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Man, that Tick Tock Hop! Absolutely nerve wracking, and I wasn't even playing! Can't say the same for the actual board. BowserBasher won through total skill, except for 95% of the time when it was pure luck!

Two great mini games between myself (Mario) and @Dcubed (Wario) just now in our games. Results to come later.

Right, @S.C.G and @BowserBasher, we should be good to go tonight at 8pm.

Yup. And last night neither me nor @S.C.G guessed right.

Don't know what I've played between War Gods or Dark Rift. Can't tell the difference between them! Just know I rented one or both. Bio FREAKS and Fighters Destiny too. None proved worth a buy but they were good for some weekend 2-player fun. I was happy to stick with KI Gold and borrow things like MK Trilogy and MK 4 until Smash Bros came along and immediately cemented itself as the go-to fighting game as the N64 entered its twilight.

Some good racing last night. I like it when the CPU is added to fill things out but it certainly ups the lightning rate. Great to see the winter version of the AC track crop up again—is it weighted in favour of the current season?

New year, new style! I'm hoping to put a slightly new spin to the way I post about titles this year. Make more thematic posts, essentially. In fact, I'm not even going to mention yet which title I finished first this year, that's coming at a later date. So, Sega announced a dozen of franchise revivals last December. That's pretty cool, but one of them bothered me: not because I disliked what I saw, but because it's a franchise that never really crossed my path. I was bothered by my ignorance, and by the fact that I kept putting it off, despite those games being on my backlog. And thus I ventured into a classic series I knew barely anything about. That series is......... ........ Shinobi That's right, I never really played anything about this classic Ninja series, despite it showing up all the time when talking about Sega. So let's start with the first entr- Wait, I don't actually own the first game? Why isn't it on the Mega Drive collection? Oh, it was only on Arcades... and now only available through SEGA AGES? uuuuhhhh... Nevermind, ignore this. Shadow Dancer Weird name. Do I own this? Oh, good, I do, it's on Steam. SO! Apparently the second Shinobi game did not actually have Shinobi in the title! I don't know what Sega was cooking back in 1990, but they were definitely smoking it. Shadow Dancer is billed as a 2D action game in which a Ninja (which may or may not be the same Ninja from the first game) and his good boy doggie go up against a terrorist group that suddenly attacked... the world, I think, while "committing all of the atrocities known to man". I assume that includes eating a Francesinha with your bare hands, so I'm already motivated. I thought this would be a 2D platformer, but the stilted movement and focus on killing enemies made me think this was more like a Beat'em up (or a Shoot'em up, it's a fine line between those genres). It's a fun one, for sure, as progress through each level depends on rescuing every hostage before continuing, which I thought was a neat idea. In some cases, you may need to explore the level a bit to find them all. Combat is fascinating. Your main moves are throwing shurikins (yes, that's the spelling), but that button turns into a context-sensitive sword slash if an enemy is nearby. Mashing the attack button does work for attacking frantically one way or the other. You'll want to do that, because your Ninja dies after a single hit (or so it seems). The other key move you have is siccing your dog at an enemy, which will leave them busy/stunned long enough for you to approach and kill them. If you take too long, the dog will get attacked and shrink back into a pup... as dogs do in those situations, I suppose (I wouldn't know, I'm more of a cat person). The dog can't be sicced while he's a puppy, but he'll grow back into houndhood after you earn a few points. I decided to name the dog "Mario". Mario is very useful for dealing with enemies with guns, as well as invulnerable enemies who only drop their shield for a few seconds. There are tricky situations where making good use of Mario is key to dealing with crowded clusters of enemies. This pondered approach is encouraged, which is pretty neat. There's also the nuclear option: ninjutsu. Once per stage, you can unleash a move that kills every enemy on-screen, but you get fewer points at the end. I did say there were one-hit deaths, but there seems to be an exception: if a rushing enemy runs into you, you just get bumped back a bit. They'll try to attack with knives afterwards, but that initial bump gives you the breath you need to avoid the killing attack. I thought this was a clever way of designing the game, deaths are instant, but there's plenty of leeway for avoiding attacks, with extra tension. And then we reach the 3rd level, and those damn ninja enemies just jump at you with knives, so suddenly it's frustrating again. A shame, because outside of those enemies, I thought it was a cool system. Thankfully, the game is short-but-sweet, with just 5 levels (each with 3 stages). The bosses are all pretty cool too (except for the final boss, which is pretty tedious) Soundtrack isn't that memorable, but there is this one track. The special stage in-between levels feels like the early 90s distilled into a funky Mega Drive beat. It's a fun game, but later levels put a hamper on it. 3 stars from me, which isn't a bad start. Mario is a good boy. The Revenge of Shinobi Yeah, so this is the first entry of the series to be made from the ground up for the Mega Drive. First released in 1989, wait that doesn't sound right, wasn't Shadow Dancer released in 1990?... Or was that the date for the MD port? It wasn't a port? So, Shadow Dancer was an arcade game, and after Revenge, they just decided to redo Shadow Dancer entirely for the Mega Drive with different levels and assets instead of making a new game?.....And named it Shadow Dancer again. The fuck, Sega? Your flights of fancy are ruining the chronology I was going for! Anyway, terrorists invade, they're out for revenge against our Ninja (called Joe Musashi, apparently), they kidnap his girlfriend just to lure him into several levels of danger. The title is misleading, this revenge is being inflicted upon the Shinobi. This game feels like a much smoother experience. Joe here controls a lot better, jumps properly, can double jump even (and if he throws a shurikin* while double jumping, he throws 5 at once in an arc, it's pretty rad). His shurikins are now finite, meaning you can't just spam them without consequence. More importantly, he has a health bar now, he can take a few hits throughout the game. Sadly, no more Mario The ninjutsu command is now a system where you can pick one of four ninjutsu at leisure. The screen-nuke spell is still here, but we now also have a shield ninjutsu (4 hits before it breaks), jump ninjutsu (useful for a couple of stages), and suicide ninjutsu. This last one is an even stronger screen-nuke, with the caveat that you sacrifice your current life. Sounds useless, but since checkpoints are sparse, it's actually a great way to regenerate your health without restarting the level. Plus, since you only get to use one ninjutsu spell per life, the suicide move is the only one to replenish itself! Right off the bat, the first level gives you well placed enemies that attack with projectiles, but can be dealt with good positioning. There are also armoured Samurai that deflect projectiles except for a few moments at a time, you have to goad them into attacking so you can dodge and hit them back. It's pretty cool stuff, having several situations that call for caution and skill. It's also a very varied game, with each level bringing a new idea, and nary a sprite recolour in sight. Fantastic bosses, too, especially the incredibly tense final boss, where you need to defeat the bloke before he kills Joe's girlfriend. But, uh... They're all copyrighted by someone else. Not unexpectedly, I mean, they literally put Godzilla as a boss in the game... and also Spider-Man... and also Batman... and also Rambo... and also Arnold-Schwarzenegger-who-turns-into-the-Hulk... Shit, even the eyes at the title screen were done in the likeness of an actor without his permission. The more recent releases replace most of these characters with copyright-friendly substitutes, and even then, they didn't catch them all Man, Sega was brazen. Unusual for the time, our main composer Yuzo Koshiro gets top billing. Deservedly so, as the music is terrific. Favourites include the first stage, boss music, and Chinatown. It's a charming game, but there are significant flaws: that double jump has finicky timing, which is pretty bad for how many times it is needed to proceed. There are a couple of nigh-impossible jumps too, which is pretty bad design (lose a life, or use the jump-jutsu, pick your poison). Furthermore, some levels are just unreasonably hard, like the subway and highway levels requiring you to dodge things all the time, or the military base that feels like a bullet hell, or the worst one, the utterly dull labyrinth. Level gimmicks are all well and good, but these gimmicks kinda stank. All of these frustrating aspects are pretty serious, and hamper the game a lot, especially since they're derived from legitimate gameplay and level design issues. The main proof is that I started to brazenly use the rewind feature because I felt like the game was getting super unfair. And after beating it, I have no desire to try the higher difficulties. I liked the game enough, and it's pretty strong in other areas, but it's hard to ignore the problems. Sadly, they're enough to bring the game down to 3 stars. *They keep calling them shurikins, but they're clearly kunai. Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master Sega, for eff's sake, this is the fourth game in the franchise, and the first to be numbered. Why can't you be normal?! Wow, this is a glow up. The Shinobi team was inspired when they made this one. So, in yet another tale of terrorists invading the world, our boy Joe Musashi looks and feels better than ever. He can now run (!), block projectiles at will (!!), wall-jump and dive-kick (!!!), and even ride horses and surfboards (!). The ninjutsu and finite shurikins are the same (though we now have the option of storing two or more ninjutsu at once), everything feels like a strict improvement. Everything feels faster, easier to control, level gimmicks are more fun overall, level design is much better across the board... This is a very fine game! The music isn't as good as Koshiro's, but it is pretty fitting and energetic. The opening theme sets the tone. This is also an easier game than Revenge. Not just because it's less frustrating, the enemies are genuinely easier to defeat and deal with. This is not a bad thing per se, I thought the game's difficulty felt right, even while the final levels ramped it up. Ended up replaying the whole game on the highest difficulty, it's that fun. Honestly, after the previous games, I didn't expect this one to be as good as it was. 5 stars, easy decision. (On a side note, I noticed is that I now reach for the rewind button as soon as I feel like a jump didn't come out like I meant it to. I think I'm gaining bad habits. I tried to avoid doing this on my second playthrough, and yet my fingers would still do it at times...) ------------- And as for the original Shinobi... from what I see, it's basically Shadow Dancer without the dog, so I'll pass on the AGES version, even though I'm sure it's great. For the series as a whole, I really liked learning about it! Didn't expect to see as much charm as I did, and I certainly appreciate the ways it approaches combat (I swear, that suicide ninjutsu is brilliant stuff). When I look at what Lizard Cube are doing with the new entry, I now can't help but grow excited at the revival.

Thanks for the games. Here's a link to this week's stream... - - - - - N-Europe Get Together! 01/02/2024)

Complaining on the internet works! My first game of Feb is complete.

I was never bothered about the 3D effect on the 3DS and so that display would do nothing for me. I played through it (100%) last year and I was honestly disappointed by it. A lot of the stages just seem to be big for the sake of being big. The more open areas weren't half as fun as the finely crafted ones seen in Pikmin 3. It had a lot of content but a lot of it felt repetitive and unnecessary. Par the course for a lot of games in the industry these days. For me, this is still one of the best Switch games that has been released. Gorgeous visuals and amazing level design made for a fantastic experience.

I'm sat watching the Switch E3 2019 Direct and a Silksong trailer pops up with Coming Soon attached to it.

Looks like there's still a few surprise Spirits yet to come!

Carl Weathers died 😟