Roll Boss Rush is a 2D Action Platformer that consists of nothing but boss fights and ‘’’’’’’‘sexy’’’’’’’’’’ Robot Master girls.
You play as Megaman’s sister Roll, but not the one from the games, rather, the one from the Ruby Spears Megaman Cartoon.
There are 4 difficulty levels (which only affect how much damage you take). You choose one main weapon (burst because all the rest are objectively worse) and one sub-weapon (vacuum-toaster-saw, none of which matter). You can also now choose between fighting 1 or 2 bosses at the same time (mono-melee) regardless of difficulty level, which is basically impossible without constant bug abuse.
During battles Roll can commit a sex crime on your enemy and absorb their power to use it against them. Roll can even perform some Street Fighter moves if the loading screens deign to tell you about them, such as a drop kick. You also have a super meter that allows you to perform a SUPER MOVE, like in Street Fighter.
Each boss has a weakness, but the weapons are so horrifically unbalanced you won’t bother with most of them. At the end of each battle, you’re given a grade based upon your performance (with prizes for high ranks that are only useful if you’re getting low ranks), an information Token to trade for boss weaknesses, and a Password.
Okay so with regards to the slowdown issue with the fish, I kind of had to check a few things.
The Playstation has 2 MB of RAM, with another 1 MB for VRAM and 512 KB of RAM for sound. I assume that the game loads all of the necessary level data (bosses and AI, background, etc.) straight to the RAM and not a constant data stream.
Jumping Flash, an early 3D platformer with polygonal and pretty sizable 3D levels, loads all of its level data to the RAM at once and runs pretty well for what it is.
This meas that either those fish take up way too much memory for what they are (probably unlikely) or the creator didn’t think to cap the number of fish visible onscreen to cause the Playstation to start chugging. Considering what’s been shown off of this game so far, that must’ve been a whole lot of fish to be distracted by in a fight that already has problems with some of the projectiles note being easily visible.
I just binged all the rest of the videos and oof I think I need to take some steps back. I still can’t get over how bad some of those boss gimmicks are. Some really need adjustments to make them okay but the standout ones are ones I can’t fathom how to really fix without a straight up redesign.
I reiterate: 11 years. Someone had 1.1 decades to realize this was a bad idea and somehow did not.
I mean I guess this could have ended on a boss rush if the author was feeling really lazy/cruel, but I’m not sure the actual final boss is “better.” I think it was a strictly horizontal move.