sdelfin

@DestructoDisk Excellent post on this topic. You don't hear a lot about the pixel limit per line. That realization was very eye opening for me. It's why the SNES overall and per-line sprite limits didn't come across as significantly better, as you alluded to. Those higher numbers do give it some additional flexibility, but that pixel limit holds it back and I think a lot of people overlook that. I was just on another article right before reading your post talking about the SNES's pixel line limit, so it was a bit funny, since I never hear people bring it up, seeing you talk about it, and explaining the issues so well. Sprites for a theoretical DKC port would not be an issue for such a port, as you said. Getting it to look and sound right would be the tricky things.

@Guru_Larry Not on-screen sprites or sprites per line. SNES does win on those which gives a bit more flexibility. But it gets more interesting when you look at sprite pixels per line. At 256 pixel-wide resolution, the SNES has virtually the same amount of sprite pixels per line as the Mega Drive. There's a small advantage to the SNES of maybe 16 pixels as I recall, which acts as a buffer against flicker, I suspect, but that's barely anything. At 320 wide, Mega Drive gets a sprite bump across the board. Sprite pixels per line goes up as well, though in both modes the pixels per line is the same as the horizontal resolution, so 256 and 320 respectively. I suspect there are a number of reasons we didn't see more enemies on screen back then. Some of it may simply be game design. Slowdown would have been a concern, especially on the SNES. Keep in mind that many games also used SlowROM as well.

And then there's optimization. Many games were not well optimized. But there's an interesting case of this on the SNES. There is a hack for Final Fight 3 that improves performance through new optimizations, so we know optimized code wasn't a priority as it probably is on these projects. Final Fight 2 also demonstrates some interesting things. It's possible through hacking to increase the number of enemies on screen and I spoke with another commenter, BulkSlash, about it. He experimented with it and found it would run flicker free until you have five enemies on screen with a single player. The game also ran without slowdown until it reached seven enemies on screen.

I remember playing around with ZSNES back in the day. I think I had just moved on from my 486 so I didn't struggle with that as the King did. The secret save states are a great idea. I wonder what the process of coming up with that was like. Controller lag reduction methods like RunAhead do basically the same thing to solve that problem. It's a fantastic solution.

The article went in a direction I did not expect and ended up being a very interesting read. It sounds like this system isn't well known yet even to companies who would find it useful in cases like this. It sounds like a good method of doing things. I've been aware of these kinds of licensing dead ends before with things like games, but also anime. All the A-Ko movies have been released on DVD and blu ray, yet the two-part OVA hasn't had a US release in decades, and perhaps not even on DVD. And the reason is the licensing situation is murky, and I recall it being similar to this game, where no one really knows who owns it rather than multiple parties may have a claim of ownership. A shame things got this messy.

I'm not a fan of pushing things so close to the limit that you get that much flicker, but this sounds like an optional mode so that's a smart way to include this particular thing. The standard two-player mode sounds like it has six enemies plus the two playable characters which means the flicker will be there. That might make more sense to push to that limit for the sake of gameplay. It is impressive to see how far it can go.

This also shows how little most arcade boards were actually pushed back in the day. Optimization was not a priority for arcades. The CPS1 could have gone a lot farther.

Yeah, leaving the direct issue of AI aside, this is also about poor judgement to leave such terrible images in the book. Makes me wonder if they even had an editor in charge to approve things. It's embarrassingly bad, assuming those behind this can feel something even vaguely resembling shame. It reminds me of the many bad retro releases over the years, especially the GTA remasters.

Very interesting read, especially with his background before design. I also learned what kerning is and I'm sure I'll be able to work it into conversation once within the next several decades. Also cool how he wasn't a gamer, but sort of became one a little bit with the Game Boy, and not just Tetris. I also like his story of how he turned that Christmas card into a chance to pitch improvements to Nintendo's early designs. I would say his judgement overall on the changes to the US box art in terms of the philosophy — consistency for the hardware packaging and shelf appeal for everything — was correct. I don't love the actual art changes in a lot of cases, but don't know how much of that was on him because that aspect wasn't really addressed directly. As stated in the first comment up above, his Game Boy design aesthetic was excellent and probably his best stuff from his work for Nintendo.

@KingMike I've seen that too, but Renovation is also shown on Japanese game boxes. My guess is that the Renovation name was used twice, for one of Telenet's development teams, and for the US publishing arm.

@GravyThief I'm glad to hear you found that helpful. I think such tools, as complex as they are, are easier to implement on game systems that have defined limitations. Such a tool for the Mega Drive would be more complex because the system can do more than the Game Boy. But those limitations probably make it relatively easier to make these tools so usable through a GUI.

Regarding the feel of a game, I wouldn't know myself, but imagine there is probably a lot of variability available as far as defining movement. But as far as that "feel" of a GB Studio game, perhaps it's a case where a lot of people don't make many adjustments from the defaults which leads to the games having that specific feel. Just a thought.

One last thing which relates. I looked at the modern game engine Godot a while back. That does require some programming, but their solution was to create their own scripting language designed to be easy to pick up, and then they also allow the use of several other traditional programming languages for those that know that stuff and which probably offer certain advantages. But that's how one far more complex game engine has tried to make things more accessible.

@GravyThief Perhaps I can help you understand better. I'll refer to GB Studio as my reference since the resources are readily availalble. The key phrase is "It uses a visual scripting system." As the description also states, those who know how to program with C can do more advanced things. What all that means is that all the basic processes of creating the game are included in the software and handled via the GUI. So for scrolling, you'd set up a background and then can set certain flags like scrolling direction and the software will handle the scrolling. Then there are additional visual tools for defining boundaries. Here's a video example if you wish to see how it works: https://youtu.be/-SvLqsYfaVc

For something more advanced like enemy behavior, the software has built-in functions(the visual scripting). There's still quite a bit to pick up, but it's learning what's available through the GUI rather than having to learn GB assembly or a higher-level language. If you think about other advanced software like image editors or video editors, you have to learn their processes like layers or timelines. It's similar for something like this. You have to learn what options and processes are available, and then you can create scripts that define enemy behavior through the GUI and the software turns that into game code. Here is a video showing the process for enemy behavior if you wish to see it: https://youtu.be/5e_n8Znid8w

I hope that provides a better understanding for you.

@KingMike @Deuteros everyone is different, of course, and clearly some people did very well in Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts with the slowdown. I played it a long time after it was current, so maybe I might have gotten used to it in 1992. But I couldn't get used to it when I played it. In fact, I hated it because I felt the slowdown just ruined my sense of timing in the game. And I was okay sticking with Ghouls n' Ghosts. Then a few years later I found out about the FastROM hack for the game. I didn't think it would make a big difference to me, but it did. I played it without the hack and then with the hack to compare. I still hated it without the hack, but with the hack, I genuinely had a great time. I can only speak for myself, but the reduction of slowdown makes it a much better game for me. I'm glad that eventually became an option and that it technically would run that way on the system if they used that faster ROM.

Congrats are in order for them finally selling an Amico. Perhaps they'll even double their install base soon.

@GravyThief Some MSU stuff can be very good. That, of course, comes down to the composition. In some ways, it's like a taste of what the SNES CD would be like. You could put the PCE CD music from Rondo of Blood in either of the SNES Castlevanias(and I think they both could use it). My favorite MSU hack is putting the arcade Turtles in Time music in the SNES game. Stuff like that is great. But the great thing about these ports is the MSU stuff is included, but optional.

As for the point of these. For starters, "just because" is a good reason from the coding side. While most of these games are simple, direct ports, the SNES allows for more sprites on screen which means they can get rid of flicker. They can reduce or eliminate slowdown. In some cases, like Duck Tales, the ports have some color tweaks to make characters more correct in their depictions. A bigger difference can be seen in the port of Metroid, which included a map function. But most of these are more direct ports, but they can theoretically serve as a foundation for ROM hacks and being on the Super Nintendo opens up a lot more possibilities.

@Sketcz Yeah, the difficulty of the dam stage is vastly overstated. I literally beat it on my first try at eight years old. I did have the benefit of watching a few other people, who were two years older than I was, fail at it many times, so I had an idea what to expect and where to go. I eventually revisited it as an adult and completed it again after a few tries, with the biggest challenge being the timer as I didn't remember where to go for an efficient path. Luckily, our experience of it being pretty easy seems to be rather common as more and more people comment with similar stories. I do recall Displaced Gamers did a video about how elements of the coding for the stage are broken, which makes the control inconsistent, but it's still quite manageable.

That last line of the excerpt of the readme is so good. Danielle is going to feel so owned.

Back in the day when I got into anime, it was so hard to get stuff. VHS was expensive and annoying. A friend and I combined for an order from a fan-subtitling outfit. We had no idea what most of it was and just had to guess based on the titles. One of the tapes my friend picked was the Variable Geo anime. It was quite the surprise seeing what it was. The NSFW stuff wasn't what I was looking for, but I could handle it. But the whole concept, waitresses fighting to determine who was the strongest, was really funny.

@BionicDodo The older I get, the more particular I get about game controllers. I know what you mean about the 8bitdo Neo Geo pad's thumb stick. It's not ideal for shmups. But I absolutely love it for fighting games and games that use those style inputs. I have come to accept this is the case with sticks. Even for arcade sticks, you have to make that trade off between shmup performance and fighting performance. I've even heard stories of people who bought really tight arcade levers thinking that would be perfect for fighting games and they ended up regretting it. A moderate dead zone is helpful in fighters, at least at a casual level. D-pads seem to be the best all-around solution, but there's a lot of variation there as I'm sure you know.

Supergrafx is a fascinating "what if" as far as if it was more successful and had a bigger library. The second BG layer and extra sprites would have gone a long way. It was such a poorly planned product though. It was only two years after the launch of the PC Engine so that probably wasn't received well. The unit was quite expensive. Not only does it have only a small handful of games, but they were released over a year and a half or something like that. That means anyone who bought it was waiting around to SuperGrafx-specific games, and those games were more expensive too. It's amazing to think there was a time when that kind of market approach was considered acceptable anywhere.

@KingMike Yeah. I understand the original reasoning behind the "select" button. Everyone was figuring things out back then as they went. But it never made sense for the "select" button to carry on past the NES era. There were plenty of PC Engine games that needed three action buttons, so they awkwardly used "Run" for that and made "select" pause. It just didn't need to exist when a third proper action button was much more useful for those early systems because the function of that button was redundant due to the D-pad and buttons being a better way to select things. Having a start/pause button makes a lot more sense to be on a specific, secondary button.

I remember thinking how cool it was that the Master System had a pause button on the console. I had played the NES a bit before then, but no one had ever paused a game that I saw, so my mind was blown when I found out that the "start" button typically acted as a pause button despite not being labeled that way.

I was just thinking about button layouts and labels earlier this week. The idea of primary and secondary face buttons makes sense, but also falls apart because the primary buttons ended up being the left and bottom buttons in gameplay. So that's Y and B. Thoguh B and A, or X and O became the primary buttons for selecting menu items.

The idea of A and B being reversed on Nintendo controllers coming from traditional Japanese is a common idea, and does make some sense, but Japanese can use use left to right, and the controller labels are not in Japanese so there's no reason to think the order of the buttons os anything but arbitrary. I suspect they determined the right-most button on the NES pad was primary, and gave it the A label as a result. The mystery to me is why the buttons at A & B, and X and Y, rather than Y & Z. The CAD thing is a possible explanation, but in the end it is also arbitrary. I don't know if it's a good explanation. It creates a mismatch as A & B are the start of the alphabet, but they skipped Z on the opposite end and that doesn't make much sense despite the explanation. And since we're talking about buttons, "select" as a button never made sense since selecting can be done, and is usually done by th D-pad and a proper button. That's one reason I liked Sega's approach. The Genesis pad has the same number of buttons as a NES pad, but select was eliminated to add another action button. Way better.

I started with a Master System, but played a lot of the NES, then got my own. Then I got a Genesis and played a lot of SNES. I was used to all different kinds of layouts. I have almost no issue switching layouts. I had the hardest time remembering the Sony layout. Even though I used it the least, I like the Xbox button layout the most when it comes to the modern layouts, though I prefer the Sony stick placement. Most games with prompts I've played are color coded. It probably helps I play PC mostly, so they base things on the Xbox pad. But

@Santar There are advantages to six face buttons just as there are to four buttons plus shoulder buttons. You are correct that certain button combos are a weakness of six face buttons. For the SNES layout, the main complaint I've heard, and it's also my complaint, that using the shoulder buttons for attacks is also cumbersome, particularly the L button since that's the same hand operating the D-pad. Some people get used to using the L button in fighting games, but some people really don't like it.

@Scollurio @Blast16 @Banjo- I didn't mention it in my previous comment on the topic of vibration, but I also agree that it makes much more sense for gun games, racing games, and flight games. Those were always the games that tended to have some kind of force feedback in arcades, whereas standard arcade games did not. But it also made sense for those games, all of which are attempts to simulate, to some degree, real-life activities involving some kind of machine. The feedback was part of making the experience a bit more realistic. Bringing feedback to all games never really made much sense to me. But so many games let you turn it off and this version of Super Mario World is an option, so it's cool for people who like it.

I know the sim-racer people insist feedback in a wheel is a must. If the feedback is good, it will provide some amount of feel to the car as Banjo- alluded to.

@Blast16 I do the same. I thought vibration was interesting for about five minutes, then I hated it. I can't turn it off fast enough. Some people say it increases immersion. For me, it takes my mind out of the game and reminds me I'm holding a vibrating controller.

I didn't watch the Game Chasers much, but this kind of news is always sad. It sounds like he was well liked by his peers and viewers. My favorite tribute here was Metal Jesus because it shows something a lot of people wouldn't know. In addition to this, we fairly recently lost PatmanQC and, in the computer/tech space, Novaspirit Tech. Hopefully news like this will be less common for a while.

For the handful of people who must play everything Undercover Cops related. I'm probably part of that group. I've always wondered about this one. It is, indeed, a bizarre spin-off game,

Micro Mages is a lovely NES game. Two games, actually, since they eventually added a second quest to the original package. I knew I had to get it after seeing the wonderful development video that gave a good glimpse into what it takes to fit a game into 40KB. Good to hear there will be more. I'm not too keen on making levels, but that could be interesting and it does come with some levels so that may be enough for me.

@Sketcz The side-scrolling snowspeeder level feels tacked on in the first place. It's short and adds little to the game other than displaying a huge snowspeeder sprite on screen. It's not especially well designed or consequential. Check out a longplay to see for yourself.

@bring_on_branstons I had a similar thought that Mario Kart was a weird choice. I think the likely thing is they were taking aim at a major release that was recent at the time they made the ad and paint it in as bad a light as possible to make Sega's platform as a whole look better. I imagine it was an attempt to counter the good reviews and word of mouth Mario Kart was getting.

I've always appreciated demakes like this. There's just something cool about making something work on hardware that isn't perfectly suited to it. I remember when this was new. It seemed an odd choice. But it reviewed very well and I remember thinking it looked great. I recall people at the time thought it was among the better fighting games on the system.

That's a great story. There are still many people of her generation that have negative opinions over video games as a whole, so it's nice to see someone like her playing games so openly. I think it is great for the mind because the best games,even if they are not puzzle games, are like puzzles in motion. I imagine Tetris is a very good game for brain health. Bomberman also sounds like it would be good as well.

I was out of gaming for a while and was pretty terrible when I got back into playing, mostly retro and retro-style games. But I got better quickly. My gaming reflexes are better than ever in my 40s. I never thought I'd be able to beat Ninja Gaiden on the NES legitimately, but I did that a couple of times a few years back. Doing that definitely stimulated my brain, and it wasn't so bad either. A lot of it is pattern recognition. And I'm sleep deprived, so if I ever get that sorted, I expect my reflexes will improve a lot. But my contingency plan for old age is to play arcade beat-em-ups(they're my favorite) so I can credit feed, and lots of RPGs, if my reflexes and joints do fail. But the best way to keep abilities up is to use them.

For some reason I was not aware of this project until a couple of months ago. I tried the demo on Steam and I really liked it. The visual style is not going to be everyone's favorite, but I gave it a chance and thought it looked better while actually playing it than in screenshots and video. I also thought they captured the Truxton vibe. The only really bizarre thing is playing a vertical shooter that's 16:9 widescreen horizontally. It seems to work fine and I'm open minded, but it is very strange.

@gingerbeardman what I remember and was able to find again is that the developer Kevtris used an oscilloscope to compare his Game Boy core to a real Game Boy to view the electrical signals and determine that the timings were the same.

I'm not sure how software emulation is tested, but I know Higan/bsnes was extensively tested with the entire library and every element was approached with maximum accuracy as the goal. The Accuracy version of the emulator was, as I recall, made to emulate one game that did something weird correctly. That version processed everything on a per-pixel basis, as I recall reading.

I've been pointing out for the last year and a half that many of the claims in favor of FPGA are wildly overblown. To be clear, FPGA is cool. It works very well. The accuracy is very good for the most part. In the case of Saturn, it probably is overall a better experience than software emulation right now because Mednafen, while excellent, has some issues including with interlaced games. But there seems to be some new developments with Saturn software emulation too. I'm not surprised Saturn's FPGA core is still not fully accurate, since the system is so complex. That isn't to say the results it produces won't seem accurate, and that's the most important thing. We've also seen a developer of arcade FPGA cores admit they use hacks to get the games running. That's why in the past I have said there are "myths" pushed in favor of FPGA and how it's not magic. But what matters is how the games run. FPGA does a good job running games. But so does software emulation.

@gingerbeardman I think it is possible and that some of the simpler systems such as the Game Boy can be, essentially, perfect. I remember reading how a developer used an oscilloscope to compare a core to an actual Game Boy. But that can also be achieved in software emulation.

@RenderSpotlight NHL 94 was special and it remains a favorite among fans of those games today. I was also not much of a hockey fan, but was very much a fan of those games. They were fun video games, period. The NHL games were some of my favorite "time killing" games back then. A friend of mind had the first NHL game which didn't have a year in the title, but would have been '92. The gameplay was fantastic. '93 refined the gameplay but lost the NHL license in favor of the Players' Association. '94 had both and more refinements, so it was the best one. 1995 is when they revamped the series so it looked and played a bit different, but it was also a buggy mess. I knew three or four people who had it and it was just filled with bugs. So the series, as far as I know, peaked with '94.

Neo Drift Out was one of the best surprises I experienced in gaming when I tried it. I knew little about it other than some people like it. It's some of the most heavily concentrated fun in a game I've encountered. Visco nailed the whole vibe including the pleasant sound design. And the game is reasonably challenging at first because there's not a lot of room for error with the timer in the later stages. The cars are all quite distinct in how they handle. It's one of the easiest games for me to jump back into when I just need a giant blast of fun. It's such a great arcade game.

@sanmansan I assumed it was covered in some magazines and I just missed it. I'm just surprised that I missed it because I was keeping up with things, but it was hard to catch everything. While the internet was still new at the time for many people, I was already spending a lot of time at gaming sites around the time the performance analyzer would have been new. And I knew a lot of people who were also getting online around the same time. That was part of the fun for the PS1/Saturn/N64 era for me, getting to really follow news and reviews online and have forum dicussions as well.

I don't have a Gizmondo, but I despise that kind of coating. It gives a nice first impression(and I've never been big on first impressions), but it's not worth it. I guess my environment is especially ill suited for those coatings as I've had remote controls practically melt. I had cable box remotes covered in sticky goo within a year or two. Same with Fire TV remotes. For one of those, I used alcohol to remove most of the goo and I was much happier with the remote. As far as I can tell, heat and humidity are especially unkind to such coatings. I bet they last longer in dry climates. "Soft touch" is just not worth it and I hated that trend.

While it's true that not every game needs a remake, the Panzer Dragoon games are, in my opinion, good examples of games that could benefit from remakes. Primarily, it's because they are stuck on the Saturn otherwise with the prospect of re-releases of the original versions seeming to be unlikely any time soon. And even though emulation for official releases has gotten better in recent years, I do not trust that Saturn emulation would be handled very well. Remakes would make these great, classic games more accessible and bring their visuals up to a modern standard making them more appealing to play for many people. As with anything like this, it comes down to the execution. The remakes don't have to be shoddy, if indeed they are. Shoddy remakes are a choice.

It goes without saying that this is sad news simply from the human side of it. I know stomach cancer is an issue in Japan. It's even more sad knowing that he was a composer of the music for Gimmick. And back then, Sunsoft was known for their great game music, especially on the Famicom/NES and Gimmick was in line with that high standard for music at the time.

What's wild to me is that some people apparently think Nintendo was the only company back then inventing and/or following good gameplay principles. You could play nothing but Sega games back then and have a good foundation for game development. On later generations, PS1, PS2, etc, there were plenty of developers that could inspire people to pursue game development and teach them some good principles in that regard.

There's no winning when it comes to D-pad an thumb stick placement. I like bezels. I don't see much point in bezel-less anything, but it seems to make even less sense on something like this with integrated controls since the screen can't go all the way to the ends like on a phone. Plus, think of the fingerprints on this thing. I'd take a regular housing over this.

@Gravyc That's an interesting take I don't hear so often. I did enjoy Arkham City and Arkham Knight, which I finally played almost a year ago, but I thought the narratives were the weakest parts, while it was much stronger for Arkham Asylum. I did like the advancements in the gameplay for Arkham City which is why I still like the other games, but I'd pick Asylum as having the best premise and story. City(with the DLC), specially, was annoying because Batman and Catwoman got caught several times very early on and that got tiresome.

This looks and sounds like a sequel of sorts to DMG Deals Damage, a homebrew game by this developer meant to commemorate the Game Boy turning 30 several years ago. That was pretty fun. Interesting how the feature is flawed. I wonder if that was some kind of mistake they just decided not to correct, which happened sometimes.

I was wondering if they would do a modern update or remake of this one. This was always a bit murky since the Japanese original is a licensed game and the western release was done with Jaleco publishing, so I wasn't sure who owned the trademark. Considering the remakes of past Natsume games, I have no concerns about it. Plus the original game will still be there and still be great.

Regarding this having become a cult classic, I'm part of that. Shatterhand is one of my favorite games on the NES. When I say that, I mean it's basically tied for number one. I really love the game and play it often. I think I've beaten it with every combination I can think of. I didn't know about Shatterhand at the time it was current, though I wish I did. I have since recommended it to a friend or two who got into retro gaming after me and I got great feedback on it.

I discovered Shatterhand through Youtube probably in 2013. I saw a video and thought the game looked like it was made for me. It's rare when a game appeals to me to that degree and it actually lives up fully to my own hype for it, and Shatterhand is one of those games. I had the same experience with King of Fighters 97.

This one just didn't land for me. I won't get too in depth on it because I don't want to drag this down too much. Things people like about this one, such as the whip mechanics and the soundtrack, are things I dislike. For the whip, the level design doesn't feel like it compensated for that mechanic. The soundtrack is all over the place for me, with some tunes being excellent, but quite a few feeling very out of place to me. I think the best way to sum it up is that this game strayed too far from the Castlevania formula of the first and third NES game, and subsequent games prior to SOTN. The fact they went back to that formula for Rondo and Bloodlines does make me wonder if they got some feedback after CV4. But there's no denying that the game made a strong impression on quite a few people, as we can see.

@obijuankanoobie Yeah, not too many people need to know specific options. I've been there when it comes to "screen shake" options. Always good to know these things. Anyway, I have Ninja Gaiden Ragebound on PC and it does have an option for blood. I don't have Shinobi yet, but based on the demo and a longplay video that did show options, there does not appear to be a blood option at this time.

Just the fact that both properties were revived at roughly the same time and released at roughly the same time made me realize a Joe Musashi, Ryu Hyabusa team up needs to happen in anime form. Spoiler alert for this non-existent anime: Strider Hiryu also joins the team of super ninjas.

I got into Prince of Persia a few years back. My favorite is the DOS version, recreated as SDLPoP. The Sega CD version is quite good too. I have tried the SNES version, but not extensively. Previously, I was not so interested in the additions, and I'm not sure they'll make the game better. It's funny as the additions add more fantasy elements to the game, which are more in line with the 3D Prince of Persia game for the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox/PC. But you can tell the SNES version is very well made just from looking at it, so they definitely put effort into it.

@jesse_dylan It sounds like this new approach, if they pursue it, would probably implemented into newer versions of the OS. I doubt existing devices would have issues or run into this new restriction. There are also other workarounds such as staying on older version of Android, and manufacturers using custom systems based on Android Open Source Project. In such cases, as long as the APK files are available, it should be easy to install things. But a setup like you describe would not have any issues, I suspect.

I like the flexibility Android offers over ARM-based Linux handhelds, though I do have an unusual situation where I need to modify the screen's color temperature. But I'm flexible, so if this situation became a problem for me, I'd probably get an X86-based handheld like the Steam Deck.

@KingMike It's interesting looking back and realizing that a lot of games are poorly optimized. I saw a video on this game that did a deep dive into this one and how the coding for the water stage is likely messed up. Capcom was also guilty of that. The NES version of Strider is likely unfinished, in my opinion, and also has clear coding and optimization issues.