Cheapest Videogame Character?

[Premezilla]

Who's your pick for the cheapest videogame character?

For example, I'd choose Eddy Gordo in Tekken 3, because kick-to-handstand move could frustrate the beetlejuice out of an opponent.

Penny for your thoughts?

[jahcs]

Nihlathak.

*Approaches with caution :ph34r:

*Notices small lag spike in BNet :o

Boom. BOOM! :wacko:

*Presses ESC :angry:

[pakman]

Who's your pick for the cheapest videogame character?

For example, I'd choose Eddy Gordo in Tekken 3, because kick-to-handstand move could frustrate the beetlejuice out of an opponent.

Penny for your thoughts?
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I used Eddy, but I'd have to go with Mitsurugi from the Soul Caliber series.

[Guest]

Who's your pick for the cheapest videogame character?

For example, I'd choose Eddy Gordo in Tekken 3, because kick-to-handstand move could frustrate the beetlejuice out of an opponent.

Penny for your thoughts?
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http://sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPart1.htm

[--Pete]

Hi,

http://sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPart1.htm
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Good article, thanks for the link. I think two points need to be stressed.

First, which the article completely ignores, is that more and more games are not competitive. They are simply pleasant ways to pass times, similar to reading fiction or watching TV. For those games, of course, the article is irrelevant.

Second, which the article touches upon, is the responsibility of the game developers to get it right, or at least patch it soon (if possible). A game is its rules. And a computer or console game's rules are basically what is permitted by the program. The article starts off by implying that anything that can be done is fair game, but ends up listing a number of things that, although they can be done, even the cutthroat players don't do. Which, ultimately, makes the beginner and the pro pretty much the same except where they'll draw the line. And that has been the topic of debate on many fora for many games.

Non-computer games often have rules committees (or publications like the General of years ago) to plug the holes of exploits. Somehow, the computer game industry needs to emulate that.

--Pete

[SwissMercenary]

Non-computer games often have rules committees (or publications like the General of years ago) to plug the holes of exploits.  Somehow, the computer game industry needs to emulate that.

Most (all?) computer gaming leagues decide for themseleves where to draw the line at each exploit, when one is discovered. And you can't really police anything outside of that league environment.

I really don't see it as much of a problem outside of 'discussions' about the validity of those exploits on discussion boards. And rule committee, or not, somebody will always disagree with it, so its not going away.

[Zarathustra]

Teanage Mutant Ninja Turtles III on the old NES.

Michaelangelo.

There is absolutely nothing any enemy in the game can do to stop you as you use his special move to bounce them back and forth, over and over, until they die. You can do this move forever, even though it SHOULD deplete your energy.

There you go; not competitive, but certainly cheap.

[[wcip]Angel]

Psycho Mantis. First character ever to break the 4th wall in videogames and make me get up out of my chair to avoid his telepathic and psycho-kinetic abilities. Pure brilliance on the developer's part, but what a character. Killed his own father as well.. Not decent!

For those of you who have not delighted in the experience of Hideo Kojima's 1998 Playstation hit "Metal Gear Solid", Wikipedia will explain what I'm talking about:

Gameplay

When Solid Snake faces Mantis, Mantis demonstrates his psychic powers by breaking the fourth wall. In the pre-battle cut-scene, he activates the controller's rumble feature, then reads the player's memory card. Then, at the beginning of the actual battle, Mantis yells "Blackout!" and causes the screen to go completely black except for the words Hideo (a reference to the director Hideo Kojima) in green all capital text in the top right corner of the screen, much like TV or VCR on-screen-displays. Many players mistook this to be a glitch in the game, while it was supposed to trick the player into thinking that he or someone else changed the TV or VCR input, as a slight attempt to throw the player off.

In the original PlayStation game, he reads off the titles of Konami's other games (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Suikoden among others), while in the remake Twin Snakes, he reads Nintendo's games (Super Smash Bros. Melee and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, among others). In the Japanese versions, if the player has save data from Snatcher and Policenauts, they will receive a special message from Hideo Kojima.

The easiest [Easiest? Don't you mean "only"? - My note] way to defeat Psycho Mantis is for the player to remove the memory card (re-insert STRAIGHT after battle), plug the controller into the Player Two port (which prevents The Parasite from predicting Snake's battle moves)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_Mant...cho_Mantis

[Maitre]

Psycho Mantis. First character ever to break the 4th wall in videogames and make me get up out of my chair to avoid his telepathic and psycho-kinetic abilities. Pure brilliance on the developer's part, but what a character. Killed his own father as well.. Not decent!
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As the wiki states, the coolest thing ever in a video game was when Mantis said to me "Now I'll read your past: you're reckless, you don't save often. You're the type of man who likes to drive fast. Still don't believe me? I'll read deeper: you like Castlevania." I replayed the game without the Gran Tourismo save file on the card and he skipped over the drive fast part and went straight to my Castlevania:SOTN file. Just one of the things that made that game so amusing. The other was the chase a rat sequence toword the end, but that could get annoying. Sometimes I would just result to blowing the thing apart with a stinger.

[Rhydderch Hael]

In Starlancer, I remember there's one mission in which a Coalition squadron commander jumps in with his flight of fighters on an attack on your home carrier. Normally, you can blast these boys away and strike them off the 'Wanted List', so to speak, but you have to be quick about it because the leaders start up their hyperjump engines the moment you hit them with the first shot.

This particular squad leader's ship, however, is rendered invincible in the mission script. No matter how much firepower you lay down on him, you'll never get the kill. The kicker is, in the post-mission debrief, your squad commander chastises you for allowing the guy to escape.

Starlancer as a whole was "cheap", though, and is a good source of frustration and ludicrosity.

[Hammerskjold]

I think it depends a lot on the context. Ghostiger put up a good link on why 'cheapness' in vs fighting games usually depends more on the players.

Having said that, the 'cheapest' characters I've seen are\were usually some boss characters in coin op beat'em up. There are some bosses that can only be practically be beaten by basically putting more coins in the machine. If you want a name, I'll throw out Ezerhorden from D&D: Shadow over Mystara.

Though if you want just the cheapest, imo some spaceship side scrolling\top down shooters boast the most candidates for that prize. Unless you're a video game savant ie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_(movie)

[Chesspiece_face]

Who's your pick for the cheapest videogame character?
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Metal Slime in Dragon Warrior. Run Away!!! Run Away!!!

[BruceGod]

No, blue slimes were cheaper. You only got one gold and one experience point from them. And I think the cheapest character ever were those little grey blobs in the Original Zelda. They could be killed by one hit from any weapon, and never dropped anything. Therefore, a completely cheap monster.

Or, if you want an actual character, go with Barret from FF7. He never pays Cloud for his second mission with his terrorist group. Talk about being cheap!

[DeeBye]

Angel,Mar 23 2006, 11:27 AM]Psycho Mantis.
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You're kidding, right? Psycho Mantis wasn't cheap, he was awesome! Fighting Psycho Mantis for the first time was a great experience and a total mindgame. How does this videogame enemy know so much about me, and what the hell just happened to my TV and controllers?

edit for my opinion:

It's not really a character, but the cheapest thing in any videogame I've played was obtaining the Suzuki Escudo Pike's Peak rally car in Gran Turismo 2. That car has huge horsepower, low weight, 4wd and handles like it is on rails. Unless you have no arms, you cannot lose a race while driving the Escudo.

[pakman]

Speaking of which, I found a "rocket ship" setting to use on the test track. Once you stop peeling your tires on the back straightaway you can get the front of the car to lift off the ground and get an enourmously high max speed.

[DeeBye]

Speaking of which, I found a "rocket ship" setting to use on the test track. Once you stop peeling your tires on the back straightaway you can get the front of the car to lift off the ground and get an enourmously high max speed.
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I read something somewhere about a guy that was racing the F1 engine-equipped minivan (Renault?) on the test track against computer opponents with those settings. His front end popped skywards and he made decent time down the track, but it wasn't quite as fast as he thought it should have been. When he watched the replay, he saw that he was pushing another car along the track the whole time. He didn't notice it while racing.

[Rhydderch Hael]

...It's not really a character, but the cheapest thing in any videogame I've played was obtaining the Suzuki Escudo Pike's Peak rally car in Gran Turismo 2.  That car has huge horsepower, low weight, 4wd and handles like it is on rails.  Unless you have no arms, you cannot lose a race while driving the Escudo.
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On thgat vein, the Fokker Dr.I in Red Baron 3D Massive Multiplayer Mode is ahistorically resilient. The wings seem to be welded onto the airframe and it takes a huge amount of damage before you can rip them off. The kicker being that the Dr.I has three wings and a massive amount of lift, coupled with the near-invincible wing structure makes the plane very hard to shoot down. It is grudgingly joked that when one of these planes are finally downed, it wasn't because of any structural damage, but rather because the sheer weight of all the lead shot into it finally took effect.

[NiteFox]

In Starlancer, I remember there's one mission in which a Coalition squadron commander jumps in with his flight of fighters on an attack on your home carrier. Normally, you can blast these boys away and strike them off the 'Wanted List', so to speak, but you have to be quick about it because the leaders start up their hyperjump engines the moment you hit them with the first shot.

This particular squad leader's ship, however, is rendered invincible in the mission script. No matter how much firepower you lay down on him, you'll never get the kill. The kicker is, in the post-mission debrief, your squad commander chastises you for allowing the guy to escape.

Starlancer as a whole was "cheap", though, and is a good source of frustration and ludicrosity.
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Mission 8 made me stop playing Starlancer. Forever.

As you describe, your home carrier is attacked by a Coalition ambush. You and your "wingmates" are dumped out the hanger bay and have to take out a squadron of fighters about one and a half klick behind your carrier. You afterburn over, start laying into the enemy fighters, when you get a message: A torpedo bomber squadron has just popped out about a klick or so at the portside of your carrier, which while you've been scrapping with the first fighter squad has rumbled on ahead a few more klicks. The bomber squadron launches torpedoes straight away, so now you have to double back on yourself to intercept all the torpedoes.

Thanks to the shoddy targetting system, and the fact that if you're not firing a craft with blindfire, you can't hit anything with your main guns. Hitting every torpedo is practically a must, since if about two land home you've got a long flight back to another carrier, whereupon you are executed on arrival for dereliction of duty.

It's damn near impossible to slag every single torpedo in a single pass, and by the time you make a second pass another wave of missiles are launched. If you try and run interference on the bombers, they'll still launch enough missiles to put you out of a home before you can kill one and there's no way in hell you can wipe out the torpedoes then.

If you order your wingmates to attack the bombers while you mop up the missiles, they murmer acknowledgement but in reality they keep on engaging the first wave of forces.

What else did I miss? ... Ohyeah. By the time you actually make it in firing range of the nearest torpedo, their almost smacking into your carrier.

I tried this mission with almost every combination of starfighter and loadout available to me. I then enabled the cheat to access all starfighters and loadouts in the game and tried those. I never once got close to take out every torpedo.

No wonder the Coalition won the war over the Alliance. Most of the Alliance pilots were dumb as a brick and failed to follow orders, and those who did follow orders to the best of their abilities were executed whenever they slipped up.

Screw Starlancer. Freelancer was better.

[Rhydderch Hael]

Mission 8 made me stop playing Starlancer.  Forever.

As you describe, your home carrier is attacked by a Coalition ambush.  You and your "wingmates" are dumped out the hanger bay and have to take out a squadron of fighters about one and a half klick behind your carrier.  You afterburn over, start laying into the enemy fighters, when you get a message: A torpedo bomber squadron has just popped out about a klick or so at the portside of your carrier, which while you've been scrapping with the first fighter squad has rumbled on ahead a few more klicks.  The bomber squadron launches torpedoes straight away, so now you have to double back on yourself to intercept all the torpedoes. ...
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I remember that. There was an easy way to beat that mission, though. Don't engage the first wave of fighters. When the enemy fighters showed up, I let the rest of the squadron tangle with them will I rany at full military power ahead of the Reliant and awaited the Kamovs. That way, I was already in the line of fire and all I had to do was blast the torps as they approached.

Sans any cheat codes, the French fighter model was the best available choice for me. Her chin-mounted neutron cannons delivered enough damage to kill a torp with a single volley, and thanks to my pre-arranged positioning, I didn't have to travel far nor fast to get the proper lead on my aiming.

Then again, ignoring the primary wave of fighters as a viable mission tactic doesn't speak too highly of the game's mission scripting.