davidn

You do mean the situation was looking foot[-t]ile, right?

Edited Date: 2013-07-16 03:14 am (UTC)

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kjorteo

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Beaks! Beaks! Beaks!

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I think you might've reached a little toe far for that one.

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Really? And here I thought I had it licked as a flag retrieval!

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Eh, humor can be a tricky feet to master.

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Teo. . . yes. :P

I'm honestly surprised there isn't another two or three levels on this game. I. . can't really imagine more than about a half dozen people having completed this game when it came out. Still, it seems like they could have done a couple of moon levels, rather than introduce a new gravity at the same time they add in a boss.

Also, is this really how that first level of the video begins? With an enemy charging across the player's position in the first second? It's difficult to believe that happens, yet. . it does seem reasonable in comparison to what else is in this game.

Also also . . DavidN is supposed to be the one with colour issues: yet you've been referring to the player colours as pink and blue, Teo. Those are the most orange and purple characters I've ever seen @_@!

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I'd been wondering about that, so I took a screencap and messed with it in GIMP for a little bit...apparently Teo's viewing things with the hue 60 degrees off.

(The edit on the right is to let Kjorteo see them how they actually are if this is an issue with his monitor or eyes.)

Edited Date: 2013-07-16 06:42 am (UTC)

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davidn

Thank you for coming to my support! I was beginning to think I was going mad as well as colourblind.

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Admittedly, I was beginning to wonder if maybe he was right and I was seeing things wrong due to the tint in my glasses. o_O

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kjorteo

The "how it should look to Kjorteo" version shows Rattle as bright neon lime green and Roll as magenta. Are you sure that's how it's supposed to look to me?

Anyway, I get #ff8e71 for Rattle, a sort of coral pink. Roll's portrait is #ca85ff, or "Kjorteo-colored," but the in-game sprite is a much bluer #a48aff.

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kjorteo

There's also this, of course.

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Oh yeah. . .that icon is very blue. And very much how I remember the game when I played it. Yet, in the video, the snakes look very apparently orange and purple to me. Hmmm. . .

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I did a Google image search on "Snake Rattle n Roll," and everything that's come up so far has been the colorations shown in the video: Rattle's been shown universally to be orange, not pink.

I think your emulator might need the Tint knob tweaked a bit to the right. o_O;

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Good grief are we really having this deep a discourse over the coloration of a pixelated snake?

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Color calibration is Serious Business. ♪

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davidn

I believe the idea is that if your monitor really were shifted 60 degrees in hue, you would see the right-hand picture as the correct colours as they are in the game - obviously not, as even I can tell (well, with some prompting on the green one) are bright green and pink.

#ff8e71 is mathematically pink (not always the best way to tell but the only way I can really 'see' colours) - but on Rattle's portrait in the middle up there, I get a much oranger #F77900.

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kjorteo

Oh, sorry, I forgot to clarify and misled--I wasn't going by Xaq's guide. Or I was at first, but then ... hold on, let me start over.

The HTML values I gave were for what I see in game, not what I see in Xaq's image. I got them by pausing a clip pf the LP part 3 video at the top of this page, and eyedroppering that.

I actually don't know where Xaq got his screenshots, but I agree that Rattle is much more orange there than he(?) is in our videos. It could be an emulator ... difference of some sort. Remember how we started part one in one emulator, then ran into too many technical issues, and switched to a different emulator and started over? I never mentioned this before because the editing is almost seamless, but I can still sort of tell the point at which we switch because the color balance (or at least the brightness) suddenly changes.

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I snapped a screenshot of Stumbling Together II, pasted it into 3 separate images in GIMP, then toyed with the hue on 2 of them.

Middle: Unaltered.

Left: Hue-altered to match your description.

Right: Hue-altered in the exact opposite way for reasons already explained.

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The NES output analog video to a television, right? Thus luminance/chrominance modulation. The exact colors would be uncalibrated and dependent on the scaling and biases of the output device; if the emulators are trying to emulate that and using different curves…

(If it's just the brightness it might well be global gamma correction, which of course can also have an effect on color perception.)

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As I mentioned under the pic, that was in case the color-off-ness was due to something with your eyes or your monitor; the hue on those was shifted the opposite direction, so that, if that were the case, it would shift to the right color.

Since you're seeing them in the color they actually are, however, that's apparently not the case....so, disregard the right third of the image.

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davidn

We'd entered the level and then paused for a break, but pretty much, yes - the first thing that happens once you're out the door is that vague cube enemy just rockets towards you and probably cleaves through you both.

It's a weird change to the game, suddenly being on this plinth of cheese without any of the slope torture that characterizes the later half of the game... the Megadrive version does have an outer space level, but frankly I'm glad that the game makers chose to stop where they did in this version!

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ravenworks.livejournal.com

Holy crap, a Genesis port...! Is it improved (i.e. completeable) at all...?

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davidn

I'm not sure. I'll check tonight!

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lupineangel.livejournal.com

From the depths of YouTube, I bring you this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZfucy9sGy8

They seem to have kept in the extra jumping height from the 'final boss' level, and in this one the nibble-pibblies jump around like... well, space hoppers. Also, they've made the time limit ridiculously tight, and apparently Rattle and Roll are jerks to each other in the Megadrive/Genesis version (as evidenced by the final score tally). I kind of like their NES incarnations better, anyway.

D.F.

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Supposing this version was released after, that would make the final level here the sequel, of sorts. The level seems strangely easy, with pathways most players can actually expect to traverse. It still needs to be played almost perfectly, but it doesn't seem impossible to complete with one life, unlike the previous four or eight levels.

Personally, I like the ending "see you next time for snakes in space" better than what's shown after the actual "in space" part. Though the cinematic is nice, and likely not something that could be done cleanly on the nes.

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davidn

Snake, Rattle 'n' Roll: But They're In Space!

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But they're in space??!?!!?!?!!!?????

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lupineangel.livejournal.com

That's amazing! Congratulations to the both of you for having the patience to get through it without flinging your controllers through the screens in apoplectic fury! I have a new appreciation for the meaning of the phrase 'Nintendo Hard'.

I'm surprised Rattle and/or Roll haven't made it onto Teo's avatar list now, especially Roll; his(?) expression is perfect for an OMFGAMAAAAZIIIING! icon or something - or alternatively, a you-wouldn't-believe-how-high-I-am-right-now reaction image. :P Crassadon's 'actually kind of cute' icon may also apply. :P

I always wanted to play this game after seeing it on Gamesmaster once; apparently, if you start the first level and just run down/right as fast as you can, ignoring everything else, there's a rocket at the end that warps you to Level 8 if you jump into it. That's the only thing I remember about it, but it always made me want to try it out. Having seen this video, I now realise how lucky I was to escape with my sanity still able to pretend to itself that it's intact. :P

Congratulations, Snakes In Space!

D.F.

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davidn

It really was patently insane, wasn't it - just gradually increasing the madness of the obstacles that it expected you to go through, becoming unfair somewhere around the end of the fifth level and then continuing to ramp up from there. The thing about the continuous attack on the yeti foot boss is unbelievable - though I'm glad Kjorteo's memory was wrong here and it took one perfect run of it going along one line, rather than three laps (or one and a half with two players). Nevertheless, the bleep generator got a workout, needless to say :)

I did see the rocket, Kjorteo showed it to me after we finished the game, though I was never fast enough to get into it. Frankly, why anyone would want to go directly to level 8 is beyond me!

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kjorteo

I'm surprised Rattle and/or Roll haven't made it onto Teo's avatar list now

Sorry, what?

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lupineangel.livejournal.com

Hah, I meant just the portraits, although that's an awesome face too.

Actually, Roll looks like he(?)'s all hyped up over something in that shot, as well. :P Nice that they could get such character onto such a small, simple sprite. :)

D.F.

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tamakun.livejournal.com

Forgive me for saying, I really enjoyed watching.listening to you two play through this.

Considering you only showed us an hour of gameplay, I shudder to think how many hours you actually played for!

I'm not going to suggest you play Battletoads next, that's just cruel, especially with what you guys have been going through game-wise recently. Rare made an NES version of Pinbot, I wonder if that's any better...

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davidn

There's nothing to forgive you for - hearing that is a great boost, not to mention the point of producing these videos :) Thank you!

I think that the total gameplay time was about two hours... but without save states (to restore after being set back by a survived fall) and the infinite lives cheat (to make the game possible), it would have been much, much longer. Somewhat unexpectedly, the game becomes much easier if you don't survive a fall, because you'll be restored to the last platform that you touched even if you just clipped it - if you fall down on those ice slopes at the end of level 10 and survive it, you've got a long climb back to the top.

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kjorteo

Yeah, I think we accidentally abused that system a bit once we disregarded the checks and balances of "if you sacrifice a life to respawn on a platform you touched, eventually you're supposed to run out of lives." I still kind of feel bad about that--I mean, there were plenty of jumps I never actually legitimately made. Oh, well, I guess.

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kjorteo

I actually really want to play Battletoads with David one of these days, but I don't think it would make a very entertaining video for everyone else. It's the same reason that I Wanna Be the Guy Let's Play vids are almost always unwatchably bad: there are just so many "someone plays an infamously difficult game, something with a reputation all over the internet for how impossibly hard it is, and loses" videos out there already, it becomes hard to add anything particularly unique or worthwhile to the formula.

But I still want to do it, just for our sake. Maybe we'll try it sometime and he can leave the recorder running just in case, with the understanding that we'll just delete/not post the video if it ends up not being any good.

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tamakun.livejournal.com

Of course, once you hit the Turbo Tunnel, the censor system will burn out...

You two really kept it amusing throughout the playthrough, too! I'm currently looking at a LP with Yahtzee playing "Normality" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6UHdzmUn2U) and ... well, it's over 3 hours long so I doubt I'll finish it, and the dialogue is nowhere near as amusing as you two XD

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ravenworks.livejournal.com

So I wanted to look up the creators of this game, to see if there were any interviews of them (just to hear them explain themselves!), but there's nothing on MobyGames for either this game OR BattleToads...! Has everyone on these projects just disavowed all knowledge...??

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ravenworks.livejournal.com

er, nothing by way of credits, I mean.... (I saw that the game doesn't list any, but I guess the manual doesn't either?)

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davidn

I'd be prepared to believe it just came together as spare bile hardened in the depths of Hades and it was then accidentally thrown out of there with a bag of clothes for the local charity shop. I don't see any credits there either - perhaps Kjorteo can check...!

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The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Rattle_'n'_Roll) lists a few credits:

Designer: Tim Stamper
Programmer: Mark Betteridge
Composer: David Wise

I'm now hearing Shuu mutter, "I'll get you, Mark..."

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tamakun.livejournal.com

After hearing about how some development houses have more than one team, I wonder if the Snake Rattle n'Roll team were the same team that developed Battletoads, while there was another team that made RC Pro-Am and Taboo: The Sixth Sense.

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kjorteo

Nothing in the manual credits-wise! Though I did find this gem in the hints and tips section:

"As with all video games, practice makes perfect. There are a few tricky jumps in Snake Rattle N Roll that will probably take a while to master. For example, some jumps may require you to jump down two spaces and to the left one space (in one jump!)"

You don't say....

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That does seem to imply that there may have been a double-jump power-up somewhere in the game. o_O

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kjorteo

I think I'm more bothered by the fact that that is their idea of a challenging jump in this game. Down two and to the left one? Really? Have you seen some of the jumps we were up against in the later parts of the game?

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