Search the Community

Thanks so much to @phillv85 for nominating me this time – this will be my first pick from when we switched to nominating individuals, but I was the person who originally suggested Parodius back in 2019 when deciding on poll candidates, so it's probably my second pick overall. I know we've already had a few rounds with fighting-themed games, but I feel like we haven't had a pure 1v1 fighter for a while. And it's a genre that's relatively easy to pick up and enjoy in the space of a fortnight! That being said, the game still needs a little bit of background for the uninitiated. Pocket Fighter or Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix is a "chibi" 1v1 fighter that is sort of a love letter to many classic Capcom games – with more than a few cameos and references – as well as being a fun blend of fighting game staples like super jumps, guard crush, special moves and super combos. It's a three-button game where you have a punch, kick and "special" – and the properties of these can change when holding a direction, crouching or jumping. Furthermore, there are easy chain combos in this game – as long as you start with a punch attack, you can press more punch/kick buttons to chain together a combination of attacks that can result in a powerful ender. As you fight with your opponent, gems of various colours and sizes will explode out of the characters, and picking these up will fill up meters (of the associated colours) at the bottom of the screen – with bigger gems filling the meters more quickly. You'll want to build these meters to improve your specials: in front of the meters are icons that show a particular special move and the corresponding command. So Ryu has an icon of the fireball move in front of the red meter, and if you collect red gems you can power up your fireballs. Items can also burst from onscreen chests – there are items you can hold on to and toss out with kick+special, and food items you can pick up for recovery. You'll always begin with a throwable item at the start of the match – it'll be shown as the circular icon next to the two small heads below the lifebar. (I think your easy chain combo can result in a new chest appearing as well?) Super combos do exist, and your super meter is below the health bar at the top of the screen. Most of the time you can get a super combo out with two quarter circle motions and an attack, so try stuff out or ask in here! Also, if you find yourself in a tight spot and have a super meter full, you can press all three attack buttons simultaneously for the Mega Crash move – this acts as a burst and knocks the opponent back, but you lose your super meter and gems. It sounds like there are a lot of systems in there, but you can still thrash around with the easy chains and have fun – and then if you're after something more, the depth is there too. Pocket Fighter saw releases on PS1, Saturn, WonderSwan, in the arcade, and in the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology. I believe it's also available in the Capcom Fighting Collection released in 2022 - but someone might need to confirm. I actually have a copy of Alpha Anthology in my shelving unit at the moment, but I don't have a PS2 right now, so instead I'll probably go for the PS1 version via DuckStation. (I may also have the WS version on my RS97, but I need to check.) My goal is to at least make it through arcade mode with a character before the next game is nominated! Previous nominations:

This is now live on the Switch eShop. Buy each pack separately or the whole set for £30. You can get 1943 for free. Capcom Arcade Stadium Pack 1: Dawn of the Arcade ('84 – '88) Vulgus Pirate Ship Higemaru 1942 Commando Section Z Tatakai no Banka Legendary Wings Bionic Commando Forgotten Worlds Ghouls 'n Ghosts Capcom Arcade Stadium Pack 2: Arcade Revolution ('89 – '92) Strider Dynasty Wars Final Fight 1941: Counter Attack Senjo no Okami II Mega Twins Carrier Air Wing Street Fighter II: The World Warrior Captain Commando Varth: Operation Thunderstorm Capcom Arcade Stadium Pack 3: Arcade Evolution ('92 – '01) Warriors of Fate Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting Super Street Fighter II Turbo Powered Gear: Strategic Variant Armor Equipment Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness 19XX: The War Against Destiny Battle Circuit Giga Wing 1944: The Loop Master Progear

Capcom are having their own event this year which will no doubt be worth a swatch given the rich vein of form they’ve been in these past few years. I’m sure I’ll update this post with some sort of relevant link nearer the time, but for now PREDICTIONS: Great Ace Attorney Collection Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin Resident Evil 4 for Oculus VR Street Fighter 6? Dragon’s Dogma 2? Code Veronica REmake? Some sort of Megaman bizness? Switch exclusive Resi? Outrage, was it? I wasn’t hip to that rumour until the other day. What else? (@gospvg, Please feel free to add this to your pinned E3 conferences thread. I wasn’t sure who / if / what we were doing as a forum for this year’s E3 chat, but I’m pretty excited about this one so thought I’d may as well make a thread.)

The Retro Games Fair is back! This is the biggest video game sales event in West Yorkshire with over 100 tables and 50 sellers with 1000's of retro games, consoles, computers, artwork, imports, accessories, toys, modified consoles and much much more all for sale No need to get up early for the car boot or wait for the postman from ebay! Here you can see the condition in person before you buy! Whether you are a big collector or just getting into old gaming there will be plenty of common titles and rarities on offer on all formats from all ages. Pay on the door and you can come and go as many times as you want in the day too. THE DATE Saturday 18th Feb 2017 OPENING TIMES 11am-5pm THE VENUE Marriott Hotel, 4 Trevelyan Square, Boar Lane, Leeds, LS1 6ET ADMISSION £2 per adult, Under 16s Free (when accompanied by a paying adult otherwise £1) Find out more information on the links below: RETRO EVENTS WEBSITE RETRO GAMES FAIR WEBSITE RETRO EVENTS FACEBOOK GROUP Let us know you are coming on the official Facebook EVENT PAGE Follow us on TWITTER Check out the PHOTOS from a previous event

Usually I make these threads as I've just started a game, but I recently finished Maximo just a couple of days ago after playing it over the last few weeks here and there. I was interested to hear what others thought of it in general, as it clearly is quite a decent game, but hard as balls in parts and was close to the bin or e-bay several times for me. I did persevere, and with the fortune of finally figuring out how to properly use the save system, it became doable for the first time. After not long since going through Devil May Cry, and remembering the moaning I did about how it was difficult, but later became excellent and doable, well I had a similar sort of experience with Maximo. There were some parts which made it feel difficult and hit and miss, but many of the enemies just need the right approach. Maximo seems to be some sort of spiritual sequel to Ghouls & Ghosts but with a different name and updated into a 3D environment. I'm sure I once read an article on why we'd never see another Ghouls & Ghosts game, although can't remember what it was, and I'm assuming here that licensing is all over that one, hence the change in name. Does anyone actually know? One thing for sure though is that Maximo is very close to the original titles in terms of difficulty and trying to keep up the instant death scenarios. It can be brutal and so frustrating at times, but the more I played it, the further I got. It also has the same idea from the original games with the ability to build up pieces of armour, only to lose this if you get hit too many times, eventually resulting in you being left in your boxers. You can even buy or find replacement boxers but I'm not actually sure if this was for aesthetic reasons. Now I don't know if anyone else had this same issue, but someone replied to a comment I made about playing this game over in the "What are you playing now?" thread in Discussion, and it seemed to me he had the same problem figuring out saves properly. The game gives out very little information about what things actually do. I remember it taking me a while to figure out how to activate a check point when first playing, which is done by jumping twice and then slamming on it with triangle. It would have helped by including a quick message by the first one at least. The biggest problem for me though was the save points at the pools. I'd seen in its format, that you begin on a full level, only to finish off and appear in a hub world connecting the remaining levels for the current world you are in. In each hub there is usually some kind of circular pool that does nothing if you go on it, but it can save if you stand on the right brick around the outside. It took me until about the third world before I even figured this existed, and even then that was by complete fluke as I walked on it and could have sworn for a split second I saw something appear and then disappear on screen quickly. Until then, the only way I assumed you could save was to beat a complete world in itself with all the levels and then the boss character. The bosses are actually not too difficult once you know how to beat them, but some can take a bit of time to work out how to damage them at all. One of the best ways to get through the stages is really to try and keep yourself stocked up on powerups and just not die or lose too much too often. In this way it reminded me of those scrolling shooters like Gradius which are much easier to progress, providing you keep your ship upgraded and just don't die, because if you do then you become open to all sorts of attacks and cheap deaths. The final boss encounter had me confused a bit as on the first part of it, I hadn't got a clue what was actually going on, and somehow it just ended after so long, but celebrations we not quite ready as it slams you into another boss battle without a save during the very last encounter with some kind of beast in pitch black. What seemed very frustrating turned out to have a knack to it though in the end and didn't take too long to beat. Maximo is definitely worth playing if you want challenge, but a challenge that you can get through if you persevere. There's a second one on the PS2 but I know nothing about that as of now, but definitely interested in picking up one day. It's funny how I initially hated this game in the early parts of it, but grew to really appreciate how good of a game it actually is, exactly like Devil May Cry was.