I tried it on ZSNES and that was all (it works great). I wonder how they managed to get it to run the way it does without slow down? Very impressive. Though in 1995 I suppose the market for a game like that would have been quite limited.
I don't feel like joining the "game progress report"-crew, but I have to wonder why people seem to be so impressed by this game. It's as if everytime something unreleased comes out, people treat those games as some sort of fallen or forgotten gaming god. Anyway, only struggled my way through the first stage and somewhat into the second now. And so far... I mean, sure, it's in rather good shape for a game that was canned. (Such good shape that it seems like a last minute call not to publish it or that it was finished first and in the process of finding a a publisher). But really, this game is pretty much below average in terms of almost everything (It looks nice in screenshots, I give it that, though). Balance is terrible, the gameplay design itself is horribly limited, it has the usual bag of Snes slowdown with fullscreen flash effects and the game itself is incredibly "shallow" (You know, like... One of those arcade cabinets from your childhood that had a "standing out" graphical style and thanks to lack of alternatives, you spent a few quarters on it as a kid just to realize 15 years later that the game actually wasn't that great.)
I think the thing here is not that it's a "fallen or forgotten gaming god," more that it's just interesting for many of us to see, from a technical point of view, how the game behaves outside of its original, potentially custom-made proto hardware. Also, we get the opportunity to play something which we would never have had the opportunity to play otherwise. Gaming habits and tastes were a little different 15 years ago. Compared by today's standards, sure, many supposedly "classic" games do seem to have lost their edge, which is understandable. I think comparing older games to current is a little unfair, they should be compared to games of the same era. Saying that, Nightmare Busters has plenty of faults, but I for one would be very interested to know the definitive reason behind why the game was canned. Games don't get scrapped for being "too hard" as difficulty can be altered relatively easily, remove a few baddies, alter the level layout slightly, etc. I know that I'm generalising a little there, but hopefully you get my point. I'd say in this state, although Nightmare Busters probably wasn't quite worthy of a release (although I'm sure there are some who would disagree with that sentiment), it would have been fairly simple to salvage it and correct those issues, especially since it was virtually complete.
Yeah, that was also why I chipped in on this thing. I wasn't exactly looking for a membership card to the e-penis club. Also, having all of these "tagged" ones is just gonna be annoying on the day of "public release" anyway. Since I'm too lazy to go around deleting small stuff on my HDD, I might suddenly find myself in the situation of sending the "tagged" one in stead of the so called "clean" one to someone asking for the game. And I know I'm not alone in this world when it comes to not really deleting/sorting files that often. So I guess it'll take like one week after public release, and then there'll be like 30 different copies of the game floating around online, drowning the so called "pure" copy.
Well, after we do the wide release, it won't really matter anyway. BTW, when did you guys want to do that?
Maybe you don't like the game because it's to difficult for you!! I mean you hardly manage to reach level two, later levels have many diferent gameplay elements. I mean below average?? How can you say that!! This is better then 95% of released snes games!! Its quite hard so very challenging, it has quite some cool moves, controll is very tight, graphics are super for snes standarts and so is the 2 player co-op mode. Music is also very good as well as the artwork. It's an arcade game, like Metal Slug or Contra 3. These games are also short just like Nightmare Busters. Because this is a game you play for 30 minutes and try to get a better score like all arcade games. Its not a Mario or a RPG you play for weeks.
No, the game is not challenging. It only challenges your patience. If you're in a hurry, you may make a few mistakes here and there, but if you take on step/screen at a time, it's about as easy as an educational game on beginner setting. If you consider it better than 95% of all released Snes games, you've really missed out on quite a lot of titles for the system. I gave it the nod for having a okay visuals, but it's nothing spectacular or breathtaking when put into motion, as the game does not really toss around any fancy effects, fluid animations or anything (By Snes standards). Comparing it to Metal Slug and Contra 3 is probably the best way to show how it is not really much of a game to write home about. And the controls are not "tight". That's a term people use for something that's fast responsive in a positive and fluid way. They're I and many others back in the days used to call "stiff". All that glitters is not gold. As I said before, I thought this was initially gonna be a "direct2public" release once it had been dumped. So the sooner the better in my opinion. Anyway, guess you should get everyone's input on this one as I suppose people might've had different ideas in mind when they donated.
well if you think this game is below average go on play classics like Revolution X, Wizzard of OZ, Family Dog, Batman Forever, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Last Action Hero, Cliffhanger, Timecop, Mario is Missing, Daffy Duck etc. etc. To take slowdown as an argument, the best snes games have slowdown...castlevania IV, Contra, SMW....but still they rock! You have to learn enjoy the game, learn the patterns like a shooter, try to finish it without loosing lives etc. Thats the challenge in this game. People that understand this know the game easily ranking in the top 50 snes games.
I dont get why each persons copy is tagged individually. That seems like kind of a moot point if its getting a public release. Its only going to aid in confusion when M5D's don't match and people think there are different versions out there.
Clearly its to keep anyone who wants to leak it before the "public" release from being involved in any other releases. Or maybe its to make them feel abit special...
Well, like I think I said before (with a slightly different choice of words), I thought I was donating to a community release and not a limited renewal of my Diamond VIP membership card in the e-penis club lounge. And as far as said "leaks" go, I honestly don't see the problem when this was a initially a fund raiser for a public release. If people want to pay for exclusivity, they should just aim for buying the original build and sit on that for some time before then evt. accepting the money as downpayment for a release. That's how most people have been doing it for like... forever. Also, this came two days after I (and many others) had donated: (Karsten's comment was just a tiny moment before this) I guess at the end of the day, the lesson for the future is: Get the plan down on paper before starting to collect money from people. I've always had community interest in general as one of my "things", and I've often given out to (read: donated to, lent out to or spent on behalf of) people in their interest. Even though in cases where I had little to no interest in the actual subject at hand in general. (Look upon it as me paying my taxes, or evt. just making up for my shortcomings in other fields as part of a community... Or maybe I'm just generous!)
Seriously, ask yourself, was the hitting of the "Submit Reply"-button to just type that really necessary? [edit] Also, good point, Dot50Cal.
Ok, so now that we've had enough drama - Let's get the "clean" rom released. I understand (a bit) if you want some sort of art contest or whatever to make the release a little more ceremonious - but really, as Carnivol said, the sooner the better.
Well, the idea was for we who donated to get it ahead of time in the first place, hence the watermarking of the roms. Which I don't have a problem with myself. Anyway it doesn't really matter to me about any other "ceremonial" events concerning this release, just trying to make things fun for you guys I guess Simon go ahead and release the orignal whenever you're ready. Well you know, we don't investigate these unreleased games becasue they're the best games ever. We do it becasue they're rare and unreleased. So it doesn't suprise me that the game isn't 100% perfect (although in this case I actually like the game.) But anyway, I actually like Nightmare Busters enough to give it a solid play through, which is something I can't say for a lot of games I try from this era.
