This week: your picks for best boss battles ever, we announce our Nokia booklet 3G winner, and a review of a really good… Snoopy game?
RADAR: Snoopy Flying Ace
XBLA
Aerial Combat
Smart Bomb Interactive
$10.00
Listen, I’m about to talk to you about a Snoopy game. DON’T STOP THE VIDEO! It may sound silly, but if you dismiss Snoopy Flying Ace, you’re going to miss out on one of the best multiplayer experiences to hit Live Arcade this year. Don’t believe me? Check out our review.
Free Indie Countdown
#3: FiNCK – Windows, Platformer, Nifflas – LINK
#2: Assault Fleet – Flash, RTS, Brad Hackinen – LINK
#1: Mr. Runner – Flash, Platformer, Bit Battalion – LINK
Feedback: Most Epic Boss Battles
You’ve fought your way through – you’ve made it to the last boss. Is the battle worth the journey? Here are your picks for the greatest final battles in video game history.
Next week’s Feedback question: What’s the best flight game or simulator ever? Weigh in with a video or audio comment on www.Bytejacker.com, a video response on YouTube, or a message on our hotline: (530) 675-GAME
Free Indie Rapid Fire
Exit Path – Flash, Platformer, John Cooney – LINK
Hydorah – Windows, Shooter, Locomolito – LINK
They Need to be Fed – Windows, Platformer, Jesse Venbrux – LINK
This Week’s Music:
Gamewave Podcast Compilation Vol. 2
Mister Rai – Super Multifaros
Marathon – Disasterpeace
Skyward – Spheres of Chaos
http://www.ptesquad.com/more/pte005.html
Stalking People is Fun!
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Awww jon you suck……liquid’s boss fight was more epic than sniper wolfs boss fight, oh well, i’m out this week cause i don’t play flight games…..wait….STAR FOX!!! aha i’m in!!!!!!
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Star fox 64 is my pick for my favorite flight game, well it’s the only one i ever played. Sheesh why not make it favorite first person shooter so everyone can say Halo.
To answer your question about the first person shooter, is because no one would say halo was the best.
But I guess this is the first time I have to mildly agree, Star Fox was a great game for the n64, though i liked the snes better, just for the music.
That was an excellent episode. Self-aware humor, sci-fi pop culture references, great acting (except for that comic punch at the end), a comic punch at the end, and me! 4 times. Count ‘em. 4 times. If other folks don’t get your video comments in then next week it’ll be me again, even more this time. Might as well just call it “The Joe Show with Bytejacker.” I’m warning you folks, get your video comments in.
Mr. Runner? Are you kidding me? The wall slide bug put no one off? Are you kidding me? Oh come on! I thought assault fleet had it man. Dissapointed much in Finck, I thougt it’d do better.
(eh hem, first comment?)
Not first comment. Not by a long shot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8TX1dD39eg
Here’s my choice for best flight sim ever. I’ve been wanting to add videos for a few months now, but it seems Viddler has always been screwy for registration
Hey, dude! If the Viddler pop-up registration here on our site doesn’t work for you, try registering over at viddler.com – that seems to work in a pinch.
hydorah website is down, heres a mirror:
http://www.gamershell.com/download_59664.shtml
Dude! what the hell man!? Ads in all it’s glory. but why the Airforce!? comon, is it time to get political or what is the point of that? did they pay good or?
seriously not ok, just saying.
I was actually kind of like “Ooh, manly sponsors. Cool.”
lets make a fuck war ad and pay bytejacker to play it. :]
sounds like a great idea there Sayoko! would definitely pay for that. =) even though a hug would be enough payment to make an anti-war ad. Think bytejacker would settle with a hug? Everyone likes hugs (let’s make it an manly hug, so we don’t loose our cool).
I’m really going to try to get a video comment in this week. I started a new job and finding the time to get everything in is proving tricky. Though my new obsession isn’t helping much… more on that later.
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GO FIREFLY :)
Danny, I played and beat your game and linked to it here. Don’t know why it hasn’t appeared on the show. I haven’t got all the extra challenging bits yet. Some of them are just plain unreasonable.
ok, i’m resorting to opera mini again as i’m at one of the biggest events in the british heavy metal calendar!!
the download festival in donnington park!! (formerly ‘monsters of rock’, google it) i’m gonna be here till at least monday morning so chances of posting a vid comment this week are between slim & none. =/
But in terms of flying games, for reasons I’ll go into later (one of which is my battery about to die) I’ll say terminal velocity for the PC.
Hey, Laurence! You beat me to choosing “Terminal Velocity”, and I didn’t really expect no one to pick that one up! O_o I wasn’t sure about it myself… It’s one of those simple games you just can’t stop playing. Although maybe it has to do with the dreaded “nostalgia factor”, as it was one of the first PC games I ever played.
Enjoy Download Festival (lucky you)!!! Bang your head a couple times for the ones left behind…
Long live Browncoats!!
The first video comment is the one that steals is.
Doods, that was a great episode!!! I love Firefly! My girlfriend got me interested in it a while back. Very funny episode.
I gotta say, I arrived yesterday to work at this camp and it might become difficult to get responses in, but I will try.
Also, flight simulators?! Well, I haven’t played many interesting flying games or simulators, but I have played Diddy Kong Racing. Perhaps I will respond with that.
Oh, an dI thought the sweat pouring off of Jon’s face on to Anthony’s was the funniest part.
Oh, I agree. I was cringing and laughing at that part. Seriously, this is an episode I could watch over and over… more than all the other episodes that I watch over and over.
Thanks, dudes! I seriously can’t even watch that part. It grosses me out so much.
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Feedback: Crimson Skys because you can have it both ways. A fast, fun, dogfighting arcadey game on the XBox or an honest-to-Amelia flight simulator on the PC.
FIRF: Jurrie’s still out. Not a fan of SMUPS but I’ll try Hydorah and see if it wins me over. Probably going to come down to They Have To Be Fed for conceptual excellence or Exit Path for excellence in execution.
I never played it for the PC, but I feel as though I need one of those cool joysticks to play a good fight sim.
None the less, good choice as always!
WOW, didn’t see that coming on side scroll shooters… I mean not from Joe Larson, or may be it was exactly what Joe Larson should have said so I was just surprised. For me i don’t know, there are games, and there are side scroll shooters, but Hydorah in my opinion would be even better if it was made into top down shooter, anyway I voted for it.
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Wherein I establish my preference for Exit Path and rant about Hydroah’s epic fail.
It says video not available…
Also, we’re all friends here, right? So you guys wouldn’t mind a peek into my personal life, something cute I did as pertaining to my changes in facial hair:
http://guesstjoe.livejournal.com/148321.html
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See, Didn’t I say i would comment!
I’m a man of my word.
I wanna say that I didn’t do it these past few weeks because of all the work i’ve been doing, which wouldn’t be a lie….
But I also got my ps2 emulator working and just bought the rest of the games NIS made so….
thats the main reason…
(NIS, why do you make games the deprive me of sleep and relationships…. this is a very abusive relationship.)
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Exit Paths pet peave, Why won’t you make more stages that make you or atleast give you the room to use that flow bar. I don’t know about latter stages.
Yeah – keeping that flow going takes some wicked perfect playing. I wound up only using it a time or two.
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Did you see the video? I had no choice, man. My minions children were bugging me daily about shaving. I had to.
I’ll probably bring it back for the winter. Makes sense that way. I mean you can’t realistically plan any hostile take overs of world shadow governments in the summer when there’s so many great things to do outdoors. No body will go along with it. No, that’s best kept for February, folks are ready for a revolt then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwn8KuDLrBs
There you go, mates. Btw, I should note I made a few mistakes in that video. Just to clarify, Descent: Freespace is a space simulation. Oh, and I found out my lag on Exit Path actually made me slower than the others. Isn’t that just a load of bullocks?
Wait, there are weapons combination in Hydorah? That’s odd, I never found that. Maybe I need to go try it again…
Ah, screw it. It failed to impressed me, turned me to hating it, it doesn’t get a second chance.
Oh, wait, you mean the weapons you can equip before the missions. Alright, maybe that’s cool but I never got far enough to really get enough of those to play with. Yeah, it still reeks of fail because you power up those weapons and die and lose it all. I do not enjoy that.
Now if they had given you 3 weapons at the start so that I could feel like I needed to experiment with the game I’d have a reason to give it more of a chance. But they didn’t. You start from zero with nothing every time, and I don’t like that. There were so many things that if they weren’t trying to make something that I’d hate could have made it a decent game, or would have at least encouraged me to try it a bit more before writing it off. But they didn’t. Fail fail fail fail fail.
Hydorah is an excellent game but you suck at it. It’s quite easy game for a hardcore shmup, definately much easier than Gradius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-bViNdLDu8
Also when you die in Hydorah it don’t downgrade your weapons to zero level as it does in Gradius.
Tell me what is the purpose to play games like Rainbow Six where you instantly lose a soldier after he gets hit (once) in the knee, or some plane simulator where you need to memorise whole keyboard + keys combinations? I realy dont think that people who like hard shmups would equally enjoy some kiddie shmup.
Hydorah is intentionally as hard as it is because it gives you so much satisfaction when you play it right and don’t die, it wouldn’t be that fun if there would be no penaly for dying. What is most fun in games like Hydorah and Gradius is not when you take down the targets but when you avoid to get hit from enemy projectiles.
“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
-Winston Churchill
Sorry for the bad language, I’m not a native speaker.
@Uxtull, the video above is back up so you can see where I establish that I do, in fact, suck at these sort of games. I know this. Just go watch the video. There are graphs that explain stuff.
Here, lemme give you an example of a good SHMUP, everything Hydorah isn’t. Prehistoric Isle 2 for the Neo Geo. It was a fun setting, better than “In space blah blah, experimental ship is the last hope blah blah blah.” And when you died you were able to retrieve most of your powerups if you were clever. And if you couldn’t… well at least you felt like that was you and not the computer trying to kick you in the groin so it had a nice reasonable difficulty curve. That’s what I consider a great SHMUP.
I saw both of your videos before I replied Joe. You are right to the point where you say in the second video when you claim as a fact that Hydorah sucks. So I replied to you that the game don’t suck, but the fact is that you suck at it, it’s just not the game for you. It’s supposed to be as hard as it is that is: not too hard. I’m not too good at this type of games and stilll I managed to beat more than half of it after four days of play (around 6 hours in total). You won’t lose all your upgrades if you die in Hydorah, it takes you back to beginning of the level (or the part of it, because levels are cut into pieces) and you still can get upgrades. I know it because i played the game, but there is also .pdf file that would tell you that if you can’t beat single level.
You could also claim that Crimson Skies is superior over MS Flight Simulator, cause it’s too hard to land and when you crash once the game is over. No. People who play Flight Simulator want just that: a true, and punishing simulator, not Crimson Skies (which might be a great game). Same thing goes for hardcore SHMUPS: this games are for hardcore gamers only. Do you consider Gradius or Salamander (games that are much more punishing than Hydorah) to be bad games. This games are fine classic shooters, the true is that you just can’t play them right.
Gradius was actually the game I meant to mention at the end of that video, not R-Type. Gradius has the multiple weapons categories that you can upgrade and that’s a lot of fun to play with, what I should have called the upgrade system. And it’s a lot of fun right at the start of the game when you have to start over.
Salamander I’ve never heard of so I looked it up. Categorial upgrades you can choose from on the fly like Gradius, so check on the fun mechanic, even if it’s a knock off. Deforming and deformable terrain, so check on the fun levels. Ooh, and you get to change perspective on some levels, so check again on mixing things up for the player. And when you die you can pick up the multiples so and continue from where you died not from the beginning of the level, so not so incredibly punishing. A bit boring as far as atmosphere, I mean it’s another spaceship fighting flying brains that’s been done to death, but overall I think Salamander looks pretty good. It’s everything Hydrola isn’t!
Ah, yeah, Hydorah is really difficult. But I personally think that’s just the curse that Shmups have since where they originally thrived was in arcades, where dying meant you were completely screwed. Why? Too take all your quarters! It’s so lovely, now isn’t it?
Trust me, mates, I’m no shmup expert, not even an intermediate, I just have this tendancy to be really stubborn (as I said, I still played multiplayer on Exit Path despite the fact that the lag was making me slower than my opponents).
I am sorry but i sometimes just can’t help thinking about it!
ANTHONY! Is there any reason why you haven’t featured Umbrella Adventure – The Castle of Cake ever in teh show? I was sending hints via onlien form and mentioning it here in the comments, that was the best game of 2009 almost! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8sNUGCyQVc … why? It is just very strange.
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I have to agree with you. Rogue Squadron was a fantastic game, certainly one of my favorites.
Also, I forgot to mention it last week but it’s nice to see you as a video commenter now. Welcome to the club! It’s about time!
Goddamn. Every time I plan to start doing this again, I totally get fucked over and have some shit to deal with. Well screw it, I’m going to be video commenting for this week regardless of whether I make the deadline or not. Now off to play the games. I’ll probably comment around noon tomorrow.
It’s after 12 and still nothing from you Headphonic. I’m starting to lose faith, I still haven’t done feedback yet, you still have a chance!
YOU JUST LOST THE GAME!!
Yeah, I got caught up today with an unexpected call from one of my friends at 8 int he morning (I was planning on playing the games and then commenting). And it kind of ended up lasting all day. But I’m playing the games right now and I might even get around to video commenting tonight. Yeah, I know it won’t be on the show, but at least I can throw in whatever comments I have to offer and get a clue about wtf is going on this week.
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‘Nuff said.
Unorthodoxed choice Sanskrit. I would not have though that one. But your right. Flight is definitely involved in Flower. That’s more siming what it would be like to fly the way I do in my dreams than in a plane, but yeah. Good call.
Unorthodoxed is my middle name, Joe. Actually, Sanskrit is my middle name… but I suppose that makes my middle name unorthodoxed… so sure, that all works out.
What Exit Path needed to win my vote this week over Hydorah was replay value.
As fun and exciting as Exit Path was for the first two hours I played it, the novelty ran out fast. Getting every achievement in “uniplayer” mode took only an hour and a half of gameplay. After that, I moved on to multiplayer; this got dull after an hour, as there were too few maps and not enough gameplay variety. While I applaud the achievement of successful multiplayer in a Flash game, the result does not maintain my interest. Furthermore, the controls felt too sloppy and loose in a game that encouraged speedrunning; I could forgive it in Meat Boy where being fast was not the main focus, but not here.
Hydorah not only impressed me straight out of the bag with a level of polish I haven’t seen in a freeware game since Iji, La-Mulana, and Cave Story, but also has kept me hooked with difficult yet addictive game play and the allure of hidden secrets. I have been playing this for a week now and still feel as though I am nowhere near discovering the full extent of the game’s depth. Beautiful graphics, an excellent soundtrack and fully-voiced cutscenes wrap together the package so nicely that I am still amazed at how Hydorah is being offered for free. Exit Path, in my book, simply can’t compare.