[RKS Freudenstachel] „Gelb schmerzt.“

[Chirei]

I am personally fine with lives being in a megamens because without lives, suddenly each line of stuff in my Health/Weapon energy bars has way more bang per buck because all you suddenly care about is how hard can you extend them until you reach the checkpoint, rather than having to manage them across the level.

What I WOULD prefer instead is a nerfing of instant death. Megaman Rock Force (At least its updated, superior version) by DEFAULT starts you with non-instant death hazards except the severe ones like falling off the level. They do about as much damage if you had Putick/Putite on in Zero 2/3. It's a very welcome change i'd just like to see more games use, because while it makes the games easier, it certainly doesn't make them free, because the damage is still pretty significant. You'd have to be chugging jesus every 5 seconds if you still bumped into every stage hazard along the way in most megamens with this change.

Also this just makes more sense - why should brushing up against a spike do more damage than getting jumped on by Big Eye?

[ano0maly]

Liebea is easy but there are a couple additional things about the fight. The two platforms on the edges fall after you step on them, and the wind during the second half could push you towards them. And sometimes she stops her hops to shoot a few projectiles.

There's only one Game Over screen for Liebea's stage, since there was no text to edit/translate.

RKS05.png

The Steam version has the English translation of the German, though, and apparently revised German text.

[Arctangent]

Also this just makes more sense - why should brushing up against a spike do more damage than getting jumped on by Big Eye?

dr. light revolutionized robotics not through ai or coordination or anything like that, but by creating robots entirely out of rubber balloons

[Ashan]

Real answer: because Mega Man games are like 110% focused on gameplay, and it made the most sense for the levels to have instant death tiles they could use, as well as giant hoppy enemies that don't insta-kill because they're hard to dodge. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but I've never really thought it was an issue that spikes are insta-death, even when brushed from the side. The point is that you're playing a game and you don't touch those things.

[Chirei]

Real answer: because Mega Man games are like 110% focused on gameplay, and it made the most sense for the levels to have instant death tiles they could use, as well as giant hoppy enemies that don't insta-kill because they're hard to dodge. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but I've never really thought it was an issue that spikes are insta-death, even when brushed from the side. The point is that you're playing a game and you don't touch those things.

You certainly don't try to touch them, but it's purely in the hands of the developer how much room they give you to not touch them. This doesn't just apply to romhacks - look at X6.

This also applies somewhat to a future game or two on this list, which is slightly disappointing.

When I played MMRF, I experienced basically no loss in game fidelity from having hazards not always be fatal. I felt like I usually got slapped on the wrist a proportional amount in relation to how much I messed up.

I would argue that just as lives are an ancient construct of old games, so are instant death hazards. They're even easier to mishandle as many, many, many romhacks have done, and unlike lives, they completely invalidate the game mechanic of an HP bar, which is very very frustrating for a lot of people. The reason people tolerate it in stuff like IWBTG(or its ilk) is because you don't have HP, and you restart extremely fast. It just always felt very off to me having such an unsettling amount of it in some megamens, especially in the X games where you can get more health and durability.

[Paragraph]

I hear from a lot of people about X8 that "it's great, but it overuses spikes a bit". Now that we've seen almost all of the game, I'd say that's not entirely true - there are just a few separate instances of spikes being much of an issue, and for raocow at least they WERE an issue each of those times. Troia Base's final room, the abysmal block trap in Primrose,* and Inferno's vertical spike hell. I guess considering how many gimmick levels there are, that IS a higher percentage of actual "gameplay" than in a "normal" Mega Man, but it's still not THAT much.

But I can see how the impression of "too many spikes" is formed for X8, because get this: it ALWAYS feels bad when X8 uses them. So does the game just use them "wrong"...or are they kinda shit to begin with? Maybe definitely in the context of
a) a stage where a tiny slip-up at the very end of a challenge gauntlet will cost you an entire otherwise flawless attempt
b) a boring terrible waiting game after a bunch of interesting, but honestly braindead simple puzzle rooms (to redo every time your lives run out)
c) the one piece of somewhat engaging gameplay sandwiched between tedious autoscrolling parts which however are far easier than the sudden difficulty...spike in the middle

[Chirei]

But I can see how the impression of "too many spikes" is formed for X8, because get this: it ALWAYS feels bad when X8 uses them.

This is pretty much the essence of why I feel more hazards just should be default, not be instant death.

There's actually a very curious oddity in one of the X games. In Morph Moth's stage, there are actually spikes during the gravity section after the shaft that has the X-Hunter arena. For some very odd reason, these don't instantly kill X. In fact, they only do like 2 damage.

I always found this very weird, but it felt like the rare time I fell down and pricked myself on them was about as bad as it should be. I couldn't really see what was under me until it was too late, and didn't randomly have to redo stretches of stage because I suddenly went the low road.

To use Troia Base, if the spikes had been damaging, a less experienced and less-equipped player might have scraped by them and gotten to the Hammer Brother Joes. They'd have a chance to beat them, but with the reduced health, they might lose. The fact that the player has a chance at all to preserve their rank instead of dying to awfully placed instant death is a LOT better.

Prickle Barriers are fine, but they're very... blatant in that they exist at all. It's like the game is trying to sell you temporary band-aids to cover up their nasty design, which bothers me a lot. Then there's the fact that you can only hold one!

[Arctangent]

uh

did the dialogue in this stage not get qa'd or something

the formatting seemed really messed up

[Grounder]

The day after my birthday is not my birthday, Tia!

[Mandew]

uh

did the dialogue in this stage not get qa'd or something

the formatting seemed really messed up

I think the perceived "ample spaces" are actually ellipses.

[Joseph Staleknight]

uh

did the dialogue in this stage not get qa'd or something

the formatting seemed really messed up

Nah, that was just Schwer being Schwer.

RKS-009: Schwer-Muta Casasola Merkle (/SHVAIR-moo-ta kah-sah-SOH-la MER-kleh/)

A young child who was found in a barren wasteland and placed in the RKS's custody. Despite not officially being part of the army, she nevertheless gets an RKS number. Due to the mysterious but implicitly traumatic circumstances of her upbringing, she is very shy and introverted--in fact, she considers her pet squid Zeppy her only true friend. Everyone else, they will block out with her Geisterwand (/GAIS-ter-vahnd/) and Zeppy's ink.

"The bonds that tie people together...are just an illusion!"

GOOD POINT: Surprisingly clever
BAD POINT: Has trust issues
LIKES: Abandoned and ruined areas
DISLIKES: People missing her birthday

Trivia:

• Her last names come from Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, one of the younger game designers to hail from Germany (as in, active since 1999).
• Another German error on the part of the devs: the Geisterwand is meant to be a barrier independent of any other structure (being made of spinning maces). Yet while the last part of its name does mean "wall", it only means it in the sense of "as seen inside the building," or "as part of a building". For the weapon, they probably intended to call it Geistermauer instead, where the second part has the right connotations. (cf. die Berliner Mauer vs. *die Berliner Wand)

E: Fixed the pronunciation on Geisterwand. Thanks, Paragraph!

[Sebby19]

Now imagine this was the first stage you picked.

I wonder if 100 coins is a 1up.

[Paragraph]

Geist is actually NOT pronounced "Gaisht", the s-t sounds are unchanged. So Gaihst, I guess?

I personally have zero issues with a shield being a metaphorical Wand, but that might stem from another videogame translation: Diablo 2's Lidless Wall is "Lidlose Wand" in German and that always kinda stuck with me in a weird way.

[Chirei]

sometimes you want a little bit more jesus but it's not meant to be



Geisterwand - Mind Barrier

Uncharged: Calls forth a ring of spinning maces to circle around Tia. Will hurt enemies on contact and stop projectiles, but only for a single time.

Charged: Tia will make a ring of maces lash out across the screen like Schwer does when releasing her barrier. You do not have to have a barrier already up to use this move.

[Ashan]

The game title is pronounced "rosencrantz and guildenstern"

[SAJewers]

question

what's contained inside a jesus tank

[Arctangent]

question

what's contained inside a jesus tank

blood

[Grounder]

question

what's contained inside a jesus tank

atheist tears

[Ashan]

Jesus juice

Oh, also I meant to say this earlier but they should be informally referred to as G-Tanks or Jee-Tanks.
Cause then it rhymes with E-Tanks, and if you use "Jee" it's short for "Jesus" and a G would be short for "God"

[Voltgloss]

[Negative]

question

what's contained inside a jesus tank

Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares

[Awoo]

question

what's contained inside a jesus tank

Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares

I just can't get enough
Personal Jesus
juice

that could've been a haiku if I actually bothered to put effort into it. Maybe.

[Kilgamayan]

There's only one Game Over screen for Liebea's stage, since there was no text to edit/translate.

RKS05.png

The Steam version has the English translation of the German, though, and apparently revised German text.

This is true, but I think it's the same thing in all of them? So I didn't bother uploading a second image.

I wonder if 100 coins is a 1up.

It is indeed! Tia can collect them all with another non-offensive support "weapon", but the other playable character can walljump and so needs no such assistance.

Speaking of that other character, their dialogue with Schwer is by far the best conversation in the game. It's a shame we won't get to see it in this run.

Is the Liebea game over screen a reference to Tower of Druaga? (Dredging up a very vague memory here)

Bingo! Well done.

Here's today's Game Over screen, which we all got to see twice already. I'm not sure why the localizers edited the image the way they did - maybe to add a frowny face to match the level? Dunno. Anyway, this one is incredibly obvious, so much so that most people end up second-guessing themselves because there's no way it'd be that obvious right???? No, it is.

RKS06_JP.png (192.69 KiB) Viewed 3869 times

RKS06_EN.png (208.97 KiB) Viewed 3869 times

[Arctangent]

I'm not sure why the localizers edited the image the way they did - maybe to add a frowny face to match the level? Dunno.

it's to match the actual sprite

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

"Schwer-Muta" decidedly ousts "Luste" for the title of Biggest Stretch as far as character names are concerned.