VideoGame_Discussion

I beat LarryBoy and the Bad Apple (originally GBA).
[imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://i.imgur.com/vofqykO.jpg[/imgt]
Recommended by TheLonelyGoomba YouTube channel, it's strangely similar to Mario vs. Donkey Kong (GBA). You platform, hit switches, roll through tubes, and avoid enemies while paying attention to your time limit. Every few stages, you play a boss fight that's pulled from some random old game (Donkey Kong, Breakout, Pong, etc.). The game is fairly short and easy as one would expect from a kid's licensed game, but it doesn't overstay its welcome and Expert mode limits you to one minute per stage! That definitely made it more frantic.

VeggieTales was and is a certified classic no matter who you are, and I was delighted to hear instrumental covers of several of the show's famous songs used as background music, from "Promised Land" to "The Rumor Weed" (I think the latter is based on The W's cover rather than the show's original, in fact). They sound nice! There's even a line that mentions the Stuff Mart from the old episode, "Madame Blueberry," which tells me these devs did their homework when making the game.

For $4, I had a pretty good time. Worth the price, I'd say.

#31 Yakuza: Like a Dragon

8/10

I wanted to score this a bit higher but the difficulty spikes about halfway into the game prevent me from doing so. Once you get to chapter 9, between chapters 9-11 it’s a bit of a chore to progress until you get to chapter 12 and unlock the underground battle arena. Then you can level the playing field. But alas, if anyone out there is curious to play a Yakuza game with old school Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy gameplay mechanics, this shall fill your cup and have it runeth over. Some of the summons you get too are quite ridiculous and over the top too but really awesome as is some of the more special attacks your characters get to pull off. There’s even numerous death by pigeon attacks, one of my personal faves to use. You get to play as 6-7 different party members each with their own sets of job classes that range from hero to hostess to even the culinary arts as a chef and police enforcers, etc. I mainly stuck to max out 1 job class per character though to unlock all their ultimate skill attacks. The story is pretty interesting too and full of the standard overly dramatic undertones the Yakuza series is known for and I clocked in about 40ish hours after doing most of the sub stories and main quest.

I beat Klonoa: Door to Phantomile .
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F16_7IgaYAEOwLC?format...[/imgt]

I didn't like this one. I know it's a PS1 classic for many, and I greatly enjoyed Klonoa: Empire of Dreams on GBA, but this first game didn't do it for me. The game is a little like Kirby 64, being a 2D platformer in a 3D environment with a dynamic camera. Unlike Kirby 64, Klonoa stages usually have multiple paths, many of which are too subtle to notice, that don't give you a good idea which are necessary. You'll walk down a path and find an outcropping that looks like it could be a secret path to more items, but then it turns out the path you were already on is the secret path, and the outcropping leads to the exit door. Or you'll see a structure off in the distance that looks like a path, but when you jump over to it, there's an invisible wall there and you fall to your death. I quickly learned to stop exploring.

Klonoa is one of those annoying collectathons where dying after a checkpoint makes you lose the things you collected after said checkpoint (minus the characters you rescue). It also has this obnoxious mechanic where striking a specific character causes all the surrounding gems to double in value for a short time--too short a time, evidently, as the gems would revert to normal before I could nab them all on the first stage. I quickly learned to stop collecting.

This remake also fails at cutscenes. They pop up at various points mid-stage, they're unengaging, and they're needlessly long. You can hold R to speed them, but that makes them go by too quickly to read. If you care about the story they keep yammering on about, you need to constantly hold and release R to speed up the slow text scroll, but not skip it outright. But after looking at the garish character designs, I quickly learned to stop caring.

I doubt I'll play the other game in the Phantasy Reverie Series any time soon, if ever. I'll stick with the GBA Klonoa games, since they appeal to me more.

Parappa the Rapper -
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Cooking Mama 2 -
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With how few beats we've had this week, I think I'll update on Monday night. Hope that's not a problem for anyone.

Add Viewfinder PS5 to my list. Review in progress

To close out both Game of the Month threads and to check two more platforms off my list, I finished off one last New Super Mario game and one last Bionic Commando game, starting with New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Number: 28
Full Title: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Platform Played: Wii
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Wii
Original Platforms: Wii
Applicable Badge: Hop 'n Bop (already earned)

The Wii entry in the New Super Mario series perfected the formula that sprouted with the original DS game by adding a whole lot more content, smoothing out the physics, and re-introducing fan-favorite mechanics like Yoshi and Star Road. It unfortunately relies on waggle for some tilt-and-twirl levels, as well as for the game-changing spin jump move that allows Mario to get some additional air and distance from each jump. The latter of which is a huge problem when you're on an incredible platforming run and suddenly need to shake your arms to keep it going. Fortunately, I had an ace up my sleeve. I broke out my Ashida - essentially, a portable console that shoves a Wii's innards inside of an elongated GameCube controller - and was able to map the shake to a single button press. It breathed new life into one of my favorite Wii games and carried me through a full 100% run: every secret exit, every Star Coin, and every warp zone.

Number: 29
Full Title: Bionic Commando Re-armed
Platform Played: PlayStation 3
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: PlayStation 3
Original Platforms: Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Applicable Badge: Heavy Machine Gun (2/2), Facelift (already earned)

Speaking of revisiting beloved seventh generation games, I rounded off the last of the "original" Bionic Commando versions with Bionic Commando Re-armed for the PlayStation 3. The Xbox 360 version of this ended up being one of my favorite Xbox Live Arcade games and one of the first 360 games I ever beat. I remember it being tough as nails and unforgiving, but other than the times I was straying from the beaten path to find secrets or upgrades, I didn't have as difficult a run this time around. The most enlightening part of the experience was, having finally played the NES game on which it was based this year, seeing the tremendous amount of content that was added to the game beyond the simple shifting of pixels. The levels are much larger with more secret paths, the bosses are entirely different, and the arm mechanics are expanded, but not so much as to take away from the memory of the source material.

Final Fantasy XVI took a sideline to all the Bionic Commando goodness this month, but with August right around the corner, that will change soon. August is going to see its return to my playlist, along with oodles and oodles of arcade games as part of the Retro Talkshop Thread's August of Arcade.

Cleared Pokémon Puzzle League on Very Hard mode. This does not shove you into 3D mode. I was mistaken. If I decide to take on Super Hard Mode and it pulls that BS, I'll let y'all know.

10th in July, 55th overall, 1st
Yoshi's Woolly World
Badge - already had
Alpha - This COMPLETES my set, will put them all into a spoiler tag below if anyone actually cares.

I beat this largely b/c I was looking for a Y title and it being a Wii-U title also helps as this is my 19th console completed - I'm coming for that Sarna. Game was decently enjoyable, though the final world or 2 were a bit more challenging/frustrating. There are 8 levels in each of the 6 worlds with levels 4 and 8 being castles with bosses to clear. Each level has 4 goals to strive for to get a star on the level... I got a whole 1 star during my playing. The 4 goals are to collect 5 flowers, 5 bundles of yarn (which unlocks a new Yoshi skin), 20 stamps and finish with 20/20 health. Overall I earned 165/270 flowers and only unlocked 16/48 Yoshi skins. I did collect around 80% of the stamps that are concealed behind gems you can collect in the levels. I only finished a very few levels with full health. At this point I'm not itching to play virtually all of the levels again to collect/do whatever I didn't yet, but I also unlocked a boss-rush type mode, so *maybe I will keep this 'in rotation' and play it here and there, but it won't be much of a priority. Also if I ever get all 40 flowers from a given world, that unlocks another level in said world with at least a Yoshi skin (color pallet) to unlock... so I suppose I should try to beat more of this, but eh, maybe next year and I'll count it for then... I'll likely need some walkthrough to find many of the hidden flowers/yarns/stamps. Going for 20/20 health would be the most challenging.

TLoZ: Breath of the Wild (Switch) - An extensive game if you want to explore everything. I was a bit overwhelmed and felt like everything was so far away. I completed about a third of the shrines, and a bunch of side missions, but ultimately I went and completed the main questline. I could still do many things, but I don't feel like completing them. Great game with a lot of options though.

Grid Legends (PS4) - Nice variety of races and cars. The campaign can get a bit cringe with the acting, but overall I enjoyed completing it. Lots of stuff to unlock.

Just finished New Super Mario Bros. 2 on 3DS. Pumped for Wonder this fall!

Frank wrote:

How do you want me to list that? It doesn't look like we have an icon for that.

#61 down: Hold ‘Em Poker - Delta flight game (beat
tournament mode x5). This gets me the
Gamer’s Day badge. I managed to pull this off
thanks to two 4 hour flights on which they had
a touchscreen with various games on it.

#62 down: Venom + Spider-Man: Separation
Anxiety (SNES). This gets me the
Mustache-Twirlin’ badge alongside my previous
Cult of the Lamb clear, as I beat the game as
Venom.

#63 down: Deal or No Deal (GBA)- This gets me
the You’re Winner badge with my previous clear
of Redfall. I couldn’t find a metacritic score for
the GBA version, but the DS version got a 20
and a user score average of 2.1/10. It really is
that bad too.

Frank wrote:

I'm playing that now too! I want a little cushion so I don't play 2 mario bros games in a row. But I'll enjoy both spectacularly.

SupremeSarna wrote:

For PS5 / ? The icon is PS5 sandwhiched between two "*" without the quotations. You can just add the game Viewfinder next to my already completed PS5 game for the month. And NSMB2 or any others that may have been missed in the last OP update.

ErickRPG wrote:

I honestly might play another before Wonder releases. I picked NSMB2 because I'm fairly certain I only ever beat it once, when it initially released.

I definitely liked it a lot more this time around, vs when it launched months apart from New Super Mario Bros. U. I think there was just too much NSMB fatigue at the time.

None-the-less I'm glad to see we are getting that evolutionary step away from the NSMB games, instead of getting yet ANOTHER.

I beat wolfenstein the old blood on the xbox1

July is now concluded! Hope you've all had a relaxing summer thus far. Here are some scintillating stats for you about the month:
-Altogether, we beat 69 games in July! (I will resist the urge to make a joke about that accomplishment.) That number is the third-highest for any month so far this year, only topped by April's 92 and January's 97.
-We earned 13 badges in July. As expected, our resident badge fiend @Bleed_DukeBlue nabbed six of those, though @Slickriven , @Renaissance2K , @legendrko25 , and I got some as well.
-I lost my job a few days ago, but it's no biggie! It was a pretty lousy gig for a universally-disliked company, and I'm in a pretty comfy position for unemployment. No matter how long my job search lasts, it at least gives me more time to update this forum... and play Pikmin 4 during breaks.

Here's to an eventful August!

#64 down: Pumpkin Jack on Steam Deck. This gets me (alongside my previous clear of Horizon: Call of the Mountain) the Bear & Bird badge.

I read somewhere that Pumpkin Jack takes an average of 4 1/2 hours to beat, but it took me 7 1/2. There are lots of cheap ways to die, and the game keeps track of how many times you die. I died 212 times before beating this. Most of those deaths were to cheap falls, but several were to bosses (and, particularly, the final boss who is pretty obnoxious). This is the last of the games I was working on while out of town for the last few weeks. I'm happy to be able to get back to my non-portable systems again (and, particularly, my PS5 and PSVR2). It was pretty rough being something like 2/3-3/4 of the way through Final Fantasy XVI and then having to wait three weeks to play it again, so I'm looking forward to finishing that up soon.

It's been a crazy slow year for me thanks to Pokemon Scarlet, Salmon Run, and Tears of the Kingdom. But, I managed to beat another game. Me and the family replayed Yoshi's Woolly World for the first time since the kids were little, and had a blast with it again!

NES -
SNES -
N64 -
GC -
Wii -
Wii U - Yoshi's Woolly World
Switch - Pokemon Scarlet
GB -
GBC -
GBA -
DS -
3DS -
360 -
XB1 -
PS1 -
PS2 -
PS4 -
PSP -
GEN -

2/19 - Unique systems

2 - Total games

@SupremeSarna BTW you have me listed with 13 badges, but gave me 14

Slickriven wrote:

Fixed.

I know I said I was done with Bionic Commando games with my last update, but I couldn't let such a special Game of the Month go to waste without replaying one of my personal favorites.

Number: 30
Full Title: Bionic Commando
Platform Played: Game Boy
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Game Boy
Original Platforms: Game Boy
Applicable Badge: Heavy Machine Gun (already earned)

I gushed about this game back in 2020 where it featured in my Year of Replays, so I only need to rehash a few bullet points. It has one of the best 8-bit soundtracks in history. It's probably my favorite Game Boy game, colorized or otherwise. And even when compared to later games in the franchise that could capitalize on better hardware, it has the most satisfying swinging mechanics this side of Spider-Man. If the NES port of Bionic Commando is considered a hidden gem, the Game Boy version - which abandons the military theme for an anime aesthetic - is even more hidden and twice as precious.

Number: 31
Full Title: Bionic Commando: Elite Forces
Platform Played: Game Boy Advance
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Game Boy Color
Original Platforms: Game Boy Color
Applicable Badge: Heavy Machine Gun (already earned), Girl Power (1/2)

Then, there's Elite Forces. Despite being excited that the Game Boy favorite was getting a sequel of sorts, I never picked this up until this month. More of a reboot than a sequel, Elite Forces adds a female protagonist with alternate levels and some impressive Delphine-esque animated characters. What is also adds, to its detriment, are a bunch of other unwanted tropes from the Game Boy Color era: ultra low quality digitized voices that are barely understandable, a field of view that's zoomed in way too far to make calculated jumps, and flat backgrounds that can barely be parsed against equally-flat character sprites. Throw in a pack of frustrating, spongey bosses, and I don't think I missed out on that much in the two decades that I ignored its release, but the swinging is still a lot of fun when I'm not flinging myself towards a cheap death.

Number: 32
Full Title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Platform Played: Windows
Collection: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection
Native Platform: Arcade
Original Platforms: Arcade
Applicable Badge: Pile Drivin' (1/2)

Moving on to the Retro Talkshop Thread's August arcade extravaganza, it's probably no surprise that I dove back into the orignal Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game as the first of the winning "front room" arcade games on show this month. No new revelations into this classic, beloved game this time around that haven't already been said, but I continue to be stupified by how much of a quarter muncher this monster is, particularly during boss fights. Gnarly, dude.

Okay, FOR REAL, I'm picking Final Fantasy XVI back up tonight. I'll be peppering that epic experience with the cornucopia of classic arcade titles featured in the Retro Talkshop Thread.

@Renaissance2K Are you sure TMNT is a run 'n' gun?

@SupremeSarna I should be at 11 unique systems so far.

I got a sealed copy of criminal girls for $51, an outstanding deal, because it was incorrectly labeled as EU version. Love getting the rare deal on ebay.

SupremeSarna wrote:

In my defense, there's both running and guns in the game.

Renaissance2K wrote:

In Starfield you can build up your fists. So Starfield is a beat'm up.

I beat Aladdin on the xbox1

Paper Mario (N64 original) and Oracle of Seasons on Switch are my most recent completions. Going through OoA now.

I beat SEGA AGES Fantasy Zone as part of @Renaissance2K 's Game of the Month forum.
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2o1DkQakAAmUtX?format...[/imgt]

I prefer the Master System port, but this one is closer to the arcade original. So no Ultra Super Big Maximum Great Strong Tot on Dolimicca or Dz Deno Roma on Mockstar. Instead, I fought the original bosses of those planets, Crabumger and Winklone. But hey, one of SEGA AGES' big features is the ability to swap out those bosses for the Master System versions, if you prefer them.

Can you beat my record score of 1549400?

legendrko25 wrote:
Was it the Genesis or SNES version?

SupremeSarna wrote:
Genesis

Arcade August is in full swing with three more completions from our Retro Talkshop Thread arcade.

Number: 33
Full Title: The Simpsons
Platform Played: Arcade
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Arcade
Original Platforms: Arcade
Applicable Badge: Pile Drivin' (2/2)

I don't hold it in as high regard as the original Ninja Turtles arcade game, but I do remember playing The Simpsons in arcades and fun zones back during its hey day. I rarely made it past the first boss (unless I happened to be packing a fistful of quarters), but playing at home allowed me to appreciate how it was a faithful extension of the show with great animation, in spite of some hilarious mischaracterization of Smithers and Mr. Burns. The animation is great, the level designs are clever, and while it's every bit as much of a quarter muncher of other early 90's arcade games, the enemies and brawling make for a fun romp.

Number: 34
Full Title: Crazy Taxi
Platform Played: Dreamcast
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Dreamcast
Original Platforms: Arcade
Applicable Badge: N/A

I played Crazy Taxi more than any other Dreamcast game back in the day. Fighting through blisters on my fingers (a side effect of the game's button-mashing boost mechanics), there were few better "snacks" than racing around San Francisco while The Offspring blasted in the background. I lost most of my muscle memory for the game over the years, completely forgetting how to execute boosts consistently, but after a whole lot of frustrating trial-and-error this week on multiple platforms, I got my figurative license back, taking home a $6,000 tab and an S-class license for the win.

Number: 35
Full Title: Metal Slug X
Platform Played: Windows
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Windows
Original Platforms: Neo Geo
Applicable Badge: Heavy Machine Gun

Heading into the Back Room of the RTT Arcade, I wanted to pick up an arcade game in our list for which I already have a playthrough recorded and posted. Metal Slug X is an easy choice because I already have footage recorded, and it has a Verified port for the Steam Deck. Nothing much has changed here - the gameplay is still a pandemonium of beautiful sprite animation and cartoonish mayhem - save for a few more gameplay tweaks and some easy Steam achievements. Once again, I was caught off guard by the game's relatively-easy first level and got absolutely trounced by everything that followed, especially the mummy level.

Finishing a game on the Dreamcast means I've reached the halfway point on my platforms. Final Fantasy XVI will be another box checked off when the time comes, but other than that, expect oodles of arcade game completions in the coming weeks.

After almost a week, I 100%'d LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy .
[imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://i.imgur.com/QufJYTf.jpg[/imgt]

This game is and always will be a big step up from LSW 1. There are a few hours more content, with score attack bonus stages and bounty hunter missions. Stages now let you build piles of pieces into props required to progress, and you can now ride classic Star Wars vehicles/creatures like AT-STs and Dewbacks. They added Red Bricks to give you meaningful extras (i.e. fast building, infinite torpedoes, a tractor beam, score multipliers, etc.) and Gold Bricks to earn throughout the game, which contribute to your completion and can be assembled to unlock some of those bonus stages. The cutscenes have more charm, the level geometry is improved (dropped studs often fell through the floor in the first game; not so much here!), and the stages themselves are generally an improvement. All good stuff!

The game's biggest flaw is the endgame for 100% completion: You build a fountain that spews infinite studs a few at a time, and you just grind money until you have enough to buy the next ludicrously-expensive score multiplier, then go back and grind more til you can afford the next one. I spent at least 45 minutes just collecting cash to buy the last few extras, which isn't as fun as you'd think. (Yes, this is the intended method--the extra Score x10 alone costs 30,000,000 studs, so stacking the previous multipliers and fountain-diving is the only practical way to buy it.) This game also dropped the shootable targets and highjumping characters from LSW, and I've never known why.

Final complaint: My childhood disk. It still works after all these years, but it gets random disk-read errors when you're wandering around the hub area. Only inside the building, though; outside and in levels works a-okay. So you'll be buying things from the cantina owner and before you have a chance to autosave, the disk just stops reading and you have to reset. Now imagine you had just grinded 6,000,000 studs outside and you get that fatal error as you're walking up to the counter--you'd lose all of it! (That fortunately never happened to me, but I was briefly concerned.)

Anyway, this game's a real classic. If you want a LEGO game done right, play LSWII. LSWIII is about on par, but this one trumps it ever so slightly.

@Renaissance2K What did you complete to get Pile Drivin'? The Simpsons and...? I'm not seeing it in my records.

OP updated!

1st in Aug, 56th overall, 1st
Comix Zone
I'll take my share of that now @SupremeSarna as I've tied you with 20 consoles now.

I picked this one largely b/c I wanted a game to beat and I looked at some lists of noteworthy games and which aligned with my Mini Console as I hadn't really played anything on them thus far this year. 2+ semi-frustrating hours later and Comix Zone was completed. Game was pretty neat with the premise and some of the things you could do, but I didn't love the gameplay. I didn't look at the digital instruction manual on the Mini, and likely should have because I wasn't aware of how to perform most attacks, which were a challenge with the Mini's pretty junk dPad... which I didn't realize it was so crap until this game, diagonal directions were not easy to get working consistently.

I ended up looking for a video walkthrough to follow some, as well as a text one for some pointers. I also noticed/recalled that they released this on the and I think I might just have that. From what I could see from a guide's info about that version, it allowed for more buttons for better gameplay. That makes me tempted to see if I can give it a shot - maybe that could count for the remake if it redid the controls? I think I'd like it better with a better controller and maybe better ways to execute all of the moves more consistently.

I've been dabbling with some Halo Infinite campaign finally, but sort felt a touch burned out from games recently. Surely part of that stems from beating over 325 across the past 3.5+ years and 10+ each of the prior 3 months as well. This is also around the time of year that I start to look at my yearly personal goals and seek to focus on games to specifically earn my goals. Comix Zone helped here as I've now beat all 9 of my consoles that I wanted to focus on the least. Which is a touch funny since I now have 5 consoles with zero games beat and nearly no progress on them, but they were my personal '2nd tier' of focus - oh well. I guess I'll be looking to focus on them soon. I had got out my mini before the Genesis to try to beat that Shock Troopers game a 5th time for said badge, but it's the 2nd Strike or sequel title on there, so I'll just have to run through it on my PC apparently a 5th time for that.

SupremeSarna wrote:

The "Heavy Machine Gun" typo in TMNT was supposed to be Pile Drivin', but you guys were quicker to mock me than I was to fix it.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Gotcha. I had no idea what genre TMNT arcade was, so I didn’t pick up on that. No hard feelings, fella.

@Slickriven
[imgt w=220 h=157]https://media.tenor.com/CDJ-yP79Z4gAAAAM/mad-eyes....[/imgt]

Haha @SupremeSarna