Februari 5th:
some awesome secondhand finds
PlayStation 2:
SONY PlayStation 2 Slim (300kr, slim model SCPH-90004 from 2008, came with a power cable and a very worn but still functional composite video cable)
SONY Dual Shock 2 Analog Controller (came with the PS2, it's a bit worn but still works)
SONY PlayStation 2 8MB MagicGate Memory Card (came with the PS2)
Sonic Riders (disc only, it was in the PS2 when I opened the lid, the disc is scratched pretty bad and has some trouble playing the intro video and in-game music but it works enough for gameplay, it's not an issue for me regardless though as I still have my old unharmed original copy of the game I bought when it was released in 2006)
PC:
Diablo II (BestSeller Series)
Diablo II Expansion Set Lord of Destruction (disc only, has some minor scratches on it but should work fine)
Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun Plus Firestorm Mission CD
DVD:
Gustav + Gustav 2 (Garfield (2004) + Garfield 2 A Tale of Two Kitties (2006))
Ooops! Var är arken? (Ooops! Noah Is Gone../Two by Two/All Creatures Big and Small, 2015)
Argai The Prophecy - Vol. 1 (new and sealed, 2000)
Comics:
Dennis The Menace
2x Gustaf (Garfield)
2x Tom & Jerry
Manga:
Emma
Other:
2x retro drink coasters
a jar of decorative fake diamonds
2x mixed blind bags of toys (2x2x2 Rubik's Cube (Minions), 1x2x3 Rubik's Cube (Secret Life of Pets), etc.)
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Februari 12th:
Electronics:
HDMI <-> Component converter (USB powered)
Manga:
Rebirth (volumes 1 to 11 and 16)
One Piece (volumes 19, 20 and 30)
Tsubasa (volumes 11 and 12)
Comics:
Arne Anka
Magazines:
Bratz (stickers and puzzles)
Toys:
a bunch of Bakugan with some metal cards
a pink metallic fidget spinner
colorful camo fidget spinner
a bag of old 90s constructable sci-fi toys (a robot, lots of little pilot guys, some other various pieces)
Other:
a cartoony fox girl bike chain lock
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Februari 18th:
Magazine
LEGO Batman + LEGO Batman figure (polybag)
Showing posts with label Sonic Team. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sonic Team. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Now Playing - Januari 2019
CastleVania Symphony of the Night (PlayStation, played on PlayStation Portable)
created a new game file for my annual playthrough of 2019, calling it "MM X IX"
Shinobi (3DS)
playing around a bit in the free play mode with some of the unlockable cheats, it's definitely better but you're still limited to what you've unlocked in the normal mode, so it's not a lot to have fun with until you've suffered through til the end of the main mode and at least unlocked all the levels to free play in
Rouge The Bat in Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
A homebrew hack/mod of Sonic The Hedgehog that replaces Sonic with Rouge, fully custom adapted with her own graphics, new unique moves and abilities.
New favorite game of all time? Nah, it'd need an official version and physical release and preferably a new game to go with the new stuff this one has in it, but for what it is, a hack of the original Sonic game, it's exceptionally well made and I love it. As a Rouge fan this is one of the best games I've ever played for sure.
Wacky Races (Mega Drive, emulated prototype ROM)
Easily the best kart racer of the 16-bit generation in the things it gets right, with just a little bit more tweaking and some other minor things it would've been perfect, sadly it was never finished and remains only available as an unreleased prototype ROM, but wow what a prototype, it has FMV, polygonal graphics, excellent sprite quality, lots of high quality animation and tons of high quality sample based audio and on top of it all it plays with a good framerate and high speed, the controls are a bit of a mixed bag but they are functional and better than some games that did get released, so there was great potential in close reach.
It's easily one of the most technically impressive games of the 16-bit generation, and that says a thing or two when you look at some of the best competition for technical achievements that generation had.
Beam Rider (Intellivision)
A very good space shooter with a 3D viewpoint.
The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)
Trying it out on my newly purchased PS3 Slim while also testing the controllers I got for it, all works well, had to safe mode reset it to work though as it was set up for HDMI display so I got no image or sound on my old SDTV at first, thankfully it's easy to do, just hold the power button down until you hear a second beep and it's pretty much done and you can play as normal.
Had to start a new game of course, but I haven't played the game in so long that I was planning on starting over anyway as my old save file from 2015 on my Super Slim is so old now that I don't even remember where I was, I think Fall, but more than that I dunno, I just know I hadn't gotten to Winter yet, at least.
Ratchet & Clank Tools of Destruction (PlayStation 3)
Finally getting into this game, it's pretty good so far, it looks good, plays smoothly, worst thing has been that a lot of side paths and stuff to pick up is missable so extremely easily, so now already I have to go back and redo stuff from all the way back from the beginning of the game as you're not allowed to backtrack in the levels at all, they're linear and almost every step forward blocks your ability to go back even a single room or area, very annoying when you know there was more stuff back there if only you could open that door again that was open without any issues just a second ago or jump back on the platform just over there where you should easily be able to reach, but no, they're permanently blocked off unless you restart the whole level from the start, I really hate that, it makes the levels feel far less impressive and open, they look big and open ended but it's literally just a pretty corridor.
Space Debris (PlayStation)
Cool Boarders (PlayStation)
It's been a long time since I played this one, it's still one of the best snowboarding games ever, easy to get into, fun to play.
Super Sprint (as part of Midway Arcade Origins, played on PlayStation 3)
Spent a few hours getting over 257000 points, it gets repetitive after a while and the emulation is not perfect, but it's enjoyable enough for a gameplay session from time to time.
created a new game file for my annual playthrough of 2019, calling it "MM X IX"
Shinobi (3DS)
playing around a bit in the free play mode with some of the unlockable cheats, it's definitely better but you're still limited to what you've unlocked in the normal mode, so it's not a lot to have fun with until you've suffered through til the end of the main mode and at least unlocked all the levels to free play in
Rouge The Bat in Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
A homebrew hack/mod of Sonic The Hedgehog that replaces Sonic with Rouge, fully custom adapted with her own graphics, new unique moves and abilities.
New favorite game of all time? Nah, it'd need an official version and physical release and preferably a new game to go with the new stuff this one has in it, but for what it is, a hack of the original Sonic game, it's exceptionally well made and I love it. As a Rouge fan this is one of the best games I've ever played for sure.
Wacky Races (Mega Drive, emulated prototype ROM)
Easily the best kart racer of the 16-bit generation in the things it gets right, with just a little bit more tweaking and some other minor things it would've been perfect, sadly it was never finished and remains only available as an unreleased prototype ROM, but wow what a prototype, it has FMV, polygonal graphics, excellent sprite quality, lots of high quality animation and tons of high quality sample based audio and on top of it all it plays with a good framerate and high speed, the controls are a bit of a mixed bag but they are functional and better than some games that did get released, so there was great potential in close reach.
It's easily one of the most technically impressive games of the 16-bit generation, and that says a thing or two when you look at some of the best competition for technical achievements that generation had.
Beam Rider (Intellivision)
A very good space shooter with a 3D viewpoint.
The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)
Trying it out on my newly purchased PS3 Slim while also testing the controllers I got for it, all works well, had to safe mode reset it to work though as it was set up for HDMI display so I got no image or sound on my old SDTV at first, thankfully it's easy to do, just hold the power button down until you hear a second beep and it's pretty much done and you can play as normal.
Had to start a new game of course, but I haven't played the game in so long that I was planning on starting over anyway as my old save file from 2015 on my Super Slim is so old now that I don't even remember where I was, I think Fall, but more than that I dunno, I just know I hadn't gotten to Winter yet, at least.
Ratchet & Clank Tools of Destruction (PlayStation 3)
Finally getting into this game, it's pretty good so far, it looks good, plays smoothly, worst thing has been that a lot of side paths and stuff to pick up is missable so extremely easily, so now already I have to go back and redo stuff from all the way back from the beginning of the game as you're not allowed to backtrack in the levels at all, they're linear and almost every step forward blocks your ability to go back even a single room or area, very annoying when you know there was more stuff back there if only you could open that door again that was open without any issues just a second ago or jump back on the platform just over there where you should easily be able to reach, but no, they're permanently blocked off unless you restart the whole level from the start, I really hate that, it makes the levels feel far less impressive and open, they look big and open ended but it's literally just a pretty corridor.
Space Debris (PlayStation)
Cool Boarders (PlayStation)
It's been a long time since I played this one, it's still one of the best snowboarding games ever, easy to get into, fun to play.
Super Sprint (as part of Midway Arcade Origins, played on PlayStation 3)
Spent a few hours getting over 257000 points, it gets repetitive after a while and the emulation is not perfect, but it's enjoyable enough for a gameplay session from time to time.
Friday, June 1, 2018
Now Playing - Juni 2018
Auto Racing (Intellivision)
Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed (PlayStation Vita)
Played some more Entertainment System games with a friend; Ice Hockey, Double Dribble, Volleyball and Blades of Steel.
And some even more Entertainment System games with a friend; Blades of Steel, Ice Hockey again, Double Dribble again, Dead Fox, Three Eyed Boy, TMNT II The Arcade Game and Battleship.
In light of having played so much Intellivision recently
I've decided to dedicate 2018 to be the Year of Intellivision
and so I commemorate this by making the INTV Running Man immortalized in Etch A Sketch!
FlatOut (PC)
It's choppy but playable. The sequel is a huge improvement in most ways, especially the stunt minigames, but this one's still good, better on console ofcourse where it's been optimized to run with maximal quality, but on a shitty PC like mine I'm amazed it runs at all.
Need for Speed Underground (PC)
Just one race, it's so choppy, I just don't want to play it on PC. On PC I guess it's marginally better than the GBA version due to the options for superior visual detail, that's really the nicest thing I can say about it, it makes for a very nice looking slideshow.
1NSANE (PC)
An old favorite offroad racing game of mine, used to play it a lot back on my old Pentium 4 with Windows XP and GeForce 4 in the early 00s.
It's like a PC exclusive Smugglers Run type of game.
Tearaway (PlayStation Vita)
Stopped giving Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed an undeserved try and went back to the most charming place in gaming instead, back to the wonderful world of Tearaway!
Net Yaroze Collection (PlayStation)
I love playing these games.
Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed (PlayStation Vita)
Played some more Entertainment System games with a friend; Ice Hockey, Double Dribble, Volleyball and Blades of Steel.
And some even more Entertainment System games with a friend; Blades of Steel, Ice Hockey again, Double Dribble again, Dead Fox, Three Eyed Boy, TMNT II The Arcade Game and Battleship.
In light of having played so much Intellivision recently
I've decided to dedicate 2018 to be the Year of Intellivision
and so I commemorate this by making the INTV Running Man immortalized in Etch A Sketch!
FlatOut (PC)
It's choppy but playable. The sequel is a huge improvement in most ways, especially the stunt minigames, but this one's still good, better on console ofcourse where it's been optimized to run with maximal quality, but on a shitty PC like mine I'm amazed it runs at all.
Need for Speed Underground (PC)
Just one race, it's so choppy, I just don't want to play it on PC. On PC I guess it's marginally better than the GBA version due to the options for superior visual detail, that's really the nicest thing I can say about it, it makes for a very nice looking slideshow.
1NSANE (PC)
An old favorite offroad racing game of mine, used to play it a lot back on my old Pentium 4 with Windows XP and GeForce 4 in the early 00s.
It's like a PC exclusive Smugglers Run type of game.
Tearaway (PlayStation Vita)
Stopped giving Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed an undeserved try and went back to the most charming place in gaming instead, back to the wonderful world of Tearaway!
Net Yaroze Collection (PlayStation)
I love playing these games.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Now Playing - Maj 2018
Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed (PlayStation Vita)
V-Rally (PlayStation)
Joyriding.
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Just a quick playthrough.
The Valley Rule (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Vector TD (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Vector TD 2 (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Grand Theft Auto (PC)
Just testing it out a little bit.
Grand Theft Auto 2 (PC)
Just testing it out a little bit.
Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (Xbox 360)
Still trying to replicate the glitch with the combining hubworlds, sadly to no success. I have completed some regular challenge in the game in the meantime though.
Senario Vs. Maxx (Plug&Play)
Just playing some of the games for fun, Smart Escape is still the best of the bunch.
Been playing some games at a friend's house, Ice Hockey, Double Dribble and Ice Climber on Entertainment System and some various games on his new Atari Flashback, a fishing game, a cowboy duel game (Outlaw), a tank game (Combat) and some other ones (American Football, Football ("Soccer"), and some top-down racing games).
I've also installed an Intellivision emulator (Bliss 2.04) and am trying out some of the games I own, since I don't own an actual Intellivision console to play them on this is as good as I can do at the moment.
BurgerTime! (Intellivision)
BurgerTime! is a really good arcade game and a lot of fun to play, the Intellivision version is great.
Pac-Man (Intellivision)
One of the top best older versions of Pac-Man for sure.
Frog Bog (Intellivision)
It's a lot more fun when you activate manual controls.
Popeye (Intellivision)
A fun arcade game, not the most impressive version but a good game regardless and still very enjoyable, I prefer it to some of the more technically impressive versions as some of the added animations, music and sound effects etc. in other versions aren't always that good and end up being kind of awkward, so at the end of the day this is still my favorite version.
Skiing (Intellivision)
A simple but enjoyable skiing game, I'd say it's one of the best due to it's simplicity, compared to for example Slalom on Entertainment System this is much better as that game is far too hard and has rather annoying controls in which you have to constantly hold up on the steering cross to go forward, which is absolute murder on your thumb, and when compared to more modern games like Alpine Skiing 2007 on PS2 for example it's also superior as that game is a bit too technical and advanced for it's own good, it looks fantastic for a PS2 game but it's just not very fun to play, Skiing on Intellivision is just a great and simple little game to pick up and play and for us who aren't into the sport of skiing that's really all you need, and it makes for a better experience than all the licenced and complicated stuff other skiing games have to offer, at least in my opinion.
Utopia (Intellivision)
Trying to learn how to play this properly, it's a really cool game once you learn it, like a versus sim game, you control one of two islands with each of the two controllers and you try to manage your island as good as you can for a set amount of turns, the one who has managed their island the best at the end, wins.
Centipede (Intellivision)
A good version, nothing spectacular but it does what it needs to do, if you know Centipede in general then you know the Intellivision version as well, it's just the same good old classic Centipede.
Stadium Mud Buggies (Intellivision)
A great isometric racing game with good control, good visuals, lots of content and great driving physics.
Monster Truck Rally (Entertainment System)
The spiritual successor to Stadium Mud Buggies, basically the same game with even more content and better visuals.
Been playing some more games at a friend's house, now on his Mega Drive Flashback; Golden Axe 1, 2 and 3, Eternal Champions, Bonanza Bros., Flicky and Mortal Kombat 1 and 2.
Auto Racing (Intellivision)
An underrated top-down racer with some really good driving physics making it a blast to powerslide through corners like a pro. Got some nice visuals too with the cars and roadside buildings having shadows and the game shows off some nice multi-directional scrolling for such an old title.
This game commonly gets a bad rep for having bad controls but it all boils down to learning the controls, and they aren't even hard to learn, I'm honestly astonished over how many seem to struggle with them, basically the control disc is like a steering wheel, using the 16-directional input as a means to determine how much you're turning in either direction, only it's even easier as you don't actually have to turn it, you can just press down where you want and the game will do it, it's of course easier to explain in real life with an actual controller or with visual aids but here's an attempt at doing so in text form anyway; for example, pressing up on the disc does nothing as that's where the steering wheel is neutral, pressing up and diagonally will only ever so slightly steer in those direction, which can be good for minor adjustments, pressing straight left or right will give you a moderate amount of turning while still not risking any spin-outs, and pressing the lower part of the disc while turning, as in lower diagonal-left and lower diagonal-right, will result in significantly tighter turning, this can cause spin-outs if you do it too much from left to right in quick succession, but if done correctly you'll powerslide through corners at high speeds and it'll feel like a modern racing game only with a top-down camera angle and retro visuals, and finally you can slide it over to the other side and basically do 180 degree handbrake like turns and even pull off proper 360s if you're good enough, it's a genuine analog control that simply wasn't a thing again at all until the later part of the 90s, so enormous amounts of kudos to this game for implementing such a control scheme this early on and of course an equal amount of Kudos to the Intellivision for having such an awesome controller for making it possible in the first place, most impressive, you also have brakes on the action buttons but they're rarely needed even on the harder tracks, only the two fastest cars truly need the use of braking, it automatically accelerates so you just have to focus on steering for the most part.
There is an older and much more rare version of the game that had another control scheme (the regular one was an option too but you had to input a code to access it) and I can kind of excuse anyone who's played that as it seems to have far harder to manage controls than the regular version, but my guess is that a majority of those who have trouble with the game has it due to them using emulation where they try and map the 16-directional control disc to a 4-directional steering cross on a modern controller or the arrow keys on a keyboard, effectively losing 12 steps of analog sensitivity in the process, it's literally the same thing as mapping a modern console's analog stick to WASD, you'll lose any and all analog sensitivity and some games simply won't play correctly if they require you to use that sensitivity, as is the case of Auto Racing, despite being an older game the system was WAY ahead of it's time and the analog disc circle pad was only one of many things it did that took competitors many years, sometimes close to a couple of decades to catch up to.
Bowling (Intellivision)
What can I say, it's bowling. You line your guy up, aim, throw the ball, give it some aftertouch, hope the physics give you a strike then repeat that until you've bowled a whole game and get the final score. You get to pick some options like ball size, isle slipperiness, right or left handed and how many players will compete, you move the guy left and right on the isle with the left action buttons and aim/shoot with the lower right action button, you can see each player's current score by pressing the corresponding number key during gameplay.
Atlantis (Intellivision)
A Missile Command clone with some cool special features like a shmup ability where you ge to send out a ship to shoot down the incoming enemies but it had an energy limit of 90 second, you need to land and recharge to use it more, it can also be destroyed while in action.
Sonic Generations (Xbox 360)
An awful game with virtually no positive, everything is bad, bad visuals, bad framerate, strange super low screen resolutions at times, tons of super simplistic "3D" models (as in a lot of basic sprite stuff you'd expect to see in old 32-bit generation games) bad, inaccurate and laggy controls, bad, inaccurate and glitchy physics, no camera control, camera glitches, long load times, horrible voice acting, garbage script, wildly unfitting voice actors, characters act inaccordingly to their personalities and feel completely rebooted and out of place, bad level design, bad audio design, almost complete lack of exploration 99% of the time, super excessive use of forced on-rail segments where you have little to no control (you can sometimes use boost to make them go by faster but that drains the boost bar), poor placement of hidden star pickups forcing repeat gameplay in the laziest of ways imaginable (literally in one stage you have three right next to each other directly after a jump you can't control with three ways to jump and no way to return and grab the other two, simply pick one jump one time you play through the level, then the second during a second playthrough and finally the third during a third playthrough, it's as forced and boring as it gets, no skill involved, just rinse and repeat thee times over, it's mindless, boring and repetitive, and it's by far the most commonly used design choice for every single thing in this game), speaking of the boost, you have a button that boosts you forward, killing enemies automatically and stuff, making the already ultra linear and on-rail designed gameplay even more linear and on-rails, it fills up with everything you do, even moving the analog stick during on-ail jumps gives you points that charge your boost meter so you can use it to skip even more gameplay, on top of that you also have lots of upgrades you can buy, from points you get for completing and replaying stages, that make the game even more automatic and easy to breeze through, it's like they went to every extreme to make the game as unplayable and skippable as possible because they weren't going to put anything good in there anyway so why make anyone suffer through it, literally the levels are quite big in size but take only a couple of minutes to get through, they feel a lot longer becuase it's just several minutes of watching sonic "go fast" without much if any interaction, so basically you can watch a playthrough on youtube and get a virtually identical experience, there's so little gameplay here it's almost not even warranted to call it a game, there are a few extra challenges you can play as well, like racing against another charcter to the end of a level with a timer, or collecting rings with a timer, or using invincibility to walk across spikes etc. to reach the end of a level while on a timer, and so on.
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360, the unlockable Mega Drive version available in Sonic Generations after purchasing the Mega Drive controller in the shop for 7777 points and using it on the Mega Drive console above Green Hill zone)
The one potentially good thing about this game was that it came with the original Mega Drive version of Sonic The Hedgehog, except ofcourse it's not the original version, it's a ported version with some glitches and omissions, first off it runs in a window, so it's not full screen, not even close, the level select code don't seem to work and there are tons of little glitches that the original definitely didn't have, finally the audio has been remade so it sounds different, same musical compositions and the same kind of sound effects but it all sounds different, not sure if I would count that as a negative or a neutral as it technically doesn't sound "worse", it's more a matter of if you want it to sound authentic or not, if you do then it's a clear negative, if you don't care then it's okay, I guess, on a final tiny positive note they did fix the insta-death if you touch spikes while temporarily invincible after having been hit by something and lost your rings, so I guess that's something, still, it's a lesser version of the original and it doesn't even slightly begin to make up for the shitty main Sonic Generations game.
V-Rally (PlayStation)
Joyriding.
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Just a quick playthrough.
The Valley Rule (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Vector TD (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Vector TD 2 (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Grand Theft Auto (PC)
Just testing it out a little bit.
Grand Theft Auto 2 (PC)
Just testing it out a little bit.
Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (Xbox 360)
Still trying to replicate the glitch with the combining hubworlds, sadly to no success. I have completed some regular challenge in the game in the meantime though.
Senario Vs. Maxx (Plug&Play)
Just playing some of the games for fun, Smart Escape is still the best of the bunch.
Been playing some games at a friend's house, Ice Hockey, Double Dribble and Ice Climber on Entertainment System and some various games on his new Atari Flashback, a fishing game, a cowboy duel game (Outlaw), a tank game (Combat) and some other ones (American Football, Football ("Soccer"), and some top-down racing games).
I've also installed an Intellivision emulator (Bliss 2.04) and am trying out some of the games I own, since I don't own an actual Intellivision console to play them on this is as good as I can do at the moment.
BurgerTime! (Intellivision)
BurgerTime! is a really good arcade game and a lot of fun to play, the Intellivision version is great.
Pac-Man (Intellivision)
One of the top best older versions of Pac-Man for sure.
Frog Bog (Intellivision)
It's a lot more fun when you activate manual controls.
Popeye (Intellivision)
A fun arcade game, not the most impressive version but a good game regardless and still very enjoyable, I prefer it to some of the more technically impressive versions as some of the added animations, music and sound effects etc. in other versions aren't always that good and end up being kind of awkward, so at the end of the day this is still my favorite version.
Skiing (Intellivision)
A simple but enjoyable skiing game, I'd say it's one of the best due to it's simplicity, compared to for example Slalom on Entertainment System this is much better as that game is far too hard and has rather annoying controls in which you have to constantly hold up on the steering cross to go forward, which is absolute murder on your thumb, and when compared to more modern games like Alpine Skiing 2007 on PS2 for example it's also superior as that game is a bit too technical and advanced for it's own good, it looks fantastic for a PS2 game but it's just not very fun to play, Skiing on Intellivision is just a great and simple little game to pick up and play and for us who aren't into the sport of skiing that's really all you need, and it makes for a better experience than all the licenced and complicated stuff other skiing games have to offer, at least in my opinion.
Utopia (Intellivision)
Trying to learn how to play this properly, it's a really cool game once you learn it, like a versus sim game, you control one of two islands with each of the two controllers and you try to manage your island as good as you can for a set amount of turns, the one who has managed their island the best at the end, wins.
Centipede (Intellivision)
A good version, nothing spectacular but it does what it needs to do, if you know Centipede in general then you know the Intellivision version as well, it's just the same good old classic Centipede.
Stadium Mud Buggies (Intellivision)
A great isometric racing game with good control, good visuals, lots of content and great driving physics.
Monster Truck Rally (Entertainment System)
The spiritual successor to Stadium Mud Buggies, basically the same game with even more content and better visuals.
Been playing some more games at a friend's house, now on his Mega Drive Flashback; Golden Axe 1, 2 and 3, Eternal Champions, Bonanza Bros., Flicky and Mortal Kombat 1 and 2.
Auto Racing (Intellivision)
An underrated top-down racer with some really good driving physics making it a blast to powerslide through corners like a pro. Got some nice visuals too with the cars and roadside buildings having shadows and the game shows off some nice multi-directional scrolling for such an old title.
This game commonly gets a bad rep for having bad controls but it all boils down to learning the controls, and they aren't even hard to learn, I'm honestly astonished over how many seem to struggle with them, basically the control disc is like a steering wheel, using the 16-directional input as a means to determine how much you're turning in either direction, only it's even easier as you don't actually have to turn it, you can just press down where you want and the game will do it, it's of course easier to explain in real life with an actual controller or with visual aids but here's an attempt at doing so in text form anyway; for example, pressing up on the disc does nothing as that's where the steering wheel is neutral, pressing up and diagonally will only ever so slightly steer in those direction, which can be good for minor adjustments, pressing straight left or right will give you a moderate amount of turning while still not risking any spin-outs, and pressing the lower part of the disc while turning, as in lower diagonal-left and lower diagonal-right, will result in significantly tighter turning, this can cause spin-outs if you do it too much from left to right in quick succession, but if done correctly you'll powerslide through corners at high speeds and it'll feel like a modern racing game only with a top-down camera angle and retro visuals, and finally you can slide it over to the other side and basically do 180 degree handbrake like turns and even pull off proper 360s if you're good enough, it's a genuine analog control that simply wasn't a thing again at all until the later part of the 90s, so enormous amounts of kudos to this game for implementing such a control scheme this early on and of course an equal amount of Kudos to the Intellivision for having such an awesome controller for making it possible in the first place, most impressive, you also have brakes on the action buttons but they're rarely needed even on the harder tracks, only the two fastest cars truly need the use of braking, it automatically accelerates so you just have to focus on steering for the most part.
There is an older and much more rare version of the game that had another control scheme (the regular one was an option too but you had to input a code to access it) and I can kind of excuse anyone who's played that as it seems to have far harder to manage controls than the regular version, but my guess is that a majority of those who have trouble with the game has it due to them using emulation where they try and map the 16-directional control disc to a 4-directional steering cross on a modern controller or the arrow keys on a keyboard, effectively losing 12 steps of analog sensitivity in the process, it's literally the same thing as mapping a modern console's analog stick to WASD, you'll lose any and all analog sensitivity and some games simply won't play correctly if they require you to use that sensitivity, as is the case of Auto Racing, despite being an older game the system was WAY ahead of it's time and the analog disc circle pad was only one of many things it did that took competitors many years, sometimes close to a couple of decades to catch up to.
Bowling (Intellivision)
What can I say, it's bowling. You line your guy up, aim, throw the ball, give it some aftertouch, hope the physics give you a strike then repeat that until you've bowled a whole game and get the final score. You get to pick some options like ball size, isle slipperiness, right or left handed and how many players will compete, you move the guy left and right on the isle with the left action buttons and aim/shoot with the lower right action button, you can see each player's current score by pressing the corresponding number key during gameplay.
Atlantis (Intellivision)
A Missile Command clone with some cool special features like a shmup ability where you ge to send out a ship to shoot down the incoming enemies but it had an energy limit of 90 second, you need to land and recharge to use it more, it can also be destroyed while in action.
Sonic Generations (Xbox 360)
An awful game with virtually no positive, everything is bad, bad visuals, bad framerate, strange super low screen resolutions at times, tons of super simplistic "3D" models (as in a lot of basic sprite stuff you'd expect to see in old 32-bit generation games) bad, inaccurate and laggy controls, bad, inaccurate and glitchy physics, no camera control, camera glitches, long load times, horrible voice acting, garbage script, wildly unfitting voice actors, characters act inaccordingly to their personalities and feel completely rebooted and out of place, bad level design, bad audio design, almost complete lack of exploration 99% of the time, super excessive use of forced on-rail segments where you have little to no control (you can sometimes use boost to make them go by faster but that drains the boost bar), poor placement of hidden star pickups forcing repeat gameplay in the laziest of ways imaginable (literally in one stage you have three right next to each other directly after a jump you can't control with three ways to jump and no way to return and grab the other two, simply pick one jump one time you play through the level, then the second during a second playthrough and finally the third during a third playthrough, it's as forced and boring as it gets, no skill involved, just rinse and repeat thee times over, it's mindless, boring and repetitive, and it's by far the most commonly used design choice for every single thing in this game), speaking of the boost, you have a button that boosts you forward, killing enemies automatically and stuff, making the already ultra linear and on-rail designed gameplay even more linear and on-rails, it fills up with everything you do, even moving the analog stick during on-ail jumps gives you points that charge your boost meter so you can use it to skip even more gameplay, on top of that you also have lots of upgrades you can buy, from points you get for completing and replaying stages, that make the game even more automatic and easy to breeze through, it's like they went to every extreme to make the game as unplayable and skippable as possible because they weren't going to put anything good in there anyway so why make anyone suffer through it, literally the levels are quite big in size but take only a couple of minutes to get through, they feel a lot longer becuase it's just several minutes of watching sonic "go fast" without much if any interaction, so basically you can watch a playthrough on youtube and get a virtually identical experience, there's so little gameplay here it's almost not even warranted to call it a game, there are a few extra challenges you can play as well, like racing against another charcter to the end of a level with a timer, or collecting rings with a timer, or using invincibility to walk across spikes etc. to reach the end of a level while on a timer, and so on.
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360, the unlockable Mega Drive version available in Sonic Generations after purchasing the Mega Drive controller in the shop for 7777 points and using it on the Mega Drive console above Green Hill zone)
The one potentially good thing about this game was that it came with the original Mega Drive version of Sonic The Hedgehog, except ofcourse it's not the original version, it's a ported version with some glitches and omissions, first off it runs in a window, so it's not full screen, not even close, the level select code don't seem to work and there are tons of little glitches that the original definitely didn't have, finally the audio has been remade so it sounds different, same musical compositions and the same kind of sound effects but it all sounds different, not sure if I would count that as a negative or a neutral as it technically doesn't sound "worse", it's more a matter of if you want it to sound authentic or not, if you do then it's a clear negative, if you don't care then it's okay, I guess, on a final tiny positive note they did fix the insta-death if you touch spikes while temporarily invincible after having been hit by something and lost your rings, so I guess that's something, still, it's a lesser version of the original and it doesn't even slightly begin to make up for the shitty main Sonic Generations game.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Now Playing - November 2017
Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)
Jersey Devil (PlayStation)
Sonic R (PC)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive, played on 3DS via SEGA 3D Classics Collection)
Baja Edge of Control (Xbox 360)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360)
Shadow The Hedgehog (Xbox, played on Xbox 360)
Race PRO (Xbox 360)
Tomb Raider Legend (Xbox 360)
Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
Finally got hold of a Gal*Gun game, it's definitely a game with my kind of humor, I like it already. Too bad there's no instruction manual in the box, it's all digital only.
Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)
pet collecting and minigames aimed toward children, an extremely typical DS game in every way imaginable, mostly touch screen controls, a couple of minigames that are more puzzle focused can be enjoyable for a bit but overall it's nothing I'd recommend to anyone outside of the targeted little girl demographic
Remember Me (Xbox 360)
It looks pretty good with lots of detailed visuals and such but it also looks very cluttered making it hard to see stuff, especially early in the game in the slums where you have piles of garbage and scattered trash all over the place, the combat is sluggish and annoying relying on combos with a really poor timing system that's really hard to get a good feel for, I've managed to get it down enough that I can get through a fight relatively unscaved but it's clunky at best, the audio quality is downright some of the worst I've heard in modern times, more often than not literally sounding like the game takes place in a wooden box streamed over internet radio from the late 90s to an internet modded Mega Drive, yeah if you've played any 16-bit version of Street Fighter 2 you already know exactly what this game's voice compression quality sounds like, it's full of annoying real time info stuff and intrusive tutorials that pop up during gameplay or pause the gameplay entirely forcing you to do other stuff before you can continue doing what you were actually doing, frequently taking you out of the experience and breaking what little immersion there might have been otherwise, the camera is awful with slow control, glitchy and jerky movement as if it doesn't update the camera in real time or something and it's constantly switching between the normal (barely) controllable view and static camera angles for platforming segments and "cinematic" moments, I say that in quotation marks as it's literally just parts of the level where it forced you to walk and no other inputs work while some music plays as you're suppose to take in the visual impressions of the graphics they made, it's as shallow as it gets and because it's done so poorly it fails to have the impact it could've had if only someone with artistic and cinematic expertise had been in charge instead of the janitor or possibly a son or daughter of one of the programmers, clearly no person with any kind of knowledge on how to direct cinematic scenes ever came close to working on this game, the level design is confusing and awkward, especially in combination with the cluttered visuals and bad camera and the game has glitches, lots of glitches, sometimes the characters during cutscenes will freak out like Silent Hill monsters, twitching, turning and spassing out all over the place in the most unnatural ways possible.
Oh, there's no proper instruction booklet in the box either, just a thin pamphlet thing, so they didn't even manage that properly.
Jersey Devil (PlayStation)
Sonic R (PC)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive, played on 3DS via SEGA 3D Classics Collection)
Baja Edge of Control (Xbox 360)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360)
Shadow The Hedgehog (Xbox, played on Xbox 360)
Race PRO (Xbox 360)
Tomb Raider Legend (Xbox 360)
Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
Finally got hold of a Gal*Gun game, it's definitely a game with my kind of humor, I like it already. Too bad there's no instruction manual in the box, it's all digital only.
Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)
pet collecting and minigames aimed toward children, an extremely typical DS game in every way imaginable, mostly touch screen controls, a couple of minigames that are more puzzle focused can be enjoyable for a bit but overall it's nothing I'd recommend to anyone outside of the targeted little girl demographic
Remember Me (Xbox 360)
It looks pretty good with lots of detailed visuals and such but it also looks very cluttered making it hard to see stuff, especially early in the game in the slums where you have piles of garbage and scattered trash all over the place, the combat is sluggish and annoying relying on combos with a really poor timing system that's really hard to get a good feel for, I've managed to get it down enough that I can get through a fight relatively unscaved but it's clunky at best, the audio quality is downright some of the worst I've heard in modern times, more often than not literally sounding like the game takes place in a wooden box streamed over internet radio from the late 90s to an internet modded Mega Drive, yeah if you've played any 16-bit version of Street Fighter 2 you already know exactly what this game's voice compression quality sounds like, it's full of annoying real time info stuff and intrusive tutorials that pop up during gameplay or pause the gameplay entirely forcing you to do other stuff before you can continue doing what you were actually doing, frequently taking you out of the experience and breaking what little immersion there might have been otherwise, the camera is awful with slow control, glitchy and jerky movement as if it doesn't update the camera in real time or something and it's constantly switching between the normal (barely) controllable view and static camera angles for platforming segments and "cinematic" moments, I say that in quotation marks as it's literally just parts of the level where it forced you to walk and no other inputs work while some music plays as you're suppose to take in the visual impressions of the graphics they made, it's as shallow as it gets and because it's done so poorly it fails to have the impact it could've had if only someone with artistic and cinematic expertise had been in charge instead of the janitor or possibly a son or daughter of one of the programmers, clearly no person with any kind of knowledge on how to direct cinematic scenes ever came close to working on this game, the level design is confusing and awkward, especially in combination with the cluttered visuals and bad camera and the game has glitches, lots of glitches, sometimes the characters during cutscenes will freak out like Silent Hill monsters, twitching, turning and spassing out all over the place in the most unnatural ways possible.
Oh, there's no proper instruction booklet in the box either, just a thin pamphlet thing, so they didn't even manage that properly.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Now Playing - Oktober 2017
September is over so I will dial down the 32 extravaganza a bit and focus on horror themed games and monster games instead, still with an underlying 32-bit focus though.
Metroid II Return of Samus (Game Boy)
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)
WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Jersey Devil (PlayStation)
Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
WRC FIA World Rally Championship (PlayStation Portable)
Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)
Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap i Kvadrat (PlayStation)
Also known as Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap Till Max, is a multiplayer-focused minigame collection for PC and PlayStation developed by UDS and published by Infogrames in 2001.
It's a 3D game with low minimum system requirements and it runs effortlessly without any compatibility problems on my much more modern hardware and software.
The visuals look good enough, not overly impressive by 2001 standards but they get the job done without any issues so I'm not complaining, it plays well with simple and easy to learn and use controls and the gameplay is for the most part fun and varied.
You play as either Asterix, Obelix, Mrs. Geriatrix or Cacofonix.
As I mentioned it's a multiplayer-focused game, so it supports the use of keyboard and a USB controller to allow for 2-player split-screen gameplay, which is very nice to see in a computer game for once!
Asterix Mega Madness (PlayStation)
I decided to check out the PlayStation port to see if there were any differences, and no, it was virtually identical to the PC game, beyond the obvious PlayStation things like loading from the disc causing slightly longer load times (which may be shortened if you play it on a PS2 with the faster disc loading enabled), a lower screen resolution adapted for display on older TVs (which can be changed if playing via an emulator on PC) and the lack of texture filtering (which is available if you play it on a PS2 or via emulation on PC) there are no real differences, some sprites are smaller to fit the lower screen resolution of older TVs better, but other than that the 3D geometry detail, framerate, colors, texture quality, controls, music, animated cutscenes and all other content is completely intact and seemingly identical.
It's an as flawless port as it possibly can be and lives up to the high Asterix & Obelix quality the series is known for.
Kao The Kangaroo Round 2 (PC)
An unusually good 3D platformer, at least by PC standards, seeing as they're usually best found on consoles, this was a multiplatform game though so it's also on PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox but it works very well on PC, even a shitty PC like mine it managed to run fairly smooth.
It seems to use the Massive engine, that powers the excellent AquaNox games, which would explain why it looks as good as it does while still running so well, it's a very good graphics engine.
Sonic R (PC)
Found this game while I was doing some cleaning, I'd put it away in a box with some other older stuff like Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Quake II, Unreal, some racing game and a couple of other games I've never even played because they wouldn't work on the PC I had back then.. maybe I'll give those a try with my current PC at some point as well.
Anyway, I decided to install this and see if I could get it running, and after having found working fixes for the issues I was having (an additional program was needed to make the controls work and a hex edited file was needed for better resolution settings), it works well enough with no major problems, I've seen some minor visual glitches and the resolution is not the same as Windows so it screws up the order of my desktop icons every time I play, but it's no biggie and it plays just fine otherwise.
The funny thing is, I have a russian version of the game, so it's Sonic R.. in russian.
It still plays like normal but all text and the voice clips have been changed to russian, and I don't understand a single word, I can guess what words mean "retry", "save", "load" or "quit" and other such basic stuff, but the rest is just strange symbols mixed with a random handful of recognizable letters.
Still, it's a fun game, I like it, it's one of the few mascot kart racer type games from the 90s I actually enjoy playing because it adds the extra depth to the gameplay with side missions during races, like finding hidden chaos emeralds and stuff.
Metroid II Return of Samus (Game Boy)
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)
WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Jersey Devil (PlayStation)
Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
WRC FIA World Rally Championship (PlayStation Portable)
Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)
Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap i Kvadrat (PlayStation)
Also known as Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap Till Max, is a multiplayer-focused minigame collection for PC and PlayStation developed by UDS and published by Infogrames in 2001.
It's a 3D game with low minimum system requirements and it runs effortlessly without any compatibility problems on my much more modern hardware and software.
The visuals look good enough, not overly impressive by 2001 standards but they get the job done without any issues so I'm not complaining, it plays well with simple and easy to learn and use controls and the gameplay is for the most part fun and varied.
You play as either Asterix, Obelix, Mrs. Geriatrix or Cacofonix.
As I mentioned it's a multiplayer-focused game, so it supports the use of keyboard and a USB controller to allow for 2-player split-screen gameplay, which is very nice to see in a computer game for once!
Asterix Mega Madness (PlayStation)
I decided to check out the PlayStation port to see if there were any differences, and no, it was virtually identical to the PC game, beyond the obvious PlayStation things like loading from the disc causing slightly longer load times (which may be shortened if you play it on a PS2 with the faster disc loading enabled), a lower screen resolution adapted for display on older TVs (which can be changed if playing via an emulator on PC) and the lack of texture filtering (which is available if you play it on a PS2 or via emulation on PC) there are no real differences, some sprites are smaller to fit the lower screen resolution of older TVs better, but other than that the 3D geometry detail, framerate, colors, texture quality, controls, music, animated cutscenes and all other content is completely intact and seemingly identical.
It's an as flawless port as it possibly can be and lives up to the high Asterix & Obelix quality the series is known for.
Kao The Kangaroo Round 2 (PC)
An unusually good 3D platformer, at least by PC standards, seeing as they're usually best found on consoles, this was a multiplatform game though so it's also on PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox but it works very well on PC, even a shitty PC like mine it managed to run fairly smooth.
It seems to use the Massive engine, that powers the excellent AquaNox games, which would explain why it looks as good as it does while still running so well, it's a very good graphics engine.
Sonic R (PC)
Found this game while I was doing some cleaning, I'd put it away in a box with some other older stuff like Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Quake II, Unreal, some racing game and a couple of other games I've never even played because they wouldn't work on the PC I had back then.. maybe I'll give those a try with my current PC at some point as well.
Anyway, I decided to install this and see if I could get it running, and after having found working fixes for the issues I was having (an additional program was needed to make the controls work and a hex edited file was needed for better resolution settings), it works well enough with no major problems, I've seen some minor visual glitches and the resolution is not the same as Windows so it screws up the order of my desktop icons every time I play, but it's no biggie and it plays just fine otherwise.
The funny thing is, I have a russian version of the game, so it's Sonic R.. in russian.
It still plays like normal but all text and the voice clips have been changed to russian, and I don't understand a single word, I can guess what words mean "retry", "save", "load" or "quit" and other such basic stuff, but the rest is just strange symbols mixed with a random handful of recognizable letters.
Still, it's a fun game, I like it, it's one of the few mascot kart racer type games from the 90s I actually enjoy playing because it adds the extra depth to the gameplay with side missions during races, like finding hidden chaos emeralds and stuff.
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Now Playing - Juli 2017
Been playing some more of my DS games on my newly acquired 3DS, also been taking some stereoscopic "3D" photos with it, which is a neat function, too bad I don't have any 3DS games yet, there aren't really that many I want except maybe Metroid Samus Returns which isn't coming out for another two months and a select few that are a bit on the pricey side and are hard to find. I did get hold of some good ones this month though.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Been playing this regularly every day for about three months now and I can say it's pretty much run it's course. It hasn't gotten any better, it remains a poorly executed unbalanced mess with some minor redeemable fun to be had when taken on it's own.
Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects (DS, playing on 3DS)
C.O.P. The Recruit (DS, playing on 3DS)
I'm stuck on a mission where I have to put out some busses on fire with a fire extinguisher, the timer is brutal and the touch screen aiming controls are not helping, great game otherwise but this mission can go fuck itself.
Star Wars Lethal Alliance (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's not as good as it is on PSP and every step of the way I take in this version reminds me of that fact.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color, playing on Game Boy Advance)
A very dark game, not the best idea for a game made for portables without backlit screens, but the game itself is very well made, has some nice light effects and the level of detail is excellent, the entire level of technical quality overall is some of the best I've seen on Game Boy Color alongside games like Alone in the Dark The New Nightmare and the Harry Potter RPGs.
Sadly the game is very hard to play, not just because it's hard to see without good light conditions but also because it just doesn't play that well, it's got clunky controls, tough enemies and no way to recap what you're suppose to be doing, so remembering the mission briefing given to you before a missions starts is imperative. I gave my new GBA Advance X-Light a try and it made the game a lot easier to see, but the difficulty still kicked my ass regardless. Suffice to say I haven't gotten past the first mission yet.
Back Track (Game Boy Advance)
An FPS similar to Wolfenstein 3D and Zero Tolerance, it plays fast and relatively smooth but it's tough to aim, shoot and dodge as the controls have a lag in the animation of everything you do, you don't aim, move or shoot right away when you press the buttons, making it very unresponsive and much more difficult than it actually is. Your goal is to rescue abducted humans from aliens while gunning down the aliens and their machines.
MX Vs ATV Reflex (DS, playing on 3DS)
A pretty bad racing game with motocross bikes, ATVs, trophy trucks and monster trucks, it has pretty awkward basic controls and the advanced controls for tricks and such are even worse, it's not unplayable but it has enough issues that it's a lot less fun that it should be.
Garfield's Nightmare (DS, playing on 3DS)
Not bad at all actually, a simple platformer where you play as Garfield in his nightmares after having eaten too much food before naptime. It looks very nice, well styled, detailed and animated, one of the best DS games I've played so far.
UPDATE: I completed it 100% on the 9th, around 04:30 at night, took me about 5 hours.
Battle Arena Toshinden 4 (PlayStation)
It's not what I imagined, it has about as much to do with my beloved Battle Arena Toshinden 2 that any other random fighting game from any other completely irrelevant series does, it doesn't have the same characters anymore, at best there are some relatives and stuff to some characters from the older games and that's about it, it's not good enough in my opinion, I play Toshinden for Sofia first and foremost and her absence is one of the major complaints I have against this game, it also doesn't play quite the same, it doesn't look the same in the art style nor does it look as good visually in the technical department either, with simpler blob shadows and Tekken-esque arenas with little to no detail other than a ground texture and some very scarce background detail, it's just completely different in every way really, it only shares the genre of being a fighting game and that you have weapons to fight with, that's it. The fact that it's a continuation of the story when it's made so different means little to nothing for me as the feel of the story being relevant is completely gone when the characters that made the story aren't there anymore.
That being said, it's not awful or anything, it still looks okay and animates smoothly, it reminds me a lot of Tekken in how it looks overall, with blockier character models that animate rather slowly, it has some really cool and cinematic special attacks, somewhat similar to Evil Zone, and it plays just fine with the controls, the free moving ability is neat even if it's a lot more limited from normal gameplay when activated, as most other fighting games do from the late 90s and early 2000s, it's just not a game that stands out like the name suggested it would, or at least not in the way I had imagined.
So while it doesn't hold up to Battle Arena Toshinden 2 in any way it's still a good game, just not as great as it should've been given the honorable title of Toshinden and being a rather late title on the PlayStation it ultimately fails to impress.
By 1999 and 2000 there were many other fighting games around both on PlayStation and the other active systems, like the new next gen Dreamcast with games like SoulCalibur no less, that simply made this game look bad by comparison.
However, it should be mentioned that this was released as a low budget title, and re-released as such two more times after that in 2001 by two different budget brands only a day apart, so they at least acknowledged that it wouldn't cut it had they tried to sell it at full price.
There are minigames and unlockable art and stuff too, so there's at least a good amount of content.
Raceway Drag & Stock Racing (PlayStation 2)
Decided to give this game a try again. I actually got first place in a stock race, but it was on easy, I still haven't been able to win on normal. I just needed a win, the stock racing mode is really hard so any win was welcome at this point.
Sega 3D Classics Collection (3DS)
A small mixed bag of old 8-bit and 16-bit generation games from Sega, faithfully re-created for 3DS.
It has some great games but also some highly questionable additions and omissions, like oddly enough it has no version of Space Harrier or OutRun, even though in Japan they got both as downloadables and could've easily added them to this collection, but it has three Fantasy Zone games, whereof two are just different version of Fantasy Zone 2 and the other is a secret you can find by clicking on an empty area of the touch screen at the Extra Games menu.
The three Fantasy Zone games included are Fantasy Zone for Master System, Fantasy Zone 2 Tears of Opa Opa for Master System and Fantasy Zone 2 W.
There are some great games on here though, like the original Mega Drive version of Sonic The Hedgehog, the arcade version of both Galaxy Force II and Thunder Blade and the original Master System game Maze Walker.
There's also the Mega Drive version of Altered Beast, the previously arcade exclusive racing game Power Drift and Puyo Puyo 2.
Here's a screenshot I took of Maze Walker/Maze Hunter 3-D for Master System using the Kega Fusion emulator.
If you cross your eyes and line the two images up as one you'll get a good idea of what the 3D depth effect in this game is like, it's really nice to see in real life on a 3DS or on an original Master System with 3D glasses.
Killzone Mercenary (PlayStation Vita)
Decided to play something else now that I'm done with Smart As. I want to play something that makes me impressed by the Vita again after so much mediocrity and this game is literally the most impressive portable game I've ever seen and I just so happen to own a copy of it to play.
Fast & Furious Showdown (3DS)
It's a pretty good port of the game, a little choppy in the framerate but still playable. It's a very unbalanced game, with some things being near impossible, taking dussins of tries before you win, while others are so easy you can't help but get them on the first try, without even trying.
Moshi Monsters Katsuma Unleashed (3DS)
A basic platformer, it offers nothing that hasn't been done better before many times by countless other games, but it's okay, the framerate is strangely not very good considering how unimpressive the game looks, it's just a very basic and barely 2,5D platformer, with 2D backgrounds and 3D models for Katsuma and the enemies, it doesn't really do anything to push the hardware so why it's not a solid 60fps I don't know, it should be when it's this visually underwhelming.
UPDATE 29th Juli
Beat the game with only a few things missing for 100% completion. It was a very short game.
UPDATE 30th Juli
Completed everything else, you get Hard Mode unlocked and you can find some hidden cheat codes if you explore a bit.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Been playing this regularly every day for about three months now and I can say it's pretty much run it's course. It hasn't gotten any better, it remains a poorly executed unbalanced mess with some minor redeemable fun to be had when taken on it's own.
Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects (DS, playing on 3DS)
C.O.P. The Recruit (DS, playing on 3DS)
I'm stuck on a mission where I have to put out some busses on fire with a fire extinguisher, the timer is brutal and the touch screen aiming controls are not helping, great game otherwise but this mission can go fuck itself.
Star Wars Lethal Alliance (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's not as good as it is on PSP and every step of the way I take in this version reminds me of that fact.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color, playing on Game Boy Advance)
A very dark game, not the best idea for a game made for portables without backlit screens, but the game itself is very well made, has some nice light effects and the level of detail is excellent, the entire level of technical quality overall is some of the best I've seen on Game Boy Color alongside games like Alone in the Dark The New Nightmare and the Harry Potter RPGs.
Sadly the game is very hard to play, not just because it's hard to see without good light conditions but also because it just doesn't play that well, it's got clunky controls, tough enemies and no way to recap what you're suppose to be doing, so remembering the mission briefing given to you before a missions starts is imperative. I gave my new GBA Advance X-Light a try and it made the game a lot easier to see, but the difficulty still kicked my ass regardless. Suffice to say I haven't gotten past the first mission yet.
Back Track (Game Boy Advance)
An FPS similar to Wolfenstein 3D and Zero Tolerance, it plays fast and relatively smooth but it's tough to aim, shoot and dodge as the controls have a lag in the animation of everything you do, you don't aim, move or shoot right away when you press the buttons, making it very unresponsive and much more difficult than it actually is. Your goal is to rescue abducted humans from aliens while gunning down the aliens and their machines.
MX Vs ATV Reflex (DS, playing on 3DS)
A pretty bad racing game with motocross bikes, ATVs, trophy trucks and monster trucks, it has pretty awkward basic controls and the advanced controls for tricks and such are even worse, it's not unplayable but it has enough issues that it's a lot less fun that it should be.
Garfield's Nightmare (DS, playing on 3DS)
Not bad at all actually, a simple platformer where you play as Garfield in his nightmares after having eaten too much food before naptime. It looks very nice, well styled, detailed and animated, one of the best DS games I've played so far.
UPDATE: I completed it 100% on the 9th, around 04:30 at night, took me about 5 hours.
Battle Arena Toshinden 4 (PlayStation)
It's not what I imagined, it has about as much to do with my beloved Battle Arena Toshinden 2 that any other random fighting game from any other completely irrelevant series does, it doesn't have the same characters anymore, at best there are some relatives and stuff to some characters from the older games and that's about it, it's not good enough in my opinion, I play Toshinden for Sofia first and foremost and her absence is one of the major complaints I have against this game, it also doesn't play quite the same, it doesn't look the same in the art style nor does it look as good visually in the technical department either, with simpler blob shadows and Tekken-esque arenas with little to no detail other than a ground texture and some very scarce background detail, it's just completely different in every way really, it only shares the genre of being a fighting game and that you have weapons to fight with, that's it. The fact that it's a continuation of the story when it's made so different means little to nothing for me as the feel of the story being relevant is completely gone when the characters that made the story aren't there anymore.
That being said, it's not awful or anything, it still looks okay and animates smoothly, it reminds me a lot of Tekken in how it looks overall, with blockier character models that animate rather slowly, it has some really cool and cinematic special attacks, somewhat similar to Evil Zone, and it plays just fine with the controls, the free moving ability is neat even if it's a lot more limited from normal gameplay when activated, as most other fighting games do from the late 90s and early 2000s, it's just not a game that stands out like the name suggested it would, or at least not in the way I had imagined.
So while it doesn't hold up to Battle Arena Toshinden 2 in any way it's still a good game, just not as great as it should've been given the honorable title of Toshinden and being a rather late title on the PlayStation it ultimately fails to impress.
By 1999 and 2000 there were many other fighting games around both on PlayStation and the other active systems, like the new next gen Dreamcast with games like SoulCalibur no less, that simply made this game look bad by comparison.
However, it should be mentioned that this was released as a low budget title, and re-released as such two more times after that in 2001 by two different budget brands only a day apart, so they at least acknowledged that it wouldn't cut it had they tried to sell it at full price.
There are minigames and unlockable art and stuff too, so there's at least a good amount of content.
Raceway Drag & Stock Racing (PlayStation 2)
Decided to give this game a try again. I actually got first place in a stock race, but it was on easy, I still haven't been able to win on normal. I just needed a win, the stock racing mode is really hard so any win was welcome at this point.
Sega 3D Classics Collection (3DS)
A small mixed bag of old 8-bit and 16-bit generation games from Sega, faithfully re-created for 3DS.
It has some great games but also some highly questionable additions and omissions, like oddly enough it has no version of Space Harrier or OutRun, even though in Japan they got both as downloadables and could've easily added them to this collection, but it has three Fantasy Zone games, whereof two are just different version of Fantasy Zone 2 and the other is a secret you can find by clicking on an empty area of the touch screen at the Extra Games menu.
The three Fantasy Zone games included are Fantasy Zone for Master System, Fantasy Zone 2 Tears of Opa Opa for Master System and Fantasy Zone 2 W.
There are some great games on here though, like the original Mega Drive version of Sonic The Hedgehog, the arcade version of both Galaxy Force II and Thunder Blade and the original Master System game Maze Walker.
There's also the Mega Drive version of Altered Beast, the previously arcade exclusive racing game Power Drift and Puyo Puyo 2.
Here's a screenshot I took of Maze Walker/Maze Hunter 3-D for Master System using the Kega Fusion emulator.
If you cross your eyes and line the two images up as one you'll get a good idea of what the 3D depth effect in this game is like, it's really nice to see in real life on a 3DS or on an original Master System with 3D glasses.
Killzone Mercenary (PlayStation Vita)
Decided to play something else now that I'm done with Smart As. I want to play something that makes me impressed by the Vita again after so much mediocrity and this game is literally the most impressive portable game I've ever seen and I just so happen to own a copy of it to play.
Fast & Furious Showdown (3DS)
It's a pretty good port of the game, a little choppy in the framerate but still playable. It's a very unbalanced game, with some things being near impossible, taking dussins of tries before you win, while others are so easy you can't help but get them on the first try, without even trying.
Moshi Monsters Katsuma Unleashed (3DS)
A basic platformer, it offers nothing that hasn't been done better before many times by countless other games, but it's okay, the framerate is strangely not very good considering how unimpressive the game looks, it's just a very basic and barely 2,5D platformer, with 2D backgrounds and 3D models for Katsuma and the enemies, it doesn't really do anything to push the hardware so why it's not a solid 60fps I don't know, it should be when it's this visually underwhelming.
UPDATE 29th Juli
Beat the game with only a few things missing for 100% completion. It was a very short game.
UPDATE 30th Juli
Completed everything else, you get Hard Mode unlocked and you can find some hidden cheat codes if you explore a bit.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Now Playing - Juni 2017
Staring off this month with an old classic puzzle game called Swing for PlayStation, Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli on PS2 and the PS2 version of Shadow The Hedgehog.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Getting a bit tired of this now, my longest record of playing the daily challenge was 45 days in a row. I noticed early on that the game has issues with controls and stuff and it's been that way without change this entire time, it's a deeply flawed game but it has minor moments when it can be very enjoyable, so it's not all bad, it's just far too flawed to be anything special, sadly.
Swing (PlayStation)
Essentially my third top favorite puzzle game of all time after Mercury and Mercury Meltdown on PSP and the ports Mercury Meltdown Remix on PS2 and Mercury Meltdown Revolution on Wii. It's a relatively unknown game for most, so here's what you do, you place numbered orbs on scales, line up three in a row to create chains removing any connected orbs, the numbers work both as weight on the scales and as points and if you stack 5 orbs on each other they collapse into one orb with the combined number value/wight. There are special orbs with other abilities such as bombs that clear every orb they are close to, color switching orbs that do various different things, star orbs that can transform when in contact with other special orbs and so on.
You die when a stack of orbs reaches the top where the orbs are grabbed. You have a manual orb grabber and a row of refilling orbs at the top of the screen.
There's also the aspect of the scales to keep in mind as if you let a heavy orb fall down on a scale when there's a light orb on the other side it will throw the light orb up and depending on the weight difference it will travel so many steps to the side opposite of where it was in regard to the heavy orb on the scale, if the weight it enough it will push the light orb off screen and it will then turn into a star orb and come out the other side or if heavy enough it can pass over and become a bomb the second time, this can go on for as big as the weight difference was, so a super heavy orb with a high number, say 67, the lighter orb will fly over the screen multiple times swifting back and forth between bomb and star orb before landing. It's a very complex game with many things to keep in mind and it's tons of fun.
Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli (PlayStation 2)
It's been almost exactly a year since I bought and played this game last, so I thought why not play it again, and because I saw no reason not to, I did.
Shadow The Hedgehog (PlayStation 2)
Haven't played the PS2 version in about two years now, I think. I got the GameCube and Xbox versions about a year and a half ago and while they both play a lot better than this with rock solid smooth 60fps framerates and with high color palettes, this version remains the only one that's never frozen on me, even after being my most played version because I owned it since the game was new I've still never had it freeze on me one, and I've played it a lot over the years so it's by far the most stable one to play even if the framerate is choppy as times and the color depth is a bit low, on GameCube it freezes a lot, you can barely make it through a single mission sometimes, on Xbox it can freeze every now and then but you can usually play a few missions at least, on PS2 I can play for hours and complete several playthroughs of the story mode and play through a whole bunch of manually selected levels and still nt see it freeze once, that makes the PS2 version the ultimate winner of the three in my book, the slight graphical and performance advantage the other two have mean very little when you can't enjoy them due to freezing issues, especially on the GameCube. Great game though, I always loved it, it's not perfect but it's great game with tons of content and fun varied gameplay. One of the last great games Sega ever made, together with Sonic Riders, Sonic Riders Zero Gravity and Sonic 06, before they exclusively started making atrocious shit only.
Total Drivin (PlayStation)
An okay racing game with some variety in the form of different types of racing, like sports car street racing, dune buggy racing and rally racing among a few others. It's kind of basic by home console game standards but not as bad as arcade games.
Battle Arena Toshinden (PlayStation)
An early and somewhat basic 3D fighting game, along with games like Virtua Fighter this was the beginning of modern fighting games.
Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (PlayStation)
An excellent sequel that made for a much more involved game than the original, a personal nostalgic classic for me as well as it was the very first 3D fighting game I ever played.
Cardinal Syn (PlayStation)
Another early 3D fighting game, not a great one sadly, it has very simple and unpolished gameplay.
Criticom (PlayStation)
Almost the same game as Cardinal Syn actually, same gameplay style of 3D fighting with same problems, but with far fewer options overall it's even worse.
Motorhead (PlayStation)
A buttery smooth racing game with some nice solid visuals and cool futuristic design, a great game and personal classic, though I only ever had a demo of the PlayStation version, I had the PC version instead, but they're virtually the same.
Psychic Force (PlayStation)
I love the Dreamcast game Psychic Force 2012 but without a functional Dreamcast I'm left to testing the older PlayStation game instead. It's not as good as the excellent Dreamcast game, naturally, but it's still good for what it is. No Regina kills it for me personally as she's one of my top all time favorite characters in all of gaming.
Deathtrap Dungeon (PlayStation)
A dungeon crawler hack-n-slash with traps, it's cool.
Ghen War (Saturn)
A Saturn exclusive first person mech game in similar style of Krazy Ivan.
Sudoku (portable LCD game)
Changed to new batteries in my portable LCD Sudoku game so I can solve some Sudokus again without having to draw lines and write shit down on paper like a filthy animal.
Intellivision Lives! (PlayStation 2)
I completely forgot I had this. I got it back in 2012 while GameStop was selling out their PS2 games cheap alongside a whole bunch of other games but for some reason this one completely slipped my mind and I had actually recently been looking to buy it as I've been curious about Intellivision lately.
It's actually kind of cool, it emulates the old games very well in most cases, some visual glitches are present but nothing major, for this kind of compilation at least it's fairly good.
I've tried most of them and some of the games are definitely better than others, but it's fun being able to play all these old games and see what they're like even if they're not exactly like how they are on the original hardware, like the analog controls aren't emulated properly, the original Intellivision has a 16 way pseudo-analog circle-pad, yet using the analog sticks on PS2 only emulates 8 direction in total, giving far less control in some games than they originally had back in the day, which is a bummer as that was one of the really cool things it did so early in gaming history, at least in my opinion, at least it has an okay way to emulate the 12-button keypad on screen with accurate overlays for each game making it much easier than trying to remember corresponding button combinations, so kudos for that at least.
It's actually got some really cool games on it and I've found quite a lot of favorites already. It's safe to say Intellivision is my oldest favorite console now, I love it.
UPDATE:
I've been enjoying Night Stalker and Tower of Doom the most, those are two really great games and I really like them. So much in fact that I recorded some gameplay footage of them and made some fanart of Night Stalker in Windows Journal!
V-Rally 3 (PlayStation 2)
After having played so much V-Rally and V-Rally 2 recently, and the GBA version of V-Rally 3 in the past, I feel it's time to give V-Rally 3 on PS2 a proper go, I tested it earlier this year when I got it but I didn't continue playing, it was just to test that it worked and to get some first impressions. Now I want to put myself into a bit more and see what it can do, we'll see if I stick with it or not, it all depends on how good it is, I guess, I've been rather spoiled by the other V-Rally games so this has a lot to live up to. So it sucks when you instantly notice the framerate issues, screen tearing and visuals glitches everywhere, like how the entire bodywork of the car just disappears randomly, this happens very often during replays, and how the handling is very low on grip and very high on bouncing all over the fucking place including launching the entire car into the air while driving on normal flat road surfaces. It's not great, it does not surpass V-Rally or V-Rally 2 overall, it adds some new things like detailed vehicle damage and more polygonal detail, but when it's so much glitchier, less optimized and worse to play it's a clear step down in quality. It's still good enough, I've played many worse rally games than this, it's just a disappointment for the series and a lesser game in the genre than what the contemporary competition had to offer, Sega Rally 2 on Dreamcast and PC for example blows this game away in every conceivable way and all the Colin McRae games of the time also do a better job than this in every way, but when even the older V-Rally, Colin McRae and Sega Rally games are better than this overall it was already clear this game wasn't competing for first place anymore and it's understandable the series ended with this title, sad, but makes sense if this was the best they could do.
Pro Rally 2002 (GameCube)
Couldn't resist firing up the only original GameCube rally game I own after having played so many rally games lately. It's a good one, more in line with arcade rally games like Sega Rally 2 than the more simulation based games. I like it, I'd like to get hold of the PS2 version some day as well. It has some really tight handling for the cars, the normal brake can stop just about anything at any speed and the handbrake is exclusively useful for powersliding as it offers little to no braking ability. It's got a mixed bag of visuals though, while the cars and special effects on the cars, like the real-time reflections and shadows look great, the environments look almost a generation behind, especially by comparison with the great looking cars. There's no damage modeling but it has dirt and snow accumulating on the cars as they drive, much like V-Rally 2 had several years earlier on PlayStation, so it's kind of average by contemporary standards of the time. It's got a nice selection of cars, very nice actually, with modern cars and some classics like the Audi Quattro, which I appreciate a lot.
WRC Arcade (PlayStation)
Giving this another go as well, I briefly tested it last month when I got it but I was testing so many new games I only got to dive deeper into a handful of them. As for this one, it's growing on me, it has a very unique feeling to it, it's very slip and slide slippery in the handling, as the name suggests it's not aiming to be a rally simulator so offering something non-standard is fine. It doesn't have damage modeling but it has dynamic dirt on the car, so if you drive in some mud, it gets really dark dirty brown, then if you drive on dry dirt the dust sticks to the car instead so it becomes brighter, and if you drive through water it cleans the car off entirely, it's a nice effect and it makes up for the lack of damage at least a little a bit. V-Rally 2 on PlayStation also had dirt on the car so this isn't the only game of that generation that had effects like this, but it's a nice effect regardless. Overall the game looks great and runs smoothly, it came out in 2002 so it's roughly the same age as V-Rally 3 and Pro Rally 2002 on the next gen consoles, kind of, Pro Rally 2002 was originally released on PC in 2000 or 2001, I forget which year exactly, and was originally called Pro Rally 2001, so it's a little older than the slightly newer PlayStation 2 and GameCube console ports, but regardless, WRC Arcade is good so far and I like it, it's a competent and well made arcade style rally game and it easily competes with the next gen offerings because of this.
I'm glad they showed the original PlayStation some love so late into it's lifespan, it deserved to go out with some stellar titles like this and F1 Arcade, even if F1 Arcade was a bit too choppy framerate wise in my opinion, they should've been able to optimize that game better for a proper solid 25fps at least if you ask me. Oh well, at least this game runs silky smooth, which puts it a relatively clear step above V-Rally 3 on PlayStation 2, with all the minor but constant framerate drops, slowdown and screen tearing issues that game sadly has alongside a whole bunch of glitches.
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Bubsy 3D (PlayStation)
I have two complaints about this game. 1) You turn too slowly. 2) You keep up the running when you stop pressing forward if you're still holding left or right, you need to let go of all directions to stop otherwise he'll keep running, this is an awkward control design choice. Honestly I'm really liking everything else, I love low poly flat shaded 3D graphics and I think this game looks fantastic, I love the cheesy 90s cartoony humor, it's silly, it's colorful, the rest of the controls are fine, I actually really like the jumping as it reminds me of the excellent Jumping Flash! games becuase you get kind of strafing controls with a downward camera angle when you jump to make platform jumping a lot easier, this is something I usually don't like in 3D platformers but here it's some of the best I've ever played. The hate and underrating of this game is wildly incorrect as far as I can tell and most likely nothing more than the typical internet follow-the-leader retardation.
Doom (32X)
Just found out there're give all and god mode cheats for this version, UMAC and UMXZ, finally a way to acquire the BFG9000! It disables entry to the secret level and the final level so you can't get the true ending but that's fine, the BFG makes it well worth it. On a sadder note the sound doesn't seem to play properly, the sound effects are all really low volume during gameplay, it's not suppose to be like that. I hope nothing is wrong with my 32X, I know it's old tech but I only got it about one and a half years ago, I haven't enjoyed it enough for it to break already.
Kawasaki Superbikes (Mega Drive)
Metal Head (32X)
Virtua Racing Deluxe (32X)
Just testing out my other 32X games a few more Mega Drive games to see if they have sound issues too. There's definitely something not right with the 32X sound, certain channels are weird, I guess, as some noises are normal others are really muted and barely make a noise at all, the Sega logo in Virtua Racing uses the 32X sound chip for an engine noise and it sounds really weird, not at all like it should. This really sucks.
Eternal Champions (Mega Drive)
Captured some footage of Trident's stage overkill.
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
LHX Attack Chopper (Mega Drive)
Night Stalker (PC)
Found a very good homebrew port of the Intellivision classic Night Stalker but it didn't support USB controllers by default, so I also found a program called JoytoKey which let me assign custom keyboard and mouse functions to USB controllers. It works great and is fun to play now.
Star Wars Lethal Alliance (DS, playing on 3DS)
A third person action game with puzzle elements as you control Rianna Saren, a female twi'lek, and her droid companion, it's better in every way on PSP but this is an okay version of the game, easily one of the best games on DS at least.
C.O.P. The Recruit (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's like the GTA Liberty City Stories of DS, a third person open city game, only not as good in any way, it's not bad though, another one of the best games on DS.
G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's like Loaded or ReLoaded with a G.I. Joe movie license, it's pretty good, yet another one of the best games on DS.
Project Rub (DS, playing on 3DS)
A minigame style game with lots of weird stuff, I don't know what to even think of it yet, it's very different.
The Rub Rabbits! (DS, playing on 3DS)
The virtually identical sequel to Project Rub. I still don't get it, if anything I'm more confused.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's more visually interesting than the PSP port thanks to the cartoony celshaded style, but it plays worse due to the poor controls and all the touch screen shit you're forced to deal with, at least on PSP it was just QTE button stuff and as bad as that is I can at least live with it if it's short and not too frequent, but with motion controls such as poor touch screen controls I have a lot less patience and it really hurts the game, which is a shame as this is a good game otherwise.
Soleil (Mega Drive)
A clone of The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past.
Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects (DS, playing on 3DS)
A broken free-moving fighting game with some entertainment value. The AI is some of the worst I've ever seen but because of how extremely unbalanced the game is combined with how poorly it controls I'd say the AI being downright broken is what makes the game playable at all, if the opponent you were fighting had been smarter the game would've been unplayable with most characters as brute force very easily wins. On the flipside, playing as a character like Venom who is one of the most dangerous characters in the game, you can just wail on until you win against anyone you're up against, even technically more powerful opponents are easy to defeat because Venom isn't just overpowered, he also has very effective attacks that are easy and fast to pull off. So you can have a rather good time plowing through a few matches as Venom if you've had a bad day.
Visually it looks like a mid 90s PlayStation or Saturn budget title, the only good thing is that it allows the game to run smoothly and have rather big levels to fight on with some destructible scenery.
The character roster is quite good, with a nice and even mix of male and female characters, sadly it's a mixed bag of characters with only some being recognizable to anyone but the most avid Marvel fans. Personally I don't care much for Marvel, I like Scarlet Spider, Venom and Scream from the 90s Spider-Man comics as part of the clone saga, or whatever it's been called, I think I read that somewhere, and some of the characters in X-Men Evolution, that's it, so for me most of these characters are either completely unknown to me or characters I don't like or care for to begin with.
Sadly the clone saga and X-Men Evolution are not what this game is based on so none of the versions of those characters are in this, at best there are some versions of characters like Venom from Spider-Man and Storm from X-Men in this but they're just the basic-franchise-in-general versions of themselves, not from any specific series, at least as far as I can tell as someone who isn't a Marvel fan, it seems like it's closer to stuff like Pocket Fighter or Marvel Vs. Capcom or something, it's just a bunch of franchises thrown together to make a game with no deeper thought or plan to it.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Getting a bit tired of this now, my longest record of playing the daily challenge was 45 days in a row. I noticed early on that the game has issues with controls and stuff and it's been that way without change this entire time, it's a deeply flawed game but it has minor moments when it can be very enjoyable, so it's not all bad, it's just far too flawed to be anything special, sadly.
Swing (PlayStation)
Essentially my third top favorite puzzle game of all time after Mercury and Mercury Meltdown on PSP and the ports Mercury Meltdown Remix on PS2 and Mercury Meltdown Revolution on Wii. It's a relatively unknown game for most, so here's what you do, you place numbered orbs on scales, line up three in a row to create chains removing any connected orbs, the numbers work both as weight on the scales and as points and if you stack 5 orbs on each other they collapse into one orb with the combined number value/wight. There are special orbs with other abilities such as bombs that clear every orb they are close to, color switching orbs that do various different things, star orbs that can transform when in contact with other special orbs and so on.
You die when a stack of orbs reaches the top where the orbs are grabbed. You have a manual orb grabber and a row of refilling orbs at the top of the screen.
There's also the aspect of the scales to keep in mind as if you let a heavy orb fall down on a scale when there's a light orb on the other side it will throw the light orb up and depending on the weight difference it will travel so many steps to the side opposite of where it was in regard to the heavy orb on the scale, if the weight it enough it will push the light orb off screen and it will then turn into a star orb and come out the other side or if heavy enough it can pass over and become a bomb the second time, this can go on for as big as the weight difference was, so a super heavy orb with a high number, say 67, the lighter orb will fly over the screen multiple times swifting back and forth between bomb and star orb before landing. It's a very complex game with many things to keep in mind and it's tons of fun.
Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli (PlayStation 2)
It's been almost exactly a year since I bought and played this game last, so I thought why not play it again, and because I saw no reason not to, I did.
Shadow The Hedgehog (PlayStation 2)
Haven't played the PS2 version in about two years now, I think. I got the GameCube and Xbox versions about a year and a half ago and while they both play a lot better than this with rock solid smooth 60fps framerates and with high color palettes, this version remains the only one that's never frozen on me, even after being my most played version because I owned it since the game was new I've still never had it freeze on me one, and I've played it a lot over the years so it's by far the most stable one to play even if the framerate is choppy as times and the color depth is a bit low, on GameCube it freezes a lot, you can barely make it through a single mission sometimes, on Xbox it can freeze every now and then but you can usually play a few missions at least, on PS2 I can play for hours and complete several playthroughs of the story mode and play through a whole bunch of manually selected levels and still nt see it freeze once, that makes the PS2 version the ultimate winner of the three in my book, the slight graphical and performance advantage the other two have mean very little when you can't enjoy them due to freezing issues, especially on the GameCube. Great game though, I always loved it, it's not perfect but it's great game with tons of content and fun varied gameplay. One of the last great games Sega ever made, together with Sonic Riders, Sonic Riders Zero Gravity and Sonic 06, before they exclusively started making atrocious shit only.
Total Drivin (PlayStation)
An okay racing game with some variety in the form of different types of racing, like sports car street racing, dune buggy racing and rally racing among a few others. It's kind of basic by home console game standards but not as bad as arcade games.
Battle Arena Toshinden (PlayStation)
An early and somewhat basic 3D fighting game, along with games like Virtua Fighter this was the beginning of modern fighting games.
Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (PlayStation)
An excellent sequel that made for a much more involved game than the original, a personal nostalgic classic for me as well as it was the very first 3D fighting game I ever played.
Cardinal Syn (PlayStation)
Another early 3D fighting game, not a great one sadly, it has very simple and unpolished gameplay.
Criticom (PlayStation)
Almost the same game as Cardinal Syn actually, same gameplay style of 3D fighting with same problems, but with far fewer options overall it's even worse.
Motorhead (PlayStation)
A buttery smooth racing game with some nice solid visuals and cool futuristic design, a great game and personal classic, though I only ever had a demo of the PlayStation version, I had the PC version instead, but they're virtually the same.
Psychic Force (PlayStation)
I love the Dreamcast game Psychic Force 2012 but without a functional Dreamcast I'm left to testing the older PlayStation game instead. It's not as good as the excellent Dreamcast game, naturally, but it's still good for what it is. No Regina kills it for me personally as she's one of my top all time favorite characters in all of gaming.
Deathtrap Dungeon (PlayStation)
A dungeon crawler hack-n-slash with traps, it's cool.
Ghen War (Saturn)
A Saturn exclusive first person mech game in similar style of Krazy Ivan.
Sudoku (portable LCD game)
Changed to new batteries in my portable LCD Sudoku game so I can solve some Sudokus again without having to draw lines and write shit down on paper like a filthy animal.
Intellivision Lives! (PlayStation 2)
I completely forgot I had this. I got it back in 2012 while GameStop was selling out their PS2 games cheap alongside a whole bunch of other games but for some reason this one completely slipped my mind and I had actually recently been looking to buy it as I've been curious about Intellivision lately.
It's actually kind of cool, it emulates the old games very well in most cases, some visual glitches are present but nothing major, for this kind of compilation at least it's fairly good.
I've tried most of them and some of the games are definitely better than others, but it's fun being able to play all these old games and see what they're like even if they're not exactly like how they are on the original hardware, like the analog controls aren't emulated properly, the original Intellivision has a 16 way pseudo-analog circle-pad, yet using the analog sticks on PS2 only emulates 8 direction in total, giving far less control in some games than they originally had back in the day, which is a bummer as that was one of the really cool things it did so early in gaming history, at least in my opinion, at least it has an okay way to emulate the 12-button keypad on screen with accurate overlays for each game making it much easier than trying to remember corresponding button combinations, so kudos for that at least.
It's actually got some really cool games on it and I've found quite a lot of favorites already. It's safe to say Intellivision is my oldest favorite console now, I love it.
UPDATE:
I've been enjoying Night Stalker and Tower of Doom the most, those are two really great games and I really like them. So much in fact that I recorded some gameplay footage of them and made some fanart of Night Stalker in Windows Journal!
V-Rally 3 (PlayStation 2)
After having played so much V-Rally and V-Rally 2 recently, and the GBA version of V-Rally 3 in the past, I feel it's time to give V-Rally 3 on PS2 a proper go, I tested it earlier this year when I got it but I didn't continue playing, it was just to test that it worked and to get some first impressions. Now I want to put myself into a bit more and see what it can do, we'll see if I stick with it or not, it all depends on how good it is, I guess, I've been rather spoiled by the other V-Rally games so this has a lot to live up to. So it sucks when you instantly notice the framerate issues, screen tearing and visuals glitches everywhere, like how the entire bodywork of the car just disappears randomly, this happens very often during replays, and how the handling is very low on grip and very high on bouncing all over the fucking place including launching the entire car into the air while driving on normal flat road surfaces. It's not great, it does not surpass V-Rally or V-Rally 2 overall, it adds some new things like detailed vehicle damage and more polygonal detail, but when it's so much glitchier, less optimized and worse to play it's a clear step down in quality. It's still good enough, I've played many worse rally games than this, it's just a disappointment for the series and a lesser game in the genre than what the contemporary competition had to offer, Sega Rally 2 on Dreamcast and PC for example blows this game away in every conceivable way and all the Colin McRae games of the time also do a better job than this in every way, but when even the older V-Rally, Colin McRae and Sega Rally games are better than this overall it was already clear this game wasn't competing for first place anymore and it's understandable the series ended with this title, sad, but makes sense if this was the best they could do.
Pro Rally 2002 (GameCube)
Couldn't resist firing up the only original GameCube rally game I own after having played so many rally games lately. It's a good one, more in line with arcade rally games like Sega Rally 2 than the more simulation based games. I like it, I'd like to get hold of the PS2 version some day as well. It has some really tight handling for the cars, the normal brake can stop just about anything at any speed and the handbrake is exclusively useful for powersliding as it offers little to no braking ability. It's got a mixed bag of visuals though, while the cars and special effects on the cars, like the real-time reflections and shadows look great, the environments look almost a generation behind, especially by comparison with the great looking cars. There's no damage modeling but it has dirt and snow accumulating on the cars as they drive, much like V-Rally 2 had several years earlier on PlayStation, so it's kind of average by contemporary standards of the time. It's got a nice selection of cars, very nice actually, with modern cars and some classics like the Audi Quattro, which I appreciate a lot.
WRC Arcade (PlayStation)
Giving this another go as well, I briefly tested it last month when I got it but I was testing so many new games I only got to dive deeper into a handful of them. As for this one, it's growing on me, it has a very unique feeling to it, it's very slip and slide slippery in the handling, as the name suggests it's not aiming to be a rally simulator so offering something non-standard is fine. It doesn't have damage modeling but it has dynamic dirt on the car, so if you drive in some mud, it gets really dark dirty brown, then if you drive on dry dirt the dust sticks to the car instead so it becomes brighter, and if you drive through water it cleans the car off entirely, it's a nice effect and it makes up for the lack of damage at least a little a bit. V-Rally 2 on PlayStation also had dirt on the car so this isn't the only game of that generation that had effects like this, but it's a nice effect regardless. Overall the game looks great and runs smoothly, it came out in 2002 so it's roughly the same age as V-Rally 3 and Pro Rally 2002 on the next gen consoles, kind of, Pro Rally 2002 was originally released on PC in 2000 or 2001, I forget which year exactly, and was originally called Pro Rally 2001, so it's a little older than the slightly newer PlayStation 2 and GameCube console ports, but regardless, WRC Arcade is good so far and I like it, it's a competent and well made arcade style rally game and it easily competes with the next gen offerings because of this.
I'm glad they showed the original PlayStation some love so late into it's lifespan, it deserved to go out with some stellar titles like this and F1 Arcade, even if F1 Arcade was a bit too choppy framerate wise in my opinion, they should've been able to optimize that game better for a proper solid 25fps at least if you ask me. Oh well, at least this game runs silky smooth, which puts it a relatively clear step above V-Rally 3 on PlayStation 2, with all the minor but constant framerate drops, slowdown and screen tearing issues that game sadly has alongside a whole bunch of glitches.
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Bubsy 3D (PlayStation)
I have two complaints about this game. 1) You turn too slowly. 2) You keep up the running when you stop pressing forward if you're still holding left or right, you need to let go of all directions to stop otherwise he'll keep running, this is an awkward control design choice. Honestly I'm really liking everything else, I love low poly flat shaded 3D graphics and I think this game looks fantastic, I love the cheesy 90s cartoony humor, it's silly, it's colorful, the rest of the controls are fine, I actually really like the jumping as it reminds me of the excellent Jumping Flash! games becuase you get kind of strafing controls with a downward camera angle when you jump to make platform jumping a lot easier, this is something I usually don't like in 3D platformers but here it's some of the best I've ever played. The hate and underrating of this game is wildly incorrect as far as I can tell and most likely nothing more than the typical internet follow-the-leader retardation.
Doom (32X)
Just found out there're give all and god mode cheats for this version, UMAC and UMXZ, finally a way to acquire the BFG9000! It disables entry to the secret level and the final level so you can't get the true ending but that's fine, the BFG makes it well worth it. On a sadder note the sound doesn't seem to play properly, the sound effects are all really low volume during gameplay, it's not suppose to be like that. I hope nothing is wrong with my 32X, I know it's old tech but I only got it about one and a half years ago, I haven't enjoyed it enough for it to break already.
Kawasaki Superbikes (Mega Drive)
Metal Head (32X)
Virtua Racing Deluxe (32X)
Just testing out my other 32X games a few more Mega Drive games to see if they have sound issues too. There's definitely something not right with the 32X sound, certain channels are weird, I guess, as some noises are normal others are really muted and barely make a noise at all, the Sega logo in Virtua Racing uses the 32X sound chip for an engine noise and it sounds really weird, not at all like it should. This really sucks.
Eternal Champions (Mega Drive)
Captured some footage of Trident's stage overkill.
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
LHX Attack Chopper (Mega Drive)
Night Stalker (PC)
Found a very good homebrew port of the Intellivision classic Night Stalker but it didn't support USB controllers by default, so I also found a program called JoytoKey which let me assign custom keyboard and mouse functions to USB controllers. It works great and is fun to play now.
Star Wars Lethal Alliance (DS, playing on 3DS)
A third person action game with puzzle elements as you control Rianna Saren, a female twi'lek, and her droid companion, it's better in every way on PSP but this is an okay version of the game, easily one of the best games on DS at least.
C.O.P. The Recruit (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's like the GTA Liberty City Stories of DS, a third person open city game, only not as good in any way, it's not bad though, another one of the best games on DS.
G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's like Loaded or ReLoaded with a G.I. Joe movie license, it's pretty good, yet another one of the best games on DS.
Project Rub (DS, playing on 3DS)
A minigame style game with lots of weird stuff, I don't know what to even think of it yet, it's very different.
The Rub Rabbits! (DS, playing on 3DS)
The virtually identical sequel to Project Rub. I still don't get it, if anything I'm more confused.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's more visually interesting than the PSP port thanks to the cartoony celshaded style, but it plays worse due to the poor controls and all the touch screen shit you're forced to deal with, at least on PSP it was just QTE button stuff and as bad as that is I can at least live with it if it's short and not too frequent, but with motion controls such as poor touch screen controls I have a lot less patience and it really hurts the game, which is a shame as this is a good game otherwise.
Soleil (Mega Drive)
A clone of The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past.
Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects (DS, playing on 3DS)
A broken free-moving fighting game with some entertainment value. The AI is some of the worst I've ever seen but because of how extremely unbalanced the game is combined with how poorly it controls I'd say the AI being downright broken is what makes the game playable at all, if the opponent you were fighting had been smarter the game would've been unplayable with most characters as brute force very easily wins. On the flipside, playing as a character like Venom who is one of the most dangerous characters in the game, you can just wail on until you win against anyone you're up against, even technically more powerful opponents are easy to defeat because Venom isn't just overpowered, he also has very effective attacks that are easy and fast to pull off. So you can have a rather good time plowing through a few matches as Venom if you've had a bad day.
Visually it looks like a mid 90s PlayStation or Saturn budget title, the only good thing is that it allows the game to run smoothly and have rather big levels to fight on with some destructible scenery.
The character roster is quite good, with a nice and even mix of male and female characters, sadly it's a mixed bag of characters with only some being recognizable to anyone but the most avid Marvel fans. Personally I don't care much for Marvel, I like Scarlet Spider, Venom and Scream from the 90s Spider-Man comics as part of the clone saga, or whatever it's been called, I think I read that somewhere, and some of the characters in X-Men Evolution, that's it, so for me most of these characters are either completely unknown to me or characters I don't like or care for to begin with.
Sadly the clone saga and X-Men Evolution are not what this game is based on so none of the versions of those characters are in this, at best there are some versions of characters like Venom from Spider-Man and Storm from X-Men in this but they're just the basic-franchise-in-general versions of themselves, not from any specific series, at least as far as I can tell as someone who isn't a Marvel fan, it seems like it's closer to stuff like Pocket Fighter or Marvel Vs. Capcom or something, it's just a bunch of franchises thrown together to make a game with no deeper thought or plan to it.
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