Hi. Recently I've been a litle irritated, and there's nothing that cheers me up quite as much as pile driving crooks!
so I've been playing double dragon advanced and final fight advanced, ---- final fight particularly is actually an arcade perfect conversion for the gba, and on my big tv with my huge speakers it's pretty awsome, especially playinhg with the x arcade stick. however, this set me thinking. thus far, while we've had several audio games where you walk along and smack people, Q9, battlezone, possibly even superliam in mechanics terms, all have basically worked the same way with a single, 1D advance/retreat mode, possibly including jumps and jumping attacks as in Q9, but essentially boiling down to something more boppit style with little thought given to the relative positions of your character and enemies. Yet games like Final fight, streets of rage, golden axe etc, do not actually work like this at all. Yes, in most games you just walk left to right beating up thugs, however there is also a crytical, vertical element, and I don't just mean jumping. The best way to explain this, is imagine each level of the game, instead of being a single line with the odd pit thrown in, is a long rectangle. Yes, you must walk from left to right, and usually must go right to finish the level, but you can also walk up and down by a limited amount, while stil facing right or left. Another way of thinking of this might be to look at your pc keyboard. If you imagine having an action figure, and placing it on the leter row on the A key but keeping facing right, you can side step up to the Q key or down to the z key, or progress forward to the S key, all while facing right. Imagine that a thug is on the d key. The thug could come streight towards you by going forward, or could try side stepping around you by going down to c and onto the bottom row, or up to e and onto the top, however, the thug can only hit you (and you it), when both are on the same row. Thus, the game becomes one of position, moving not just forward and back, but up and down, indeed, in many games (including streets of rage and final fight), you'll get hit pretty quickly if you walk streight left or right into a thug, but are best off moving diagonally oup or down and initiating a grab. I hope this explanation makes sense to anyone who hasn't had the eyeballs to see how such games work. The thing is, just as in 2D platformers lack of the actual second dimention in audio makes the games far simpler, in 2D beat em ups, lack of this up/down positioning makes the games far simpler too, sinse without being able to out flank or maneuver your enemies, they just turn into a hit it before it hits you type of thing. I think though, this would be comparatively easy to show in audio by using either pitch, or volume to show vertical position of enemies relative to your character, and thus making you neede to considder where they are vertically. this would add significantly to the tactical gameplay of such games, sinse you would need to for instance estimate when an enemy is close on a vertical level then move up or down to attack them, or wait until an enemy came into your vertical plane before attacking. Even just three positions for enemies, above, below and on the same level would be enough for tactical play I think. I really hope the next person who looks at making a walk along beat em up in audio will considder this, sinse I really think we need to move away from the boppit style here it, react, type of gameplay of games like Superliam, and move into something more technical, and ultimately more replayable and satisfying. Yes, this will be more difficult, but games like Final fight and double dragon were never easy either. Beware the grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
