What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[calthaer]

I have been getting in to Death Road to Canada, which I believe is available on iOS and Switch. The benefit of having it on Steam, where I'm running it, is that I should be able to do "remote play together" and do local co-op online. We'll see - maybe I'll be able to get this to work.

It is so fun. Kind of like FTL, where you will have multiple runs, building up and unlocking abilities until you get a combo together that is a winner. The first time I succeeded I only got one guy through to Canada - a special character I had met along the way. Eventually maybe I'll be able to get the guys I start out with through to the end. It's light-hearted, not too serious, just a good time.

[fergojisan]

I've been playing Circus Convoy, the new 2600 game by David Crane and Garry Kitchen. It's really a lot of fun.

[gbpxl]

I've been playing Circus Convoy, the new 2600 game by David Crane and Garry Kitchen. It's really a lot of fun.
$55 for the standard edition is a joke. I'd pay $25 max. They said this on their website:


"Our Collector Edition games are priced below the inflation-adjusted price of original games published in the in the 1980s. In 1982, for example, Pitfall!™ and Keystone Kapers™ were published with a suggested retail price of $39.95. Adjusted for inflation that would be $107 today. Accordingly, the suggested retail price for a feature-rich, Collector Edition Atari 2600 game from Audacity Games™ is $99.00.* For retro gamers on a budget, a lower-priced Standard Edition boxed-game is available."

The problem with that logic is that games have gotten a lot cheaper since then, in general. A game you can sink hundreds of hours into might only cost you $60. I'm not spending the same amount on a game I might get 3-5 hours out of, tops.

[fergojisan]

Okey doke

[YoshiM]

$55 for the standard edition is a joke. I'd pay $25 max. They said this on their website:


"Our Collector Edition games are priced below the inflation-adjusted price of original games published in the in the 1980s. In 1982, for example, Pitfall!™ and Keystone Kapers™ were published with a suggested retail price of $39.95. Adjusted for inflation that would be $107 today. Accordingly, the suggested retail price for a feature-rich, Collector Edition Atari 2600 game from Audacity Games™ is $99.00.* For retro gamers on a budget, a lower-priced Standard Edition boxed-game is available."

The problem with that logic is that games have gotten a lot cheaper since then, in general. A game you can sink hundreds of hours into might only cost you $60. I'm not spending the same amount on a game I might get 3-5 hours out of, tops.

Whatever floats your boat. Vote with your wallet and they'll get the hint.

I'm interested in Circus Caper (to me, the price is alright for a game that's probably expensive for what's probably a small production run as opposed to back then Atari that mass produced multiple thousands of games) bit I don't know how often I'd get a chance to play it. If I can sneak my CRT upstairs on Game Days and leave it there....maybe. it looks really cool and I'm itchin' for a twitchin' type game.

Speaking of twitchin', I brought the Vita to work to show it a little game love. I fired up "Killzone:Mercenary" and had a good time with it. It took a bit to get back into the swing of things but soon as I was poppin' heads like in Star Wars. It floirs me just how great the visuals are in the game. A little pop-in here and there but all in all it was a solid experience.

I am now on the planet Helghan working on getting these sattelite dishes hacked so the fleet can take control of the ship-killer cannons. I have to defend a power transformer but died. As I can't save in the middle of a mission, I have my Vita asleep and plugged in for tomorrow.

[Ostin Powers]

I really didn't play anything the last two weeks due to Covid. I worked half days remotely but by the afternoon I was wiped out. The kids got to get more game time than ever until the wife and I felt better and cut them off as the youngest three started to get a little demanding. I was in the mood to play sonething classic but all my gaming equipment is downstairs (save for my PC) and I had no ambition.

Last Friday I went back to work and did get some gametime in. During lunch I played some "Animal Crossing:New Leaf", whittling my mortgage down. Shampoodle came to town and I was able to get a silver shovel.

That night my wife and I usually watch murder mysteries on PBS but it's all stuff we saw over and over again. She wanted to keep watching this new show on Masterpiece online called "Miss Scarlet and The Duke". I watched two episodes already and it didn't get my attention as it was horribly predictable and was hitting "hot points" of today that were taboo and illegal back then. So I played some more "Star Wars-Battlefront".

The gameplay has now reached that formulaic feel and I know I'm playing it (https://overgear.com/games/wow/raids/castle-nathria) to see where the story goes. My character's team defected to the Rebellion, who kinda accepted them with open arms even after Leia said " did its share of damage to the Rebellion" (paraphrased). In a few months, my character is a commander and seems well liked, even though I killed many rebels by [i]shooting most of them in the face.

What were the conversations over time?

"We know you can melt the face off a target at 100 yards. Joko Raisen, an officer that survived your attack on our capital ship now dribbles his cereal on his uniform everytime he eats, gives his full recommendation and a hearty half-thumbs up. I promote you to commander".

I try with modern games.....

Most modern shows are a sheer disappointment for me. I am a fan of MK but taking into account recent tendencies I feel reluctant to go to the cinema and get disappointed in one more film :(

[YoshiM]

I haven't watched "regular" TV in a long while, but from what snippets I see, I'm not missing much.

Monday was more Killzone, inching further along in the story. Still a pretty slick FPS, especially since I started dipping my toes in the weapons dealer boxes. I still like my silenced rapid fire gun (no long range site but I'm pretty accurate even at a distance) but I started using the VANguard device. The little shoulder rockets are pretty sweet. Takes 3 or so to take out a flame thrower soldier, though.

Today I took a walk for a bit, so I only had a little time on my hands to play. I loaded Oceanhorn again on the Vita and went to the Withering Island. I was a little lost not knowing where I should go, but it was a fun time. I explored a bit of that island then had to shut down. Thank goodness for its many save points

That might be all this week. Friday my lunch break will be spent at a funeral for my ex-mother in law who I knew since childhood (my ex and I have some same relation due to marriages-explaining it always gave me weird looks). So hopefully folks will save any drama gor their llama.

[YoshiM]

I got to play Super Mario 3D Land, which was pretty dang sweet so far. Didn't play much, maybe the first three levels. I was in a mood around Tuesday (we adopted a newborn kitten and I had made my feelings clear about the last one-long story) so I just plopped down and played more Star Wars: Battleground II on PC. I discovered my X360 wired controller was starting to get some drift in the stick, so I took it apart, cleaned it and played Star Wars again another night. I got through the Lando and Shriv mission at a weapons manufacturing facility and still had drift. Oh well.

Tonight I broke out the N64 to test out the gear replacement I did on one of the controllers. It had the Gamecube style stick and it just didn't feel right. The stick is a little loose feeling but still accurate. I played the new SM 64 hack demo "Return to Yoshi's Island 64", which gives you 26 stars to collect. It looks gorgeous but to me with the new camera system, it was hard for me to judge where I would land or where I was going with some tricky jumps. SM 64 had its issues but to me was manageable. I did play the original to see if I was just losing my touch with the game and I was able to jump around like Mario was wearing a Parkour hat. Even with that issue (which again could be me), this patch should be checked out if you have an Everdrive 64.

After that I fired up some Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It was a nice soaking rain in my town of "Almost", where the fruit made a noticeable "plop" sound when they hit the ground (which I honestly never caught on to before). On there I got a Wii U from the cookies fortune and played some "Desert Island Escape". It's a mini strategy/discovery game where you have 3 animal friends (at the cost of 2 or 3 play coins each) that have special abilities to help get off the island. You have to find items to build a raft along with tools to help on the island. When you encounter creatures or have to interact with bee hives and that, the game uses a prize wheel that I believe you have to try and tap on what you want as it spins. On my first go I was able to get off the island.

My "west wing" was expanded but I never got around to talking to Nook to get my mortgage total. So now I'm sitting on 102,000 bells until I do.

The wife has a show she's in tomorrow and if it's a full house, I'm not going due to social distancing. Then I might fire up the DSi XL and dig into games I haven't played yet.

[Ostin Powers]

I have been getting in to World of Warcraft, which I believe is available only PC and MacOs. The benefit of having it on PC, where I'm running it, is that I should be able to do "remote play together" and do local co-op online. We'll see - maybe I'll be able to get this to work.

It is so fun. Kind of like FTL, where you will have multiple runs, building up and unlocking abilities until you get a combo together that is a winner. The first time I succeeded I only got one guy through - a special character I had met along the way. Eventually there (https://despize.com/wow/gold/) maybe I'll be able to get the amount of gold I currently need I start out with through to the end. It's light-hearted, not too serious, just a good time.

Share your opinion :) It is a really awesome game. Unfortunately for some reason not a lot of my friends join me preferring other releases :(

[YoshiM]

Not much to report in gameplay as, well, I haven't played much. I started "Persona 4 Golden" on the PS Vita and while the presentation is great, I'm just not DOING much yet. I get it's a slow buildup but dang I want to do more than just hit X.

Friday I beat the solo mission on SW:Battlefront 2. Good story but the accomplishment felt hollow. I didn't get that feeling of "wow, whatta game!" as it was more like "ok, I'm done". I tried out ",Ghostbusters" on PC but I just didn't feel it. Bill Murray and Harold Ramis sounded like they wanted a paycheck and humor seemed a little forced.

[YoshiM]

Haven't had too much of an urge to post but I just cleaned around my (new to me) desk area in the basement so now I'll treat myself to some online. It's funny, I work in a concrete "cave" most of the time at work and now my leisure area is also in a concrete cave...at least in the basement I have windows!

I had managed to pick up "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" for the Wii U on disk again. I had some credit left at a store and I figured "why not". I brought my secondary Wii U into work and during a few lunch breaks, I hooked it up and played the game on the gamepad. No different than whipping out a handheld in my mind. Since this Wii U was freshly set up and my account is on my "main" Wii U, I started from scratch. After playing "Skyrim" for a while, I find my opinions on this game have changed. While "Skyrim" has a sense of depth and lots of beautiful locations, Nintendo really went the extra mile to make the graphics on "BOTW" stand out. While Bethesda's game has plants and environments that move with the wind and look fairly realistic, "BOTW" really seems to have amber waves of grain moving in literal waves. I also now appreciated the ability to climb pretty much everything, which is something I couldn't do in "Skyrim" (mainly rocks and such). I did just pop into "Skyrim" now to see if my memory was borked but I was right-there really is a difference and Zelda's environment seems more "organic" to me. I find I don't mind the cooking this time around either.

I just got the paraglider and made my way down to the rest of Hyrule. I'm moving my way towards that forest village in the beginning. I'm going to really try and stick with this game.

[gbpxl]

Just beat Sonic. just in time for the blue rodent to turn 30 (next month I believe.) cant believe it took me 25+ to do this. I only got 4 of the Chaos emeralds so I didnt TRULY beat it but still saw the credits

[YoshiM]

Why not pump a little life back into this thread? :: starts moving the bellows ::

I decided to give my PS Vita a spin. I bought a triad of games when the storefront was supposed to close. One of those titles was “Axiom Verge”. I knew it was a Metroid-a-like but from online recommendations it sounded solid. I gave it a whirl today and so far it’s decent. Can’t say “great” as of yet as it still feels very Metroid, even with the changes in weaponry and that “code changer” that fuddles up weak enemies or does weird things to certain objects.

The weapons I have so far, minus the Axiom beam is the three way shot, that cluster bomber projectile and the short range burst of energy weapon. Metroid’s weapons have a feeling of purpose as each had its strength and gimmick. In this game, the weapons really just give you multiple ways to kill your foes. The cluster bomb so far is the only one that really is used for solving barrier puzzles (shoot bomb then detonate early so the explosion spreads and hits a switch). But I’m still early in so who knows what other situations I’ll run into.

The control is tight-Metroid tight. That’s a heckuva feat to nail that level of platforming.

Graphics are an homage to a bit of late NES MM5 and with a mix of Tg-16 graphic quality in my mind. Some of the graphics look muted and purposefully grainy but the couple bosses I encountered along with some locales ramped up the fidelity that works with the general aesthetic. Sound is great with a hypnotic techno tunes and well done sound effects.

[YoshiM]

Saturday I took a trip through the 3DS eShop to see if there was a demo for “Metroid: Samus Returns”. Of course there wasn’t but I was shown some other options. Two games came up: “Quarters, Please Vol 1 and Vol2”. They are compilations games containing pretty good clones of existing arcade titles like “Centipede”, “Defender”, “Bump n Jump”, “Missile Command”, “Dig Dug”, “Galaga” to name a few. Graphics, characters and names changed to protect the innocent.

To play the games, you walk your pixelated avatar through a tiny three story arcade. You can listen to the chip tunes music and sound effects to get that “arcade” atmosphere or hop onto a machine. I picked up volume 2 for $5 as that seemed more up my alley.

I gotta say, the games are pretty good. The overall vibe reminded me of playing clone games back on the Color Computer (though much better graphics and sound). The only seeming original game was sn endless runner karate game, which I enjoyed as well. When meandering around the arcade, I could pet a cat, change music on the jukebox, change time of day, watch a ping pong match (but not play) and shoot some hoops on the roof.

I never really looked around the eShop, but I’m glad I took the plunge. Never know what gems you’ll find.

[gbpxl]

just beat Spyro for PS1 (120%). last time I did that was maybe 20 years ago. such an easy game but its so easy on the eyes and satisfying collecting jewels that it's easy to forgive the kindergarten level of difficulty

[gbpxl]

I finally got all the heart pieces in Zelda ALTTP. The SNES version is harder than the GBA one from what I am remembering (I beat the GBA one first, many years ago.) I was down to only one heart piece and I kept doing the treasure chest game, thinking that was the one I was misssing. So I probably wasted half an hour to an hour of my life doing that when it turned out I forgot to get the one in Blind's hideout in the Light World. also entered the Chris Houlihan room for the first time. this is easily one of my top five favorite games of all time, possibly even my #1. from the memorable music to the clean looking graphics, hreat balance of difficulty, massive bosses. it's hard to find fault with this game.

[YoshiM]

Recently I tipped over the fence and bought a Switch Lite. I picked up “Super Mario Odyseey” and am really enjoying it. The game is just gorgeous and plays great! I thought the hat mechanic would have been silly but its use has been pretty ingenious so far. I collected enough moons to clear the desert kingdom but I am exploring the world more as I keep finding more.

I’m trying not to peek at hints (I get attracted to using them due to my lack of time) but couldn’t figure out how to get a building in the middle of a killer sludge pond. So I looked and saw just how many moons are in that kingdom. Wow! Lots of stuff to do! And my suspicions were confirmed that your actions unlock other events in the kingdom. So I closed the page and am determined to go about this “naturally”.

[Mad-Mike]

In the last week+ a few days and today I've been down with HORRIBLE tonsilitis and mostly watching Arcus speed-runs iand You Can Beat Video Games on YouTube, sometimes on mute, kind of helps me sleep.

Before that, was still leisurely dry-running Dragon Warrior IV for a later Let's Play (and to test out the $250.00 cart I traded a nice chunk of my collection for - I finally have all 4 NES versions), while LPing Dragon Warrior for YouTube. AT one point I got the Mitsubishi TV fixed up (degaussed, tamed down the buzz on brighter screens), that set is awesome for YouTube recordings because it has a RCA passthrough that takes from whatever the current source is, so anything from a real console or computer (wii, Tandy 1000, NES, Atari 2600) can be filmed direct off the CRT TV via the passthrough. Been playing a little Adventure on Atari as well, more as a test for the RF on the TV than anything else.

[gbpxl]

Ive been playing Banjo Kazooie which is a game that I always associate with Halloween. The main BGM theme in Gruntilda's castle has a Halloween vibe to it, and I love the drawings on the walls which look like Jack o Lanterns. Even though thers only one level that is horror-themed, the whole game has lots of horror-themed elements to it, like Mumbo Jumbo's house, transforming into another creature (a pumpkin of course being the most Halloween-ish.) and the Game Over screen is obviously an homage to Frankenstein. The cauldrons you jump into to transport you, spiderwebs covering Gruntilda's lair.

[YoshiM]

I just got to the end of “Super Mario Odyssey”. I had a good time with it, though the “wow” factor diminished as I played. It’s definitely designed to be a bit more leisurely in play-not too hard or easy. Definitely an exploration game.

A couple levels seemed small, like the soda springs kingdom and the food-based kingdom. The end of those levels went really quick so that left me having to hunt for moons, which wasn’t hard but in my mind messed up the flow. At those points, I just really wanted to get through the game.

I’ll probably check out the Mushroom Kingdom now that it’s unlocked. I’m curious how it’s put together since Super Mario 64. Speaking of that game, my ex-brother in law said it was like SM64. After playing through Odyssey….nope. I still like 64 better. While it had its gimmicks it wasn’t nearly as gimmick driven as Odyssey.

[Tron 2.0]

Switch
Espgaluda II,i really like how live wire has gotten the license to do ports of cave shooters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44kg565Hzjc

[YoshiM]

Saturday I got to bust out the NES for a little action! I fired up "Mystic Origins" from the same people who made the "NES Maker" software. I tried a little bit of it at the Midwest Gaming Classic and it seemed pretty cool, so I bought it. After putting some time into it, my opinion changed pretty quick.

The game feels more like a demo than anything. The general game play reminds me of the game "Dragon Power", though the game is supposed to be more "Legend of Zelda". Your character is a bard type person that uses his lute as a melee weapon. You can also jump and when in the air, do a double tap to slam down on trap doors to enter places below. Your character doesn't have the precision movement of Link and the environment can get you a little stuck, so I found myself trying to move around trees but getting hung up on pixels. This gets bad when an enemy is nearby and touches you, as your health can get zapped to nothing pretty quick. You eventually learn some magic to charge up and shoot a ball of energy, which is then used to light torches to make stuff happen. You can also learn songs, which you play with your controller ala Ocarina of Time. I did not, however, obtain any desire to find any. The graphics were all right but there are parts where, when you go transition to day to night, the walls become difficult to discern as being solid or background. I wondered why I wasn't moving when that part of the wall looked like a path. The game also uses an experience system to strengthen your character but no save feature to speak of. Needless to say, my work was lost when I turned off the system. The big plus, though, is the music-they did an excellent job.

I played better NESMaker games, so I hoped the developers of the tools would be able to crank out something decent.

[Cmosfm]

GTA Trilogy has been played a lot lately. Does that count as Classic yet? ������

[Tron 2.0]

GTA Trilogy has been played a lot lately. Does that count as Classic yet? ������
Is it buggy still or are they patched out ?

[Canija]

Haven't had too much of an urge to post but I just cleaned around my (new to me) desk area in the basement so now I'll treat myself to some online things like leprestore (https://leprestore.com/wow-us/boost/character-leveling/) and the opportunities it gives. It's funny, I work in a concrete "cave" most of the time at work and now my leisure area is also in a concrete cave...at least in the basement I have windows!

I had managed to pick up "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" for the Wii U on disk again. I had some credit left at a store and I figured "why not". I brought my secondary Wii U into work and during a few lunch breaks, I hooked it up and played the game on the gamepad. No different than whipping out a handheld in my mind. Since this Wii U was freshly set up and my account is on my "main" Wii U, I started from scratch. After playing "Skyrim" for a while, I find my opinions on this game have changed. While "Skyrim" has a sense of depth and lots of beautiful locations, Nintendo really went the extra mile to make the graphics on "BOTW" stand out. While Bethesda's game has plants and environments that move with the wind and look fairly realistic, "BOTW" really seems to have amber waves of grain moving in literal waves. I also now appreciated the ability to climb pretty much everything, which is something I couldn't do in "Skyrim" (mainly rocks and such). I did just pop into "Skyrim" now to see if my memory was borked but I was right-there really is a difference and Zelda's environment seems more "organic" to me. I find I don't mind the cooking this time around either.

I just got the paraglider and made my way down to the rest of Hyrule. I'm moving my way towards that forest village in the beginning. I'm going to really try and stick with this game.

Played it first on PS4 but it was near unplayable with the severe frame drops so I dropped it. However, with PS5 it's running at a locked 30 with no drops whatsoever, not even during the most intense explosions. And this game is so much fun. The traversal is very good, especially with the upgraded Rocket wingsuit you get from Sky Fortress. And the island of Medici looks so beautiful. The colors really pop on my 4K setup.

[YoshiM]

I gave it a try. I gave it my all. I had hoped maybe by having a more comfortable way to play "LoZ:BOTW" I'd get into it more. I'm now pretty much at the point I was on the Wii U but after one puzzle shrine where I had to use my Switch Lite to move floor pieces around, I had it. Not that the puzzle itself is hard-I got that figured out just fine. It's the CONTROL and then not being able to see what the heck you are doing when the system is all tilted out of view. Plus the acceleraometers don't seem all that smart as I had a heck of a time getting stairs to slide on their rails slowly one way but then when I tilt it the other way to fix my mistake, the stairs move at a snail's pace and I've got the system seriously tilted. There's no consistency.

I got through the dungeon and then looked at my inventory. I went to places where I probably shouldn't have gone and had to beat up a lot of bad guys. I hardly had any real weapons other than what I got at the top of a waterfall by the two mountains (I can't think of the name-it's got the two peaks and the "sister" shrines that have the orb placement solution for each other). I figured I'd have to go back to some areas to slay some beasts to find better weapons or travel the countryside to see if found weapons respawn. Then I got to thinking...."WHY?!" Granted it reads on other sites like you'll be swimming in weapons later on but I'm fed up with the fetching. Here's Link, the hero of Hyrule who just came out of a 100 year slumber from a high techni-magical Star Wars esque Bakta Tank. This ancient race was so keen they had computer tablets that have an infinite battery life and signal no matter where you are and you don't need an Otter Box for it! Link can be burned, dropped from several stories, sliced, crunched, drown, melted in acid and while his body dies, the dang Sheikah slate works like nothing happened! You'd think that maybe, someone from Sheikah R & D, while Link's mostly-dead corpse was being loaded into the Healing Womb and Zelda's slate was being stored, might pipe up about a brilliant idea.

Tech: "Hey, boss, you think maybe we should throw together some sort of blaster, flame thrower, bomb launcher, personal force field, maybe even a light saber, that Link could use to fight with when he's done in the oven? We can use the same material we used for the slate-that thing can probably take a Guardian blast at 60 paces!"

Manager: "No, the slate is all he'd need. For knowledge is power! And to live by the sword is to die by the sword!"

Tech: "Uh, right. How about armor? Something tough that any guardians that might still walk the planet when he wakes up can't harm him through?"

Manager: "No, for to rely on armor is to be weak. His own wit and natural agility is all he'll need!"

Tech: "You do realize that his muscles are going to atrophy while he floats in that rejuv-o-sperm, right? He'd be lucky to not collapse after a brisk run!" Shouldn't we hook up some electrodes to his body to keep him toned, like that one guy I read about in some slate novel...Key-Ah-New or something like that?"

Manager: "No, for he is to regain his ability naturally."

Tech (who sighs): "Ok, how about a nice set of clothes for the different climates in Hyrule?"

Manager: "No, Link is a humble servant. Breeches and a tunic will suffice."

Tech: "I'll see if the local Goodwill hasn't been burnt to the ground to see what I can find. Maybe he can slap a moblin with the slate."

I shifted my attention to an Evercade handheld and got some time in with the Data East Arcade cartridge. I beat "Sly Spy" and "Bad Dudes" and got whipped on the second board of "Burgertime". It's a solid little machine that I'll probably dig into a little more. Friday I had my Windows laptop with me at work so I fired up some "Witcher 3". I went back to the Griffon battle and took it on using my new Xbox One controller (I bought two used ones with one working great except for sticky buttons and I needed a dongle and the other, a Bluetooth model, had bad sticks. I bought a new one to get the dongle and the controller.) Played great, though I had gotten used to the Switch's screen movement for aiming weapons. Once I knocked that out of my head (after being knocked around by said griffon) I was shooting pretty well with the crossbow Geralt was given. It took a few tries as I was trying to remember how to play but eventually, with the help of the potions the game instructed me to make, I took the bugger down. I took the head to the Captain but didn't take his coin payment. I stopped there for the time being.

Tonight I tried to take my wife and three middle step daughters on a "movie date". One of my twins (who are both 13) and my 11 year old got "BOGO" coupons from their school for their great work and the one twin wanted to see "Spider-Man: No Way Home", which she convinced the other two (her twin is homeschooled right now but she does a lot around the house so it'd be a treat) to see it as well. She's good at that. Anyway, the theater didn't have enough tickets so we came home. They went and did their thing and I came downstairs to see what else I could play. I got some "Amazing Frog?" time in with their V3 beta update, which is coming along nice. Car physics are a lot better than they were last I played. They now have biplanes which will definitely KILL YOU as I don't know how to fly one in the game. I was then reminded by Steam that I have "Castle Crashers" which I installed immediately after my crash. I forgot how much fun that game was! I had it on Xbox 360 and got close to the end but never got there. However my "home" XBO controller has those sticky buttons, which made fighting difficult. I'll have to tear the bad controller apart to get the button pads out.

All in all, good times. Been working a LOT so this was a nice reprieve. Plus I got Movie Date attempt 2 tomorrow (bought tickets tonight) and while the wife works, there might be more game time.

[Aussie2B]

I haven't posted in this topic in forever, but I haven't done much gaming to report on either. The "Beaten in 2022" topic already covers most of it. I beat Shantae (the LRG repro/reprint) on my Game Boy Advance SP, after a long gap between starting the game and resuming it. I didn't bother messing with the GBA-exclusive Tinkerbat form much. Seemed kind of game-breaking (not that I particularly enjoyed switching back and forth between animal forms). Then, thoroughout January, I did pretty much everything there is to do in the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country, including beating both the regular mode and Hero mode at the maximum percentage and getting S-rank ribbons on every stage in the DK Attack mode. I have dabbled in some NES games, like Shadow of the Ninja, BreakThru, Dragon Spirit, and Zelda II (the last one via emulation), but I'm talking a very miniscule amount of time in each.

What I played most recently was StarHawk on my Game Boy Advance SP. I beat it last night, and, well, that was a mediocre shmup. But that's okay because I didn't really expect it to be amazing. I bought LRG's release of it basically sight unseen, mostly because I knew I'd never fork out the going rate of the European-exclusive original. Since I prefer to have games legit (or half-legit, as LRG's GB/GBC releases aren't licensed by Nintendo), I figured I'd give it a shot (especially when I was already placing an order to get Castlevania Anniversary Collection). I don't know if there's some subset of the retro gaming scene that cares about NMS Software (maybe British gamers?), but they're a no-name developer to me. I can appreciate a few things about the game, like some decent graphics at times and the password system, which is why I was able to beat it at all (on the Easy setting, which is the default), given the tiny stretches of gaming time I have these days. But, man, there are a lot of boneheaded things about the game too. For example, the sound effect for firing is so irritating that I had to turn the volume on the system completely off. What I heard of the music before doing so didn't seem notable, but I still would've preferred hearing it while playing. The ship is so sluggish, and power-ups, which rarely appear, only change your weapon. Enemies are sponges and generally take a bajillion hits. You can be hitting an enemy the second it appears until the last moment when you have to move to dodge and still not kill it sometimes. Like I said before, I appreciate the password system, but they screwed that up too. In later stages, the passwords start you with an upgraded ship because you can barely survive with the default weapon, yet your weapon is downgraded when you take a hit and it's not restored to what you started with when you used the password even after using a continue. So once I got to the continue screen, I'd have to quit, go back to the title screen, put the password in again, and then restart the stage that way to get back to the upgraded weapon. I could complain about other minor things, but I'll leave it at that. It wasn't a bad experience but wasn't an especially good one either. Just another notch on the belt.

[Nes]

Pieces for the SNES. A lot more fun in 2 player mode.

[YoshiM]

Classic wise, not too much. I got a new R4 card for my DSi as my R4 Gold bit the dust. This one came with a bunch of emulators on it, so I dabbled with Super Mario Bros, which actually plays great! I also have an Intellivision emulator on there that works pretty slick, though it's weird pressing the virtual keypad as I'm expecting the buttons to press in. Weird how the brain works.

I played on my Ouya recently only to find the sucker wouldn't fire up! Thankfully I have my kickstarter one yet and I rooted it to get to the new community servers. Bomb Squad is still a family favorite and I have the PC version on a bunch of the kids' laptops, so we can have a large LAN party of mayhem.

My Xbox is hooked up to my computer monitor for some neo-retro fun! I played some Burnout: Revenge and that got me hollering. This used to be a group game but that was in my "old life" of my last marriage. I did speak to my ex-brother in law and found there were no hard feelings or anything. I might have to hit him up on some Switch action.


Speaking of Switch, I did get some more Switch time in. I tried Alex Kidd in Miracle World but my gawd the remake just plays funky. I know the original had its quirks but playing the remake was painful for me. That got traded in with store credit for Metroid: Dread which is pissing me off in another direction: those dang EMMI robots! However I think, not unlike Breath of the Wild, I'm fighting years of playing the past 2D games and having those etched expectations and Dread does away with some of that. The insta-kill of the EMMIs just sucks. I'll keep plugging away at it as it plays solid. Thankfully there are little check points but crap gets frantic when you are trying to figure out where to go next and one of those metallic d-bags are on your tail.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is becoming my favorite AC game. As I dip my toes into this game here and there I find this really has the best of the other games wrapped into this one. My personable animals are back, the museum is just beautiful and life there is good. I haven't really minded the crafting as I don't feel like I'll pull my hair out trying to get things accomplished and I run out of material.

That's it for video gaming for me. I've been doing a LOT of Dungeons and Dragons with the kids lately. I've basically got two campaigns going with their two different characters. One of my twins plays a character who split from the main group (she's a brat that thinks she's a goddess and the dang dice seem to just LOVE her. Tongue is the brightest of silver and a heart of the darkest of stone), saved an NPC and then went off on her own. Based on her interactions with that NPC (a bard), this spun off into the kids making new characters and it's been a wild ride! The twin lost the NPC because, well, she's a person-using power monger. Her twin sister's character, who rolled to see if her character (a female humanoid-meets-animal monk) knew the NPC and got a natural 20. We gauged it that her character had a budding relationship with the NPC but she left just before they got romantic and now they found each other. So there's that drama on top of a Jesus Christ type character who speaks to his god and refers to him as "Dad" who enjoys watching football in heaven (based on a priest that talks sports and all the celebrities he knows every Christmas midnight mass). A rat-man who is of the same species as the twin's animal person but is just more animal who is like a trash heap that has a thing for gourmet cooking. We have a halfling assassin who was trying to win back the bard NPC for her mistress (why the heck they all roll to find connections to this NPC, I don't know) and finally a half-elf ranger with his dog Handsome. It's been quite a ride with betrayal, hardships and finally the monk and bard getting engaged.

On the flip side, the original team got their butts trounced thanks to their healer leaving with that bard. Now they have a paladin, played by the twin of the brat, who is a POLAR OPPOSITE of the her other character (male, out to help people and speaks with a great Australian accent). And per tradition, dice rolls were made and the paladin dated the sister of my bard NPC (up to her tragic death-they were secretly in love and the paladin was going to propose). Thankfully that's the only connection. Their younger sister came in as an animal-person-an owl and this character is a....ahem....hoot. Both she and the twin with the Paladin are HUGE Marvel movie fans, so they are seeing themselves as Falcon and Captain America. Or in the campaign, as the paladin is from the frigid north, "The Owl and The Winter Champion".

That's all I got to print. With my kids working a lot this summer, I'll hopefully get to play some games.

[Aussie2B]

I've gone through a few games since the last time I posted in this topic, but with gaming time itself being a precious commodity for me, I have even less to spare to write about what I play. I've just been dumping my thoughts out when I beat a game, but one game I've been playing a good bit that probably won't end up on my list in the Beaten in 2022 topic is Pix the Cat on my Vita. As far as I know, there isn't any way to really "beat" the game. It tries to be like classic arcade games where you just pursue a high score, though it does have a couple modes with a finite number of stages, and it's also got in-game missions, a progress percentage, and trophies of course. So it's a pretty meaty and challenging game if you want to do everything. That said, I doubt I will. A lot of the missions and trophies are pretty damn tough, so I don't think I'm gonna be putting in the time and effort to 100% anything. But I would like to clear the Laboratory and Nostalgia modes, and I'd like to at least unlock every gameplay aspect. My high score in the main arcade mode is currently over 1.3 million, but I believe I need 1.5 million to unlock the Dessert arcade grid. Even that sounds like a trick, let alone getting 2 million for the associated mission/trophy. It's funny how the game's one and only gold trophy is one of the easiest to get (and one of the few I currently have). You have to crack the top 10 of the daily grid scoreboard, but since nobody is playing the game anymore (at least not on Vita), the only difficult part is scoring 1.2 million on the main arcade grid to unlock access to the daily grid. Anyway, it's a fun game and one of the better releases from Limited Run Games that I've put significant time into.

And for one of the worst... I'm still poking around in Proteus on my Vita too, even though I already "beat" it. I'll try to squeeze whatever trophies I can out of it, though a couple sound especially annoying, so I won't necessarily go for 100% here either. I've never been a "trophy hunter" as they call them. I mean, most of my gaming has been with games that predate trophies/achievements anyway, but I'll casually go after them, especially when a game has basically nothing else to offer like Proteus. I have to play this game sparingly regardless because virtually all free-roaming first-person games make me feel sick, and the stupid little optional dot in the center of the screen that Proteus has to supposedly help with motion sickness does jack for me. I try to cut myself off at 15 minutes, but sometimes I end up playing for more like 20-30, and then I get a little woozy. So I admit my own physical limitations probably work against the game, as I can't let myself get totally immersed or whatever. Not that I think I would regardless because it's so aimless, but I imagine most people who like Proteus probably don't have to worry about motion sickness.

[Tron 2.0]

PS4
TMNT Shredders Revenge
Pinball Arcade

Retrofreak
Bucky'o'Hare (famicom)

[Aussie2B]

All the Vita stuff stuff I was playing lately I was going through while staying with family for around a month (first time seeing most of my family in three years and first time most got to meet my daughter), and like usual, my motivation to play whatever I'm messing around with while "on vacation" (not really, because I was still taking work here and there) peters out when I return home and get back to the normal grind. So I'm just wrapping stuff up to eventually start up something new. I mentioned in the Beaten in 2022 topic that I returned to Tokyo Tattoo Girls after years. Actually, the last time I had been playing that was the previous time I visited family. This time, I finished clearing all four difficulties with all six girls. The Extreme/Expert difficulty (the game can't decide which to call it) actually wasn't as challenging for me as Hard. I guess I had solidified my strategies by then, and all the items I unlocked for the HQ probably made a big difference. Anyway, that's completed enough for me. The platinum trophy is impossible to get because another trophy is glitched and unobtainable. The only thing left I could do is go for the trophies where you gotta play through the game eight times with each girl. But that's just mindless grinding busywork. I'm not gonna run through the game 24 more times. So that's been shelved and so has Proteus. I did quickly get to the end of my third file in Proteus to get the trophy for that, but I just can't be bothered to do the ones with the stones and plants. Another "maybe someday but probably not." Pix the Cat I haven't touched in over a month, and I'm torn on if I want to get back to it. It is a fun game, and my in-game percentage was 91%. I was also pretty close to getting the flower bonus in every Nostalgia stage. But there's not much left for me to do in the game, and what's left is so tough that I don't know if I'm in the mood for it.

I did return to BoxBoy on 3DS, which I dropped when I left home because I didn't want to pack the 3DS. I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to jump back in, even though I left off on the post-game bonus stages. I pretty quickly blew through those, and I've collected all the crowns in the game (never beat a stage without doing so, actually), so I've unlocked Marathon mode. I also still haven't tried out the challenges unlockable in the shop. So I'll check out that stuff, but I don't foresee myself playing this much longer either.

[YoshiM]

Any game time has been consumed with Zelda: BOTW on Switch. I took the plunge again and finally overcame my mental hurdle with this game: I'm not used to having a buffet of abilities early on coupled with having free range to try almost anything. This became apparent when I was freeing the divine beast Ruto (? the elephant with the Zoras). I was looking for a switch to open a gate to get at the map terminal and one of my step sons said "just you the cryo glyph to lift it". Duh....water...ice blocks....I felt stupid but it was the "aha!" moment that caused me to cast off the years of Zelda-instilled expectations. Shrines and such have gone a LOT easier since this obvious revelation to me. I've got two divine beasts down, the Master Sword and now I'm hunting shrines. It's getting a little tedious as some require "UPS" services (go do this, come back to NPC or location to gain access). I like some of the stuff, like being able to go anywhere provided you have the stamina and what not. However it's starting to get long in the tooth for me. So once I get some more shrines and the rest of the beasts, I'm gunning for Ganon to put this to bed. Then I can pass the game on to the younger of my twins as she never gets a chance to hop on the Wii U version as her twin plays to "kill horses".

Not much else in the digital realm. I think I might gravitate back to PC for a while as I have been looking at my Steam list with more interest.

[Aussie2B]

Still playing BoxBoy on 3DS. I've been dabbling in Marathon mode, and I cleared all the challenges. Overall, I'd say this stuff isn't as fun as the regular levels. I don't particularly like racing the clock, not when I was enjoying the main game being so chill in its pace. I liked the score challenges more than the time attack challenges and had an easier time with them too. I've only cleared the first couple worlds in Marathon mode with a perfect all-S ranking. But I do kinda like improving my rankings, without stressing about being perfect. So that's what I'm working on at the moment. One thing that's funny is that Nintendo, despite being being so strict about not allowing people to name their characters curse words in many games, didn't even consider the combinations you can get when you get three categories ranked on each world that can be D, C, B, A, or S (from worst to best). To get to the point, I've got one world where my ranking is "A S S", haha.

[Aussie2B]

Seems like, in recent years, I don't as often make a conscious choice to stop playing a game like "Okay, I'm finished with this now. Time to put it away." Instead, things just sort of fizzle out, and before I know it, I've realized I've stopped playing and don't have the desire to get back to it. That's what happened with BoxBoy on 3DS. I kept toying around with Marathon mode, but once it got harder to improve my rankings, I just didn't have the motivation to keep repeating the same stages to basically do perfect speedruns of them. So after not touching it for a while, I decided to move on to something else, which I had also once dropped, but for an entirely different reason.

I resumed my file in Illusion of Gaia on Super Nintendo that I started in 2020. I say "resumed", but I was at the beginning of the first dungeon, so I could've just as well started from scratch. I originally started the game very shortly before I found out I was pregnant, which was about the same time the "morning" (aka all day) sickness kicked in. I felt too nauseated to play anything for a couple months, and by the time I did feel well enough to look at a game screen, I just didn't bother to return to Illusion of Gaia. So my file sat for over two years, and now that particular file has been dropped again, even though I'm still playing. Before I started playing the first time even, I made up my mind that I definitely wanted to collect all the Red Jewels. This is basically Missables: The Game, so I knew I had to be careful about it. I downloaded a PDF of the manual (wish I had a real copy but whatever) which has a nice little walkthrough that includes every Red Jewel location. Yet one night, I got careless and missed one at a place you're at for all of maybe two minutes before never seeing again and then saved in the town after. That really took the wind out of my sails and I almost dropped the game then and there, but my husband was kind enough to start the game from scratch and get me nearly to where I left off, with all the Red Jewels (thankfully, it wasn't especially far into the game), so now I'm playing that file. It's aggravating that you can't just save to any slot and leave yourself backup files you could return to, but honestly, the game is kinda trolling with the Red Jewels and expects you to miss some. There's other annoying quirks about the game, like how sometimes text boxes appear instantaneously and disappear with seemingly any input, causing me to unintentionally miss text sometimes, and how it often forces you forward with no warning (talk to a certain character and *boom* you're off to the next place, whether you were ready to leave or not). The difficulty level is also questionable because they increased it in some ways. The first boss, made more difficult than in the Japanese original, was easily the hardest boss I've faced thus far, but other changes probably were for the better and keep the game from being pathetically easy. Anyway, I'm currently in the city of Euro, with every Red Jewel thus far, and quibbles aside, I'm having a fun time with it, and even the story, as poorly localized as it is, is kind of interesting. They got a famous author who normally writes novels and never worked on a game outside of this to do the story, and it does have a weird way about its narration and pacing that feels more like the storytelling of a novel than a game. Most of the game feels very polished, and I think, if I had played it back when it was new, it probably would've become a childhood favorite of mine.

[Tron 2.0]

PS4
Castlevania Anniversary Collection
TMNT Cowabunga Collection

[YoshiM]

Last weekend my youngest stepson asked me about "this game where you play two aliens" which translated to "Toe Jam and Earl" for the Genesis. He proceeded to ask me if I wanted to play it and I agreed. Any time a child asks to play an old video game....you grab that opportunity! Anyway, I fired up my Genesis Mini and we got into the game. It took us a bit to get the brains wrapped around the game (him it's first time playing a game like this, me I haven't played this in forever) but we dove into our quest for the funky ship pieces. He did really well, making due with the presents and avoiding the Earthlings. I was hoping to get the rocket skates early so I could get us to the little island on the first level but got them late and coudn't fall off the levels fast enough. We stopped at Level 5 and I saved the game (thank goodness for the save feature!). He wants to play this weekend but I have a queue of folks that want my time (D&D of different campaigns, my daughter wants to play "Rainbow Friends" on Roblox as I type this).

I got some solo time in and it was split between playing "Shadow Warrior 2" on PC and continuing "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild". I got to the second stage in "Shadow Warrior 2" and it's been pretty slick. The melee combat is a little disorientating but it pays off in the sheer visceral graphics. In Zelda I've taken care of the Bird divine beast and I'm working on the camel. The Yiga Clan hideout I thought was going to be a tough stealth session but it was really short, thank goodness.

I find it interesting how my kids approach this game compared to me. One of my step sons said I "really was into finding shrines" as I had a bunch of hearts AND almost three wheels of stamina. I told him my goal was to beat the game and I wanted high enough stats. He just goes into the game with the thought to "go hunt guardians" or go climb some mountains to find stuff to max out his outfits' stats. The elder of my twins like to play to "kill horses" (she finds a better horse but her slots are full at the stable) and putzes around here and there. My second eldest step son is trying to see how far he can get without getting hearts. He's been focusing on maxing out his stamina and tackling various challenges.

That's been about that for me.

[Aussie2B]

Still plugging away at Illusion of Gaia on Super Nintendo with the roughly half hour to an hour of gaming time I tend to get before bed each night these days. I'm now up to Dao, so I guess the Pyramid is the only dungeon I have left before the final stuff. Not too many Red Jewels left to hunt down either. My husband was watching during the infamous scene with Hamlet and was devastated, haha. I knew the scene was coming at some point, since, to this day, I remember Nintendo Power describing the scene in the 100th issue of the magazine for the Illusion of Gaia entry in their top 100 games ever list (on Nintendo systems only, of course), so it wasn't nearly as shocking to me. Still, though, what a noble pig, as Kara says.

[Tron 2.0]

Beat the u.s version of Castlevania III Dracula Curse recently and most of the time i just play the japanese version instead.Hmmm,maybe i'll try to complete dracula kid next.

[YoshiM]

I finally beat Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Since my last post I took care of the Divine Beasts, found every memory and maybe about half of the shrines. I had Rivoli(?) Bow, a bunch of guardian arrows, a full suit of guardian armor and away I went to the Castle. I swam up the waterfalls at the back and made my way into the Sanctum without much fuss from guardians. Then came the showdown. After a very cool cinematic of Calamity Ganon getting whupped by the power of the Beasts, we squared off. This was it-the first form before he goes to his big beast mode (that I read about) not unlike Twilight Princess.

So we fight. Well, that's an understatement. For all his size and arms and combative pomp....he didn't last long. Not that I'm the greatest BotW player out there-my third eldest step son hunts all forms of lionels for FUN and has few problems, so I think I pale compare to him. But going into the second phase of the first form-if you are good at reflecting guardian beams and you have all the divine beast powers, Ganon will fall very quickly without much effort. The second form was visually impressive but he was easy to take down. The only opponent I really had was the camera. Roll credits. It was bittersweet that it wasn't this grand battle that you'd think it'd be. The aforementioned centaur-race of Hyrule packs more challenge than the Hyrulian Master of Disaster. Truly, it was about experiencing the journey than it was defeating Ganon and saving the world. How the hell Link lost a hundred years ago blows my mind.

With that out of the way, I got to experience my first Halloween in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I had a lot of fun with it, got pranked but got some cool virtual swag in the process. The music and atmosphere were great! Got some more Toe Jam and Earl in. Made it to Level 14 with my step son before he wanted more Roblox. I played around with the Genesis Mini 2 and it's pretty dang sweet. If there's lag....I don't see it. I can get as far as I used to get in After Burner 2 so that was a good sign things were on the up and up.

Right now Atari's new "Atari 50" cart is keeping my attention. You can't go into it just going for the games as some folks crap on the list of games, the age of them and the price. If you go into this like it's a museum, you get more out of it. At least I did-I'm going through all the pictures and videos like exhibits. Some games I play, some I don't as I know it won't play well with a stick (Breakout for one). I'm currently in the Computer part of the saga, which has a bunch of commercials thus far.

Thanksgiving Day, after cooking a feast for my family (which will probably be devoured in 15 minutes) I'll sit back with more Animal Crossing. Time to experience that holiday.

[Tron 2.0]

SWITCH
Mega Man legacy collection

Bought it years ago on the cheap digitally figure i sit down play them through finally.Once i'm done with that series it's off to playing elden ring,since i got a copy recently for ps4 since it was on sale this past black friday.

[Aussie2B]

I posted in the other topic about beating Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, which I did on my DS Lite (for whatever reason, I gravitate toward this model over the DSi XL we have, which my husband prefers), but I wanted to write a little more about the experience. For one, it felt very different from Harmony of Dissonance and Aria or Sorrow. I blew through those extremely quickly, to the point that I barely feel like I ever played Aria of Sorrow. I guess that doesn't say much for it, but seriously, when I look at screen shots of it, it's like I'm seeing the game for the first time. I remember liking Aria of Sorrow more than Harmony of Dissonance (though neither extremely impressed me, and same goes for Dawn of Sorrow), but I guess Harmony of Dissonance was the more memorable game long-term. I feel like Dawn of Sorrow was a little more challenging than those two and definitely lasted me way longer, but it's hard to say if the game is genuinely different to any significant degree or if it's just because I'm in a very different place in my life now, which is impacting how much time I can devote to games and how much mental energy I have available to give them when I do play (in other words, I'm playing right before bed and exhausted after a long day, typically). I did approach Dawn of Sorrow in a similar manner as back with those GBA games, though. It didn't want to just blow through the castle and be done. So I put in all the time to collect at least one of every soul, got every item drop, completed the map 100%, got my level up to the max, synthesized all the best weapons, and acquired at least one of every item I could (but had to sacrifice a couple weapons to make better weapons). To complete all the weapon synthesis chains, I had to give up a few boss souls, reducing my soul collection from the 100% it had been at (but I did make sure to grab the Chaos Ring before doing so). For the most part, I was cool with the grinding, since it's relaxing and enjoyable in a mindless kind of way. But I do feel bad for people who feel compelled to do more than I did. The game seems like a real nightmare for those obsessive-compulsive enough to want even one of everything, let along the maximum of nine (and there is value in doing the latter, since some souls change as you acquire more of the same type). Replaying the game over and over via New Game+ to grind for the boss souls, which you'd have to do not only to max them out but to get the souls needed for weapon synthesis, is too much for me. I heard it would take literally dozens of replays to max out everything. I wouldn't mind replaying the game on Hard someday and earning the soul exclusive to beating that, and the Julius Mode that's reminiscent of Castlevania 3 sounds cool, but I'm fine with leaving those and Boss Rush Mode for the future, which is my usual MO with these SotN clones and their unlockable bonus content.

[Aussie2B]

I'm gonna do like I did with Dawn of Sorrow and use this topic to write more about my experience with a game I just posted about beating. You see, Labyrinth on DS is something of a cursed game for me, haha, but I guess I've now set things right. I've been a big fan of the SNES game On the Ball (aka Cameltry) since back when the Super Nintendo was still alive, so many years ago, when I learned it got a follow-up on DS, I naturally wanted to pick it up and give it a shot. But for some stupid reason, I got it in my head that it only came out in Japan. I believe there was a gap between the original Japanese release, Mawashite Koron, and the US localization, Labyrinth, but by the time I heard about the game, I'm pretty sure the American version was already available. But I didn't do my proper research and bought a Japanese copy on eBay, when normally I prefer to pick up US versions of games whenever available and obtainable at a sane price. Thankfully, I only dropped like 10-15 bucks on it, if memory serves. Gameplay-wise, having the Japanese version doesn't make a big difference. There's very little text. But nonetheless, I still managed to get stuck in the Japanese version. The furthest I could get was a stage where you're trapped in a box of metal bricks. I could never figure out how to break through them, and I figured the language barrier was screwing me. Fast forward to just recently, and I got on a real DS kick when I started playing Dawn of Sorrow. I ended up adding like 10+ more games to my collection and have several more I'd like to grab. I think I already had a pretty good collection, but there's just so much interesting stuff on DS, and a lot can still be had for fair prices. Anyway, I figured it was time to correct my mistake with Labyrinth by getting a US copy and figuring out how to clear everything in the game. But after I paid for a copy, a few days later, the purchase was strangely canceled, and I was issued a refund. So I bought a second copy, sealed no less, and finally got a copy in my hands. Go figure that the in-game text and English manual say almost nothing about how to clear what I had been stuck on, but I figured it out and, once and for all, completed all the stages. It's got nothing on On the Ball, especially in terms of aesthetics, but it's still fun. I love the surreal otherworldly graphics and music of On the Ball and bizarre motivational poster-like things you get at the end of courses. In Labyrinth, you get anime girls shoehorned in for seemingly no reason but eye candy and generic, peppy music. It's weird how it feels like Labyrinth tries to offer more depth and complexity, with custom balls and the Gyro technique, yet it still comes off as more shallow and barebones than On the Ball. And the lack of info on what little Labyrinth does have drives me nuts. The manual really should've covered things better and the in-game tutorial too, and there's practically nothing about the game online. No FAQs or anything I can find. I'd love a definitive answer on how new ball designs are unlocked, but all I can do is guess. I suspect it has to do with the "Entire Distance" total listed in the main menu, but I can't say for sure, let alone what numbers have to be hit to unlock each design. I also have no idea how "distance" is calculated. Some things are obvious, like score and time, but there's no distance being measured while actually playing. Like, can you waste time spinning in circles and increase the distance you earn? Or is each stage worth a set value? Seriously, the manual explains none of this. And this unlockable stuff is poorly implemented to begin with. Who wants to replay the same stages endlessly to just unlock new ball colors and such? I guess it's a weak attempt to increase the longevity because, if you only play through all the stages once, you're done in the blink of an eye. And I guess it's working on me, to some degree. I have been replaying the stages some, but I don't know how long I'll bother before coming up with something else to play. Judging by the menus, it seems like there are still quite a few I'm missing.

[Aussie2B]

I called it quits with Labyrinth on DS. I'm not positive that there aren't more ball designs to unlock, but frankly, I've already replayed all the courses a stupid amount, haha, and I don't care to do so any longer. The more I played, the more I feel confident that the "Entire Distance" total is what's tied to unlocking designs. It seemed like I'd get a new one every time I passed some round number. I didn't bother to track anything, so I couldn't say what those numbers are, and it seemed the more distance I racked up, the larger the amounts had to be between designs. I stopped when I passed 56000. (To put things into perspective, you wouldn't normally even hit 10000 going through all the courses once. I don't know if the distance I'd earn decreased as I learned the stages more and got quicker times, but I noticed I was usually getting around 6000-some going through all six courses. I didn't bother doing the math to see if any course was more efficient for racking up distance than the others, but I think I would've gone bonkers replaying the same course ad nauseam anyway, so I was fine with running through all of them.) The last design I unlocked appeared when I just passed 50000. It's a pencil shape, and the only design that isn't at least somewhat spherical. Based on how the menus look, I think I have every shape, but there might be more colors for each shape, which are basically just palette swaps. There's room in the menu for four colors for each shape, but I only have four colors for three of the eight shapes. I've got three colors for the cogs, two each for the sports balls and apples, and only one for Chack'n and the pencil. If there are more colors, oh well. I ran through every course with the pencil and got nothing. Prior to the pencil, it seemed like each unlocked design for a while was 5000 apart, so one run through all the stages was enough to get something new. If there is more, then the gap has obviously grown to 7000+, and I'm not about to invest more and more grinding into getting palette swaps. Maybe my assumptions are wrong and there's actually cooler stuff still left to unlock (like if, say, instead of palette-swapped Chack'ns, you'd get other Taito cameos), but nobody but me has seemingly put this kind of effort into this game, haha, and I'm not going to keep spending my time on efforts that may amount to nothing. For all I know, the pencil may be the very last thing to unlock.

So moving on, I was thinking of playing through something on PSP. But my PSP has an issue that I had to check on first, so I played some TwinBee Da!! on the TwinBee Portable compilation. The remake of the Game Boy game is basically the reason I bought the compilation (as I already had the others on other platforms), and it's always fun to blow through. I got near the end but the aforementioned issue screwed up my run. You see, for years now, the metal prongs in the UMD slot compress, whether I leave a UMD in there or not, and then it doesn't apply enough pressue for the system to detect that the flap is closed. It's an easy fix, though. I just use tweezers to pull them back outward. But it's something I have to repeatedly do. It'll usually last for several months before the issue arises again, but with how infrequently I use my PSP these days, that means I have to fix the slot basically every time before I start something up. So once I saw the issue popping up while playing TwinBee, I did the fix, and now it's ready to go.

Other than that stuff, I played a tiny bit of Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade's Revenge for the first time on our SNES flash cart at my husband's insistence, haha.

[YoshiM]

Haven't touched this thread for a while. I got my Animal Crossing time in and it was pretty fun in New Horizons. The spread was a lot bigger in this game than in New Leaf, which I played right after. There was a lot of trading to get the ingredients for Franklin's meal and I loved how all the animals that stayed in doors were busy whipping something up on their stoves. I got the whole meal complete.

I jumped onto Animal Crossing New Leaf probably a day or so later and set the clock back (which is something Nintendo should have kept in NH but I get that, having online being pushed and their seemingly "no spoilers" agenda, the game goes by the system clock). It was a similar affair: get ingredients for Franklin but it didn't have the same grandiose vibe. I then went back to Wild World and it was pretty much....nothing.

After that I got into the Switch eShop sales and got Portal, Castle Crashers, Quake and later on Boomerang Fu. Portal plays awesome and I love the portability. Castle Crashers is a hit with my kids but for some dumb reason anyone who uses their profile for the other players can't save their progress. A little searching found that they had to hit a button to select a profile but what I didn't know is they actually TRIED that. Discovered the stupidity of Nintendo's online account stuff with certain titles-my regular Switch needs to be the primary console in order for the other profiles to save their progress in that game! My eldest twin, who has a Nintendo account and is a part of my "Family plan" also tried to play Fortnite on my Lite while we had a game of Castle Crashers going on the main system. She was blocked because my account was in use, even though I wasn't in the same game. That makes the whole family plan and sharing a bit moot.

Classic wise, I got in some Atari 2600 and got the non-gaming wife involved, which was short lived. Got some Space Invaders and some Combat in after a long hiatus. I also got back into the Tandy Color Computer community with a 64K CoCo 2 and a bunch of carts. I want to get back into doing YouTube videos (only did one before I got diverted into theater) just for the fun of it and I wanted to do a look at a tape my Dad gave me for a gift back in 1984. The system works great and I got to play some Dino Wars, Dungeons of Daggorath and Mega Bug. My young boys REALLY liked Dino Wars. I just got a CoCo SDC so I can use disk images. I just have to get around to setting it up.

While cleaning a NES controller I played some Mike Tyson's Punch Out on real hardware and got farther than I usually did. I beat Bald Bull in one go! For kicks I tried my NES Mini to finally test to see if the delays I found were emulation or TV based. I tried the same game and sucked at it. Yeah, it's emulation, which is sad as I like the form factor and the ease of saving.

That's about that. Happy New Year all!

[Aussie2B]

Happy New Year!

It turns out the issues with my PSP have gotten worse than they once were, which I guess isn't surprising, since, even though I've played through several digital-only PSP games on my Vita in recent years, I hadn't beaten anything on UMD in around a decade (not counting my recent go through TwinBee Da!). Back in the '00s, whether it was something old or new, it felt like as long as I took good care of a system, it would hold up just fine, but over the last 10+ years, I've had a number of systems develop issues while not in use. Time takes its toll no matter what, I guess. Now even if I tug on the prongs in the flap repeatedly, I still get the system popping up the Home menu on occasion, as if the flap has been opened, and sometimes it just plain doesn't see the UMD at all and doesn't start up the game to begin with. I don't know if it's all linked to that flimsy lever that determines if the flap is closed with a UMD inside or not, but one of these days, I should probably try to do something to permanently press it down. I'm just hesitant to put tape because I don't want adhesive to break down and cause other problems, especially because my PSP is one of those rare, Japan-only limited editions (the Star Ocean one).

Despite these annoying quirks, I've still been pushing forward with Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure. I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to play a 3D game with fully 3D movement because I haven't played many 3D games lately period, and when I have, it's been 2.5D or otherwise featuring restricted movement. I didn't want to go with a full-on 3D platformer because I've completed a fair number of platformers recently, but I still wanted something that would be pretty simple and straightforward and not a massive time investment. So I think Gurumin was a decent choice to fit the bill (though, some of the dungeons I've recently completed surprised me with somewhat demanding platforming). I don't know how close I am to the end, but I've racked up 10 hours, and I've beaten 3 of the 4 minions of the main bad guy. I only have one more special move to buy, but I still only have one photo in the album, so I don't know what's up with that. I also have no alternate costumes to wear, but I did start the game at the perfect time in that I began shortly after Christmas and got to see the Santa outfit and then New Year's kimono without having to change the system clock. So far, it's been an enjoyable experience. My only real complaint is that I don't think the game was made to suit handheld gaming as much as it should've been. Being a Falcom game, it was on PC first, and I don't know if they changed anything about saving or not for the PSP version. You can save at almost any time, but if you save in a dungeon and quit, you restart at the dungeon's entrance, with only the money and such you collected saved. So there's not much point in saving besides in between dungeons, and when dungeons have taken me as long as 40 minutes, that's sometimes longer than I'd like between saving my progress. It's extra dumb when the game gives unlimited continues that restart you at the check points in dungeons. Why can't the saves restart you there too? But really, I'd be happy with just a temp save. I guess they figured that, since the system has a sleep mode, it doesn't matter, but I prefer to shut down fully and not waste battery life by keeping it in sleep mode for 24+ hours.

[Tron 2.0]

Sega Genesis Mini II
Shining Force-CD,i use to have a original copy of the game in the 90's.I got halfway through and i got stuck and i took a break and never finished the game.This game i guess you could say my pile of shame so i like to complete it finally.

[YoshiM]

I gotta bust out my minis more. I've been debating getting an HDMI to HDMI and Audio splitting device so I can take a mini to work, hook it up to a monitor and play while I wear headphones. At home can be a crap shoot for getting TV time. Speaking of TV time I cleaned my CoCo carts and got to play some "Downland". The game still kicks my butt after 40 years. It IS nice to play it with a Deluxe Joystick. I tried out my CoCo SDC, now loaded with ALL my backed up disks. I got in some "Shock Trooper", "Interbank Incident" and "Robot Odyssey" time to see how it all worked. I noticed the SDC throws off some RF noise so I have to see if there's a way to reduce that.

This weekend I got a little "Portal and "Portal 2" time in. My kids wanted me to play "Fortnite" with them but my daughter was over and wanted a go so I let her use my account. I do have another email account through Hotmail that I could set up for Epic and have her use. It's tied to my Xbox Live account which she still has on the Xbox 360 I left behind during the divorce but my daughter says that her mom never use the ol' box. I downloaded "Sky" for the Switch but haven't tried it yet as my oldest step son would probably have a hissy fit if someone played it before him. My oldest twin was teasing about playing it as the son was getting packed to go to Minnesota with his mom, my son and their eldest sister for a funeral. For a 20 year old he whined like a tween, oh boy. The game is by thatgamecompany, the same minds behind "Flower" and "Journey" on the PS Vita and PS 3 respectively.

For lunch breaks I decided to bring my 3DS to work and try my hand at beating "Super Mario 3D Land". I left off at level 4-2. I have to get used to the slidey pad controls again as I had Mario plummet to his death more than I care to admit. I also forgot that, when you hear Toad yelling from somewhere and you look at him through the binocular stand, you have to zoom in on him completely before he coughs up a star coin. I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to get up to him so I looked it up. "Oh, you have to zoom in all the way...ok....dur.....". I won't make that mistake again.

[kupomogli]

I'm at the end of chapter four on Tactics Ogre Reborn, I plan on finishing Hell's Gate / Palace of the Damned and all of the other content before completing the game, but I did go the law route and got almost all of the characters at this point. Anyways, here's a review and comparison of what the game does well over the PSP version and the PS1 version and what it does worse imo.

Sadly there's no perfect version of Tactics Ogre, as every single version has some major flaws, but I would say that the original PS1/Super Famicom versions get closer than any other despite just how good some of the features are from the PSP and Reborn versions of the game. So Tactics Ogre Reborn is based on the PSP version, a version of the game I never completed because after getting to chapter four, I quit playing due to required grinding to level up the White Knight class from level 1, the warrior from level 1, and this is already after I leveled the terror knight and dragoon from level 1 earlier. Every single class on the PSP version starts at level 1 among many other issues making the PSP version just a very bad game because of how much of a grind it all is.

Tactics Ogre Reborn cuts a lot of the grind from the PSP version and the skill and special attack system brought over from that game comes over to Reborn in a much better way. On Tactics Ogre Reborn, depending on what your characters level is, they will have all of the skills of their specific class based on that level. No skill grinding required. The only thing that Tactics Ogre Reborn does require on the skill front is based on weapon usage. If you have never used a hammer or sword for the entire game and you decide you want to use hammers, that weapon class will be at whatever level it started at for that character. The weapon class gains bonus damage as well as allowing you to use a new special attack every 10 levels.

On the original game the only class diversity is the passive abilities between each class and definitive upgrades are in the game. The same does still apply here as you'll never use a soldier or wizard over anything else, however every other class except for the archer is viable. The valkyrie and rune fencers have fairly high stats in all categories making them good for both the front lines as well as being able to cast both attack and healing spells effectively, but they can only cast low tier spells. The berserker who had no passive abilities on the original game now gets a skill that increases attack by 50% and a randomly activating skill that allows the clas to attack all spaces to his side and the three in front as well as a slight boost to attack when activated. The knight can cast healing spells, and has a chance of reducing all damage by a high amount and has a chance of absorbing half of the damage from anyone from a short range being an exceptional defensive unit. Terror knights work similar to the way they did in the past but the fear skill is now infinitely more potent, just that it does not activate all the time and if fear activates it lasts for several turns on the enemies that were effected regardless how close the terror knight is, additionally the terror knight has a skill that can cause fear 100% of the time. They can also use low tier dark magic. Dragoons allow characters to deal more damage against dragons and beasts while also having skills to deal more on their own and beastmasters or dragon tamers increase the power of beasts or dragons, they are also able to throw items a long range, however this removes the ability for these characters to target themselves with the items. Warlocks are still wizards with a higher tier of spells and can power up or allow characters to deal more damage against golems. The swordmaster can evade multiple melee attacks per turn or deal a premptive attack towards anyone that is attacking them and then still counter afterwards, the class also has aoe magic that can buff or heal allies or debuff enemies.

Now as amazing as the new skill system is and the diversity of the characters, the issue is that every passive skill, most of the skills in general are automatic, random. The point of a dragoon with the dragon or beast killer skills are to force your party to deal additional damage to those enemies, but if you go three or four turns and the skills don't activate, there's no point in the class and it just becomes any other character. Now yes, you can change multiple characters to a dragoon or change multiple characters to a beast master, etc to increase the chances that these effects will activate on your party. However this brings two other issues, you need a class mark to change classes, and while you can purchase them in shops after a certain point, do you currently have them in the inventory to do so?

The other thing the game does is cards will appear on the field randomly at random locations. These can change the tides of battle but at the same time, they're just so random that the battles they're more of a necessity you can be required to go out of your way more than one turn which is never going to be effective. I'd have rather this new card system didn't exist and the game was balanced without it, the game would be much better due to that. The cards that will appear are auto cards, critical cards, magic cards, and attack cards.

A lot of leaders in the third and fourth chapters start with absurdly high stats, one such enemy starts with 190 intelligence, no cards, over 50 stats than your same class, dealing 600-800 damage per spell. If he picks up a card that's 800-1000 and without constitution it's an OHKO. There is a level cap in this game which is nice it does not allow you to get too powerful, but then you are capped at level 19 and the enemies are level 21 with a leader who's level 22, or enemies at level 33 and two leaders at level 36 while your cap is 32 and one of the leaders deals more damage than any of your characters have at full health with constitution. There are a lot of times the game pretty much forces you to get lucky with the RNG in how the battle progresses as you will not win without getting lucky. The very last battle on chapter three in law for instance has two leaders, one of them is in the back and is a spell caster, the other starts somewhat close but can cast highly damaging spells but deals melee damage as well. The only way you can win this battle is if you move to a position five spaces away from that leader to force him to melee you and then get lucky enough that every one of your characters can deal enough damage to defeat him before two of his allies recover him full health. Any attack this leader does deals 3/4 of your character's health, more than 1/2 with an aoe. If this enemy does not move in range and he casts a spell none of your characters can reach him, they can't move more than a few spaces because of a golem that you can't move past and once the other leader comes into range you're not going to survive two spell casters/attackers who deal 3/4 damage per hit. You can't defeat all these enemies, either as you can't cure enough damage sustained and you can't deal enough damage as all enemies are higher level and deal more damage.

Now despite the absurdly high difficulty at chapters 3 and 4, there is one more thing that the game does poorly. I would say that this is only around seven or eight battles, but still, seven or eight battles that you feel trial and error is a requirement is not fun. There is a way for you to actually increase your stats outside of leveling but the game does a poor job of explaining it. Your characters start with a movement of three and four, so getting around the battlefield is a slog compared to the minimum of five on the original game. That is another issue that this game does a poor job explaining, and that of course is the ability for you to craft items.

So when I first played the game, I did not realize you could buy crafting sheets in consumables. There is a tab that's a small piece of paper, but I did not know this was this, infact, I did not find out you purchased crafting sheets until chapter four because I scrolled down past this exeraggerated number of 100 consumables, but on the very bottom of this menu will you find the crafting sheets. Without the ability to do this in chapter three I really have no idea how the game is balanced in that instance, maybe with the ability to do this then balance would have been better at those few absurdly difficult battles, but for the very last one, no, not at all. Crafting these items is a necessity to making a better experience and this game hides it away, out of the way and easy to miss.

At its core, Tactics Ogre Reborn is a fantastic game and should a flawless gem, but Square Enix decided to throw that flawless gem in the mud and that's what we're left with. A near flawless game with some major issues, although one of these issues you can get around if you are already aware that they hide it away, so there's that. If you ever play the game go purchase the crafting sheets asap, you don't even need the items to craft. Almost all of them are found in the shop. This allows you to increase all character movement by 1 and to increase all weapon attack power by 20 and then another 20 attack with the +1 accessory.

[Tron 2.0]

I'm still playing shining force-cd on the sega genesis mini II.I finished book one recently shesh when you fight woldol final form it's a very cheap fight.It's so snk boss syndrome since woldol,demonbreath drains a good deal of hp.I had to use cray boost spell to up my party defense to win the fight.Now book one is finally cleared i started to play book two of shining force-cd.

[Aussie2B]

I think I'm up to the final boss fight in Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure on PSP, but I've been holding off on tackling that while I complete some optional stuff. This is another game where online estimates for completion times are completely unreliable. Sometimes I check sites like HowLongToBeat, usually to pick out shorter games to play, and it helps for getting an idea of what games are crazy long (like, say, Dragon Quest VII) compared to those that are more reasonable, but outside of relative terms, I can't trust people's estimates much, especially when most people want to brag about how quick they can beat a game. Anyway, I have over 19 hours on the clock in Gurumin, with plenty left to do. Granted, my time isn't accurate to my playing because there were many times where I had to set the PSP down for a bit and the clock kept going, but the "completionist" time on HowLongToBeat is 17-some hours, which is total nonsense because I know to get everything in the game, you have to play through the whole game at least four times (on different difficulties). I'm not even gonna concern myself with that. If I want to replay the game down the road, then, yeah, I'll do New Game+ on a different difficulty (currently doing Normal). I'm just gonna try to do all I can with one single file. I still have some optional stages to do (optional if you don't care about getting the good ending, at least), and I'm working on getting Master ratings on all the stages I have done. I have more headgear to collect, and while most of the outfits would be unlocked via replays, I know I can get at least a couple with this file. I know I can get more pictures for the album too. And there's the whole optional quest to collect platinum medals for a drill upgrade. I've got 3 of the 11.

[YoshiM]

I got midway through World 5 on "Super Mario 3D Land" but then my week got hectic, so my breaks were non-existent. While the game is cute and I'm happy that so far I don't need to be Racoon Mario in order to obtain the big coins (a BIG point of contention in "Super Mario 3D World" where you HAD to wear the Cat suit in order to get some coins), the game wore thin for me. Not that it was hard (though I did drop a few lives trying to get a big coin due to me not getting the perception of heights of some platforms right) it's just getting old. I had the similar feeling with "3D World", giving me a feeling I'm getting "Mario'd out" in a platformer sense. I had fun with "Super Mario Odyssey", so maybe it's this 3D mixed with old-school "world/level" perspective?

I got to finally sit and play some "Boomerang Fu" on the Switch. It's a top-down arena style food-based combat game where you select a food (carrot, mug of coffee, ice cream bar, slice of watermelon, etc.), deck them out in unlockable add-ons (glasses, antlers, a fork, chef's hat, etc.) and then duke it out in different environments by hitting or throwing your boomerang at your friends, bots or both. We played the Team mode which allowed team members to resurrect their fallen comrades by standing over their bottom-half remains until a meter fills. Random power ups appear that can make your boomerang start fires, cover things in ice, split into mutliple pieces, be controlled by telekinesis, and more. Other power include warping through walls, teleporting to where your boomerang is, creating decoys (a bot version of you splits off), using camouflage (standing still turns you into an appropriate background object), etc. Sometimes you can pick up another boomerang to use that against your enemies.

The first go rounds it didn't quite click with me but the more I played, the more I got into it. Not as much as my kids, who were whooping and hollering. In games like this (and Smash) I sometimes have problems processing all the things that are going on at once. Sometimes I lose myself as I'm trying to get a handle on all the player movements while trying to stay on the move so I don't get clobbered. Other times I'll focus on my guy but then get ambushed. I got better but I have to really practice at it more. I do more assists than being a food Rambo like the youngest of my twins. She can barrel through that game unscathed.

[Aussie2B]

I'm still picking away at the optional stuff in Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure on PSP, but I should be done pretty soon, I think. I got all the platinum medals and the drill upgrade for doing so, all the headgear, the couple alternate outfits accessible at this point, Master ratings for every stage and mini-game, and all but two photos. I'm not sure if those last two photos are even accessible in an initial playthrough, so all I really have left is the optional boss and the final boss. I mean, I could theoretically grind for Junk to upgrade my headgear levels, but Junk and those levels carry over from one playthrough to the next, so it would make more sense to leave that for potential future replays. It kinda sucks that so much is locked behind replaying on all the different difficulty levels, especially when I think not much changes besides the damage received, but it is what it is.

[Tron 2.0]

I'm still playing shining force-cd on the sega genesis mini II.I finished book one recently shesh when you fight woldol final form it's a very cheap fight.It's so snk boss syndrome since woldol,demonbreath drains a good deal of hp.I had to use cray boost spell to up my party defense to win the fight.Now book one is finally cleared i started to play book two of shining force-cd.
At the end of book II but damn it's final boss iom has a ton of hp and deals allot of damage.

[YoshiM]

I finally broke down and got an HDMI to analog audio extractor, so I can hook a mini system up to my workbench monitor at work during a lunch break. On today's menu I brought my Genesis Mini 2 and figured I'd try some games I never really played before or played very little back in the day.

First up: "Golden Axe 2". I played the crap out of the original but never, for whatever reason, played any of the sequels. Ho-hum reviews? I can't find an EGM with a quick Google, so I can't be sure. I never even RENTED it. I think I tried it on past emulators or maybe even Sega's Genesis collection on PS3 but it was only a passing glance. Now I know why. It's Golden Axe 1.5. Graphics are changed, a new magic mechanic is in place but the sound effects suck as do some of the animations. I took my man Gilius up to the gates of the Castle before my continues were used up on Normal mode. To me it practically felt like a rip off of the original. While the original still has a place in my gaming heart as it felt like I was playing an arcade game, the gameplay for both just feels monotonous now.

Next I tried "Sonic CD". I owned this back in the day but could never sit down to really play it. Now with the ability to save any time, I figured, "why not?" It's frickin' visual chaos. It's a good looking platformer but right off the bat it's hard to tell what's "background" (like little animals flitting about) and what's a mechanical wielder of death (as some of the robots LOOK like the little animals flitting about). As the latter games seemed to push more about speed, I found myself careening the Blue Blur into more bad guys than I'd like. I did rocket myself into the past on the first world but I didn't time shift else where through the rest of the level. I fought Robotnik in his punchy walking machine with the spikey Gene Simmon robo-boots and got the shaft as I touched the BACK of his boot coming down from an attack and still spinning. Ended the stage with only 4 rings to my name. I have my game saved at the next level, so we'll see what the future brings this week.

Over the weekend I got in a little "Portal 2" time and got down to the old Aperture Labs circa 50's area where you start hearing the quips of Cave Johnson. I'm currently stuck in this area where there are inaccessible doors going to a place where Cave wants to "throw science to the wall and see what sticks", another door where if I would go to the bathroom "it might come out blue" (or something like that) and then a third door that announces that, if I bleed, it's actually gasoline and I should stay away from open flames. I have to investigate more to see where I can all go as the place is in shambles.

[Tron 2.0]

Completed book 2 of shining force-cd finally i did some leveling for the other party members.I got,slade up to level 15 then i use his boost spell for defense while using the other characters for range attacks and one to attack iom directly.In the end it worked still i hate that boss fight iom was to op.Now that book 2 is done that will open up book three the last chapter of the game.

[Aussie2B]

After finishing up Gurumin, I've been slow to start up something new, as I've been doing a fair bit of reading lately too (just for fun, I mean, not my reading for work), but I figured I'd finally tackle Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake after beating the MSX version of the first Metal Gear a few years ago, which was my first experience with the series period. Like with the prior game, I'm playing via the Vita's Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. Metal Gear 2 was royally kicking my butt with the first couple areas. I don't know if it's just been too long since I played the original and I lost my groove with this series, or if the differences are really throwing me off (like the guards having greater range of vision), or if I still just don't have enough experience with this genre as a whole. But yeah, it took several attempts just to get inside the building, since getting spotted was basically an instant death sentence, and then it took several attempts to get anywhere on the first floor. But once I reached the elevators, things started picking up. I've gathered the first key card and a few other items, so now I'm just exploring the building to see what I can find and do. I mapped out the first game and initially thought maybe it wasn't worth doing for this game, given the in-game map, but I decided to map this one too in order to keep track of what doors I have and haven't been able to pass through, along with item locations (especially for consumable stuff like ammo and rations).

[Tron 2.0]

Sega Genesis Mini II
Shining Force II

Finished book three of shining force-cd weeks ago so it's main story is complete.So now i'm playing shining force II on the mini II.

[YoshiM]

I dabbled with "Ranger X" on the Sega Genesis Mini II. I never played this originally and while the presentation is neat, I'm not overly fond of the game play. I got to the second level and just didn't feel compelled to keep going. I played a little "Populous" afterwards and got my little group of followers to start expanding before I had to save and stop for the day.

I switched back to the, ahem, Switch to continue with "Portal 2". I got through the Aperature Innovations sections and am now going through Wheatley's tests. Some parts in the game is where mouse aiming would have been really helpful but I got through it. I had a few "duh" moments but through death reloading I was able to figure most of things out without help.

I then played "put the big Switch and my DS/GB stuff away as the kids don't take care of the stuff". My regular Switch was set on the floor by the bed to charge which almost made me blow my stack. Granted the house is a hoarder's paradise with piles of things here and there but they could have at least put it securely in the clothes basket NEXT to the bed. If I didn't have my flashlight on when getting ready for bed (I didn't want to wake my son or my wife with the big light), I might have stepped on the thing. So that's off limits for all. I did allow the eldest twin to play on my Lite as a few of us invaded her and her sister's room for D&D as a "rental fee", which I had to explain to one of my sons who pointed out my supposed hypocrisy. The DS bin didn't have its lid, had toys stacked on top of the messed pile of games and I found crayons and Legos mixed with the cartridges. So that was fun clearing that.

[Tron 2.0]

I dabbled with "Ranger X" on the Sega Genesis Mini II. I never played this originally and while the presentation is neat, I'm not overly fond of the game play. I got to the second level and just didn't feel compelled to keep going. I played a little "Populous" afterwards and got my little group of followers to start expanding before I had to save and stop for the day.

I switched back to the, ahem, Switch to continue with "Portal 2". I got through the Aperature Innovations sections and am now going through Wheatley's tests. Some parts in the game is where mouse aiming would have been really helpful but I got through it. I had a few "duh" moments but through death reloading I was able to figure most of things out without help.

I then played "put the big Switch and my DS/GB stuff away as the kids don't take care of the stuff". My regular Switch was set on the floor by the bed to charge which almost made me blow my stack. Granted the house is a hoarder's paradise with piles of things here and there but they could have at least put it securely in the clothes basket NEXT to the bed. If I didn't have my flashlight on when getting ready for bed (I didn't want to wake my son or my wife with the big light), I might have stepped on the thing. So that's off limits for all. I did allow the eldest twin to play on my Lite as a few of us invaded her and her sister's room for D&D as a "rental fee", which I had to explain to one of my sons who pointed out my supposed hypocrisy. The DS bin didn't have its lid, had toys stacked on top of the messed pile of games and I found crayons and Legos mixed with the cartridges. So that was fun clearing that.
Ranger X learning curve are the controls once you master it,it's not that hard to complete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qTywEhUcHc

[YoshiM]

Ranger X learning curve are the controls once you master it,it's not that hard to complete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qTywEhUcHc

Wow! This is where it would be nice if the manual was built in the Genesis Minis. I had no idea the special weapons were solar powered! I'll probably give this another shot.

As mentioned in the "Beaten in 2023" thread, I beat Portal 2. I played some during a late lunch yesterday and then polished it off when most of folks at home were in bed. I had one issue at the very end about how to reach something but, like the rest of the puzzles, I was able to look more at the environment and figure out what I needed to do. My youngest twin was eying me as I looked at my phone to see what I was missing (which typically is just a spot I didn't think about when surveying the room to put a portal and without reading further, I figured out the rest while feeling stupid that it didn't "click") as she loves to pick on me for "cheating". Though she will ask her elder siblings on how to do something in a game which she doesn't consider cheating (my house is filled with double standards). Thankfully I didn't find what I was looking for but the solution popped in my brain and I could take care of bid-ness.

With the quasi modern out of the way, I think I'll revisit the classics for a while through my minis. It's too bad the NES Classic has the worst perceivable lag out of the bunch as I wouldn't mind playing through some of those NES games. It grates on me. From doing a quick read it looks to be Nintendo's emulation is the culprit. When I get it back from my Mom I'll have to redo Hackchi so everything loads from Retroarch.

I just gotta decide if I want to start with a Nintendo system, Genesis or the Turbo.

[YoshiM]

Double dose of gaming in a short time! Woah, Bessie!

I brought my SNES Mini to work in hopes to play it on lunch but never got a chance to. I plugged it in today and played some "Street Fighter II Turbo". It's weird using the SNES controller but I got along as the bog-standard Ryo....until I had to fight myself. Then I tried some "Earthbound". Eh, not quite my speed right now.

Tonight I got to play some Roblox with my daughters and got in some "Tornado Alley" time before I had to make dinner. I was really impressed by the upgrades the developers did. Using a controller was a dream in this game and the rumble worked as well! I had a lot of fun with it.

After all that I fired up the laptop again and started to play with my (Lo) Wang in "Shadow Warrior 2" again. This time the game flowed. I got the elements for the Master to mix a potion up for the woman that's in Wang's head, fought a drug chemist called The Chef (who REALLY dug into his own stash that looked like a bloated Demi-Gorgon from "Stranger Things"). Then I finished off my gaming night discovering there's upgrades you can do to the weapons and Wang himself.

As it's game night all over the house and my kids are dispersed and the wife and eldest are watching some British murder show, I sat on the floor in the bedroom to go-ninja-go-ninja-go. I can't feel my tuckus anymore so I'm done.

[Aussie2B]

I think I've gotten into a decent groove with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake via the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection via my Vita. I've been making slow but steady progress. I've made it from the Zanzibar Building to the Tower Building and got the fourth key card. My next task is to find a carrier pigeon. I know there's a boss fight on the 30th floor of the Tower Building, so I don't know if I have to clear that first or what. But Kasler said I needed grenades for the fight, so I've backtracked all over to see what I could access with the fourth key card and managed to find grenades, among other things. I've beaten three bosses so far, and the first was pretty simple, but the next two were pains. I lost a few times to the Running Man just by blowing myself up with mines, haha, and I think I understand why the swamp is so notorious and hated in this game (with having to pass it after every failed attempt to beat the Running Man). And the Hind D helicopter...ugh. Controlling the Stinger missiles suuuuuucks, at least when you have to quickly take cover in between shots. So I'm a little apprehensive about the next boss fight. But I'm enjoying myself overall, and I actually find myself looking forward to the prospect of playing Metal Gear Solid someday. It wasn't really part of my plan. I just figured I'd play the 2D games. I'm not really one for big, AAA-type games, especially when they're gritty and macho, for lack a better way to describe what I mean, haha, but I have a big soft spot for 5th gen gaming, so I think I'd be down for the first Metal Gear Solid. After that, who knows. I can't really see myself playing something like, say, MGS5, but I guess never say never. In fact, just the other day, I ordered myself a copy of Metal Gear Solid for PS1, which, despite my decent sized PS1 collection, I surprisingly haven't had all these years. I do have Twin Snakes for GameCube, but I'm more inclined to play the original version. I wish I got it many years ago when it was a <$10 game CIB, but oh well. If I had a PS3, I could get it on PSN and even transfer it over to my Vita, but I skipped that system and still don't have one.

[YoshiM]

I got my Xbox 360e all set up with the Kinect and I downloaded pretty much all my old XBLA games. I got in some time with "Epic Dungeon", "Tron: Deadly Discs", "Afterburner: Climax" and "Dust: an Elysian Tale". Saturday night I was asked if I wanted to play some "Castle Crashers" on the Switch and with a full crew of myself, one of my twins, my son and his slightly older brother, we beat that sucker! My twin step-daughter always got to kiss the princesses but this time I got to get the last one. It was.....an amusing situation when her veil came up.

Sunday I got to try out the freebie Kinect and it worked! I went through "Kinect Party" with my son and then more of my kids. They had a blast with it! I also got to play some "Fruit Ninja" but couldn't get the system to go into local multiplayer. Later on that night I made my Switch Lite the "main" console again (I had to transfer the rights to my big Switch so we could get everyone's "Castle Crashers" characters) and spent a little time with "Skyrim". Nothing major there-just made the opening trek to Whiterun.

That was a LOT of gaming for me. This coming weekend I'll have my daughter so we'll get to play (hopefully) some "Kinect Party" like we used to when she was younger. I'm also hoping to play some "Kinect Adventures" (or whatever it was called), which I picked up complete from a thrift store on Saturday.

[Aussie2B]

I'm guessing I'm at least somewhat near the end of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake via the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on Vita. I've got the ninth key card now, or at least I did, until I replaced 7-9 with the green master key card. The master key cards came from rooms all next to each other, and there aren't any more I've yet to get into, so I think that's it for the key cards. I got myself psyched out with the bosses for nothing. All of the bosses past the Hind D have been easy enough. The game has also become more straightforward. There're no sections of any of the past areas that I have yet to enter period, actually, but I did have to backtrack all the way to the fourth floor of the first building to enter the freezer, which was rather tiresome. Some of the puzzle-type aspects have gotten slightly trickier. I can see why people often get stuck on the hang glider part.

[Tron 2.0]

Since i finished shining force II recently i got out the first genesis mini again and started to play the first shining force game.

[YoshiM]

I recently picked up "Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes" for the Original Xbox again and I got a couple of my D&D playing children to join me. I forgot how much this game was an advanced version of "Gauntlet" and honestly seems to play better to "Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows". Or at least that's what my memory tells me-I remember getting "G:SS" when it came out and felt it sucked. I can't remember why-my group didn't play it long back then before it went back to the rental store. They had a blast and so did I. It's been probably getting close to a couple decades since I played this game last with my ex. It was like playing a brand new game as I don't remember jack.

After "game time" I brought the Xbox downstairs to back up some games to the hard drive. I got to play some "Black" as one of my step sons is a big FPS fan. I only ever played the demo of this game (thanks Official Xbox Magazine) so playing it for realsies was pretty cool. Game handled well and I wanted to keep going but I had to set the clocks ahead for Daylight Savings time and I didn't want to stay up too late.

[Aussie2B]

As I wrote in the other topic, I beat Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake via the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on my Vita. I had 12 hours on the clock (though, like usual, who knows how much of that is idle time while I ran off to do something), and my rank was Elephant. Considering my 300+ kills and 150+ alerts, I guess I was about as quiet and stealthy as an elephant, haha.

I also listed off beating a couple of the games on TwinBee Portable on PSP, but the real reason I'm playing that again is because I'm finally giving a serious go at the original arcade TwinBee. The TwinBee series has been my favorite shmup series since the early '00s, when I discovered Stinger and then subsequently bought all the other games in the series, spin-offs included. I beat most of them for the first time many years ago, but I always avoided the first game. It just felt too archaic and unappealing to me, even compared to Stinger and TwinBee 3, despite neither being that impressive on a technical level (especially with TwinBee 3 being a 1989 release, you can tell Konami wasn't putting a ton of effort into it, but it's still fun). I know the first TwinBee isn't a game you can truly beat, in that it just keeps looping, but I've never cleared even the first loop (not sure if I ever bothered getting further than the first stage or two), which makes it the only shmup in the series where I haven't cleared all the stages. (Including spin-offs, I also have never beaten the platformer or RPG either.) But forcing myself to give it a real shot, I've discovered that it's more fun than it initially seemed, and it also has more of the stuff that appeared in later entries than I expected (like the baseball power-up). So in addition to having fun, I feel like I'm more properly understanding the history and evolution of the series. I made it all the way to the boss of Stage 5, which is the "final" boss, but I choked there and instantly lost all my lives. Unlike later games, where you can grab the ghost of your ship after losing a life to regain your power-ups, you're totally screwed if you die here and may as well start all over. You can't even brute force your way through with pumping in credits because you have to start over upon losing a credit, which I guess is smart because it would've been scummy of Konami to let you resume where you left off if you'd just immediately lose all those lives. The key thing here seems to be getting the shield ASAP, and if you lose it, you better pray you can quickly get another. If you get the options, you no longer can acquire the shield (and vice versa), so they're not worth getting at all. I just try to increase my speed and get the double shot and barrier, then wait until I can pick up the triple shot and baseball from ground enemies. Then I can deal with the swarms of enemies pretty decently. I've never been great at shmups, so maybe clearing one loop would be nothing for others, but it's a decent enough challenge for me, especially for late-night playing when my reflexes aren't exactly in top form.

[kupomogli]

DBZ Kakarot is straight garbage. Open world ruining games again and again. It does faithfully follow the anime and the cutscenes are good but playing the game is just not fun in the least.

The only good thing about the game is something I've found out that's only in the game as a patch. Dragon Ball Card Warriors. If you don't install the patch the card game does not exist, once you install the patch it adds a card game that has hundreds of cards and 50 different battles that get progressively more difficult. It disappoints me because this card game is absolutely amazing. Despite the simplicity it has a massive amount of depth.

Dragon Ball Card Warriors doesn't exist in any form and is apparently the original DBZ card game with a lot more cards(There's a lot more than 296 cards in game, but the game also has images of the 296 mint condition versions of the actual cards provided you have the in game version.) So how the game plays is that you have an energy bar, a bank, and four colored tokens. You start with one energy and if you're the second player you start with one energy and two points in your bank as an extra card. As each turn passes, you have an additional energy to use and each energy you do not use goes into the bank. The bank can be broken to pull out the energy sitting there but it can't be used again unless you use a card to unbreak it. Then additionally the four different colored tokens are based on each of your cards. Whenever a card is destroyed and moves to the graveyard, you'll gain a color token based on the card, these aren't required for anything but card abilities that can activate whenever you place the card on the field, extra damage, extra stats, different status effects attached to the cards, etc, otherwise the cards are placed on the fields without these effects.

Any card that has an effect that doesn't require a token has worse stats than a card that has no effects. However, that means it's a card that has no mechanics. Doesn't mean it's worse, but having a worse card that can do other things can be better. Additionally, cards that are a higher level aren't drastically more powerful. Level 2 cards are barely more powerful than a level 1 card and so on. So technically, you could use a lot of low level cards and you'd have a really powerful deck, however there are some cards that can completely wipe all low level cards from the field.

There are a lot of effects though like cards that give you extra energy when you use them, cards that increase your energy level, cards that unbreak your bank, recovery cards, guard cards, invincibility cards. Like if you get a 18 card that is invincible when 17 is on the field and somehow add guard to that card, the only way for the enemy to do anything from that point on is to have piercing or something that can destroy the 17 card otherwise the 18 card will be invincible and you can't attack anything but that card. If that card gets rush as well and enough attack power, it could then keep attacking as long as it keeps destroying cards.

You can create a deck by using a lot of different cards, but many of the deck builds are going to be card types. Saiyans, androids, Frieza army, Ginyu Force, Goku/Frieza, Goku/Buu, etc. There are builds you can make by using one card that happens to pull out multiple weak cards and you can then buff up these cards with field wide items, etc. It's honestly one of the best games I've played in the last few years and it's not even on disc. Incredibly disappointing :(.

[Aussie2B]

Clearing the first loop of the original arcade TwinBee via TwinBee Portable on my PSP still evades me. I've yet to even get to the last boss again, though I have made it to Stage 5 a number of times. I just keep losing my barrier at the worst time. I either can't make any recovery, or sometimes I'll get so far as to having a red bell appear, only to get hit a tiny fraction of a second before I can grab it. It's tough because the power-up bells immediately cycle back to a regular bell with one additional shot, so you basically have to stop shooting until you can grab the bell you want, giving enemies an opportunity to swarm the screen and fire off shots everywhere. That said, I think my late-night playing is really holding me back. I don't think it's a coincidence that the one time I got up to the boss of Stage 5 I happened to get a chance to play in the middle of the day, when I wasn't as tired.

Anyway, I use the other games on the collection as a way to take a break from the first game (especially since they have charging shots and/or auto-fire, so I'm not button mashing like in the original). So in addition to TwinBee Da! and Detana! TwinBee, I ran through TwinBee Yahho! As nice as it is, I still have never played this one that much, probably because the home console versions are just the arcade version with free play, and I've never been the type to set arbitrary restrictions on myself like trying to get a 1CC. So I use however many credits it takes me, and it's quickly over. But playing the first TwinBee got me reflecting more on how Yahho! came out 10 years later. I know they made a to-do of it being the 10th anniversary game (and it ended up being the last proper TwinBee shmup), but it's really remarkable seeing how far the series came in only 10 years. I mean, if you showed me a game from 2023 and a similar game from 2013, I don't know if I would even notice a huge difference. Technology is still improving of course, but it's not nearly as drastic as it used to be.

[Aussie2B]

I had posted that I cleared the first loop (aka Stage 1 through 5) in the original arcade TwinBee via TwinBee Portable on PSP, but what I did specifically was make it partway through Stage 7. The harder loop isn't just the exact same enemy patterns and groupings but faster and with more bullets, like in some games. Rather, they throw at you a new mix of all the previous enemies, plus a handful of new ones, so I wanted to see how far I could get just to check out what differences I could see. That, and I wanted to see how high I could get my score. I just fell short of 1 million, but that was nearly double my previous high. Not that I was making any huge effort to boost my score. I just wanted to get past the fifth boss, but I did grab and chain yellow bells whenever I could (if only to get them out of the way). It seems like Stage 6 mostly exists to get your ship powered up again after Stage 5. The regular enemies didn't put up much of a fight. But the hard loop version of the first boss, Onion Head...oof. It's like a bullet hell shmup. I don't know how it'd even be possible to dodge the endless waves of bullets. But I got to it with a barrier, so I managed to survive long enough to beat it. But at that point, I had already died and was a sitting duck with no power-ups. I was waiting and waiting for Stage 7 to give me some bells, but there was just nothing. Barely any clouds and what did pass by seemed to be empty. So I eventually lost my remaining lives and couldn't make it to the boss of Stage 7.

Moving on, I decided to start up Brain Lord on Super Nintendo. I had been wanting to play it for a while, but I was waiting for a good time. I didn't want to play it right after another overhead 2D adventure game, so I wanted to give some space from my playthroughs of Illusion of Gaia and Metal Gear 2. Speaking of the former, that was the only home console game I actually played on a home console last year, so maybe this year I could at least do two, haha. I mean, I play plenty of home console games on handhelds, thanks to ports and such, but sometimes it's nice to sit down at a TV, even if it's not as convenient for me. Anyway, I haven't even left the first town in Brain Lord, but I'm liking it so far. As shallow as it sounds, I was always turned off by the ugly protagonist sprite. He reminds me of the hero in Virtual Hydlide, haha. But the rest of the game looks pretty nice, and the script has more personality than I expected. I really like the music too. My husband is a fan of the game and has beaten it at least once, so I watched him play it some many, many years ago, but I think it'll be nice to finally give it a go myself.

[fpbrush]

Moving on, I decided to start up Brain Lord on Super Nintendo. I had been wanting to play it for a while, but I was waiting for a good time. I didn't want to play it right after another overhead 2D adventure game, so I wanted to give some space from my playthroughs of Illusion of Gaia and Metal Gear 2. Speaking of the former, that was the only home console game I actually played on a home console last year, so maybe this year I could at least do two, haha. I mean, I play plenty of home console games on handhelds, thanks to ports and such, but sometimes it's nice to sit down at a TV, even if it's not as convenient for me. Anyway, I haven't even left the first town in Brain Lord, but I'm liking it so far. As shallow as it sounds, I was always turned off by the ugly protagonist sprite. He reminds me of the hero in Virtual Hydlide, haha. But the rest of the game looks pretty nice, and the script has more personality than I expected. I really like the music too. My husband is a fan of the game and has beaten it at least once, so I watched him play it some many, many years ago, but I think it'll be nice to finally give it a go myself.

Those do look similar. Virtual Hydlide looks like he could beat up Brain Lord, though.

[Aussie2B]

Haha, yeah, it takes a tough guy to pull off that fairy armor.

I'm slowly chipping away at Brain Lord on Super Nintendo. Not slowly because the action or puzzles are so challenging but just because I haven't had much time for gaming. I guess I'll see later on if it actually lives up to its title and gives my brain a workout. With Boxxle under my belt, the puzzles where I have to push objects onto switches are child's play for me so far. I'm only up to the second dungeon, the Site of Civilization, which is also referred to as the Ancient Ruins sometimes, but it seems like there's only a handful of dungeons total anyway. I did temporarily get stuck on the puzzle where you have to guess the third number in a sequence that starts with 12 and 52. Seems like a no-brainer now, but I was way overthinking it, probably because this game has the usual so-so translation you'd expect from an Enix-published game on Super Nintendo. The clue for the puzzle was worded awkwardly and had me going down a totally different direction.

[kupomogli]

So I have both Strange Journey and Strange Journey Redux. Haven't played either of them. Started Redux because it's on the 3DS. I absolutely love the 3D effect. So I'm playing, the game starts up and there's no 3D visible, no 3D during the story scenes, I'm like, maybe when I get to the dungeons which this is not a port, they completely remade the dungeon visuals. No 3D there either. No 3D in the entire game which really disappoints me as the first person dungeon crawler are perfect for the this and the fact that SMT4, SMT4 Apocalypse, and Persona Q have some of the most beautiful 3D with just tons of depth. Like jaw dropping.

Anyways, as for the game itself I did look at comparisons of what the original and the remake does, so the remake adds these commander skills. I am not acquiring any commander skills nor am I acquiring the passive skill that if the MC dies you don't automatically lose. I'd rather keep it close to the original as possible. It does add some quality of life features so if I'm done playing inside a dungeon I can at the very least save in the dungeon. However, I have only been saving in the terminals or at base otherwise. I didn't even save in the dungeon when I accidentally played too long after the flashing light of doom and my 3DS power cut off on me, losing an hour worth of progress.

The story is good and it has voice acting which is great.... it's just in Japanese. The quality of the voice work despite the language is excellent, so that's a plus, but I would really have preferred English voice acting. It's just Sega being cheap yet again because both this and Persona Q2 had voice acting and both of them were Japanese only, where all other games including Persona Q had voice acting in English. Voice work costs money but it's next to nothing compared to the game development costs. It's just a way to cut costs and why is it that they add voice acting for the Japanese fans but then feel they need to bend the western fans over like we don't matter.

That being said, SMT Strange Journey probably has the best gameplay in the series. It's a mix of both classic style SMT with modern mechanics infused much like the addition of the Press Turn System. In SMT Strange Journey, each of your demons is preset like the older games and whenever you level them up they don't earn extra skills, what you see is what you get. The demon will sometimes ask if it can change a skill and on the original Strange Journey you didn't know what you were going to have the skill change into. I do think this is a great addition to Redux because 90% of the time I've been denying the skill change because usually there's no benefit to doing so, more often than not changing skills just seems bad. Additionally I think another change from Redux is that one or two skills will carry over to the new demon during fusion, I don't think this existed in the previous game. However, one thing that did exist in the prior game is that when you max the knowledge you have towards a demon they'll give you their source. Their source will have a few skills that you can use during demon fusion to carry those over to the new demon.

I like this new change because unlike SMT Nocturne and every other modern SMT, all of your demons will pretty much all have mostly the same skills where the demons here will keep a lot of what makes them unique to others and not just their HP/MP/Stats/Resistances.

The other thing I really like about this game is that again, it's like the classic style with the modern enhancements. One thing I've gotten tired of with the press turn system is that when you have a couple overpowered demons in the situation or you have four great demons but in the current situation two aren't as good as the others, you just pass the turn and end up taking five turns with your powerful demons and the demons who won't deal as much in this battle or situation you'll just skip their turn. Or how you might only have two demons with buff skills and you use the advantage of passing turns and you can pretty much massively debuff the enemy or buff yourselves in one or two rounds by simply not engaging with your other characters and just passing.

In the classic games and some of the modern games, Persona 4, 5, SMT Strange Journey, etc, you're at the very least required to use each character in combat and you're unable to just give their turn away to another. Now while I don't care at all for Persona 5's bloated storyline, I do prefer the combat more than the press turn system, an amazing system that I've just gotten tired of. In the case of SMT Strange Journey, what happens is that you both need to deal weaknesses and you need to have matching alignments. If you have matching alignments and deal attacks that hit enemy weaknesses all characters with those alignments will then join in a demon co op attack to deal extra damage. Unfortunately this doesn't work with critical hits, so only magic using demon's can benefit from this. Not like it really matters that much as it appears that physical attacks are more powerful than magic attacks, so the magic attacks greatly benefit from this, especially so when you're fighting an enemy strong versus physical and you really need to use magic attacks. Demon co op is essentially a non elemental rush. You can really get the most out of it with low level AoE spells since they cost such low MP.

I honestly don't really know if the questions from the demons in SMT4 mattered, but I do know on SMT Nocturne it didn't, it was just random what happened regardless of the question. On SMT Strange Journey, each demon has a specific personality and several questions. Maybe around four or five that were very specific to this demon. You need to appeal to the demon twice to request something of them and even though you might see multiple demons ask the same quest, depending on their personality the answer will be different. Once you fail multiple times it's easier when you know what the demon is ultimately looking for, but when you first talk to them, you kind of have to think based on their speech or even their look what their personality may be and how best to respond.

The one thing I don't really care for about the game are the dungeons. Now it's not like the dungeons are bad. The problem with the dungeons are that you've got several areas in the dungeon that might be completely separate. They in now way even interconnect to the main dungeon and just lead all around to dead ends. I don't feel like the game itself is grindy, but because of these dungeons, I feel like their is unintential grinding because of their design. Infact, I'm six or seven hours in, fought three bosses so far and I don't think this game has any required grinding in the least. It's amazingly well balanced.

[Aussie2B]

I haven't had the time to make updates, but like I said in the other topic, I've beaten Brain Lord on SNES and Akumajou Special: Boku Dracula-kun on my AV Famicom. Brain Lord never got any tougher than that second dungeon, in my opinion, not in terms of puzzles or in platforming and combat. Even though it's a totally different kind of game, Dracula-kun gave me TwinBee 3 vibes, in that it's a later Famicom/NES release from Konami but clearly was more of a B-tier project for them, not pushing the hardware in any impressive ways like they were with other titles, but still showing off some creative silliness in a simple, fun game. I really love how the first stage of Dracula-kun is basically a chibi-fied tour of the first Castlevania.

Anyway, not sure what I'll sink time into next, but I did briefly try out a Donkey Kong cart I recently bought on my Super Game Boy 2. I've been reading old Nintendo Power issues from around when this came out, and it got me interested in playing it and the subsequent Mario vs. Donkey Kong series that was inspired by it (at least until they turned into Lemmings clones, from what I've heard). The portability of handheld games is a big plus for me, so I've actually barely ever used my US Super Game Boy or Super Game Boy 2, but Donkey Kong takes advantage of the Super Game Boy so nicely that I think it'd be hard to make myself play through it on my SP or what have you.