Jonnas

Huh, those screenshots for NFL QC 98 look really good for the N64. When I first glimpsed them, I thought I was looking at a PS2 for a moment.

Oh wow, I didn't know there was a Captain Toad game for the N64!

Man, Tetrisphere was such a cool game. Creative concept, trippy aesthetics, proper difficulty curve (I do remember some late-game challenges being daunting)... It's a perfect candidate for the NSO.

Excellent choice! OG Dragon Ball is so fun to watch. Regarding Kai, the filler doesn't just extend to episodes or mini-arcs, there are full minutes of silence, flashbacks, or even imagine spots, in the original Z that just... fill episodes with nothing. Sure, sometimes there's proper tension, but the pace is far slower than what anybody remembers. On the flip-side, the mini-arcs and episodes of filler that DO exist in the original are actually very entertaining. That said, the original Z does have the original score, as well as uncensored violence. Those are pretty important, too. Finally, I don't think the entire Buu arc was ever adapted to Kai, so there's that (and to be fair, the Buu arc is far better about those Z issues I mentioned. It's a much brisker pace, that arc)

Yeeeesss! Another convert to the glory of Goemon N64! There is now, like, a full dozen of us in N-E. Rerelease them already, Konami, geez...

Depends on whether their intention was to replicate the glitch. If so, they successfully replicated Bow-Wow getting stuck in a tree. In the original, he'd snap back to you as soon as you moved into another screen (typical GB behaviour, really), so this brute-forced "fix" looked natural. Looking at the video you posted, it looks like replicating the original "fix" makes it look like he teleported, more unnatural than ever Even considering their intention, I do think they should've at least made it so Bow-Wow runs back to you when he's off-screen: replicating the "feeling" of that glitch is more important than replicating the exact behaviour. Regarding getting stuck in gaps between holes... I haven't played the remake. In the original, it was common for those in-between holes to feel like quicksand that just maaaaybe escape if you were quick enough. I hear this is actually something they changed in the remake, as Link snaps into the hole far more definitely (Michael Damiani in particular lamented that this lead to the loss of certain unintended shortcuts from the original game). I'm not sure if what you experienced is a by-product of that change. Finally, I love hearing your impressions, and I do hope you'll keep posting them. When you dive into a game, you go all the way, and I love reading about it.

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.

This is a neat idea. Not a fan of Shadow at all, but I always appreciate variety, and it's a good effort, bringing substantial new content to a remaster. But why did Sega greenlight a title that will inevitably lead to fanfiction when googled?

Oh shit! I remember playing Heretic on the PC when I was younger! Those screenshots look so similar to that. This too feels similar to my memories!

Yeah, but Yoshimitsu has always been an oddball design. He's meant to be "the weird one" in the cast. Not the only weirdo, mind you, but his sword definitely makes him one. Just like Roger&Alex's tails, or Kuma&Panda's odd proportions. All of those make those respective fighters "weird" or "unique", they stand out from the cast more easily than, say, Leo or Bryan. Ultimately, Tekken is a series where conventional martial arts take center stage. Sure, there are robots and bears, and goofy shit running around, but the core is very clear. Like, someone like Bob feels conventional, despite having a made up fighting style, and that's because he follows the heart of the series. Therefore, by adding Noctis, the choice was made for the FF character to be seen as an "oddball" or a "weirdo" in the cast, instead of somebody who actually feels like they're part of the background. It's not even just the sword, he literally summons blades from the aether whenever he feels like it. Neegan was criticised to hell and back for not being a proper martial artist and just whacking people with a bat, and yet he's still closer to the feel of the series than Noctis. tl;dr: Just because he's technically not the first bloke with a sword, that doesn't mean he fits.

That's what happens when you add the most recent FF protagonist in Tekken 7, instead of... the character that actually makes sense He'll never hear the end of it!

How many bosses? Around 8 or so?

I love our emojis They're expressive, charming, cute, and characteristic. Somehow, we went from having a surprising variety of smileys throughout the internet, to gradually having every single platform share the exact same set of emojis. Except for N-E It's the best corner of the internet

FINALLY! I kid you not, I checked if there were updates on this just this morning. I can finally play this 2022 game on my Switch. (Should've added FP2 to the 2024 pledge, I think ) By all means, Steam reviews are glowing. They also claim this to be a surprisingly long game.

...You know what? Makes perfect sense. This is probably the team that's mostly made up of former Cing staff. They live!

Jesus fucking Christ, the blatant theft going around in this game is insane. Like, you don't even need to look at the 3D models, that's just Meganium's face! They didn't even bother changing the format of its eyes! From an artistic standpoint, this is simply repulsive. And of all properties they wanted to steal from, they went to the biggest IP in the world, owned by the most paranoid-about-copyright company in the videogaming space? They're going to get what they deserve. They would have better luck stealing Mickey Mouse, and I'm not even kidding.

Doraemon was huge in Portugal and Spain (still is, I think)... but not yet in 1997, so this game never came out here I'm impressed that such a substantial adaptation came out so early for the N64. Anyway, that Nobita comment made me laugh Him being useless is pretty faithful to the show!

For me, it is. I'm not even talking about the digital/physical split. You can own a digital collection (even with the risk of certain games being pulled from digital stores). Plus, companies like GOG do care about consumers having a collection that's actually theirs (I can even give a friend a copy of a digital GOG game I purchased. It's like borrowing cartridges all over again). No, it's the subscription services that I distrust. Those are services you can't pick, choose, or curate. Imagine having your leisurely playthrough of Skyrim or BotW be rushed by the deadline in your subscriptions. Imagine purchasing a 6-month subscription of an hypothetical Square-Enix's GamePass, only to see them sell your favourite IPs the following week. Imagine having your yearly DKC3 playthrough be entirely dependent on purchasing a whole year of NSO. Imagine having P.T. or Mario 3D All-Stars be tied to a couple of months each on a service, and then they're gone forever, nobody keeps them. I look at the current state of streaming services and I get headaches. I'd rather that not happen to the medium I'm more passionate about.

That... is more enticing, I will admit. I do have my reasons for wanting to see the game as it was originally, but I can't deny that the AGES series is top-notch. I will consider it.

Nice try, but I'm onto you: I know that Golden Sun is actually two games! But seriously, I played through the Golden Sun duology twice already. I love them, they're great games, but I'm not in the mood to replay something familiar right now (Unless they announce a fourth entry, *hint* *hint* *nudge* *nudge*, then I'd be replaying the entire trilogy) I have the Steam version, which I imagine has none of those things. But I'm good with playing RPGs with their original intended balance. Increased gains is meant for replays and such, imo. Oh, I remember playing the demo for this one Looked really cool, and the gameplay felt quite satisfying. I remember it being tad more difficult than usual for Metroidvanias, which I always welcome. Judging from your review, it sounds like the game stays strong well after the end, so I'll definitely need to keep an eye out for deals.

I somehow missed this question. Good thing I answered it in another thread So yeah, broad goals. But I did like that Top 10 pledge, so I'll make a quick one of my own that broadly represents some games I'd like to properly tackle/finish in 2024: I only picked games that I do not want to start that soon. I guarantee that my first proper entry in this thread will have none of the games above. It's also non-binding. There's like 3 RPGs in there

I didn't even know Felix the Cat had games! But yeah, this is a nice rerelease to see. To be honest, I didn't even know Rocket Knight Adventures had 3 different games! I thought it was just the one Mega Drive game

Oof. Yeah, having a bunch of characters just be the same recoloured ninja brings out so many problems. Later games in the series would do a lot more to differentiate these blokes. Mortal Kombat is a fascinating series, in that there's an undeniable charm and identity to it (and its characters), but the fighting has always felt stiff as a board. It's a series I can easily ignore and respect at the same time. That said, fighting games of the time were needlessly obtuse, and MK Trilogy seems to be a particularly bad case of it. The N64/PS1 era was when movelists and extra modes started to become standard, but this celebration of the series-thus-far just ignored all that, huh?

I normally don't pay much mind to New Year's Resolutions. They're arbitrary goals set at the beginning of the year that inevitably get sidetracked by reality... but I definitely want to set some abstract goals that lead me into the life I want to have. Not 100% sure on what they might be, but I will want to check them every couple of months or so. Gaming-wise, I have a few (mostly backlog-related ones) that are set: Focus on clearing the NSO: By "clearing", I mean make a decision one way or the other. "Dropping" I game I have no interest in also counts as "clearing". I don't expect to clear it fully by the end of the year (watch them add Banjo-Tooie & Perfect Dark simultaneously in December or something), but if I reach 80-90%, I'll be very happy; Clear every game in my backlog that's marked as "Unfinished": I have tons of unplayed games, but only a dozen or so that are "unfinished". Once again, not fully expecting to clear it by the end, but reducing it to 1 or 2 would be excellent; Finish at least one RPG: Not "drop", I mean, properly finish a longform game. Could be a 10-hour NES RPG, as long as it is that genre, and a proper adventure; Make a firm decision regarding Fire Emblem Heroes: December was a wreck for that game, or rather, my enjoyment of it. I'm giving it until February to get its shit together, and if it doesn't, I will officially uninstall it. Yeah, keep it small and realistic, focus on one goal at a time. Should be fun.

This sounds like a hefty endeavour, and I wish you great success, Cube. And more importantly, that you have a lot of fun exploring these hundreds of games. You definitely made a really good review for Pilotwings (which doesn't sounds like my type of game at all), and I felt like the Mario 64 opener approached the game from a new perspective than I'm used to. They are fantastic to read, and I look forward to seeing more.