Zero Punctuation: Shovel Knight - Good NES Nostalgia

[bobdole1979]

Is this guy with the conspiracy nonsense for real? He can't seriously believe this tripe.....can he?

are you saying advertising is a conspiracy? You do know developers do this right? Pay youtubers and twitch players to play their game right? Like this isn't some big secret.

 

[step1999]

What always irritated me about the current state of the industry (ooh look at me jumping on commentator vocabulary bandwagon) is that as soon as new games stopping doing things we liked, the first instinct was to ditch EVERYTHING and go back to the NES. To paraphrase Yahtzee, "What has been the point of the last thirty years of game development and evolution if you're just going to remake [insert ol skool title here] again?"

So, are publishers and their development fuckpuppets to blame or have the people who complained the loudest about how "games these days suck" just no realized yet that they've become obsolete?

What I want is a return to 90's FPS's, where you carry twelve guns and run around huge, non-linear maze levels looking for the exit. You know, DOOM! Brutal Doom is a step in the right direction, but imagine how good it would look on the Unreal 3 engine. Or what about a console space shooter, like Wing Commander, or Starlancer (Christ, I loved that game.)? Or hell, even Tachyon:the Fringe?

Has everything from the PS2 onward been for nought!?

Have you played the Rise of the Triad remake? It's a really good 90's style shooter that came out last year

No it's not...
It's bad.

Shadow Warrior reboot however was amazing. Play that instead!

It's just a matter of opinion. I love both games, but I didn't mention SW2013 because it's more first person slasher than first person shooter imo.

 

[Hutzpah Chicken]

I never cared for the NES, mainly because I had a Sega Genesis when I was young. With that said, I agree that running back to the 8-bit era is silly. The 16-bit era gives a better feel for me, but the whole idea of 8-bit is to appeal to the kids from the late 80's.

Shovel Knight looks like a good time so I'll probably pick it up when it's a dollar on Steam. If Super Amazing Wagon Adventure was enjoyable, maybe this will be too.

 

[Uratoh]

Also, I'd agree with Order of Ecclesia. And on Hard Mode.

You ever try what I called 'Heaven or Hell Mode' (after the DMC mode)? It's Hard Mode, with your character maxed out, but you *MUST* have a Death Ring equipped for the entire playthrough of the game. Bosses are by and large a joke, with Eligor and the Giant Enemy Crab being notable exceptions, but merely navigating the stages becomes an incredible challenge. I got so much more use out of Robo-Noa than I ever thought I would beating the game like that.

 

[Roger]

Was I the only constantly getting a trifle miffed over Yahtzee's thorn in the side of "NES can't parallax scroll"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltuRuGM271Q

I don't know how Shovel Knight does it, but the NES could totally Parallax.

It depends on how you define Parallax, lest we get down to semantics.

Shovel Knight parallaxes in a particular way that the NES couldn't. In all of the examples shown in the video, the parallaxing tiles do not intrude on the non-parllaxing tiles. Either they have their own height to scroll separately on, or the (system-imposed) blockiness of the foreground tiles is hidden with careful color selection and/or shadowing. Except in the case of Megaman 3, in which the "parallaxing" starscape was accomplished using sprites that, being sprites, were even in front of the landscape.

In shovel knight, there are multiple layers of parallaxing on top of each other and using non-block boundaries. Both of these things would be impossible on the NES, though clever programmers of that era could've managed something similar by sectioning off different horizontal bands for different levels of parallaxing, as seen in the Ninja Gaiden 3 section of the video, which has foreground as well as background parallax scrolling.

It's more of a technical nitpick than anything else and even standard-bearers Megaman 9 & 10 had the occasional miss in fidelity on that front. Skipping out on a technical limitation that a great amount of work was spent disguising - to the point of it occasionally forgotten that it even existed - is hardly a black mark in my book. It'd be like docking points for when too many sprites are on the same scanline and not imposing flicker or slowdown.

Fair enough. I hadn't seen what Shovel Knight's look was.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Oh that treant soul...

And I'll agree, the magic spell items in the game really are overkill...the game's quite beatable without them (and nets you an achievement for doing so), but several sections are a LOT harder, especially without the 'briefly become completely intangible and invulnerable to all damage' and the 'dash forward at high speeds in mid air' spells.

Now I'm kind of curious which of the DSvania games Yahtzee likes best...knowing him, my best guess would be Ecclesia, since while it has flaws, it doesn't reek of unfufilled potential like Ruin (though Ruin has some great stages) and doesn't have Dawn of Sorrow's 'use contrived stylus gimick to kill boss or you have to fight it again' thing.

Since he's soul hunting probably Dawn of Sorrow, or Aria of Sorrow if he's gotta GBA compatible DS.


OT:

THANK YOU. Thats exactly why I favor 'retro' games over most AAA games. They are doing the things I want.

 

[Veylon]

Fair enough. I hadn't seen what Shovel Knight's look was.

The "look" is a bit more SNES or Genesis or maybe even pre-Windows 95 DOS, or at least that initial outdoor level gave that impression. It does adhere to the four-color palette rule of the NES, though - which is something most allegedly 8-bit games pass on - "cheating" only with sprites, which is something that's been done on the original hardware via layering, most notably with Megaman. Beyond that, it's something that the NES hardware could've managed.

 

[orangeapples]

I just want to say, bobdole1979 totally made this whole thread. Sure typically people will talk about Yahtzee's "review" or the game itself, but bobdole1979 took this to a whole nother level.

 

[Cabamacadaf]

snip

Egoraptor donated a lot of money to the Shovel Knight kickstarter, he's friends with the composer of the game, and they played the demo on the show long before the game itself came out. I'm pretty sure they weren't paid by Yacht Club Games to play it, especially since he donated so much money to them, it wouldn't make sense if he was then paid in return to play it. They might be playing it as a favour to them, but I think he just likes the game a lot.

 

[thy beachwear zones]

I just don't see how a knight charging into battle with a shovel is interesting. And from what I've seen, it isn't really used in a shovelly way (to dig holes, to bury things, to knock people out with a shovel to the back of the head, whatever) which just makes it worse. I challenged myself to think of a better thing for him to carry, and succeeded within 60 seconds (a gun that fell through a time portal, which he uses as a club).

 

[TheZaius]

IS there a Knighty Knight in this game? He wears a nightcap and fights you with a pillow.