Glen-i

Not tried the demo yet, but going by the format of the GBA game, I'm guessing this "selection" of levels specifically chooses these ones to better showcase the game for demo purposes. In the actual game, you'll just play the levels in order. EDIT: OK, now I've tried it. Feels just like the original, which is great! They got that spot on! Although they competely got rid of the score, which I'm not keen on. The longevity of the game was helped by trying to beat the high scores on each level, now you're just judged on whether you get the presents. That's lame. Music's great! The limited remixes I've heard so far are very jazzy and nice. I do wonder if the TV announcer in the intro (It's weird seeing that cutscene actually animated now) is literally the same voice clip as the GBA game. I think it is, but it's not being mangled by the GBA speakers, so I can't be certain. I have played the original, so I'll likely wait for the eventual 30% sale, but anyone who hasn't, and has always wanted a sequel to Donkey Kong '94, should absolutely pick this up. It's a solid game.

Time format tonight. Custom Stages from 7:30.

Yeah, sorry, far too late by the time I noticed your post. It's fine, we can do it next week. Anyway, as I'm sure you're aware, Duel Mode varies wildly in time. Backtrack is pretty notable because the lack of junctions means you have pretty much no influence on where you go. So who knows how long it'll take?

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!

Can't stand being with real people. I perform poorly in social situations. If I can ever be by myself, then I will take it. Don't ever call me. Always text message.

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

Don't have much of a choice, do we? Otherwise we'd have to fight you on Clayfighter...

Nope. You can actually choose the season offline, but not online. Us lot on voice chat inevitably play "guess the season" whenever Animal Crossing is picked.

Huh. Mischief Makers got off lightly then. Because 2D snobbery was defo a thing. Castlevania being the biggest example.

I assume you mean praise from outside magazine reviewers? Because being a 2D game in the N64 era was basically a fast track to critical panning.

I don't think anything is that bad!

Different themes have been a thing with all the paid DLC though? The first one swaps Castlevania out for Japanese Yokai, and the second one is European Folklore. This batch is sci-fi, and probably my favourite one. Most of the Among Us characters have a cool co-op benefit to them. For example, the red one gets a stat boost when anyone's weapon reaches max level. The key word there is anyone, even someone else maxing out a weapon will give him a stat boost. The new map has a neat gimmick to it, and the weapons are incredibly imaginative. The Lucky Swipe makes me laugh. A big massive ID card that swipes across the screen. Ironically, it's stronger when you have low luck, because the damn thing won't register the swipe, so it keeps trying until it gets it.

Yeah, that art style change sucks. There's a reason Wind Waker on GameCube looks better then Twilight Princess HD. Brothers is a very cool game though. I do recommend it.

What utter cheapskates! It's 1,200 bells! Lazy sods. I expected other games to have some assets stolen in there somewhere, but I can't say I expected Animal Crossing.

Let's just go with us being too high class and dignified for that to amuse us. Yeah, he'll believe that. Tee hee, Isaac gave Garet a Hard Nut!

Yes, I did it! Got Isaac first! I win! EDIT: Suppose @S.C.G gets second place there.

Oh wait, I see it now. Very droll.

Going by his discussions with me over past voice chat sessions. I think it's the actual building that's the fun part. As a former Flipnote enthusiast, I get it. Creation is fun.

Sea of Stars is a... oh wait, that image already explained that... It's developed by Sabotage Studio and was released in 2023 on most current platforms. I played the Switch one. The game follows Zale and Valere, two Solstice Warriors. Solstice Warriors are people who can utilise the power of the Sun or the Moon, because they can use these powers, they are the ideal people to combat "Dwellers", insanely powerful abominations that can only be defeated during an eclipse. If left unchecked, these Dwellers become World Eaters, which are bad news. There's only one Dweller left, so Zale and Valere have it relatively easy... Like the image above says, Sea of Stars is a turn-based RPG that takes a lot of inspiration from other RPG's. The most apparent inspiration is it's presentation, which is reminiscent of Chrono Trigger. Most encounters can be seen on the overworld, and there's no seperate battle screen as the gameplay transitions smoothly between exploration and battles. Weirdly enough though, the battles don't actually follow suit. The battles mash multiple mechanics from different games, Chrono Trigger's splash damage mechanic shows up, but the battles take more cues from Paper Mario, of all things. Looks friendly You can have your three party members attack in any order you like, but they all must act once before you can use them again (Paper Mario does this), so careful planning over who acts when can make fights easier. If you have more then 3 characters, you can swap them out on the fly for when the situation calls for it (Yep, Paper Mario). Which is good, because each character has a very limted moveset (Kinda like the partners in Paper Mario) The game also has action commands for both attacking and blocking (Paper Mario again). The game claims that the bonuses you get from nailing the action commands should be seen as just that, a bonus, but I find that hard to believe, because you very much need to get good with them later on in the game. Which brings me to a small criticism, some of the attacks you do are not obvious for when you should input a button imput. A small graphic signaling when the button should be pressed would've gone far. It all sounds kinda derivative when I list it out like that, but thankfully, Sea of Stars does have it's own ideas. MP, which lets you use special skills, is very limited. It's not weird for a character to be tapped out after using only 2 skills, but you can recover MP with standard atttacks. Standard attacks also give you "Live Mana" which you can use to power up your attacks. So the dynamic of battles involves balancing using your strong special skills with keeping your MP high enough that you can do said special skills if you suddenly need it. It's cool that the game successfully encourages you to spend MP, because doing a standard attack with max MP is a massive waste. The main defining feature of battles is the "Lock system". When enemies are about to use a stronger attack, a number of various icons will appear near it. For example, you could see two moon icons, and a sun one. What this means is that if you're able to hit that enemy with 2 moon attacks and 1 sun attack before it can attack, you can cancel that attack., and even if you can't pull it off, breaking some of those locks will still weaken the attack. It's a cool system that rewards knowledge of the capabilities of your team. And then there's the combo attacks, which are kinda like Chrono Trigger's Dual Techs, but they don't actually function like that game. Instead of just using two charcater's turns at once to execute Dual Techs in Chrono Trigger, combo attacks in Sea of Stars are instead, a seperate resource that builds up over time, and they only use up one character's turn. Functionally very different from Chrono Trigger there. There are still more cool, original ideas. The relics are a good example of this. These are toggable options that provide modifiers to customise the game to your liking. The game does a good job of identifying the relics that may be too overpowered for those who don't want to make the game too easy ("For those looking for a lighter challenge"), as well as the ones that make the game harder. Massive praise must be given to the actual overworld itself. In most RPG's, dungeons aren't very engaging to traverse through. There are some exceptions in the genre, such as Golden Sun. Another of Sea of Stars in this aspect is Golden Sun itself. Dungeons are full of cool puzzles and terrain that requires a keen eye to progress through. You even get some Zelda like items to increase your puzzle solving capabilities. It's very cool. Wish more RPG's had great level design like that. The visuals are obviously absolutely gorgeous. Intricate pixel art combined with modern lighting techniques make for a beautiful game. The soundtrack is probably the weakest part, not because it's bad, but because everything else surrounding it so good. Sea of Stars is great! Truly excellent. It may take some inspiration from other RPG's, but it takes those aspects, and combines it with it's own ideas to make something it can call it's own. Shame I only played it now, because it would certainly be among my favourite games from last year, otherwise. No idea why Daffy Duck is here, though...

Theme week! Bit of a spoecific one that I name: Waiting for the Sun to Rise The GBA Golden Sun games got added to NSO recently. They're kinda infamous for being a two-parter plot. The two years in between those games was unbearable for teenage me. So in honour of that excruciating wait, every character here has featured in a GBA title released in 2001 and 2002. Because I had to do something to distract myself. Mii Brawler is allowed, but only the Bomberman costume Mii Swordfighter is also allowed, but only the Goemon costume The stages are a bit more loose. Just ones that have been in a GBA game. Items follow a similar theme as the stages. Except the Assist Trophy, because the real winner tonight will be the first person to get the Isaac Assist Trophy! Format: Time, 3 minutes FS Meter: On Custom Stages at 7:30pm. Normal stages at 8pm (Choose random to keep the stages on theme)

OK. Early Sol Blade not impressive enough for you? How about I up the ante?

You say that, but hasn't Yoshimitsu been a thing in Tekken since the start? A guy running around with a sharp pointy thing isn't exactly new territory. That said, Tifa is a better fit for the game, but that's the difference between Harada and Sakurai. Because I bet Square pushed for Lightning as the Smash rep back on the 3DS/WiiU entry, but Sakurai has the clout to negotiate the character he would prefer and Square would have to compromise, because Smash is that big, and the advertising you get from that is too beneficial to ignore. Of course, I have no proof of that happening, but it wouldn't surprise me.

You have to understand that @BowserBasher got a Wacky Watch on the first turn, (I nicked it about halfway through the game). followed immediately by CPU Luigi getting a star from a hidden block. And then nothing of note happened for 15 turns. And then all hell broke loose! Yes, we did 3 battle games in one turn. Yes, BowserBasher got 3 stars in one turn. And I wasn't having that. So my fury of a million suns made us play an extra 5 turns, and... It made all the difference! S.C.G there, almost jinxing Luigi into second place. He never realised how right he was! Anyway, here's another moment. Anyway, good game! Despicable behaviour throughout, but good game! @darksnowman, we noticed you trying to get on the Switch App voice chat, but my phone doesn't play nice with that, literally can't hear anything on it. We normally use the N-E Voice Chat Room on Discord for when we play together. I'm sure I'd be able to invite you on to that for any future sessions.

Uhhh. Well. That game was certainly... Interesting.

I'll give it 5 minutes, then we'll start