I finished up Mario Kart: Super Circuit on my Game Boy Advance SP a while ago, getting gold on every cup, which was a little tricky for the last couple cups of the Super Circuit and Extra cups on 150cc. I clocked a time on every track in Time Trial, getting the best time and lap on most but not all. I'm satisfied to leave it there. I didn't get a triple star ranking on any cup, so maybe I'll tackle that someday, but I can tell it would take a huge amount of time, practice, and luck to pull that off on every cup.

Anyway, I finally bought and started up a game I've been wanting to play for a couple years now: Fuga: Melodies of Steel. Its sequel already came out a few months ago (in what is planned to be a trilogy, I think), and normally, I'd be all over a new Little Tail Bronx game as soon as it's out. I mean, I imported Solatorobo as soon as it launched in Japan and then preordered the US release too (good thing, considering its current value). But the first Fuga launched when my daughter was still an infant and still not sleeping through the night. So I wasn't really in any position to tackle anything particularly involved. And with it being digital-only, there was no reason to buy it until I was actually ready to play.

I've only had one session with it so far, so I'm still in the midst of tutorials and trying to figure things out. I'm going into it practically blind, and being a modern game, there's no manual or anything, at least not for the PC version I bought on Steam. I debated which platform to get it for, since I could've gone with PS4 (or Xbox One, but that's not even hooked up), but it was cheaper on Steam due to a sale, and I got the Deluxe version with the digital artbook and soundtrack and such, which I'd rather download to my PC, if possible, versus having to be on my PS4 to use. It's definitely a low-budget game. You can tell this was published by CyberConnect2 directly, instead of having Namco Bandai funding. Tail Concerto and Solatorobo feel like they had bigger budgets, in terms of comparatively to other games of their time and platforms. But I like what I've seen so far. The music is excellent, like usual. I'm not sure if the art is still Nobuteru Yuuki, but it looks nice enough. The cutscenes feel like a visual novel, and the battles are that of an RPG, but it all feels like a unique combination and not quite like anything I've played before. Definitely nothing like Tail Concerto or Solatorobo gameplay-wise, which I'm still a little iffy on. Each Little Tail Bronx game seems to move further into the territory of being an RPG, but I love the platforming action of Tail Concerto. But it's fine. If they intended for all the Little Tail Bronx games to be super similar, they wouldn't give each its own unique title. The fact Fuga is its own series shows it is its own thing within the Little Tail Bronx umbrella, and I'm cool with that as long as it's fun in its own right.