When we got set up at the office two years ago, I brought all my old video game systems out of storage so they could have another run. One of the games I was most excited to play was Overhauled Man 3, a PC Engine (TurboGrafx in US) CD game I had imported from Japan back in 1992.
OHM3 always had a special place in my heart because it had this fun non-stop feel to it. It wasn't the greatest game ever made, but you could tell they were trying to give you lots of eye candy and variety so nothing ever felt dull. You had an attack (sword) button and a jump button, and holding down your attack button let you fire off a sparkling fireball, which you could then (barely) control if you pressed down the button and held it again after releasing. This let you stear the fireball into enemies in the air, or even loop around completely... There was something fun and unique about it.
This was also a year before Gunstar Heroes, one of the most inspirational games of my life. Both had similar graphical styles, although GH was better designed and had a lot more explosions.
Still, I consider OHM3 to be one of those games that inspired the games I make today. I was excited to play it again... But alas, my CD reader no longer worked.
This past week, I downloaded (and had to register - wtf) an emulator called Magic Engine. So far I haven't been able to get any rom files from old CD games to load, but I CAN put my old CDs in the CD drive and load them up just like my PC was a TurboGrafx! I am finally able to play OHM3 again, and the emulation seems perfect. The load times are a lot better now, too! It's starting to show its age, but I still love it.
We've been playing a lot of oldschool arcade games lately - looking for those bits of 2D inspiration. Since I'm working on Castle Crashers, I really enjoy studying oldschool brawlers. I'm an especially big fan of that forgotten period in the 90s, where the arcade games were too good for the SNES and Genesis, but not up to the 3D standards (or RAM limitations) of the Playstation and Nintendo 64 that would follow. Stuff like The Punisher, Battletoads (arcade version) and Violent Storm.
I like oddities, such as the Spiderman brawler where the camera zooms out and switches to a platformer mid-level. I feel like no other brawlers really did that. I've been tinkering with a level in Castle Crashers that becomes a shooter mid-level. It feels totally natural and intuitive, IMO. I've always liked games that changed up genres and introduced variety, but I never liked it when I felt like I was playing a different game from one level to the next. You gotta keep it natural - let the players feel like they've been controlling the same character the whole time. It has to be a seamless transition. I'm hoping I nail it.
We're starting to catalogue the really obscure brawlers and shooters we've been discovering. More on that later.
On a totally random note, the Battletoads arcade game has to be the only game where you can grab enemies by the balls and punch them repeatedly. It's pretty awesome. If you give yourself a delay between punches, it releases the grab move and you can start it up again immediately without the enemy countering you. This allows you to do an infinite ball punch at your liesure, although the enemy doesn't seem to take damage until you finish the combo, so you can punch them in the balls like 100 times and they will still be alive afterwards.
Note: The ball grab is a context sensitive grab move that is specific to one enemy type in the game.
ProBo
OVER A HUNDRED BALL PUNCHES!! WOW!!
And ow....