Monthly Retro Game Club

Reset_Tears · April 30, 2020, 10:51pm

Looks like 71900 was my best score for KiKi KaiKai. I sure didn’t improve much over the month, oh well. These sorts of games are tough. The Arcade Archives release is nice to offer an easy mode and extra lives, as well as a rapid fire option – these are certainly helpful, but I still rarely get past level 3 or 4.

KiKi KaiKai ending spoilers

Via save states on an emulator, I was able to finish the game for the sake of seeing how the later levels were. I really liked the last couple bosses – the kitsune and the tanuki. They were very different from all the other bosses. Loved how the tanuki would turn into a copy of Sayo-chan, but still have the racoon tail.

I was surprised that there was an eighth level. You find the seven lucky gods, but then have to get their boat. The last level isn’t very fun IMO. It is a never-ending loop full of lantern statues, and hidden in three of them are scrolls you need to collect in order to finish the level. This was a real pain, because there are so many enemies flying at you the entire time… and the spinning ring of flames will chase after you after a short while, making it near-impossible to actually search for the scrolls. My hat’s off to anyone that has completed the full game at the arcade!

All in all I still found the game a fun one. I’d probably give both this and StarTropics a 3/5. I’ll put together to a write-up for each on the site, and announce May’s games for this club.

Reset_Tears · May 1, 2020, 12:36am

For May 2020, the retro games of the month shall be:

Ecco the Dolphin (Genesis) – 1992 – action-adventure
Vib-Ribbon (Playstation) – 1999 – rhythm

ecco gotm

Ecco the Dolphin is a game in which you control a regular dolphin, swimming through underwater maze-like levels. You solve puzzles, avoid obstacles, fend off enemies, and search for air to breathe. It was a big success when it released for the Sega Genesis (MegaDrive), partly because it was such an unusual game at the time. It has a rather “modern indie” feel to it, in my opinion. I have also seen the game compared to Metroid titles, in regard to its level design and generally lonely atmosphere. (At times it can get surprisingly dark and scary too.)

The game is extremely beautiful to look at, and has a very fitting atmospheric soundtrack. Overall I think there is a lot to like about this one, but each time I’ve tried to play it I have a hard time. Ecco is a difficult game. It’s easy to get lost, and many of the puzzles are obtuse. I will definitely be using a guide for much of this playthrough, in order to not get too frustrated. I think the general design of this game is rather curious, to put it lightly – but maybe it will all flow more smoothly for the rest of you.

This game has been re-released many times over the years. A Sega CD port followed shortly after the original, adding a few extra levels and giving the game a new soundtrack (there is debate on which is better). There were also Game Gear and Master System versions, though I believe these are pretty different. The original has been included in various Genesis Collection compilations for systems such as GBA, PS2, PSP, PS3, and Xbox 360, and can be picked up on the 3DS for added stereoscopic 3D functionality. It is also part of the lineup for the Genesis Classic mini. And it’s on Steam – for one whole dollar! Howlongtobeat dot com says it takes about 5 hours to play through.

Perhaps worth noting, the Japanese release of Ecco was apparently revised to be a bit easier. There were also two main sequels made for the game: 1) Ecco: The Tides of Time (1994) – a direct follow-up on the Genesis, and 2) Ecco: Defender of the Future (2000) – a 3D take on the formula for the Dreamcast (also a beautiful game for its time).

Vib-Ribbon for the Sony Playstation is a rhythm game that has you controlling a simple vector-graphics rabbit across a plain black landscape. To the beat of the music, you jump over blocks, stretch over pits, spin through loops, and slip through jagged spikes. There are only six songs included in the game (in three courses), so the goal for those is just to get the highest score.

What makes the game particularly unique for its time was how you could swap out the game’s CD with a music CD, and a new level would be generated for each track. In other words, it’s something like Audiosurf, and offers infinite replayability. From my brief experience, it seems the game’s a bit random with how difficult each track will be – but there are options to adjust this. This game was created by dev studio NanaOn-Sha, which was most famous in those days for Parappa the Rapper. There were two sequels (of sorts) for Vib-Ribbon on the Playstation 2, but both were only released in Japan: 1) Mojib-Ribbon, and 2) Vib-Ripple.

Vib-Ribbon itself was only released in Japan and Europe – Sony’s American branch (SCEA) didn’t bother with it. Which leads to an interesting story from E3 2014, in which Vib-Ribbon was briefly showcased by the new SCEA president Shawn Layden (meant to give an example of unique gaming experiences only to be had on Playstation), without realizing it wasn’t actually ever released in the Americas. To make up for this, the game would soon get a digital release for the Playstation 3 and Vita. The ability to play CD music was even retained for the PS3 release.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on either (or both) of these games as you play them over the course of May. If you finish, you can give a mini-review if you’d like. Let us know if you think these games stand the test of time!

Nes · May 1, 2020, 1:32pm

Oh dang how didn’t I find this sooner, this sounds like a great idea. Also ECCO!! I have fond memories of playing ECCO in my dreamcast even if I never finished it haha, I’ll try to join for this month’s

LauraMFrench · May 1, 2020, 2:25pm

Will probably dive into Ecco this weekend (no pun intended). For the record I kind of gave up on trying to beat Kiki Kaikai without using save states, but I’m also too stubborn to give in and use save states so I put it in my backlog until I can muster up the patience to try again. I only got up to the third boss so far and haven’t been able to beat him. But at least I got to give it a try!

killerstar · May 1, 2020, 8:00pm

I was always kind of curious about Ecco, having seen it in many vides and heard it in conversations about strange games. So I’m bound to try it!

Vib-Ribbon looks strange as hell, so sign me in too!

killerstar · May 1, 2020, 9:07pm

Vib ribbon sure is weird. The little mascot is equal parts annoying and adorable and I love how it changed shape when you fail to hit the notes.

I’m emulating it with RetroArch and so fat haven’t found a way to use my own music. I tried to create a CD image from some of my mp3s but the emulator just crashes when I change the virtual drive. Anyone has any pointers?

Reset_Tears · May 2, 2020, 5:18am

I bought the game off PSN to play on Vita, but in order to try out the CD functionality I’m also emulating the game on my laptop. I’ll just go through my process for that. The emulator I’m using is ePSXe, and to create “CD images” I’m using PowerISO. The free trial version of it lets you make CD images up to 300 MB in size. Open it up, then go File → New → Mixed Mode CD. Drag MP3 files into the bottom box of the screen. Then save the file (I do “Save As” so I can name it and have the file in the same folder as the Vib-Ribbon game). For me it generates two files (a .bin and a .cue file). Now, when you’re playing Vib-Ribbon, go to the option “play with my own choice of CD” and select it. You’ll be asked to insert a CD. Just hit the ESC button, then go File → Change Disc → ISO. Now select one of the two files you created in PowerISO. In my experience, the larger file doesn’t work – I have to use the smaller one. Hopefully at least one of them will work for you too!

And that’s that. Note that you can also select Change Disc → CDROM, if you have an actual CD nearby you want to try out. Again, I used ePSXe – I don’t know if the process will be the exact same with other emulators.

Right now I’m enjoying the best Vib-Ribbon life with Bangarang - Skrillex.

killerstar · May 3, 2020, 7:02pm

I was using another emulator. Trying it in ePSXe seems to kind of work (the game doesn’t crash instantly) but unfortunately all I got is white noise. Bummer… I’ll keep on trying

killerstar · May 3, 2020, 8:36pm

Yey! I finally got it working. Turns out the key is that the CD image has to be a “Mixed Mode CD” and Brasero (the linux app I was using to create the CD image) doesn’t have that capatibilty and apparently there is no linux app that can create that kind of files. I had to boot up my windows machine and create it with power iso there and it works!

In case anyone’s curious, this is what I tried to play with:

Reset_Tears · May 3, 2020, 9:53pm

Glad you got it to work, killerstar! Quite the long song to pick though… Are you able to get through the whole thing?

First Impressions on Ecco and Vib-Ribbon

Ecco is an absolutely gorgeous game – I love to just swim around and look at all that detailed pixel art. The backgrounds! Absolutely wild. Every kid who had any interest in the underwater world must have been completely over the moon with this game. And that music is extremely good too. Really gets across that mysterious vibe of the deep ocean depths. I really like how everything gets darker, the further you swim down (and vice versa).

The game is also surprisingly tough from the very get-go. As I alluded to before, I always found it strange that a game about a cute dolphin swimming around in the colorful ocean would be designed to be so difficult. It seems like the sort of game that should’ve been targeting younger audiences, but no way I would’ve been able to get past even the second level as a kid. How would I have been able to figure out to push a sea shell into that wall of rocks to break it down? And thread the needle so perfectly to get past the insta-kill octopus? And not only survive all the blowfish hazards – but do so quickly, because you’re always on a strict time limit for finding air? This Ecco game is not for the weak, I can say that much. I’m also not a big fan of the whole key and door system with the crystals, since it’s never clear which is the door and which is the key… and honestly, why are there all these crystals blocking my path in the first place?

How do people feel about the controls for Ecco? I’m trying to decide how much I like them. It’s definitely a little different from most platformers, but I get that the setting and character probably requires something different. Might just take some time to get used to.

As for Vib-Ribbon, I’m digging it for the most part. The six songs included in it are definitely… weird. I’m assuming that’s why the game wasn’t brought to America. But maybe I’ll warm up to the songs as I replay them and try to get higher scores.

The gameplay is nice and simple; I like the choices made for what buttons to use. It seems to make sense, what each button is assigned to for the rabbit’s actions. And speaking of the rabbit, Vibri is surprisingly very cute for a such a simple little sketch doodle. Her squeaky little computer voice is endearing.

I have played a few of my own songs in the game, and it’s certainly fun to play the game with my own music. But I really do wonder what the game is going off of for generating the levels. It feels like it’s not really playing along to the “main” beat for most songs. It doesn’t feel completely random either though. I will keep trying more songs to see what genres work best.

killerstar · May 3, 2020, 10:36pm

Yeah, that’s to be expected, I think. Still today rhythm games are touch and go on their ability to automatically generate meaningful patterns. Considering that this is a 20-year-old game… I don’t expect much. Still, I am curious about the algorithm they use.

Overall, Vib Ribbon is strange enough to entice me, but with only 6? songs (and the issue with the autogenerated patterns) there’s just not much there. The gameplay mechanics are very ingenious. Having 4 “primitive” actions and combining them into different shapes works very well. But that mechanic is only really used in the hardest difficulty level.

It would be great to be able to download more songs and hand-crafted levels, though!

EDIT: Although I’ve just tried with Rammstein and it works pretty well. Spieluhr syncs surprisingly well.

GigaDeathNullGolem · May 4, 2020, 10:34pm

Yeah i did not like the idea of that level and thought it was bad design. The learning curve and incremental progress was fun on this one, but by the end it’s kinda like a ‘gotcha’ and theres not really a reason to deny a player who got that far the ending scene. I think for an arcade game this one required a bit too much knowledge out of the player on little things here and there despite its general simplistic gameplay. In this era it needs to say on the side of the cabinet these things or flash on attract mode, before you can jam your quarter in (or soon after).

cool you did pick Ecco. I think that’s a good choice. It’s def one of those games a lot of people know about but i bet few have actually played it. HLTB seems to suggest its a 8 hr long game tops so that means i could actually play both genesis and sega CD versions if I want to (There are retroachievements for the genesis). I came across it because it was mentioned in a list or something as one of the better Sega CD games, so it made my grouvee 2020 challenge list for slot ‘Sega CD (for the console)’ looking at a vid comparison both games are pretty.

I actually played PaRappa the rapper the first time the other month (don’t know if you saw) so yeah i’d be curious to check out something like that.

@killerstar Hmmmm… I’m glad you found a solution and posted one for others. My instinct was to create a .cue file that combines the existing CUE your game came with and add a music disc you created to it. then load that in the emualtor. and just treat it as a multidisc game. (its been 20 years since i tried to make a CUE for a music cd. its probably not that hard but i dont know how to off the top of my head.)

we should have a contest to get high scores for a specific song. Maybe something like Guile’s Theme lol

Reset_Tears · May 7, 2020, 6:14am

The button layout and the corresponding obstacles on the ribbon is a central part of what makes this game work. The mixed shapes take some practice to memorize, but the forms they take always make sense. I’ve found that these two-button presses show up loads more when playing your own music.

This game would be perfect for the modding scene. If talented music people could carefully create their own levels for Vib-Ribbon, that would be very cool. I’d have to agree that randomly-generated levels are never going to feel as good as hand-crafted ones. Honestly, I think it’d make all too much sense for the devs to release this game on Steam at least. Mods could be a thing, but the devs could even release their own DLC packs every now and then for their own new music.

Of course, it’s at that point I remember that there’s no actual demand for more Vib-Ribbon!

Be sure to share your thoughts on how the two versions compare! I keep meaning to explore the Sega CD a bit, but just haven’t gotten around to it. (I’d probably start with Snatcher and/or Popful Mail though.)

I imagine Ecco would take me more like 80 hours without any outside help or use of save states, lol. For this month I just want to make sure I get through it all, make it to the ending.

killerstar · May 7, 2020, 4:35pm

Yesss, absolutely. As it stands right now, it reeks of untapped potential. The game is only a framework with which to build new stages. It absolutely needs a stage creator either in game or as a separate software.

I remember playing a drum rythm game years ago and downloading a lot of custom songs. Maybe Vib Ribbon was just too ahead of its time.

LauraMFrench · May 7, 2020, 6:43pm

Started playing Ecco on my plug and play last night, a little hard to take screenshots since it’s my first time playing a game on a “console” instead of my computer for a while but I took some pics of some opening screens.

No major problems with the plug and play yet except one glitch where I got stuck between some spikes and another part of a wall and died but I only played for a little time and haven’t even passed the first real stage yet so it didn’t set me back much.

This game reminds me of the online dolphin jumping game I used to play endlessly in middle school lol. And it’s fun to see the ~aesthetic~ that has become popular in its original context.

LauraMFrench · May 7, 2020, 6:50pm

I haven’t played much yet, is it really that hard I’m glad there’s a password system for the stages but I’ll have to figure out how to enter them, the console thing came with a manual with instructions for the games so maybe that will help me. I’d probably like to at least finish one game each month if I can’t finish both. Maybe if we get really stuck and one of us is ahead we can trade hints lol.

Reset_Tears · May 7, 2020, 7:17pm

You get a password whenever you finish a level. To enter the password, you start up the game, but instead of swimming to the right you swim left instead. That will give you the password screen. You can always just look up level passwords online if you ever want to skip a level.

Right now I’m stuck on a level that’s a proper maze, asking me to find and rescue some other dolphins. Some tunnels have strong currents that push you back though, so it’s a pain to navigate.

LauraMFrench · May 7, 2020, 9:28pm

Ah thank you I was worried because I didn’t see a traditional menu screen and wasn’t sure which button I’d have to press to get the password screen to come up.

Ugh I’ve only encountered two currents so far I think but already found them annoying, can only imagine how rage-inducing they’d be in a maze lol. Sounds like finding the dolphin baby in StarTropics was more fun

Reset_Tears · May 7, 2020, 11:14pm

For people looking for help on Ecco, I am finding this guide helpful.

Some tips:

It’ll take time to get the hang of the controls. Remember you can swim with just the directions, swim faster with C, and rush forward with B. You’ll need to use B for attacks. For jumping out of the water (e.g. over small islands), I’ve found I have to build up speed, and then dash right below the surface, pointing Ecco diagonally.
A is your echolocation to talk to dolphins and crystals. But if you hold on A, you get a bit of a map to help you out. (Not much though.)
You activate “key” crystals by bumping into them, and then unlock (remove) the “barrier” crystals by using echolocation. Unfortunately, some of these barrier crystals will respawn if you leave the area (e.g. to go get oxygen before continuing on to the next area), because this game likes to make life for Ecco as difficult as possible!
In the fourth and fifth levels, there are three lost dolphins to rescue in each. (The game does not specify the number.) You don’t have to rescue them to clear the stage, but it’s a good idea to do so because you’ll be rewarded an ability upgrade. You have to find a dolphin, and then lead it back over to the original dolphin you spoke with at the start of the level (near the surface). To get a dolphin to follow you, you have to swim right in front of it, your tail in front of its face.

GigaDeathNullGolem · May 8, 2020, 7:48pm

Hey guys im on my phone but i finsiehd ecco for sega cd and highly reccomend that version. Its not only got a really cool and unique soundtrack but it has neat little extras and some very very beautiful looking levels unique to that version. I read that all the other versions are based on the mega drive version (virtual console and steam) its a very easy game to run on retroarch and works out of the box (for me) using either pico or gen plug. Just make sure the game loads a cue file or you wont get the in game music.

Most of theearly difficulty comes from movement. A sense of spacing and speed. This game is basically sonicnthe hedgehog 2 but underwaterand with simplified gated puzzles like out of this world or lost vikings or something. After you read a gamefaq that explains the basic mechanics (and your upgraded attack you earn from rescuing hostages on level 3 and 4… but only the first one is useful i read) you only have to worry about enemies. I found simce the game lets you repet over endlessly breathe isnt a big issue becase the maps arent that big enoughto really get lost in and yu will soon be FLYING through them sonic2 style! Also killing thr bigger enemies makes them stay dead so make SUrE youupgrade your sonar attack so you can do it easier.

The game seems a little glitchy and the meggladrive is ansolutely a shitnshow when it comes to glitches that the dolphin can get stick on or trapped or telesplorted/transclipped through. Watch some speedruns and try it yourself lol. Also i think both versions have an ingame cheat menu, but i either didnt do it right to bring it up. Gives you inf health, sound test level select etc.

This isa fristratingky difficukt game. Certain levels are made hard to be made hard and the game dev is a dick. But thats like the only flaw in this game its gorgeous, its reallly fun to zoom thru levels and the way this game tells a story through the perspective of dolphins as well as how they communicate is very unique.

I actualy found this game to have a very similiar vibe to star tropics! I dont know if resettears planned it that way or it was coincidence!