Printable View
By people. From what I remember reading in EGM and other mags at the time, I got the impression that Bonk was in the same league as Mario. Unfortunately, it's not. The graphics were very good from Bonk's Revenge forward, but only the first game had enjoyable gameplay. And even if the first game had the graphics of the later games, it still wouldn't be comparable to Mario.Quote:
Originally posted by NeoZeedeater
Bonk had no hype before its release. Unless you mean post-release praise by people.
EGM was too harsh on Bonk I thought, giving it 7s. Gamepro rated it really high though, IIRC.
DKC was awesome for using prerenders. It showed off the snes' ability to use lots of colours and could trick the eye into thinking the sprites were polygonal characters moving and animating in realtime. If only Final Fight on snes could have that much polish to the animation, it would have been a perfect port.
Again it's the realistic animation that stood out for me. The monkeys would move so realistically that I looking back, I would have much preferred the CG look with great animation over the 2d handdrawn 'flat look' with average animation. The only thing that could come close to it in animation imo was prince of persia, flashback and abe's odesyseyy. (I can't spell it!)
(Now Abe that was a great use of prerendered CG over handdrawn 2d - things actually had texture and realistic shading that would fit right into CG cinemas seamlessly. The CG really helped in creating gritty, dark atmoshperic environments that gave the world a movie-like atmoshpere)
Oh yeah and the guy saying prerendered sprites control like crap doesn't know what he is talking about. Collision detection has nothing to do with it either. All a prerender is, is a bunch of snapshots of all the frames of a 3d model that is moving; all put together as a flat sprite.
One thing KI missed out on is convincing grabs since the models would need to squash aginst each other and this would mean theyd need to overlap. No grabbing allowed.
But I don't see anyone complain about how your sword sticks right through a person's body in soul calibur and doesn't register a bump on the character. (just a hit animation. Check out some idle animations where your character's weapon is going right through the other guy's body.)
Or how in some old fps there is still a tendancy for characters to stick out of floors when they fall flat on a starcase instead of flopping down realistically.
People notice these things now but back then if you paid too much attention to the technical things people would scream "there's no gameplay. Why'd the bother with the graphics?" Old school gamers are technophobic. Then, and even now. Money and effort spent on small technical details was looked down upon because it meant you weren't "piloshing teh gaemplay!!111!" and focusing on making the thing live up to the short attention spans of the average gamer wanting an intense gaming experience.
When the day comes when characters can algorithmically figure out how to place thier hands on a door handle (without needing an animator's help) rather than rely on a "open door handle" animation(hand-created by an animator), that's when things are going to be really freaky in realism. The emotion engine on the ps2 was supposed to be the big revolution in gaming but it never delivered in its promises of being able to process all the information on the fly with its cpus, and instead, developers are still using traditional custom hand-animations and motion capture to do things.
I thought Donkey Kong Country on the Super NES was a great game. Back in 1994, I happened to see this game a couple of weeks before it came out. The graphics were absolutely beautiful, and the gameplay was good, too. I knew I had to have it, even though I didn't have a SNES. I did have a Jaguar at the time (still do :) ), but at that time that system didn't have any platform games, and game releases were so slow that it was anybody's guess when one would finally come out. So, I got myself a SNES, and then when DKC finally came out, I got that and Vegas Stakes as my first two games for the system.
About 10 months later, I traded in the SNES and most of my SNES games towards a preorder for the PlayStation system. I don't recall playing DKC since the summer of 1995, but I still have some fond memories of the game. I still remember the beautiful snow levels, with the falling snowflakes. The underwater scenes were also beautiful, with a sort of "new age" music in the background. There was also a crystal cave, with an upbeat, catchy tune.
I'll concede that the level designs weren't the best I'd seen in a platform game. Also, there were a couple of annoying parts, such as the barrel launching sections. The checkpoints for game saves also got on my nerves in one or two parts of the game, where you had to survive a couple of very difficult levels before getting the opportunity to save (the first Crash Bandicoot for PlayStation also had this problem).
Overall, though, it was a landmark game. Despite the media hype at the time, it was not the first video game to use prerendered sprites and backgrounds for all of its visuals--Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy on the Jaguar preceded DKC by almost a year, and there might've even been earlier examples that I can't recall. It did, however, combine very nice visuals, great music, and engaging gameplay into one snazzy package (as opposed to Crescent Galaxy, which quite obviously lacked the last two). The Jaguar and 3DO were the two new next-generation systems at the time, and Sega was readying the 32X expansion module for the Genesis. DKC looked better than 95% of the Jaguar/3DO/32X games, and this was on an unexpanded SNES with no special coprocessors in the cartridge. That, in turn, did a lot to harm sales of those systems, since people were scratching their heads wondering why they would want to buy new hardware, when the SNES seems quite capable of competing on the level. It opened a lot of eyes, and while it spawned some imitators, it also got developers (on all the platforms) to start thinking outside the box on how they could make their games stand out.
Whether you like the game or not, there's no denying that it made an impact on the video game industry.
hahaha Sure I haven't played it. Why not just start a poll asking if KI sucks or not. Sounds like you;re talkng out of your ass. I played the game more than enough to know it sucks and it's obvious to anyone that plays fighting games.Quote:
Originally posted by Shin Johnpv
KI controls like SF2, the majority of the move imputs are direct rips of SF2 move imputs
you obviously didnt play the game
and you didnt just hit a bunch of moves and sit back and let insane combos happen
again showing you didnt play the game
you had to time everything just like in any good fighter to link a jump in MP to a standing FK you had to time it right and then to connect that with a linker you had to time it right
it wasnt just mash the controller and step back
stop talking out your ass
cause its pretty obvious you are to anyone whose put in more than 5 minutes with the game
the animation is fine in the game, the controls are smooth and responsive
the combos require skill with timing to pull off
like i said this game controls nothing like MK or Pit Fighter
and is more akin to the SF style
let me guess you tried it somewhere and got owned in no time huh
cause you obviously didnt put any time in with this game
and the arcade rev of KI2 is still a great and fun game
Could you maybe not lump everyone into one category?
I don't care for KI but the control is as sharp as a tack. Get off it.Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Canuck
hahaha Sure I haven't played it. Why not just start a poll asking if KI sucks or not. Sounds like you;re talkng out of your ass. I played the game more than enough to know it sucks and it's obvious to anyone that plays fighting games.
If you don't care for KI then you think ti sucks probably. We're not talking about strictly controls here buddy. Although no matter what you say I think KI's control sucks and is around the same level as MK.Quote:
Originally posted by burgundy
I don't care for KI but the control is as sharp as a tack. Get off it.
The problem here lies with you being quite confrontational with anyone who doesn't share your opinion.
Also, your logic of "if you don't care for it, you probably think it sucks" is quite flawed. I don't care for many games, or even some genres, but I don't think they suck, I simply (and here's the key thing) don't care for them. I'm indifferent towards them.
Seriously, take it to another thread. Start your own. Hell, make it a poll. Just stop ruining this one.Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Canuck
If you don't care for KI then you think ti sucks probably. We're not talking about strictly controls here buddy. Although no matter what you say I think KI's control sucks and is around the same level as MK.