Arcade Archives Knuckle Heads PS4 - All chars; C.Silva playthrough!
1Namco's first (I read?) fighting game, SFII wanna-be / sometimes kinda isometric beat-em-up "Arcade Archives Knuckle Heads" got yanked from the US PS Store the same day it came out--last week-- [Update 8/24: Knuckle Heads is back on the US PS Store!Thanks @MapleStoryPSN for the update! : D)] for getting listed at the wrong price, but the announcement of it also linked to the GB store, not the US one...so anyway I got impatient and bought it from the JP store. So here I am mashing at it furiously on my PS4, on Easy difficulty. ; P Tried all characters, couldn't beat the final (dumb mirror) match as B.Vaike, somehow beat it as C.Silva.
Played like an absolute goon.
Game has music copyright claims all over it, w/ no revenue sharing option. Maybe that's what's kept it out of the US PS Store. : P Tried cutting them out (and muting the one covering the entire ending! ; PPP), re-uploaded, and six more claims came up. : PP
My other fighting games playlist: • smbhax's other fighting game adventures!
0:00 - start
5:18 - R.Vincent - Normal difficulty
16:45 - B.Vaike - Easy difficulty from here on ^ _^
1:16:19 - C.Silva playthrough
1:53:01 - ending & credits
1:55:53 - G.Darrell
2:07:24 - C.Myao
2:11:12 - T.Fujioka
2:18:11 - wrap!
The three isometric 1-v-2 battles you gotta do in single-player are kinda fun and the controls finally sorta feel like they make sense (and it stretches out the six-character cast to a decent arcade 1P game length). Not so much for the rest of the game, the non-isometric 1-on-1 bits; and facing a powered-up version of yourself as the boss sucks, especially since they spam the hold-button-to-power-up version of all the normals and specials and I couldn't wrap my head around how to eh do specials powered up and anyway I hate holding gosh darn buttons so forget it.
The hit and hurt boxes and whatnot don't seem that well worked out here, I dunno. Also, initial hits do huge damage, later hits less; I guess that happens in SFII also but not nearly as obviously and frustratingly I don't think? Anyway it felt pretty egregious here to have 50%+ of your health gone in like the first two hits, how's that for morale.
And they probably should'a done something about the throw spam.
The CPU seems spirit-crushingly good at hitting you with ideal counters just when they don't want to lose. ; P I suppose they aren't really that smart and it's just how it goes with general cheapness of their reactions and ability to spam the twitchy inputs needed for the specials (LOTS of charge moves and down-up or back-forward moves in general ARGH; oh and since it's a jump button rather than up to jump--and no crouch! ; D--some moves up UPWARD quarter-circle-forwards wahahahaaa), but sheez.
Oh yeah and the proximity normal move switching is really annoying, let's switch from a long-range lunge to a pathetically short range feeble poke just as they would'a entered the lunge's range! Argh.
Sure could'a made a decent isometric beat 'em up with it though.
World Heroes came out in July '92, maybe six months or so before Knuckle Heads--so probably NOT a coincidence this game looks verrrrry World Heroes-ish.
8/18/24
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