Nintendo Switch Online: SNES

[darksnowman]

Further evidence that one man's trash is another man's treasure: I genuinely have fond memories of Rival Turf so I'm very pleased to have it available through NSO.  

[Julius]

Today Fighter's History and Kirby's Avalanche are being added to SNES Online, and Daiva Story 6: Imperial of Nirsartia is being added to NES online:

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Julius

[darksnowman]

"I'd worry more about cleaning up your Avalanche skills first." Yeeeeeooo.

 

[Dcubed]

Ahh, Kirby’s Avalanche.  The result of what happens when 90s bowderlisation is allowed to run unchecked.

Not gonna lie, I low key love how aggey American Kirby is allowed to be in this game 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Dcubed

[WackerJr]

I can’t believe that it’s only today I’ve discovered that Kirby’s Avalanche is Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean machine! (Just with a very different looking protagonist… well unless Kirby ever decided to suck up Robotnik to take on his appearance of course…)

[Helmsly]

How about this, after 28 years it turns out there is a hidden 2-player mode in Super Punch-out:

I just tried it and works on NSO (no reason why it shouldn't have but I figured I'd test it anyway). I don't know if you can make it work online though.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Helmsly

[Glen-i]

2 hours ago, Helmsly said:

I don't know if you can make it work online though.

Don't see why not, the guest player just commandeers the second controller inputs.

Can't imagine 2 player is even remotely balanced though.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Glen-i

[Dcubed]

5 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Can't imagine 2 player is even remotely balanced though.

Oh no way would it be even remotely balanced.  This is almost certainly a debug menu/feature that was originally made for the game’s developers to quickly test and iterate on the different boxers’ movesets.  I’m certain it was never intended to actually be used in the final release by the player.

Still an amazing discovery though! Love when stuff like this gets found years after the fact!

[Helmsly]

8 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Don't see why not, the guest player just commandeers the second controller inputs.

Can't imagine 2 player is even remotely balanced though.

I’ve never actually played anything through online on NSO before but I always assumed that was how it worked. Also yeah, it’s not balanced at all lol
 

3 hours ago, Dcubed said:

Love when stuff like this gets found years after the fact!

Yeah me too, it’s awesome. I’m surprised this was only found now though considering how easy it is to do.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Helmsly

[BowserBasher]

So the one for the free choice of fighting an opponent is simply holding Y+R and pressing A or start? How was that never found? I'm always pressing buttons like that. I mean there's only so many buttons on the SNES controller and I thought that these kind of cheat codes would be the first to be tried,

[Helmsly]

3 hours ago, BowserBasher said:

So the one for the free choice of fighting an opponent is simply holding Y+R and pressing A or start? How was that never found? I'm always pressing buttons like that. I mean there's only so many buttons on the SNES controller and I thought that these kind of cheat codes would be the first to be tried,

You have to hold Y+R on the second controller and then press A or Start on controller 1. The only reason I can think this wasn’t found after all this time is because no one would have bothered to see if a second controller did anything in a single player game… but even then, people data-mine Roms for old games all the time, especially Nintendo games, so it’s still surprising to me that is was only found now. It’s fantastic it’s been found though.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Helmsly

[BowserBasher]

54 minutes ago, Helmsly said:

It’s fantastic it’s been found though.

It is, and the fact that Nintendo just sat on it and didn't say anything. How many more games out there having something hiding?

[Helmsly]

5 minutes ago, BowserBasher said:

It is, and the fact that Nintendo just sat on it and didn't say anything. How many more games out there having something hiding?

I bet there are quite a few undiscovered. Funny enough there were a couple of other easter eggs from the first punch out game that were found out only a few years ago: https://www.engadget.com/2016-04-11-punch-out-easter-egg-found-29-years-later.html

Edited August 10, 2022 by Helmsly

[Hero-of-Time]

This evening, I finally sat down and played Starfox 2. Crazy that it's taken me this long to play it.

Not bad but not great either. I like the idea of defending areas and tackling smaller stages when attacking enemy rockets on the world map. I just think it's all a little underwhelming and I certainly think they made the right call shelving the game at the time. 

I was surprised how well the walker controlled. Using the L and R triggers to rotate and then strafe felt pretty natural and being able to switch between both the walker and Arwing at the press of a button was pretty nice.

I'm happy to have finally played it but it's not a game I'll be in any rush to play again.

[nekunando]

On 11/09/2022 at 8:22 PM, Hero-of-Time said:

This evening, I finally sat down and played Starfox 2. Crazy that it's taken me this long to play it.

Not bad but not great either. I like the idea of defending areas and tackling smaller stages when attacking enemy rockets on the world map. I just think it's all a little underwhelming and I certainly think they made the right call shelving the game at the time. 

I was surprised how well the walker controlled. Using the L and R triggers to rotate and then strafe felt pretty natural and being able to switch between both the walker and Arwing at the press of a button was pretty nice.

I'm happy to have finally played it but it's not a game I'll be in any rush to play again.

Yeh.. I played it last year and wasn't particularly enthusiastic about it

 

[Hero-of-Time]

Yesterday, I decided to start Earthbound again. I think this will be the 4th time I have tried to play the game to completion. I did finish Earthbound Beginnings this year and so I'm hopeful that I will be able to see Earthbound through to the end this time.

I have enjoyed my experience a lot more this time around than I have done in the past. I spent a lot of the early game just grinding levels until I was strong enough to defeat enemies in the area without having to battle. Once Paula arrived in the squad I done the same thing. Same goes for Jeff. I usually hate it when RPGs add new characters to the team and they aren't the same level as the rest of your team but here it's not too much of an issue. They catch up pretty fast.

My team is currently at level 26+ and I just arrived at the Milky Well area. This is the furthest I've ever got in the game. I don't really care for the font being used by Mr Saturn. Seems to be wacky for the just for the sake of being wacky, which I suppose is Earthbound all over. 

 

[Hero-of-Time]

I made a little more progress on Earthbound. Losing Paula and then having to work my way through the store took some doing. The enemies there hit really hard and only having two party members at my disposal made it a bit of a slog. I tried to avoid the fights where I could. Thankfully the boss in this area was very easy.

Speaking of slogs, before tackling the store I noticed that Jeff had a status effect on him. Ness still doesn't have the Gamma level of healing PSI and so I had to trek all the way back to Saturn Valley just so I could get the thing removed. I would have used some supplies if I had room to carry anything. I've said it before when I played the game on the Wii U and I'll say it again here, the inventory system sucks on this game. Why they decided to limit your slots but throw loads of items at you to pick up is beyond me.

What the hell was with the Moonside area of the game? I get that this game is weird but having an area that has invisible paths and guys that teleport you around the area just wasn't fun at all. I didn't enjoy that all.

On to the Monkey Caves I go....

[Hero-of-Time]

Today I finally got my 4th and final party member. The team is complete. It's nice to have someone on the team who can also help out with healing duties. I think I've now nabbed 6 of the sound stones, so I'm well on my way through the game. The next area I need to go to is some kind of pyramid but I found a decent grinding spot and so have spent a bit of time levelling up there. Ness is currently level 50, with the rest of the team in their 40's. 

I'm still not really enjoying the game but I'll continue to soldier on. The praise this series gets continues to baffle me. 

[Hero-of-Time]

Earthbound has finally been completed.

Spoiler

 

Yeah, not a great game at all. Even though I also disliked Earthbound Beginnings, I think I enjoyed it more than this. The soundtrack for Beginnings is certainly a hell of a lot better than the one is this game. Still, despite not enjoying the game, there is a strange sense of satisfaction in that I have now at least played through the game from start to finish. It took multiple attempts but it's finally done. 

[drahkon]

Thanks for the impressions.

It's a game I've tried many times without getting far. I found it to be so boring that I couldn't bother to keep playing. Guess I will never give it another go again. Your and my gaming tastes mostly align

[Glen-i]

That fact that he didn't make the obvious reference by saying that "This Game Stinks", means that I have to discount everything he thinks about the game.

Sorry, them's the rules.

You know he'll end up playing Mother 3 eventually.

[Jonnas]

I'm not particularly fond of Earthbound, myself. It's got charm, but that's it, really. I can certainly relate to H-o-T's write-ups.

That said, Mother 3 is a much better game. It's worth trying out even if EB was underwhelming

[Ike]

On 02/04/2022 at 1:07 PM, Hero-of-Time said:

I finished Earthworm Jim 2 on Thursday evening.

  Pics and Ending (Reveal hidden contents)

 

The game isn't as good as I remember it being, which is quite often the case when going back and playing retro games. I honestly don't remember it being such a mish mash of stages. It's as if they had a bunch of ideas but had no way to bring them together in a cohesive way. Everything just feels a little disjointed. When the game is allowed to be a platform game it works really well but having the Peter Puppy levels show up multiple times, levels where you have no suit and a stage where you are pushing an air balloon along, all of this just feels like a mess. There's no need at all for the Peter Puppy stage to show up 3 times during the adventure and it feels like padding more than anything else. 

I will say though that the game still made me laugh. Some of the random things, such as firing a pig off a slide or a boss fight that isn't really a boss fight ( bit like what happens in the first game ) got a good giggle from me. I also had a laugh at the stage ISO 9000. Having now worked with quality systems and done courses on ISO9000 standards and auditing, I now get the joke about that whole level, something that l would obviously wouldn't have got as a kid.  

I'm hoping the first game shows up on the service at some point. I'm keen to see if I now prefer that one over the sequel. 

I ended up playing and finishing it last night (albeit the Mega Drive version) and I agree with what you said. Most of the stages are awful and the Peter Puppy ones happen too many times and are way too long. How I beat them as a kid without saves states, I'll never know. I did always prefer the first game over the second, the second game doesn't really have that many platforming levels. Like you say, it just felt like a lot of gimmicks thrown together. How on earth are you meant to know the answers to that quiz? The new weapons it added are kinda useless, mostly only really useful in Level Ate and the final level.

Although protected the cows from being abducted by UFO's will never be not funny.

 

[Dcubed]

Yeah, Earthworm Jim 2 is an interesting mishmash of ideas, almost like a Kirby Superstar esc omnibus; but the stages all go on for FAR too long and all well outstay their welcome.  The game’s pacing is just awful as a result.

If each stage was cut down to about 1/4 of its current length? The game as a whole would’ve been way better off for it.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Dcubed

[Julius]

Side Pocket and Devious have been added to the Super SNES and NES catalogues, respectively! 

 

Edited March 16, 2023 by Julius