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Episode 725: E3 and the Ten Minutes in Prime Time

by James Jones, Greg Leahy, Jon Lindemann, and Guillaume Veillette - June 6, 2021, 6:53 pm EDT
Total comments: 3

It's a shell of its former self.

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This week we all realized that E3 is basically happening right now, insofar as its happening at all this year. James is registered to "attend" but has literally no idea what that even means. The good news is we now know when Nintendo will be presenting their line-up for 2021, but it's happening on the last day of this black box masquerading as E3. This means they'll likely not be doing much at their "virtual booth," which again, is a nothing phrase.

After a break, Jon continues to tell us about ordering a PS5 and Haze in the year 2021.

So there's that.

Gui is playing R-Type Final 2. I would give more context but the title alone is enough of a punchline. Lastly we end the show with memories of our favorite E3 presentations.

You can visit our virtual booth by sending an email.

This episode was edited by Guillaume Veillette. The "Men of Leisure" theme song was produced exclusively for Radio Free Nintendo by Perry Burkum. Hear more at Perry's SoundCloud. The Radio Free Nintendo logo was produced by Connor Strickland. See more of his work at his website.

This episode's ending music is Make or Break remix for qanchis from The World Ends with You: Final Remix. Composition by Takeharu Ishimoto. It was requested by Shane. All rights reserved by Nintendo Co. Ltd.

Talkback

KDR_11kJune 07, 2021

Gradius 3 Arcade seemed less like "amping up the difficulty" and more like rushed, badly tested design. It's full of bugs, insanely hard and the Japanese version doesn't even have continues! It's full of slowdown too, the reason the SNES version is easier is that they redesigned a lot of the garbage parts. Like the infamous cube rush, which just throws 100 homing cubes at you that may home in so quickly that you cannot possibly dodge them so you have to guide them into forming a wall that will catch further cubes but if you're unlucky a cube may just decide to clip through the wall and kill you anyway. Even pro players will give up entirely if they lose a life in certain areas because recovery from the checkpoint is impossible. Yet the longer you stay alive the harder it gets so strategic deaths are a part of playing the game too.

Gradius 4 continues the trend by being made in an even shorter time frame and being even glitchier.

YoshidiousGreg Leahy, Staff AlumnusJune 07, 2021

Quote from: KDR_11k

Gradius 3 Arcade seemed less like "amping up the difficulty" and more like rushed, badly tested design. It's full of bugs, insanely hard and the Japanese version doesn't even have continues! It's full of slowdown too, the reason the SNES version is easier is that they redesigned a lot of the garbage parts. Like the infamous cube rush, which just throws 100 homing cubes at you that may home in so quickly that you cannot possibly dodge them so you have to guide them into forming a wall that will catch further cubes but if you're unlucky a cube may just decide to clip through the wall and kill you anyway. Even pro players will give up entirely if they lose a life in certain areas because recovery from the checkpoint is impossible. Yet the longer you stay alive the harder it gets so strategic deaths are a part of playing the game too.

Gradius 4 continues the trend by being made in an even shorter time frame and being even glitchier.

Interesting stuff; it sounds like the console port of Gradius III deserves a little bit more credit than its prevailing "better by accident" reputation would suggest. Back in around 2012-13, I spent some time with Gradius III in its arcade form via the Gradius Collection for PSP. Predictably, I did not make it far enough to observe the game being as severely broken as you describe, nor did I get to see how most of the stages differ design-wise from the SNES version (which I did play to completion as a small child many years earlier still - E Laser and Reduce Shield for the win!)

KDR_11kJune 08, 2021

Konami was pretty good at improving games in home ports, e.g. Contra Arcade is usually considered inferior to the NES version.

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