Glen-i

Honestly? I was kinda struggling up until yesterday. I wouldn't call this a stretch, mind you. I love me some stupid tier lists! And Awkward Zombie is the best webcomic that still gets updates today. It's hilarious!

Right, I'm expecting 5 people tonight. So here's the theme. People Marth Will Talk To Yeah, gotta explain this one, huh? I binged through some Awkward Zombie comics, after looking for a certain one, and stumbled upon this one. Obviously, anyone who knows anything about Fire Emblem can tell you that Marth isn't a classist snob, but Katie Tiedrich kinda only had Smash Melee to work with back then, and it's funny, so she's kept Marth like that ever since. Anyway, people asked her to release Marth's full tier list from that comic, so she did. And this theme focuses on the people Awkward Zombie's version of Marth officially deems worthy of talking to. This was done before the Fighter's Pass, but the only character who would be in Marth's talk zone from that would be the Dragon Quest VIII version of Hero. If you've played that game, you know why. Speaking of, there are costume restrictions. Bowser Jr - No Koopalings Hero - Bandana Hero only (includes the blue alternate colour) Stages match the characters. Items are set up to not include living things. The rabble will be kept out. EDIT: I didn't overlook the Fairy bottle and Beehive, SHUT UP! DOUBLE EDIT: And Sandbag, SHUT UP! Format - 3 Stock, 10 minutes FS Meter - On See you tonight at 8pm.

Did Wind Waker teach you nothing!?

Just a word of warning. Make sure you manually quit to the system menu if you want to save your progress. Don't have a PS5, so don't know what exactly that would entail, but yeah, keep that in mind. It seems auto-save doesn't work properly (or even exist?). Wouldn't want a power outage to make you lose hours of progress.

See now, that's quite fascinating. In Japan, it's very much meant to be set in a fictional Japan. The court system is heavily based on it (Less pointing and fighting game sound effects, mind you). But when we got the DS version localised, the American team Capcom used decided to take some liberties, you know, to try and make it more appealing to us lot in the West? For the first game, it mostly worked. Even with a spirit medium-in-training playing second fiddle to Phoenix himself. But then it sold better then expected, so naturally, Capcom localised the two sequels, and well, those games steadily lean more into the Japanese aspect more heavily, which kinda left the Western localisers written into a corner. They doubled down, still insisted that it's set somewhere in LA. Eventually, the fans started cottoning on, but considering how completely insane the series can be. It didn't feel totally out of place, really. In fact, a lot of people found it endearing, and would delight in poking fun at it. I still quote "Eat your hamburgers, Apollo" to this day! Such a good line. Apollo Justice (the game that comic is based on) decided to just roll with it. There's a place called "Nine-Tales Valley" that's a town of Japanese immigrants, who also happened to have some ancient yokai spirits immigrate along with them. (That's canon! As far as the English version goes, anyway) Now it's just part of a running gag, and everyone digs it. Honestly, after Spirit of Justice, I'm kinda convinced the developers are amping up Japanese culture references just to watch the Western localisation team try and explain it off.

Booted up Investigations 2, mostly to see how it compares to the fan translation. Done the first case so far. So far, as far as name changes go, the fans have it. Not a strong opening move from the official localisation. Gonna put this in spoilers for obvious reasons. BTW, were Selfies a thing in 2011? Might be my age speaking, but I wanna say they weren't? This official localisation mentions selfies, but I can't help but feel that if the original DS game was localised back then, that word wouldn't be in it. Of course, I could be completely wrong.

It's on my eShop wishlist, but my limited income means I'll have to wait for a sale. Very much want to play it after the demo.

If there's one thing I learned about Speedrun Levels, is that they are massively improved with some proper panic inducing and epic music. If Astro Bot has some unique music for that kind of thing, and it's half as good as that? Then I'm all in!

Oh, don't worry. Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster is what I'm focusing on now, I just meant that when I go back to Castlevania, that will be next because it's on the Dominus Collection. Aria of Sorrow was pretty short, so I craved more, and Dawn is a direct sequel, so it was perfect.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is an action adventure game that originally released on the Game Boy Advance in 2003. I've never actually finished a single Castlevania game before, but with the Dominus Collection recently released, I wanted to at least try this one before committing to it. Speaking of, this game isn't part of that collection. I played this on the Advance Collection, which came out in 2021. The game takes place in the year 2035, and follows Soma Cruz, a Japanese exchange student who is magically teleported to Dracula's Castle for some reason. Soma is attacked by monsters, and after beating them up, he absorbs their souls. You see, Soma has a special power called the "Power of Dominance" which allows him to absorb the souls of monsters and utilise their abilities. So, you know, like Kirby, but nowhere near as cute. Using this power, he has to explore Dracula's Castle, and find a way out. This is one of those Castlevania games that are structured more like a Metroid game (Hence the term, Metroidvania). Instead of various stages where you have to get to the end, it all takes place in one massive castle, and it's surrounding areas. Much like Metroid, the goal is to find your way through this labyrinth, find new abilities and use said abilities to get to even more areas. Rinse and repeat, until you get to the final boss. The key difference between this and Metroid, however, is that Castlevania utilises an RPG style level system. Killing enemies will eventually make Soma stronger. Alongside that, you can also find or purchase equippable weapons and armour to boost those stats even further. Or just stumble upon a sword that's bigger than you are, that works too. What's also noteworthy is how the souls work. Every enemy has a corresponding soul, and you have a chance of getting it whenever you kill one. Equipping these souls will allow Soma to use certain abilities. But what's interesting is that some optional areas need a specific soul to access, you could go through the whole game without getting what you need, so I'm not sure how to feel about that. Aria of Sorrow isn't the first Metroidvania I've tried, by the way. That would be Circle of the Moon (Known as just "Castlevania" in Europe), but I bounced off of that game because it was very unforgiving. Aria of Sorrow is far better in it's difficulty curve, and I'm glad I gave the series another crack with this one. Even if the fight against Death was a humongous difficulty spike, but that seems to be a pretty standard thing with Death. Shout out has to go to the animation this game has. Castlevania games since the shift to Metroidvania has some of the most satisfying animation in games. When you can bust out a victory dance at any time, well... The soundtrack is also top tier, but that's nothing unexpected for Castlevania. That series has an amazing batting average for soundtracks. So yeah, my first completed Castlevania game, and I very much enjoyed it, so much so, that I went and got the Dominus Collection afterwards. And speaking of that... Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is another action adventure game that originally released on the DS in 2005. Like I mentioned before, I played this on the Dominus Collection, which released last week. As the name implies, this is a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow, you know this because the intro immediately spoils the big twist of Aria. Soma is once again dragged into action when a mysterious cult wishes to create a new Dark Lord to replace Dracula. This is bad, so Soma has to reuse his Power of Dominance to stop this. When it comes to gameplay, this game plays very similarly to Aria of Sorrow. A big Metroid style map to explore, and lots of souls to find along the way to augment Soma's abilities. It's just a simple refinement, but that's totally fine. I will say that the bosses are way better though. They are probably the highlight of the game. OK, bad example, but trust me, they're great. (Seriously though, REALLY!?) All in all, they play similarly, but I prefer Dawn of Sorrow. So I'm gonna use the rest of this post to point how excellent the emulation options are in the Dominus Collection. Being a DS game, Dawn of Sorrow naturally uses both of the screens on the console, but the footage I posted above actually shows three screens. The original game had those two screens on the right as an option for what you had on the top screen, but the Dominus Collection allows you to display both at once. Very cool, and having the stat screen was quite helpful in solving a certain puzzle. As well as that, there's save states, and a rewind feature, which I never used, but the biggest change would have to be the option to draw seals with button inputs. I've heard some horror stories on how imprecise drawing on this game can be, so this is an interesting workaround. It works well enough. Can't imagine what trying touch controls with the imprecise Switch screen would be like. Don't plan on finding out. But yeah, that's it. I'll likely carry on playing through this collection with Portrait of Ruin.

This is an interesting article here. Some people on Era are trying to play "Whataboutism" by claiming Nintendo are just as bad with Smash, but I don't think that's comparable in the slightest. If we take the franchises that haven't had a new release in the latest 2 generations, we have Mother, Ice Climbers, Game & Watch, R.O.B, Punch-Out, Duck Hunt, and Banjo-Kazooie. And that last one's not even on Nintendo! Not every IP should live forever, but it's the sheer magnitude of dead franchises that Sony pretty much ignore that I think the linked article is trying to point out, and I agree with that. That said, can't wait for this to come to PC, I'm really looking forward to a Mario Galaxy structured game, especially after how disappointing Odyssey was, so I'll be hanging out with @martinist in that strip club.

And naturally, we didn't disconnect even once! Bloody typical. After how dreadful I did on some tracks, kinda wish I did disconnect.

Don't sit on the toilet too long.

Reminder that we're doing this tonight at 8pm. EDIT: New page would happen now... And the Miis...

Told ya, @Dcubed. The Europe in N-Europe stands for "European Portuguese is what Jonnas wants" Rolls right off the tongue!

Welp, now Final Fantasy IV's boss theme will have shown up in three completely different IP's! That song gets around!

Hah! Oh boy, you have no idea! The cats are so absolutely busted, that it's actually more effective to not evolve them! They get a permanent strength increase every time they nick some floor chicken. This can snowball really hard!

I suddenly regret ever bringing it up now...

Difference is that The Zelda was dated even back then!

"The" Zelda? Are you 60 or something? Man, I just got flashbacks to some old fogie saying that to me in the 90's.

There is something there, but you're not able to do it yet. Leave it for now.

WHAAAAA!? What would ever make you think that!? ...Yeah, she is. Vampire Survivors is absolutely jam packed with references to games that aren't Castlevania. From Final Fantasy XIII, to Ultima. Knife guy is decent, 1 extra projectile is a solid benefit, but it doesn't scale, which can become a problem later on. Anyway, nothing stopping you from giving "Not-Bayonetta" Knives, she actually utilises them better, get to a high enough level, and she just melts through enemies like a... well, you know the saying.

Stamina format tonight at 8pm.

Next week is the start of September, which means... FRESH PRINCE NIGHT! If you want to go all in on the theme, here are those excellent Miis @RedShell made for you to try and recreate. Of course, I imagine most of you regulars already have one from a previous year, but if you wanna switch it up, there they are.