Comment on Ninja Gaiden for DOS: rated M for "mistake"
atomicpoet@lemmy.world 4 days agoI’ve played many games from the era. There were quite a few DOS games that had much smoother scrolling even if there wasn’t specialized hardware for it. Thexder, made in 1987, is a good example of this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwHKg2aUB0I
The truth is, a good many Japanese games that were converted to DOS just weren’t very good.
There were exceptions, though. SEGA games tended to be excellent. And I have to say that anything by Nihon Falcom was amazing – to this day, Sorcerian is a standout on DOS.
zod000@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
Come to think of it, I think it was parallax scrolling that Id Software figured out that hadn’t been done properly before. I had never encountered any of the Japanese DOS games in the DOS days. I imagine there just wasn’t distribution of then in the US I guess. I would have loved to see some Nihon Falcom games.
atomicpoet@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Both Thexder and Sorcerian were distributed by Sierra.
Thexder, in particular, was quite popular—got a Western-only sequel called Thexder 95 that was a showcase for Windows 95:
youtu.be/iI_qGdgybmU
It’s still playable on modern Windows.
As for Japanese games, they’re largely hit or miss on DOS. If it’s a Capcom or Konami game—it’s probably terrible. SEGA is good.
I think the game that really humiliated Capcom was the DOS port of Street Fighter II. In the early 90s, a bunch of Koreans made their own unofficial port and it shamed the official port.
This might explain why Super Street Fighter II for DOS was so much better.
zod000@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
Interesting, I never saw either Thexder or Socerian in local stores at the time, nor I had even heard of them. It doesn’t look like GOG has them listed, but I’ll keep an eye out so I can possibly give them a try.
atomicpoet@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Nope, they are abandonware. You either buy the physical disks or sail the seven seas.