Amiga Longplay [056] Rise of the Robots (CD32)
8Questions?: http://youtu.be/aZ1bcsIgwWM
The Amiga version of Rise of the Robots has been longplayed several times already, but in all of them they more or less spam the same move over and over again (the flying kick) until they beat the game. They also complain and say the game is too hard and the only way to beat it is by spamming this move. These longplays also have graphic glitches, speed issues and unnecessary long loading times. So, I gave the game a try myself (only played a demo version once many years ago) and entered training mode and tried the moves out. I noticed the two special moves for the Cyborg - Turbo Head-Butt & Shoulder Barge - do insane damage and are easy to do, even spammable. I could defeat some of the robots with just 1-2 Shoulder Barges (difficulty doesn't matter).
The game was not hard at all IMO, just spam these two moves rather than the flying kick and they die 10 times faster. Sure, it's super easy on Beginner/Easy/Medium as the opponents takes damage even if they block, but even on Hard it went way easier than I expected thanks to these two moves. How come others didn't use these instead of complaining about the difficulty and resort to only flying kicks? (I prefer calling it "jump kick", but the manual says "flying kick")
I didn't want to spam these two all the time, so I mix it up a bit here and there, doing all the other moves, and on one of the opponents I do the classic flying kick from start to finish so I had that included as well. One or two matches might seem like a close call, that's because I wanted to mix it up a bit, doing more normal moves and make the rounds last a bit longer.
It's weird the AGA (floppy) version is the same as CD32, but CD32 version takes 1.6mb more which is several small files and one big one missing from the floppy version. This big file is called "IN2A", the floppy version only has "IN1A" and "IN3A", where CD32 has all 3. "IN2A" is not played in either versions for some reason, so I've included it in the video. This file is an alternative animation to the intro part at 1:40... I say alternative as they show the same text and they chose to play one instead of the other. I've edited it so that the text for the end part of 1:40 is not shown and it instead goes straight to the "IN2A" animation, with the text shown on that one instead. You see when "IN2A" starts as the colors change (right before the elevator thingy goes down) . They didn't use the same palette, or whatever, looks awful compared to the one before that, but it looks nice once it switches to the bottom screen which is where they wanted the colors optimized instead, I guess.
Unlike RotR on some other systems, the Amiga version has no in-game music, no paralax scrolling, can't jump over an opponent, no "defeated opponent" animations (just still pictures), non-scrolling stages (maybe because the Amiga version has a wider stage shown, so no room for scrolling), AGA is 256 colors but they only use about 140 so it looks terrible compared to other version, etc. One would think that the CD32 version would have all or some of these missing things, but nope... like WTF!? (only uses 14.4mb of disc space)
Some boring emulation stuff:
This game was a bitch to get running properly. I installed the .IPF version using the installer on the disk and and ran it from a hard drive. I recorded while playing till the game stopped loading after the fade out of the defeated picture of The Exterminator (opponent 4). I thought it maybe was just temporary so I replayed till I got there again, and it stopped loading at the same spot again, so I changed some emulator settings and tried it again, still stops loading. I replaced the files with the one from a pre-installed WHDLoad version and ran it again (didn't start the WHDLoad version, I use the game's own executable) and it still stops loading at the same place. So, ran it straight from floppy instead with different settings and the same result everytime. I gave up and tried the WHDLoad version (WHDLoad is only last resort for me as it always crashes with random error messages when using save states, like CPU trace and VBR crap). The WHDLoad version worked, so I played it a bit further until the classic crash happened from using save states. This crash happened at the first fight on Hard difficulty (I chose to play on Medium, but after defeating all the robots, I get to fight them all again but on Hard), so the score is reset (09:58), from here I used as few save states as possible to hopefully get to the end before it crashes again, and I made it.
Apart from not loading properly, the floppy (IPF) version had no graphic or speed issues, but the WHDLoad version did (also broken sound in some animations, which I fixed to some extent... like the "IN2A" animation, 70% of the sound was broken, so I replaced it with a sound heard earlier). So I manually fixed all (I think) of them.
The game over picture is added at the end.