Glen-i

Yep, have to agree with the advice given already. Remake's whole shtick kinda falls apart if you haven't played the original. Can't say I totally agree with @Hero-of-Time saying Crisis Core is also needed. I just played that recently for the first time, and it's nowhere close to necessary. Also agree that Chrono Trigger is much less of a commitment. 20-25 hours is accurate, and totally worth it. Try and play the SNES version if you can. The rewritten script in the modern version is a bit dry in comparison. If you can't though, the modern version is fine.

Oh, right, forgot to mention that. Yeah, it'll be off. Because we choose Random the majority of the time, I trust us to not exploit team setups that are way too good. (Double Belmonts, Double Mother Kids, etc). Especially with items and Final Smashes on, it's better to keep it off. "Team Attacks" being off doesn't apply to items that you can hit yourself with by the way, so careful where you throw those Bob-ombs.

Right, theme night! Although, it's not much of a standard theme, more of a format change. With only 4 of us expected to play this time, it's time for the return of... Team Battle No character, stage, or item restrictions this time, but once there's 4 of us, we'll be playing 2 V 2 matches! Like last time, we'll be playing Time format to minimise the time someone might spend in a 2-on-1 situation. To keep things simple, I'll rotate myself around to team up with each person after every match, and use voice chat to co-ordinate that with the other 2 people there. So @Ike won't need to change his team colour. Format: Team Battle, Time, 3 Minutes FS Meter: On See you at 8!

So, I've started playing PMD: Red Rescue Team last night. I've never played the GBA version before, mostly because the DS version makes this a poor choice, but DS NSO doesn't exist yet, which makes it the only way to play the original games on Switch. So now's a perfect chance for me to fill in that gap and secretly justify to myself that I was right about questioning why people would ever get the GBA version over the DS one. Here are some of the things that are more then a little awkward: The obvious one is that there's no second screen, so you don't have somewhere to put the map or your team status. If you want a map, you have to use an overlay, and you have to open a menu to see other Pokémon's HP. There's no X or Y button, so there's some interesting compromises for some controls. In every other PMD, you rotate your Pokémon on the spot by holding Y and choosing a direction. Here? You press Start! It's so bizarre! And you don't hold it, pressing start toggles "Rotate Mode", and pressing it again deactivates it. Thankfully, I found out that tapping R does the same thing (Holding R lets you move exclusively diagonally, as usual). But my muscle memory is messing me up because the Pro controller has a Y button, so I instinctively press it and then accidentally take a step because Y does nothing! GBA NSO actually button maps the X button to function as a B button, which in a lucky break, means that it opens the menu, just like the DS version. Unlike the DS version, pressing X twice doesn't open up the move menu quickly, it just backs out of the menu like a B button would. Oh man, the music! I was obviously expecting a downgrade here, but some of the songs get utterly mangled by the GBA sound chip! The amazing soundtrack does not deserve this! The game tends to start struggling when around 8 enemy Pokémon are on a floor at once. The poor GBA is trying to program all the AI of those enemies, and it causes frame hitches when you take a step. To be fair, the DS version also has this problem, but it tends to happen when there's, like, 30 enemies at once. The lovely little conversation portraits Pokémon have are the same size as the DS version's. They obviously didn't want to do two different versions of all those, but it means they take up a lot more of the GBA screen space. Not really a bad thing, just an interesting quirk. EDIT: Just remembered that Miiverse was archived, so because I posted on that way too much. I've got visual proof of that last bit. See what I mean? Both games use the same sprites, so the DS one looks a lot less cluttered, even without the second screen. I've now also noticed that the field of view is a bit larger on the DS version.

It's one of those games that you absolutely have to appreciate, but realise that it has been massively improved upon in other games since. Kinda like the original versions of PMD: Rescue Team. I love them, but it's weird going back to them, especially now it has a more standardised remake.

You have to love the big massive middle finger to all those idiotic TERF's trying to use her as some kind of tool of hatred against Trans people (Which I believe she's not even Trans? Which only makes the whole situation more ridiculous)! It's beautiful retribution!

For context, I chucked 12 shurikens in her face for around 9999 damage, still didn't die. Which means this thing has around 130,000 HP, Makes the Emperor's 15,000 HP look positively quaint! And that's the third game done, but it dawned on me that despite the fact that I've played the Pixel Remaster version before, I never wrote about it for some reason, sooooo... Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster is a remake (Yes, it is a remake, not confusing at all) of the Famicom game Final Fantasy III that came out in 2023. Being a very late Famicom RPG, it never got released outside of Japan. Yes, there was a DS version, but that one differs so much from the original game, it might as well be a different game. So as far as the 2D version goes, this is the first worldwide release of it. The game follows 4 random orphans as they go spelunking in a random cave, but then fall down a hole. Down this hole, they find a big crystal that tells them that someone is trying to drown the world in darkness and that the four of them are the latest "Warriors of Light" to fight against it. That's pretty much it. Compared to Final Fantasy II, the story is very much barebones. FF III is very much a gameplay first kind of RPG, and that shows through the job system. The first Final Fantasy did have jobs, but they were set at the start of the game. FF III gives you more jobs to choose from as you find each of the four crystals, and you can freely change them at will. As I'm sure you all know, I love job systems in RPG's. It allows a lot of customisation, but I'm not super keen with how Final Fantasy III handles it. You see, there are many instances where the game demands that you use a specific job for a certain boss, or dungeon, in order to not die horribly. Here's a good example. Yes, I totally demolished that boss with 4 Dragoons, but if you tried to do that fight without Dragoons, you would die so incredibly fast. You're basically mandated to use Dragoons there, and FF III is full of those kinds of mandatory job requirements. Which ironically, makes this job system quite limiting. Final Fantasy V and Bravely Default would do this a lot better. So, the Pixel Remasters kind of bother me, because most of them have some kind of compromise that stops them from being the definitive version. This is mostly because the GBA versions look better, and have bonus dungeons. The Pixel Remasters look closer to the NES versions and lack any of the bonus dungeons. The thing is, the 2D Final Fantasy III never got a re-release, so the Pixel Remaster is the one entry that is actually a definitive edition. The soundtrack, like all the Pixel Remasters, is truly excellent. It's easily the greatest thing about them. The Final Boss track goes in a very Bravely Default direction, which is amusing, because that game is well known for the job system it uses. So yeah, I do like this game, but I kinda find it the weakest of the NES Final Fantasy games. I appreciate the straightforward first game, and I have a real soft spot for the totally wonky second game, so this one kinda falls a bit short in comparison.

Can't argue with the results though. BowserBasher's putt game was excellent tonight.

Righty-o. Room will open in 10 minutes then.

Seeing as we haven't played it in a while, and Cube recently playing it got @BowserBasher in the mood, I'm thinking a round of Mario Golf, and Perfect Dark afterwards?

I've got you covered!

Uhhh, so I was going back through my videos when I stumbled upon this old clip... And yes, it was @Dcubed who nailed me with the banana yesterday! Geez, Mario Kartma is a cruel mistress, paying me back for something I did over a year ago!

Got a free space tomorrow for NSO shenanigans. If anyone wants in, give us a shout. And if you have a specific game you want to play, let us know. We normally play around 8-ish, even if @S.C.G won't be around until 8:30-ish.

A lot of that happening tonight. To be fair, one of them was my bad, I had to get the door, and I forgot the game boots you if you become inactive for 5 seconds, and seeing as I'm the host, well... The last one on DK Mountain was weird though, everyone got disconnected. That is, except for me... and @Dcubed. Not sure how he managed to stick around, but at least it proves it wasn't our fault. Ha! "Suddenly, Bananas" evaded! Nothing can stop me now!

Our sacrifices are not in vain, at least. Ignore the fact that I never would've bought the physical version anyway.

Naturally, I downloaded this last week. You're welcome.

I think there's a sneaky peek at an update character in that trailer. It's happened before, and there's definitely a sprite there that's not in the actual game. Oh wow, is Poe finally gonna be actually good!?

Add Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster to the list. Already talked about it before, where I mentioned that they fixed the final boss so you couldn't one shot it with a high level Toad spell... It amuses me that the song doesn't even get to properly start.

Player's Choice tonight at 8pm.

So, no change from playing it with me there then.

Oh good, I don't have to be the nerdy guy who has to correct @Dcubed Specifically, Oracle of Ages. Seasons doesn't have the N64 style Zoras in it.

Anyway, here's a bunch of games I played for the first time. The Legend of Starfy (Densetsu no Stafy) games are 3 platformers for the GBA that only released in Japan back in 2002-2004. They were recently added to the GBA NSO app in all regions, although all the text is still in Japanese. The game follows Starfy, who is neither a star, nor a starfish. He lives up in a floating castle in the sky, but he tends to have the unfortunate tendency to fall from the sky, right into the ocean below. In the ocean, an evil sea slug called Ogura is doing... evil stuff? No idea. Can't read Japanese, I assume that's what's going on. This series is interesting, the majority of the games take place underwater. It sounds awful, but Starfy somehow is more nimble in water then he is on land, so swimming around is very snappy and fun. Also, discount Koopas! Despite the amount of text the games have, you don't really need to know Japanese to get through it... Almost... The first game's tutorials show some buttons, but it's not always clear what it means (The later games have visual demonstrations of these, so it's much better there), and the second game had a couple of puzzles where you needed context from a conversation, so I had to look up a guide for that. Despite that, the games are great, relatively simple to get to the credits, but going for 100% in the two sequels is interesting as the number of levels suddenly doubles, and some of them get quite tough. Shout out to the secret final boss in the third game, which I died to about 20 times, it's a comical difficulty spike that would make modern Kirby games proud Anyway, they're very good games, but if you only play one of them, play the third one, that one is excellent!

OK, I just have to share this. I beat it, barely. For context's sake, that enemy only appears in this room, and in the Pixel Remaster, it's a 1 in 100 chance! Incredibly unlucky! No wonder I lost Mario Party last night. EDIT: There we go, I killed Chaos. Because of that (un)lucky Warmech encounter, I ended up getting 100% bestiary by complete accident. Kinda obligated to do the same on the other five Pixel Remasters here now... Warmech is the rarest encounter in all 6 games, it'd be a waste not to!

Funnily enough, that's a perfect visual metaphor for what Mother 3's plot does to Lucas. That's not a visual metaphor, but it is sick. Anyway, Stamina matches tonight from 8pm.

I think that's it? I never finished Octo Expansion because I get bored with Splatoon. Something about getting all the Mem cakes without asking for help, doing the escape levels without skipping them, and then going back to Locker #8. Whatever that means...