimate is a fan game created with OpenBOR, featuring nearly 70 playable characters from Capcom's beat 'em ups and fighting games. They've even included SNK characters, because why not?

And best of all, it's free to download! You can find it here:
fflnsultimate.firebaseapp.com/descargas
Here's a link to a save file with all characters already unlocked:
mega.nz/file/QZIQiZJT#jBMjl9dGrpHiEbObMVxr11Vmheiq72CxTmySn5EI8aw
Just place it in your saves folder and you'll be all set.

Juri is really fun to play. She has a high skill stat, which means she regenerates mana quickly. This means you can use more special attacks and string together long combos. Her fireballs don't take much mana to use either, and they're *really* good. She does have some weaknesses though. Her dragon punch isn't fully invincible, so sometimes an enemy's jump attack will beat it, or you'll get hit from behind, which can be pretty annoying. Her super doesn't do a lot of damage either, but overall she's still pretty strong. She seems to be really good during the stages, and a bit weaker against the bosses.

This is also the first time I've ever played the Street Fighter stage. It's a bit harder than the Final Fight stage, but Seth is a lot less annoying than Belger, so it kinda evens out. I also didn't realize the Cammy clones could jump attack you from another plane until the very end, so the parry probably would be really useful against them. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:00 Stage 1 - The Slum
6:15 BOSS: Damnd
7:43 Bonus Stage
8:10 Stage 2 - The Subway (Lower Path)
17:10 BOSS: Sodom
18:34 Bonus Stage
19:18 Stage 3 - The Park
25:22 BOSS: Edi.E
26:44 The Park - Part 2
32:02 BOSS: Abigail
34:06 Bonus Stage
34:37 Stage 4 - Industrial Area
36:03 BOSS: Freddie
37:22 Industrial Area - Part 2
43:15 BOSS: Rolento
45:15 Bonus Stage
46:04 Stage 5 - The Bay Area
51:15 BOSS: Balrog
53:10 The Bay Area - Part 2
56:48 BOSS: Vega
58:30 BOSS: Sagat
1:00:00 BOSS: Akuma
1:03:19 Ending?
1:03:37 Extra Stage - Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
1:10:15 BOSS: Slice
1:11:18 Bonus Stage
1:12:13 Extra Stage - Captain Commando
1:19:30 BOSS: Blood
1:21:09 Bonus Stage
1:21:40 Last Stage - Street Fighter
1:30:05 BOSS: SIN Bison
1:32:16 BOSS: Seth
1:37:17 End Screen

-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71