Neue Rezensionen von Trip Fisk

Soulash 2 caught my attention months ago since it looks to be a mix of RPG/resource management/base building and I like those for some reason. Unfortunately I found Soulash 2 to be a little too early access and old school to keep my attention. So, for me, its been one of those "I can turn money into unplayed games" games. In other words, I haven't played it enough to write a review.

That is until August 25 2024.

Soulash 2 is another game in a growing list where authoritarian leftists openly attempted to cancel Soulash 2 and its developer using the common and predictable tactics and methods they use every single time.

Soulash 2 is a game developed by 1 person. What did he do wrong? What crime did he commit?

Well, someone asked him to put gay marriage in Soulash 2.

And he said, 'no.'

Predictably this immediately made the developer a homophobe/bigot/alt right ♥♥♥♥. Once this was declared, social media was used to sic a hate mob on him. You can look up Artur's feed on twitter (which is the cancel culture's weapon of choice) and what you WON'T find are comments from him attacking gays. They don't exist. Instead, you'll find a guy standing up for himself against furious, hate filled literally gay bullies being rude and nasty to him, twisting his words, and lying about him. The people who do this, btw, claim to be fighting hate and protecting persecuted people... By persecuting those they hate.

The people attacking Artur lack the self awareness to notice they do the same thing they casually cancel and ban people over. Its quite hypocritical.

It's also a bunch of unfair and evil BS. This is not the first time I've seen this, and its tiresome to see how often these bully tactics are used to coerce and assassinate developers' reputations over personal political grudges and identity politics.

Obviously I want to support the developer through this and I don't like how he's being pushed around by jerks who decided they want to destroy him and his work over something so petty.

Oh man, I thought I wrote a review for this game! Did it get deleted? Time to write another I guess!

If I were to be stuck on a desert island and could only take 1 game with me, it would be this one. A personal favorite. #1 colony sim/base building game without a doubt. Easily within the top 3 games I've ever played.

Rimworld has infinite and limitless potential. No two games are the same. There are moments where Rimworld is frustrating. There are moments where Rimworld is weird. But if you can wrangle your pawns and manage your base to survive a cold, heartless, and unforgiving world, there's a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction to be had.

There's a bit of a learning curve to figuring out how to play Rimworld. Once you got it figured out, it can be very addicting.

I've never been able to win a game of Rimworld. I keep getting sucked into the base building aspect. Then move on to playing something else after a week or month of nothing but Rimworld. Part of the reason is I keep recruiting too many people and building up the base too nice and fancy, and it turns the game into one of those monster truck tractor pulls where the game keeps throwing bigger and harder mobs of enemies at me.

There's a lot of personality and quirkiness to Rimworld. I'll never forget my first game! I didn't know what I was doing, I was barely keeping my pawns fed. Then a group of yorkshire terriers showed up and joined my colony. They ate all my food. My pawns began to starve. The pawn who was a soldier, my fighting guy, the most important guy I had, couldn't handle the pressure and lost it. And by that I mean he stopped following orders, ran over to the stockpile to smoke a blunt. Once he was good and high, he dug up a corpse, took it to the dining room, and began eating it. A nudist pawn who was missing like 4 fingers (from frostbite) didn't like this and starting fighting him. The high soldier went berserk going on a killing spree killing the nudist and others before he was put down. The surviving pawn bled out and died from injuries. Then the yorkshire terriers began eating the corpses. That was how my first colony failed.

There's another colony I had on a map with a lake that kept me from building a wall completely around my colony. I decided to use the lake as a wall since enemies can't cross deep water. Later I recruit this old black guy named Eli. Eli was crippled and wearing a hearing aid. All he could do was social and cleaning. Best warden and trader in the colony. When he wasn't doing that, he was cleaning his little ass off. I grew attached to watching Eli do his thing. One day mechanoids appear and I'm not fretting. I'm expecting them to get funned into and die in my kill box. So that lake I mentioned above? A mechanoid decides to go right up to its edge and starts taking pot shots at my colonists on the other side. Old Eli's out in the open and the mechanoid targets him. After like 3 shots, the mechanoid nails Eli. Blows his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ head clean off. That pissed me off so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad I stopped playing Rimworld for about a year.

I should mention I was playing on commitment mode, so Eli was gone for good.

RIP Eli.

Rimworld is totally worth it at any price. I believe it only started going on sale recently. DLCs aren't necessary for the full experience of the game and 2 of them are weak and basically exist as tips for the developer.

Seriously, 11/10 game here. One of the best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzdSOJ6suT8

tl;dr review: no NA ROM = don't buy.

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EXCUSE ME??? What's this Tatakai no Banka ♥♥♥♥?!?

This here game was called TROJAN in North America! Where the ♥♥♥♥ is the NA ROM?

Fun story about Trojan. 40 years ago, I'm on the school bus going to grade school. There's this kid who rides the same bus. He's one grade behind me and the NES was huge at this time, so we're always having conversations about NES games.

One day he tells me he got a game called Trojan. I'm not completely sure if he liked or hated it, but he certainly liked to talk about it. Being little kids at the time, it was probably for attention. He described Trojan's premise as the following....

"You play as a gladiator and the goal of the game is to fight and defeat Prince Snottymouth. Once you defeat him, you cut off your genitals and become a princess."

"So, wait. You can't just become a princess whenever, you have to defeat Prince Snottymouth first?"

"That's right. Prince Snottymouth is trying to stop you from becoming a princess."

"You're not saving the princess, you ARE the princess?"

"That's correct."

Yes, my friend called the main villain Prince Snottymouth.

I think this was my friend's way of saying he didn't like this game since he wasn't good at it, found it frustrating, and he decided this made the game lame. The best way to deal with his anger was to make fun of it. Also, mocking it for attention. I say this since I remember watching him play it and he wasn't very good. There's also an enemy that throws bombs. You lose your sword and shield if you block this bomb. My friend called the bomb a 'candy bar', so maybe he didn't hate the game, he was just retarded and making ♥♥♥♥ up.

Who would have predicted that Trojan was 40 years ahead of itself with its radical story of self discovery and taking down evil white cis het chuds for the right to castrate yourself to become the prettiest princess ever?

Well, it turns out my friend was lying. I played and somehow managed to complete Trojan on the NES. While its true the final boss is Prince Snottymouth who's basically a blonde copy of the main character, you do not in fact cut off your junk and become a princess. Imagine my shock when I beat the game only to discover my friend was full of ♥♥♥♥...

I apologize, this turned out to be a story about NES Trojan.

The last time I played Trojan in an arcade was at Cedar Point about 20 years ago. Its definitely one of Capcom's middling pre-CPS games. It starts out ok but then you'll eventually reach a wall where the game becomes unfairly difficult.

Playing Trojan again on CAS today, I'm reminded that it does start off ok, but suddenly gets stupid roughly half way. Specifically when you reach the elevator level. The controls get disabled when riding an elevator, but enemies still attack meaning you'll take a cheap shot sometimes.There's also the spiders on the elevator level that instantly respawn once killed. I'm not sure how to get by these without getting hit at least once. But this is the kind of dumb unfair ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ common in pre-CPS Capcom games. Also typical, is the game starts off innocently enough, then suddenly has brutally ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ design at roughly the 1/2 way point. its the kind of stupid BS hard where it feels like Capcom isn't after your quarters but wants to completely prevent you from beating the game.

So, yeah, Trojan sucks. Not a fan.

Oops, sorry. I meant Tatakai no Banka.

Prince Snottymouth is safe.

Oops, I mean 王子 鼻水口 because there's no NA ROM. There's no excuse for that to be missing.

Don't tell me the Trojan brand condoms prevented Capcom from releasing the NA ROM...

tl;dr review: Don't believe the DRM hating liars, Capcom Arcade Stadium does not have performance issues. The only issues CAS has is the game selection is meh and the whole thing is overpriced. Some are also missing their NA ROMs for ??? reasons. Not bad enough for a thumbs down, but not worth buying unless on sale.

----------tl;dr stuff----------

Like many people, I didn't buy Capcom Arcade Stadium due to all the negative reviews. I got it as part of a humble bundle and after messing around with CAS 1 and 2 for hours, here's what I've discovered with CAS 1:

There tends to be 3 types of negative reviews:

1. Apparently, when it first came out, CAS was in a pathetic state. I didn't own it then, so I don't know how bad. Capcom supposedly ironed out the worst issues since then. Many of these reviews WERE legit, but haven't been updated.

2. There are lots of bad reviews over Capcom adding DRM claiming this makes CAS run poorly. This is 100% BS. CAS runs just fine on my PC. I can only figure CAS runs poorly on a potato PC since it renders a fake arcade using RE Engine. These reviews are from loser communists and pirates who compulsively throw fits over DRM and will do and say anything to make games with DRM not sell. The current top 2 reviews are lazy copy pastes for Christ sake! I wouldn't be surprised if the 'poor performance' is due to getting the free game and hacking/modding CAS to play the rest. These are stupid people who shouldn't even care. Anyone can easily get MAME and play every Capcom arcade game for free.

3. Street Fighter 2 censorship. I agree with this one. Capcom, China's militant Communist government hates Japan and capitalism. Why would you censor E. Honda's stage and Hong Kong's flag to appease them? They're just going to steal what you're trying to sell there anyway. This makes you look like a spineless idiot!

Overall, this collection is a mixed bag. Numerous classics along with lots of trash that hasn't aged well. Many games included also appeared in the awful Cacpom Arcade Cabinet. I seem to remember those games not being emulated accurately. CAS' emulation is essentially 1:1 arcade perfect outside the idiotic censorship.

Nice things about this collection: 1:1 perfect emulation. save states and a rewind feature in real time. The fake arcade provides a nice, yet pointless aesthetic.

Bad things: Apparently, if you don't buy all the games, CAS will spam ads at you to buy the ones you don't own. The SF2 censorship is idiotic. No on-line multiplayer. Its missing a few NA ROMs. Where's SF2 RAINBOW EDITION, Capcom? Huh! Where is it?!?

that said, here are my thoughts on certain games in this collection:

((((( pre-CPS Capcom )))))
Early Capcom era. Capcom knew how to make games, but not how to make them fun. Most games from this era suck. This collection actually has the best ones.

Vulgus: Captain Commando himself personally told me this was Capcom's first video game released to arcades in 1984! Thank you, Captain Commando! Game sucks tho.

Ghosts and Goblins: Lots of people love this game. I don't like it since its harder than a witch's tit in winter.

1942: I'm not sure if this was a hit in NA arcades or not, but I did see it a lot. Its ok. Premise is weird for a Japanese developer tho.

Commando: Distinct arcade hit in NA when it came out. I stink at it and find it frustrating. Data East distributed it in NA for some reason.

Section Z: Sucks. Showcases Capcom's habit of making frustrating difficult not-fun arcade games and porting a more enjoyable version to the NES.

Tatakai no Banka: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, Capcom! You released this in NA as Trojan! You know what? Who cares, this game sucks anyway. NES one was better.

Bionic Commando: another example of the arcade version being ass and the NES version being different and better.

((((( CPS-1 era Capcom )))))
this is where Capcom began to make a name for themselves in arcades with genuinely good, fun games.

Forgotten Worlds: Capcom's 1st CPS game! This game needs a spinner for the authentic experience. BTW, if you actually have a Forgotten Worlds spinner, they're rare and quite valuable.

Ghouls and Ghosts: One of my favorite arcade games. Timeless classic for me.

Strider: Another timeless Capcom classic. Staff behind this game ♥♥♥♥♥♥ off to make a quasi-sequel for Mitchell Corp called Osman.

Final Fight: ANOTHER timeless Capcom classic. Certified hit in NA arcades. This is a game that briefly revitalized arcades in NA, but not as much as Street Fighter 2 did.

1941 Counter Attack: Decent. better than 1942

Senjo no Okami II: Capcom, buddy... You released this game in NA as Mercs you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idiot. Where's the NA ROM? This aggravates me since Mercs is another arcade classic for me! Still enjoy it even if its in Japanese. >:(

Carrier Air Wing: Slightly obscure quasi-sequel to UN Squadron/Area 88. Its not bad. Almost as good as UN Squadron!

Street Fighter 2 + SF2 CE: 1:1 arcade perfect EXCEPT Capcom censored the background in E. Honda's stage for communist China while liars try to convince everyone this was done to please South Korea. If you believe this, there's a forbidden city in China no one wants I can sell you.

Street Fighter 2 Turbo: This literally exists because someone from Capcom played Street Fighter 2 Rainbow Edition and was like, "Oh.... everything's faster. And Chun Li has a fireball..." NO, Capcom. Rainbow Edition literally turns everyone into Shang Tsung and you can throw opponents into barely moving fireballs. Get the ♥♥♥♥ outta here!

Varth: bit of an obscure shooter, but pretty good.

(((( CPS-2 era Capcom ))))
This is when Capcom was in its prime and pretty much knew exactly what it was doing.... Sometimes too well!

Super Street Fighter 2 + SSF2 Turbo: ♥♥♥♥ this game. Not only does it cheat reading inputs, they changed Guile and the announcer's voice to sound like a gay game show host. Also E. Honda and Hong Kong censorship for China.

Powered Gear - Capcom... You released this in NA as Armored Warriors. So why didn't you include the NA ROM? You put the NA version is in your Beat Em Up Bundle, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! This is an awesome game I never saw in NA arcades.

Cyberbots - Never saw this in an arcade either. Only as a Jp import on Sega Saturn. A mash up of Street Fighter 2 and giant robots? Its fun! Not sure why it wasn't promoted more in NA.

19xx: Pretty good. The 194X games consistently get gooder each seuqel.

Battle Circuit: Weird, but fun beat em up. Never released outside of Japan. The character designs give me Gunstar Heroes vibes.

Giga Wing: Developed by Takumi, who has a schmup pedigree due to its staff. This is the first game I heard of referred to as a 'bullet hell'. I never saw it in NA arcades (they were mostly dead by this time) so this was a Dreamcast game to most people including myself. It can be frustrating, but its not bad. If you're not a freak who can fly in the tiny spaces between bullets, just clear the screen with a bomb.

To finish this up, its hard to pick just 'yes' or 'no'. There's plenty of reasons for both, the censorship and missing NA ROMs being a big case for 'no'. I don't quite get the a la carte model. This collection has some fantastic games along with some real stinkers. I don't know why they didn't just sell this as one whole collection especially since they moved on to CAS 2!

Overall, recommend just edges out not-recommend since this collection has some real bangers in it that are still good enough to drown out the mistakes. But again, I only recommend buying the whole thing while its on sale.

I'm not sure how well both CAS 1 and 2 sold. They only exist since the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle sold so well. But I'd honestly like to see more Capcom arcade collections with the games they kept making as arcades died in NA that no one got to play.

The worst and saddest thing is Capcom's best arcade games are licensed properties, so you'll never be able to play stuff like Aliens Vs. Predator unless you get MAME.

tl;dr review: Capcom's first ever video game. It's not good and hasn't aged well. Do not recommend.

------tldr stuff--------

I learned this was Capcom's first game by playing Marvel Vs. Capcom. Thank you one of Captain Commando's victory lines!

Apparently this was released for arcades in NA. I never saw this game anywhere, ever. I may have played this on MAME, but that was so long ago and this game is so forgettable that I forgot that I had. If I were to judge it against games of its time, I'd say Vulgus is a modest attempt at best completely outclassed by other, more impressive shooters at the time. The fact Vulgus has weird ideas that exist to make the game harder and frustrating (such as enemy power ups that power up enemies until you collect them) doesn't help

Additionally, this game has NOT aged well. Playing it today is like taking ativan since its repetitive, boring, and never ends. But to be fair, Vulgus is EARLY Capcom where they knew how to make games, but not how to make them fun.

The one thing that made Vulgus worth playing is the Yatischi? Yatchitchi? Its the enemy that looks like a throwing star inside a red circle. It keeps killing me because I'm so used to seeing it as a bonus pickup in Capcom's other early games, that I keep running into it.

Senjo no Okami II? Get ♥♥♥♥♥♥, Capcom! Its called Mercs! WTF??!

I want to give this a negative review because this doesn't contain the NA ROM which is dumb and makes no sense.

But this game is so awesome and a favorite of mine from my youth, so I can't.

If you didn't know, this is a sequel to 1985's Commando, a game that was a pretty big hit in the arcades. 5 years later, Mercs appeared and while it didn't seem to set arcades on fire, it pretty much appeared in every arcade and did have some lasting power sticking around in a few arcades for a couple of years.

I actually remember seeing this game for the first time in a tavern with an insane $0.75 for 1 credit/$0.50 continue, 1 life, and set to hardest difficulty. Drunk patrons kept coming up and feeding the machine quarters, then dying in less than a minute.

I ALSO remember trying to beat this game in the arcade several years later and couldn't since Mercs offered limited continues and would eventually game over without a countdown which really pissed me off.

There actually is a sequel to this game called Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3. It was a downloadable game on 360/PS3 and it's pretty bad (because Capcom didn't develop it for some ??? reason).

It makes me a little sad to realize Capcom will likely never make another short, arcadey sequel because Commando and Mercs (not you Commando 3) are still pretty damn fun to play.

tl;dr review: unfortunately Saturday Night Slam Masters sucks. But if you don't take my word for it, you shouldn't feel ripped off too badly spending $2 finding out exactly why Saturday Night Slam Masters sucks.

----------------------- the rest of the review -----------------------------

I distinctly remember when Saturday Night Slam Masters came out. It was in 2 big blue cabinets basically stapled together and was damn near in every single arcade that had the newest and hottest arcade games. I also distinctly remember every single Saturday Night Slam Masters simultaneously vanishing from every arcade literally a few months later never to be seen again, almost like it never existed. I'm not exaggerating!

Straight off of Street Fighter 2's success, this should have been a massive hit for Capcom.

Playing it again 30 years later, I'm reminded why it utterly failed: each character only has 1 special move and 1 special grapple which is lame.

More importantly: on default difficulty, the CPU is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too good. Jump kick at the CPU, and it will knock you out of the air with a standing attack every. single. time. Have a special move that launches your character at your opponent? The CPU will somehow punch you out of that, too. CPU tends to get priority with grapples. CPU can break your grapples. It is nearly impossible to break the CPU's grapples. Saturday Night Slam Masters was designed to be a miserable experience that wants to humiliate you, so its no fun at all. Shamefully, it's massively inferior to Technos' older pro wrestling arcade games that were way more accessible and fun, even if their AIs were also cheap and unfair - they weren't straight up ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ machines like Saturday Night Slam Masters' was.

Another personal issue I had with the game was the coolest character, The Scorpion, was only playable in Team Battle Royale and I didn't know the reason why until 20 years later where I discovered the moron is the final boss of single player mode. Its like finding out the Team Battle mode was originally called a "Quarter Pounder Match" but had to be changed because they use metric in France.... Ok, that last part is a lie and a dumb joke reference to Pulp Fiction, but whatever.

I'm convinced if the AI was tinkered with a little bit to allow an ok player to win a few matches, it would have fared a lot better.

BTW, if somehow anyone has the arcade cabinet materials for Saturday Night Slam Masters (character + movelist inserts) these are apparently completely lost media. They're highly sought after and somehow nowhere to be found.

I have a treasured memory of Final Fight in the arcade.

I remember seeing Final Fight for the very first time at a water park in Florida. It was right next to whatever game I was playing and it kept distracting me since the guy who was hogging Final Fight was really getting into it. Plus, at the time, Final Fight's graphics looked ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing, so I couldn't help but look every so often.

The guy playing was some blonde haired surfer bro looking guy in his later teens, and I'll never forget this: he gets to Sodom who absolutely destroys him. Surfer bro kept wanting to pick up Sodom's katana which just makes Sodom angry. Game over. That was surfer bro's last quarter, and he really wants to keep playing...

Then this little Mexican kid wanders into the arcade accidentally dropping a quarter. It rolls across the floor. Like a ninja, Surfer bro LEAPS on the quarter grabbing it, then jams it straight into Final Fight to continue his game.

Little Mexican kid is like WTF! and gets sad. His older brother notices and comes over. When asked what's wrong the kid tells him about his quarter and points at surfer bro.

"Hey, did you take my little brother's quarter?!"

Yes he did, but Blonde surfer bro does not give one good ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Completely ignores him. Its all about the Final Fight. He's still no match for Sodom. You can count the number of times he's able to hit Sodom on 1 hand. He keeps trying to pick up Sodom's katana. Final Fight's difficulty was cranked to max since Sodom is able to kill Surfer bro in like 3 hits. Surfer bro game overs in about 30 seconds. Then he leaves the little arcade angry over how unfair the game was.

Little Mexican kid is still ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up with his older 13 year old looking brother angrily staring daggers at surfer bro, but can't do anything since Surfer bro was 16 or 17, twice his size, did not give a ♥♥♥♥, and was gone in an instant.

That was my first time with Final Fight. I don't remember the first time I actually played Final Fight, tho.

But I do remember Final Fight being mega popular and one of the handful of games that revitalized arcades across NA at the end of the 80's/beginning of the 90's. It was practically in every arcade, and if this wasn't the game that made you recognize Capcom's arcade expertise, 91's Street Fighter 2 did.

This is also like the 90th instance of the game I own. There's at least 5 different versions of it too.

Final Fight is also noteworthy since people obsess over game lore for some reason. Enemy names specifically. No joke, there are many people who are fixated on Two P for some reason. "Two P... What does the P mean? Hmmm!" <- common question said by weirdos obsessed with Final Fight's enemy names. Because half the enemies were named after famous bands/musicians, I'm convinced Two P = Tupac. Its not that complicated... And yeah, I'm familiar with the Two P = Forgotten Worlds 2nd Player theory. I don't believe that's true since, again, more than 1/2 the normal enemies share names with famous bands/musicians.

The one odd complicated back story is Poison being a transvestite which I am absolutely convinced originated from a Japanese Capcom developer misunderstanding a question about Poison being asked in English involving confusion over changes made for the SNES version of Final Fight which, at this point, doesn't matter since Capcom wound up making the transvestite answer official canon.

I also remember reading someone claimed Belger is supposed to be based off of Belphegor, a demon that represents sloth and laziness and pointed to Belger being in a wheel chair because he's lazy and not because he's crippled.

However, none of these people ask why Guy beats up Cody in the ending for seemingly no reason. If you know why, please leave a comment explaining it. Its always been a mystery to me!

This might be the game whose sequel set arcades on fire (like a phoenix) around the world, but wow is it awful. Unimpressive visuals and sound. Stiff controls. Incredibly unbalanced. Geki is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. 1 character to play as. Not much fun at all.

Knowing how to do any of Ryu's special moves is like a cheat code. They destroy the CPU every time since the CPU doesn't know how to react and they do way more damage than normal attacks. But the controls are so awful its hard to pull any of them off reliably.

The ONLY reason I'd recommend is for the curiosity and you won't feel ripped off spending $2

Fun fact: original Street Fighter dedicated cabinets had 2 buttons. 1 for punch and kick. How hard you pushed it determined if the attack was light, medium , or hard. The system didn't work very well! Neither did this game.

edit: the announcer will never not sound like he's saying "MICHAEL!" when a round starts