Hey, I loved Robotron X, too! And I think the Dual Shock controller is very well suited to Robotron, so any other console controller shouldn’t fare much worse. Where’s my Robotron X for the Gamecube?
A good question, how far does purity count? Robotron has old-school twitch by the buckets, but Smash TV, IMHO, has both purity and a bit of depth, for the win.
H.
Haven’t played the 360 version of Robotron, but Jim Preston’s analysis rings true to me. I was a huge arcade Defender nut, I’ve played it a handful of times in the last decade to know it’s not just nostalgia, but Defender just always sucks on consoles or PC’s. The hardware had a lot to do with the magic.
A bunch of my coworkers have been addicted to Geometry Wars since the 360 came out so it’s been good to finally play Robotron again–Jeff brought up yesterday that Geometry Wars suddenly seems easy coming off of Robotron. Yeah, there’ve been a several really good games in that same style (most of them are on Xbox Live Arcade already), but Robotron is still probably the purest, toughest, and fastest. My favorite thing about the game is how you’re always forced to decide how best to snatch up the humans for extra points, since you need the points for extra lives, and the humans can get turned into enemies if you just leave them be. That game would be plenty hard if all you had to worry about was shooting stuff, but having to rescue the humans adds a whole different layer to it.
In replaying all the arcade classics on Live Arcade, I’ve found Robotron and Joust hold up really well, while Gauntlet isn’t quite as strong since it’s arguably not as much of a skill-intensive game.
Actually I think there is a lot of skill involved in gauntlet. I never had much, but there was this guy at our local arcade who always signed his name as “Red”. He would regularly make it to level 100 without any additional quarters. Me, Id be happy to get to level 5 on one credit.
A friend and I played Gauntlet co-op last night. Something was amiss. Ah, lack of music! I hit the home button, browsed my computer’s MP3 drive and grabbed the Castlevania Symphony of the Night Sampler CD. Wow. Completely different game now. Pretty cool to be able to do stuff like that these days.