May 5th:
Went to a Retro Game Convention in Gothenburg with some friends and bought some neat stuff. I bought one cartridge of Space Battle for Intellivision, but then later found a cheaper one with the overlays and manual laying in a big box of random stuff, so I bought that copy too! There were no refunds, so yeah, simple as that. (all items are pre-owned unless otherwise noted)
IntelliVision:
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Treasure of Tarmin (cartridge only)
Tron Deadly Discs (cartridge only)
Space Battle (cartridge only)
Space Battle (cartridge, two controller overlays and manual)
Star Strike (cartridge only)
Mega Drive:
Abrams Battle Tank (cartridge only)
MIG-29 Fighter Pilot (cartridge only)
32X:
Cosmic Carnage (cartridge only)
DS:
Asphalt Urban GT (no instruction manual)
Collectibles:
Princess Daisy - Super Mario Super Size Figure Collection (version with keyring hanger, new and sealed)
Princess Daisy - Super Mario Super Size Figure Collection (version without keyring hanger, new and sealed)
Steel Battalion - Lycoming Defense Systems Vitzh 1st-Generation - Capcom Figure Collection (new and sealed)
Steel Battalion - Lycoming Defense Systems Quasar 3rd-Generation - Capcom Figure Collection (new and sealed)
Other:
Virtua Racing (Mega Drive) rental case
Tomb Raider (Saturn) instruction manual
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 12th:
One of my friends who was with me to the Retro Game Convention a week ago had bought a game he didn't like, so he gave it to me.
Mega Drive:
688 Attack Sub (cartridge only)
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May 14th:
A trip to the local GameStop resulted in some nice finds today. (all items are pre-owned unless otherwise noted)
Hardware:
AtGames SEGA Mega Drive Plug N Play with 81 built-in games, cartridge slot, power adapter, stereo composite AV-cables and two 6-button controllers (new and complete in box)
PlayStation 3:
Battleship
BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend
Dead Rising 2
EyeCreate
Far Cry 3
God of War Ascension
Valkyria Chronicles
PlayStation Vita:
Dynasty Warriors Next (no instruction manual)
Xbox 360:
BlazBlue Continuum Shift - Limited Edition (no instruction manual)
Dead Island Riptide - Special Edition
F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin
Grand Theft Auto V Five (no instruction manual)
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Prey
Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008
Star Wars The Clone Wars Republic Heroes
Collectibles:
Disney Infinity 3.0 - Cars 2 - Holley Shiftwell (figure only)
Disney Infinity 3.0 - Star Wars - Ahsoka Tano (figure only)
Skylanders Imaginators - Golden Queen (figure only)
Skylanders Superchargers - Hot Streak (vehicle only)
Skylanders Superchargers - Jet Stream (vehicle only)
Skylanders Swap Force - Ninja Stealth Elf (figure only)
Totaku WipEout Feisar FX350 (new and sealed)
Totaku WipEout AG-SYS (new and sealed)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 17th:
Took a long walk today and bought some stuff along the way.
Collectibles:
3x Marvel Avengers Black Widow Hasbro action figure (2016, new and sealed)
DVD:
Dumb and Dumber Unrated (1994, new and sealed)
Bluray:
Monster High Clawesome Double Feature (2014, Monster High Fright On! (2011), Monster High Escape from Skull Shores (2012), new and sealed)
Penguins of Madagascar (2014, new and sealed)
Robocop (2013, new and sealed)
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May 22nd:
Ordered some games online during a 20th anniversary sale that Discshop.se was having. Got every game for only 20kr each, all new and sealed.
UPDATE: the order arrived and I went and picked it up the next day, May 23rd
PlayStation 3:
Battlefield 4
Borderlands 2 - The Premiere Club Edition
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
Duke Nukem Forever - Duke's Kick Ass Edition
Medal of Honor Warfighter - Limited Edition
Prototype 2 - Limited! Radnet Edition
Rage - Anarchy Edition
XCOM Enemy Unknown - Elite Soldier Pack Edition
Xbox 360:
Battlefield 4
Duke Nukem Forever - Duke's Kick Ass Edition
Medal of Honor Warfighter - Limited Edition
Prototype 2 - Limited! Radnet Edition
XCOM Enemy Unknown - Elite Soldier Pack Edition
Showing posts with label Intellivision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intellivision. Show all posts
Sunday, May 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.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Now Playing - December 2018
Dodgem Arena (PlayStation)
Newman Haas Indycar Racing (PlayStation)
Formula One (PlayStation)
Eragon (Game Boy Advance)
Unlike the PSP game which I enjoy greatly, this is a slow generic RPG style game with somewhat action-oriented turn-based combat, you press combos using A and B rather than select your move from a list, so it's like an extremely dumbed down and simplified Legend of Legaia or Xenogears type of system, it's not a bad game but I have fantastic RPGs to play, this has literally nothing that draws me in, it exclusively makes me want to play any of the countless better games that do the same kind of things endlessly better.
DT Racer (PlayStation 2)
Chip Shot Super Pro Golf (Intellivision, played as part of Intellivision Lives! on PlayStation 2)
Played this for Intellivision Day, December 3rd. I was originally planning to play lots of varied games and especially focusing on my favorite, Auto Racing, but I was away and busy most of the day so I didn't have time for that and decided to instead focus on some game I hadn't played that much that I still knew was good, and Chip Shot Super Pro Golf fit that criteria perfectly.
It's a really good golf game, one of if not the best I've ever played.
It's easy to get into and doesn't have any issues like more modern golf games and it's not as limited and basic as older and other contemporary games from back then were either, it's a virtually perfect mix of simple and to the point level of entry with just the right amount of complexity and advanced features to add the necessary depth for it to not get boring over time.
Auto Racing (Intellivision, played as part of Intellivision Lives! on PlayStation 2)
Set a new best time of 7:11 on my favorite track 3 with the red car.
Golf (Intellivision, played as part of Intellivision Lives! on PlayStation 2)
It's almost unplayable because of how the controls fail to emulate the analog disc of the Intellivision controller which is required for the aiming in this game, having only 8 directions to aim forces you to at least double, triple and even quadruple your amount of swings as you simply can't aim where you want and have to zig-zag and divide your swings up with the few directions you can aim in, it takes almost all enjoyment out of the game to say the least. Such a shame.
Chip Shot Super Pro Golf (Intellivision)
With the proper colors it's much easier to see the direction of the incline on the green and where the hole is, unlike in the Intellivision Lives! emulated version on PS2 which fucks up the colors pretty bad for this game in particular.
Soccer (Intellivision)
used it to test if my newly purchased INTV System III worked without any issues, everything seems to be working fine
Pac-Man (Intellivision)
Popeye (Intellivision)
BurgerTime! (Intellivision)
Auto Racing (Intellivision, emulated on PlayStation Portable)
It's embarrassing how insanely much better this emulates than the official Intellivision Lives! version on the stronger PlayStation 2 hardware. This emulator even emulates switching to the 2nd controller, making games like Auto Racing playable as it normally requires both controllers to start the game even in single player mode, while on PS2 you still need two controllers for that.
The emulator isn't perfect and there can be some glitches (especially with emulation speed being too fast, but a quick restart of the emulator fixes that and it only seems to occur after having been awakened from after being in sleep mode) and some games don't seem to work (not sure why but there seem to be some config file that is required by the emulator that I don't have set up properly, I'll look more into that in the future), but for now at least my beloved Auto Racing plays great and it's awesome to be able to play it properly and portable, I love it.
Super Mario Land (Game Boy)
Got some new batteries for my old Game Boy and playing through Super Mario Land a few times is a great way to get back into the Game Boy groove.
Smashing Drive (Game Boy Advance)
Finally getting to play this on real hardware, I've tried it emulated before and it seemed really interesting, it's a really fun arcade style checkpoint race and crash type game with over the top powerups and lots of action. It's a bit on the short side with only 4 levels but they multiple segments to them and each segment has alternate paths and secrets to find. I like it and will continue to look for a console version.
3D Rubik's Cube 2 (flash game on PC)
an excellent Rubik's Cube game for PC made entirely in flash
it had multiple sizes of cubes and full color customization for the different sides so you can get it just right, controls are also good and it plays smoothly even on my weak old PC
Here's a link to the .swf file: 3D Rubik's Cube 2
Night Stalker (Intellivision, played as part of Intellivision Lives! on PlayStation 2)
Shinobi (3DS)
A lackluster, low budget game in an otherwise great series. Controls are clunky, level design and enemy placement is awful, enemy respawning is annoying, pickups are either completely useless for gameplay (most just give a few points) or useless because they don't give what you need nor want (for example: after segments where you're guaranteed to take damage you get a shuriken throwing powerup or something instead of a health pickup, in other places after you've started a new level or something you get a full health pickup when you already have full health). The parry move that allows you to nullify enemy attacks is both laggy and hard to judge when you're executed, it also has lag frames after so you can't do it with every attack no matter how good you are at the timing, the game makes it completely useless when you're attacked multiple times in short succession, everything else you do also has a lag to it and lag frames after, so you're open to attacks almost constantly and there's no way to make it better, you can't improve your skills to overcome, it's just a bad game design limitation.
It also has shit poor checkpoints and you have to replay enormous parts of levels that are easily big enough to count as levels on their own all in one go, so even when playing on easy where you have infinite continues and the enemies are weaker than on normal or hard, it's still an extremely repetitive chore to play if you just happen to fall down an invisibly hidden insta-death pit after having gone through a whole huge area only to find that nope, there wasn't a single checkpoint anywhere during that place.
The visuals are literally on DS levels with unfiltered textures, low poly 3D detail and aliasing galore (even when turning off the stereoscopic effect), the framerated is also not perfect in stereoscopic mode (as is a common problem on 3DS, sadly) and the game is very dark and enemies and hazards don't stand out at all with little to no contrast from the environment and sometimes they're just plain hidden behind foreground objects making it literally impossible to avoid taking damage from their "suprise motherfucker" attacks, also touch damage on everything: touch an enemy's toe? take full damage as if he cut you with a sword.
All cut scenes are 2D cartoony video, as in 2D animated style and no 3D effects for the 3DS, despite this being a 3DS exclusive. I've played several multiplat games with custom 3DS stuff in them like the pre-rendered cutscenes being rendered with stereoscopic effects, but not in this exclusive 3DS title!
It offers an "easy" mode for beginners of the series that allows infinite continues and weaker enemies, as in normal and hard have limited lives and enemies you have to keep hitting until they die, constantly slowing the game to a crawl and making it artificially annoying that you have to restart the whole game if you run out of lives, it's as bad as old games only this had no excuse as it came out in modern times.
Sub Rebellion (PlayStation 2)
Basically a mix of AquaNox and Armored Core, two of my favorite games ever, so yeah this game is awesome. It's also made by Irem, makers of R-Type, so that's a triple treat right there!
Space Debris (PlayStation)
One of the finest third-person semi-on-rail shooters ever made.
Newman Haas Indycar Racing (PlayStation)
Formula One (PlayStation)
Eragon (Game Boy Advance)
Unlike the PSP game which I enjoy greatly, this is a slow generic RPG style game with somewhat action-oriented turn-based combat, you press combos using A and B rather than select your move from a list, so it's like an extremely dumbed down and simplified Legend of Legaia or Xenogears type of system, it's not a bad game but I have fantastic RPGs to play, this has literally nothing that draws me in, it exclusively makes me want to play any of the countless better games that do the same kind of things endlessly better.
DT Racer (PlayStation 2)
Chip Shot Super Pro Golf (Intellivision, played as part of Intellivision Lives! on PlayStation 2)
Played this for Intellivision Day, December 3rd. I was originally planning to play lots of varied games and especially focusing on my favorite, Auto Racing, but I was away and busy most of the day so I didn't have time for that and decided to instead focus on some game I hadn't played that much that I still knew was good, and Chip Shot Super Pro Golf fit that criteria perfectly.
It's a really good golf game, one of if not the best I've ever played.
It's easy to get into and doesn't have any issues like more modern golf games and it's not as limited and basic as older and other contemporary games from back then were either, it's a virtually perfect mix of simple and to the point level of entry with just the right amount of complexity and advanced features to add the necessary depth for it to not get boring over time.
Auto Racing (Intellivision, played as part of Intellivision Lives! on PlayStation 2)
Set a new best time of 7:11 on my favorite track 3 with the red car.
Golf (Intellivision, played as part of Intellivision Lives! on PlayStation 2)
It's almost unplayable because of how the controls fail to emulate the analog disc of the Intellivision controller which is required for the aiming in this game, having only 8 directions to aim forces you to at least double, triple and even quadruple your amount of swings as you simply can't aim where you want and have to zig-zag and divide your swings up with the few directions you can aim in, it takes almost all enjoyment out of the game to say the least. Such a shame.
Chip Shot Super Pro Golf (Intellivision)
With the proper colors it's much easier to see the direction of the incline on the green and where the hole is, unlike in the Intellivision Lives! emulated version on PS2 which fucks up the colors pretty bad for this game in particular.
Soccer (Intellivision)
used it to test if my newly purchased INTV System III worked without any issues, everything seems to be working fine
Pac-Man (Intellivision)
Popeye (Intellivision)
BurgerTime! (Intellivision)
Auto Racing (Intellivision, emulated on PlayStation Portable)
It's embarrassing how insanely much better this emulates than the official Intellivision Lives! version on the stronger PlayStation 2 hardware. This emulator even emulates switching to the 2nd controller, making games like Auto Racing playable as it normally requires both controllers to start the game even in single player mode, while on PS2 you still need two controllers for that.
The emulator isn't perfect and there can be some glitches (especially with emulation speed being too fast, but a quick restart of the emulator fixes that and it only seems to occur after having been awakened from after being in sleep mode) and some games don't seem to work (not sure why but there seem to be some config file that is required by the emulator that I don't have set up properly, I'll look more into that in the future), but for now at least my beloved Auto Racing plays great and it's awesome to be able to play it properly and portable, I love it.
Super Mario Land (Game Boy)
Got some new batteries for my old Game Boy and playing through Super Mario Land a few times is a great way to get back into the Game Boy groove.
Smashing Drive (Game Boy Advance)
Finally getting to play this on real hardware, I've tried it emulated before and it seemed really interesting, it's a really fun arcade style checkpoint race and crash type game with over the top powerups and lots of action. It's a bit on the short side with only 4 levels but they multiple segments to them and each segment has alternate paths and secrets to find. I like it and will continue to look for a console version.
3D Rubik's Cube 2 (flash game on PC)
an excellent Rubik's Cube game for PC made entirely in flash
it had multiple sizes of cubes and full color customization for the different sides so you can get it just right, controls are also good and it plays smoothly even on my weak old PC
Here's a link to the .swf file: 3D Rubik's Cube 2
Night Stalker (Intellivision, played as part of Intellivision Lives! on PlayStation 2)
Shinobi (3DS)
A lackluster, low budget game in an otherwise great series. Controls are clunky, level design and enemy placement is awful, enemy respawning is annoying, pickups are either completely useless for gameplay (most just give a few points) or useless because they don't give what you need nor want (for example: after segments where you're guaranteed to take damage you get a shuriken throwing powerup or something instead of a health pickup, in other places after you've started a new level or something you get a full health pickup when you already have full health). The parry move that allows you to nullify enemy attacks is both laggy and hard to judge when you're executed, it also has lag frames after so you can't do it with every attack no matter how good you are at the timing, the game makes it completely useless when you're attacked multiple times in short succession, everything else you do also has a lag to it and lag frames after, so you're open to attacks almost constantly and there's no way to make it better, you can't improve your skills to overcome, it's just a bad game design limitation.
It also has shit poor checkpoints and you have to replay enormous parts of levels that are easily big enough to count as levels on their own all in one go, so even when playing on easy where you have infinite continues and the enemies are weaker than on normal or hard, it's still an extremely repetitive chore to play if you just happen to fall down an invisibly hidden insta-death pit after having gone through a whole huge area only to find that nope, there wasn't a single checkpoint anywhere during that place.
The visuals are literally on DS levels with unfiltered textures, low poly 3D detail and aliasing galore (even when turning off the stereoscopic effect), the framerated is also not perfect in stereoscopic mode (as is a common problem on 3DS, sadly) and the game is very dark and enemies and hazards don't stand out at all with little to no contrast from the environment and sometimes they're just plain hidden behind foreground objects making it literally impossible to avoid taking damage from their "suprise motherfucker" attacks, also touch damage on everything: touch an enemy's toe? take full damage as if he cut you with a sword.
All cut scenes are 2D cartoony video, as in 2D animated style and no 3D effects for the 3DS, despite this being a 3DS exclusive. I've played several multiplat games with custom 3DS stuff in them like the pre-rendered cutscenes being rendered with stereoscopic effects, but not in this exclusive 3DS title!
It offers an "easy" mode for beginners of the series that allows infinite continues and weaker enemies, as in normal and hard have limited lives and enemies you have to keep hitting until they die, constantly slowing the game to a crawl and making it artificially annoying that you have to restart the whole game if you run out of lives, it's as bad as old games only this had no excuse as it came out in modern times.
Sub Rebellion (PlayStation 2)
Basically a mix of AquaNox and Armored Core, two of my favorite games ever, so yeah this game is awesome. It's also made by Irem, makers of R-Type, so that's a triple treat right there!
Space Debris (PlayStation)
One of the finest third-person semi-on-rail shooters ever made.
Gaming Purchases - December 2018
01:00 at night from Friday, 30th November to Saturday, December 1st:
Ordered some awesome stuff online, should arrive later next week.
UPDATE: It's Friday 7th today and it still hasn't arrived, maybe next week?
UPDATE: It arrived and I went to pick it up on Saturday the 8th
Intellivision:
INTV System III (console, both hardwired controllers work, power cable and RF cable with RF Game/TV switcher box)
Soccer (complete in box with manual and two overlays)
Game Boy Advance:
Smashing Drive (cartridge only)
PlayStation:
Space Debris (complete in box with manual)
PlayStation 2:
Sub Rebellion (complete in box with manual)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 13th:
ordered online today
UPDATE: it arrived in my mailbox on the 18th
PlayStation 2:
a third party Dual Shock 2 replica controller
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 14th:
at the local GameStop
3DS:
Shinobi (pre-owned)
PlayStation 3:
BlazBlue Calamity Trigger (pre-owned)
The Last of Us (pre-owned)
PlayStation 4:
Redout: Race Faster Than Ever - Lightspeed Edition
Collectibles:
Totaku Collection: WipEout AG-SYS (First Edition)
Starlink: Battle for Atlas - Starship Pack: Pulse (ship) + Volcano (gun attachment) + Calisto "Chase" da Silva (character)
from another store
Electric Bug Zapper Lantern (green)
Mickey Mouse comic + LEGO Star Wars Imperial AT-Hauler ship polybag
LEGO Nexo Knights magazine + Princess Macy with her Thunder Hammer
and from a third store
a small portable battery powered LED light chain (black)
a small regular electric powered LED light chain (black)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 20th:
some secondhand finds
DVD:
Aladdin och Rövarnas Konung (Disney)
Barbie i Svansjön
Barbie - Fairytopia
Barbie - En Perfekt Jul
The Bunker (2001)
HDDVD:
King Kong (Peter Jackson)
Vinyl Records:
Bernard & Bianca i Australien (Disney)
Den Lilla Sjöjungfrun (Disney)
Göstas Skiva
Juletid
Juletid
Jul
CD:
Hassan (P3)
Books/Comics:
Hassan (P3)
Kim Possible - Rädda Världen (Disney)
Sabina - Serier för Tjejer (1990)
Sabina - Serier för Tjejer (1991)
Other:
a hand carved alabaster stone egg (made in Italy)
clothing blueprints (five different, women's clothing only, with illustrated art covers)
a 1x2x3 Rubik's Cube (McDonalds, Secret Life of Pets)
a 2x2x2 Rubik's Cube (McDonalds, Minions)
a yo-yo that lights up when it spins (Skittles)
a wallet (Disney's Cars)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 21th:
some movies
DVD:
Barbie - Delfiner och Magi
Biet Maya - På nya honungsäventyr
Encounter
Grottmannen Dug
Maze Runner - The Death Cure
Peter Rabbit
The Titan
Bluray:
The Titan
Ordered some awesome stuff online, should arrive later next week.
UPDATE: It's Friday 7th today and it still hasn't arrived, maybe next week?
UPDATE: It arrived and I went to pick it up on Saturday the 8th
Intellivision:
INTV System III (console, both hardwired controllers work, power cable and RF cable with RF Game/TV switcher box)
Soccer (complete in box with manual and two overlays)
Game Boy Advance:
Smashing Drive (cartridge only)
PlayStation:
Space Debris (complete in box with manual)
PlayStation 2:
Sub Rebellion (complete in box with manual)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 13th:
ordered online today
UPDATE: it arrived in my mailbox on the 18th
PlayStation 2:
a third party Dual Shock 2 replica controller
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 14th:
at the local GameStop
3DS:
Shinobi (pre-owned)
PlayStation 3:
BlazBlue Calamity Trigger (pre-owned)
The Last of Us (pre-owned)
PlayStation 4:
Redout: Race Faster Than Ever - Lightspeed Edition
Collectibles:
Totaku Collection: WipEout AG-SYS (First Edition)
Starlink: Battle for Atlas - Starship Pack: Pulse (ship) + Volcano (gun attachment) + Calisto "Chase" da Silva (character)
from another store
Electric Bug Zapper Lantern (green)
Mickey Mouse comic + LEGO Star Wars Imperial AT-Hauler ship polybag
LEGO Nexo Knights magazine + Princess Macy with her Thunder Hammer
and from a third store
a small portable battery powered LED light chain (black)
a small regular electric powered LED light chain (black)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 20th:
some secondhand finds
DVD:
Aladdin och Rövarnas Konung (Disney)
Barbie i Svansjön
Barbie - Fairytopia
Barbie - En Perfekt Jul
The Bunker (2001)
HDDVD:
King Kong (Peter Jackson)
Vinyl Records:
Bernard & Bianca i Australien (Disney)
Den Lilla Sjöjungfrun (Disney)
Göstas Skiva
Juletid
Juletid
Jul
CD:
Hassan (P3)
Books/Comics:
Hassan (P3)
Kim Possible - Rädda Världen (Disney)
Sabina - Serier för Tjejer (1990)
Sabina - Serier för Tjejer (1991)
Other:
a hand carved alabaster stone egg (made in Italy)
clothing blueprints (five different, women's clothing only, with illustrated art covers)
a 1x2x3 Rubik's Cube (McDonalds, Secret Life of Pets)
a 2x2x2 Rubik's Cube (McDonalds, Minions)
a yo-yo that lights up when it spins (Skittles)
a wallet (Disney's Cars)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 21th:
some movies
DVD:
Barbie - Delfiner och Magi
Biet Maya - På nya honungsäventyr
Encounter
Grottmannen Dug
Maze Runner - The Death Cure
Peter Rabbit
The Titan
Bluray:
The Titan
Thursday, November 1, 2018
Now Playing - November 2018
Auto Racing (Intellivision)
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Mega Drive)
Auto Racing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
It's still not as good as the real thing but it's still good enough to have some fun with.
Bomb Squad (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
This one is borderline unplayable, the heavy use of the numeric keypad and bad control emulation ruins a lot of the intuitive nature of the game and like most games on this disc the lack of proper instructions makes it so you have to look up extra stuff online to get a good idea what to even do.
Thankfully I already know how to play most these games properly but for others who want to get into Intellivision are gonna have a very hard time with this collection, sadly. It does not show off the awesomeness of the real games running on original hardware, that's for sure.
Skiing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Enduro (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
This one I am not so familiar with, but I'm trying to get the hang of it, I'm getting better.
Stadium Mud Buggies (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
Sadly they've just lazily taken the 60hz NTSC roms and slowed them down to play at 50hz for this collection, so the games run and sound slow and weird, far from the real 50hz PAL original versions on original hardware.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
WRC Rally Evolved (PlayStation 2)
A really great rally game with some cool extreme weather effects and stuff, kinda similar to games like Motorstorm Apocalypse or Split/Second.
WRC 4 (PlayStation 2)
A great rally game, it's basically like WRC Rally Evolved but focused on regular rally racing only. Both are great games.
Rally Championship (PlayStation 2)
A fantastic arcade rally game, I love the driving physics, the music is awesome, this may be a new contender for the best [arcade] rally game I've ever played. I can't seem to wipe off the huge dumb grin I get on my face when playing this.
Jet Ion GP (PlayStation 2)
A nostalgic classic for me, I think it was the third or possibly fourth game I got for my PS2 back in the day.
New York Race (PlayStation 2)
I got this game less than a year ago but originally I could've gotten it instead of Jet Ion GP.
Now finally I've been able to compare both side by side and truly see if I made the right choice when I picked Jet Ion GP over New York Race all those years ago.
I have to say yes, I made the right choice, as good as New York Race is, I like Jet Ion GP better. I'm glad to finally have both though.
Sonic CD (Sonic Gems Collection, PlayStation 2)
Beat is with the bad ending but I did probably my personal best run ever, with only having lost one life during the whole playthrough, obtaining 5 of the time stones and getting the good future in I think 8 or 9 stages.
Sonic Unleashed (PlayStation 2)
This game is awful.
It's the same version that is on Wii so I can't even imagine how bad that one must be if it's this game with broken motion controls..
I have the Xbox 360 version, which is different from the PS2/Wii versions, but I haven't played that one yet. I'm guessing it's probably really awful as well, maybe not quite as bad as this one but still really bad, I have no reason to think they made it better in any way that counts, the atrocious Sonic Generations I have on Xbox 360 has made sure I can exclusively assume the very worst of all modern Sonic games.
As a side note, anyone who dares complain about even a single tiny little thing about Sonic 06 needs to play this (and/or Sonic Generations) to see what truly bad Sonic games are like, then they need to beg on their bare knees to Sonic 06 for forgiveness.
Crash of the Titans (PlayStation 2)
I didn't have much hope for this being good but it suprised me, in fact it's one of the better 3D platformers I've played.
Good visuals, good gameplay, good controls, good level design, very good multilingual voice acting.
The combat could've been a bit better in the responsiveness and control, but the ability to take over large enemies and use their abilities adds a nice variety and depth to the combat and gameplay of the entire game, so overall that's all still good too.
Offroad Extreme! (PlayStation 2)
I have this on Wii and played it a few years ago, it was pretty bad with the visuals and framerate but I remember it having really responsive and accurate motion controls, far better than any other Wii game in fact, and now I've tried out the PS2 version and can safely say the framerate, visuals and controls are all much better than in the Wii version, as good as the Wii version's controls are they are to no suprise infinitely better with an analog stick, and the visuals actually look okay in this, still low budget looking but they run silky smooth and the environments and textures don't look weird like they did on Wii.
Simply put, the PS2 version is clearly superior in every way to the newer Wii version, and keep in mind that Wii had a more than twice as powerful CPU than PS2 and twice as much RAM memory.
Armored Core (PlayStation)
Made the Shadow The Hedgehog logo as an emblem. Also began work on a My Little Pony emblem of the old cartoon (My Little Pony Tales) show logo.
Dead Or Alive 2 (PlayStation 2)
LEGO Batman The Videogame (PlayStation 2)
Saint Seiya The Hades (PlayStation 2)
What a disappointment. I enjoyed the anime series back in the day, Hilda De Polaris being my favorite character, but this game is just awful.
Ugly, poor controls, repetitive, limited gameplay and game modes, awful game design with enemies being allowed to revive themselves multiple times before you defeat them but you game over instantly if you lose once, enemies are either super easy and can be defeated by repeating a single attack or they are impossibly hard and spam super moves that can't be dodged that drain 95% of your health in one hit, japanese voices only, retarded dialog options you have to unlock before they are actual options but you still have to pick the only option available as if you had a choice only to waste your time and slow down the already awful excuses for cutscenes.
I really didn't find a single redeemable feature in this game. I didn't even get to see Hilda.
DT Racer (PlayStation 2)
Feels good to play my favorite racing game of all time again.
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (PlayStation 2)
Awful gameplay design, atrocious tutorial design, garbage programming and optimization with tons of unnecessary in-level loading times and framerate issues, glitches, artificial limitations on what you can do making a vast majority of the moves you have at your disposal unusable, bad voice acting, extremely poor script with cringe worthy dialogue from everyone, continuity problems severely limiting your freedom of options in the levels.
It's a bad game, plain and simple. Play a good stealth action game instead, there are many of them, even in the same series there are better ones that are older, this one is simply one of the worst, avoid it entirely, you're not missing out on anything good if you never play this, you're just saving yourself from a headache and frustration.
The Italian Job L.A. Heist (PlayStation 2)
One of those potentially fantastic games that was ruined by absolutely retarded progress design. Unless you super master every single little corner of the game with every car and save your progress you'll never see a vast majority of it, not even in multiplayer mode which could've been great and fun had they just had everything unlocked to enjoy. Having to perfect the entire singleplayer experience to have anything fun in multiplayer is at best insult to injury. Such a shame. it plays great otherwise, looks great too. Tight controls and fun stunt moves, it has so many top quality attributes it's nothing short of impressive how they managed to systematically go through all the trouble of locking down the entire game and making it one of the hardest games ever to unlock even a single new thing in. One of the best examples of all time on how not to design a game's difficulty and means of progression.
Cold Winter (PlayStation 2)
An overall mediocre FPS with a great physics engine, tons of interactivity and great dynamic lighting and shadows, too bad none of that is used and it plays more similar to Wolfenstein 3D or Doom than, say, a stealth game or something.
Battle Engine Aquila (PlayStation 2)
Good old cockpit view mech shooter. I wish it would've had a third person view but it's still a good game, some repetitive missions and sadly as always with game like this the developers just had to force in annoying protect and escort missions to ruin the fun.
Star Wars Racer Revenge (PlayStation 2)
I like it, it's fast, looks good, controls good, sounds good and has nice levels with multiple paths. I wish it would've had weapons like WipEout, but you can at least damage your opponents with aggressive playing, so it's not completely limited to just basic racing at least.
Star Wars Jedi Starfighter (PlayStation 2)
An okay free-flight spaceship shooter, nowhere near the level of games like StarLancer, Star Trek Invasion, Colony Wars Red Sun or Blast Radius but not bad either, just okay. Framerate issues, some clunky command controls, clunky enemy selection/targeting controls, repetitive defend, destroy all, protect and escort missions and repetitive gameplay keep it from being great.
The SeeD Warzone (PlayStation 2)
I'm getting a little better at this game. I always wanted to be good at it and play through it properly but I've never had the time to dedicate to learning all the depth this game has to offer.
Super Mario Bros. 3 (Entertainment System)
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap (Game Gear)
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Mega Drive)
Auto Racing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
It's still not as good as the real thing but it's still good enough to have some fun with.
Bomb Squad (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
This one is borderline unplayable, the heavy use of the numeric keypad and bad control emulation ruins a lot of the intuitive nature of the game and like most games on this disc the lack of proper instructions makes it so you have to look up extra stuff online to get a good idea what to even do.
Thankfully I already know how to play most these games properly but for others who want to get into Intellivision are gonna have a very hard time with this collection, sadly. It does not show off the awesomeness of the real games running on original hardware, that's for sure.
Skiing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Enduro (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
This one I am not so familiar with, but I'm trying to get the hang of it, I'm getting better.
Stadium Mud Buggies (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
Sadly they've just lazily taken the 60hz NTSC roms and slowed them down to play at 50hz for this collection, so the games run and sound slow and weird, far from the real 50hz PAL original versions on original hardware.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
WRC Rally Evolved (PlayStation 2)
A really great rally game with some cool extreme weather effects and stuff, kinda similar to games like Motorstorm Apocalypse or Split/Second.
WRC 4 (PlayStation 2)
A great rally game, it's basically like WRC Rally Evolved but focused on regular rally racing only. Both are great games.
Rally Championship (PlayStation 2)
A fantastic arcade rally game, I love the driving physics, the music is awesome, this may be a new contender for the best [arcade] rally game I've ever played. I can't seem to wipe off the huge dumb grin I get on my face when playing this.
Jet Ion GP (PlayStation 2)
A nostalgic classic for me, I think it was the third or possibly fourth game I got for my PS2 back in the day.
New York Race (PlayStation 2)
I got this game less than a year ago but originally I could've gotten it instead of Jet Ion GP.
Now finally I've been able to compare both side by side and truly see if I made the right choice when I picked Jet Ion GP over New York Race all those years ago.
I have to say yes, I made the right choice, as good as New York Race is, I like Jet Ion GP better. I'm glad to finally have both though.
Sonic CD (Sonic Gems Collection, PlayStation 2)
Beat is with the bad ending but I did probably my personal best run ever, with only having lost one life during the whole playthrough, obtaining 5 of the time stones and getting the good future in I think 8 or 9 stages.
Sonic Unleashed (PlayStation 2)
This game is awful.
It's the same version that is on Wii so I can't even imagine how bad that one must be if it's this game with broken motion controls..
I have the Xbox 360 version, which is different from the PS2/Wii versions, but I haven't played that one yet. I'm guessing it's probably really awful as well, maybe not quite as bad as this one but still really bad, I have no reason to think they made it better in any way that counts, the atrocious Sonic Generations I have on Xbox 360 has made sure I can exclusively assume the very worst of all modern Sonic games.
As a side note, anyone who dares complain about even a single tiny little thing about Sonic 06 needs to play this (and/or Sonic Generations) to see what truly bad Sonic games are like, then they need to beg on their bare knees to Sonic 06 for forgiveness.
Crash of the Titans (PlayStation 2)
I didn't have much hope for this being good but it suprised me, in fact it's one of the better 3D platformers I've played.
Good visuals, good gameplay, good controls, good level design, very good multilingual voice acting.
The combat could've been a bit better in the responsiveness and control, but the ability to take over large enemies and use their abilities adds a nice variety and depth to the combat and gameplay of the entire game, so overall that's all still good too.
Offroad Extreme! (PlayStation 2)
I have this on Wii and played it a few years ago, it was pretty bad with the visuals and framerate but I remember it having really responsive and accurate motion controls, far better than any other Wii game in fact, and now I've tried out the PS2 version and can safely say the framerate, visuals and controls are all much better than in the Wii version, as good as the Wii version's controls are they are to no suprise infinitely better with an analog stick, and the visuals actually look okay in this, still low budget looking but they run silky smooth and the environments and textures don't look weird like they did on Wii.
Simply put, the PS2 version is clearly superior in every way to the newer Wii version, and keep in mind that Wii had a more than twice as powerful CPU than PS2 and twice as much RAM memory.
Armored Core (PlayStation)
Made the Shadow The Hedgehog logo as an emblem. Also began work on a My Little Pony emblem of the old cartoon (My Little Pony Tales) show logo.
Dead Or Alive 2 (PlayStation 2)
LEGO Batman The Videogame (PlayStation 2)
Saint Seiya The Hades (PlayStation 2)
What a disappointment. I enjoyed the anime series back in the day, Hilda De Polaris being my favorite character, but this game is just awful.
Ugly, poor controls, repetitive, limited gameplay and game modes, awful game design with enemies being allowed to revive themselves multiple times before you defeat them but you game over instantly if you lose once, enemies are either super easy and can be defeated by repeating a single attack or they are impossibly hard and spam super moves that can't be dodged that drain 95% of your health in one hit, japanese voices only, retarded dialog options you have to unlock before they are actual options but you still have to pick the only option available as if you had a choice only to waste your time and slow down the already awful excuses for cutscenes.
I really didn't find a single redeemable feature in this game. I didn't even get to see Hilda.
DT Racer (PlayStation 2)
Feels good to play my favorite racing game of all time again.
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (PlayStation 2)
Awful gameplay design, atrocious tutorial design, garbage programming and optimization with tons of unnecessary in-level loading times and framerate issues, glitches, artificial limitations on what you can do making a vast majority of the moves you have at your disposal unusable, bad voice acting, extremely poor script with cringe worthy dialogue from everyone, continuity problems severely limiting your freedom of options in the levels.
It's a bad game, plain and simple. Play a good stealth action game instead, there are many of them, even in the same series there are better ones that are older, this one is simply one of the worst, avoid it entirely, you're not missing out on anything good if you never play this, you're just saving yourself from a headache and frustration.
The Italian Job L.A. Heist (PlayStation 2)
One of those potentially fantastic games that was ruined by absolutely retarded progress design. Unless you super master every single little corner of the game with every car and save your progress you'll never see a vast majority of it, not even in multiplayer mode which could've been great and fun had they just had everything unlocked to enjoy. Having to perfect the entire singleplayer experience to have anything fun in multiplayer is at best insult to injury. Such a shame. it plays great otherwise, looks great too. Tight controls and fun stunt moves, it has so many top quality attributes it's nothing short of impressive how they managed to systematically go through all the trouble of locking down the entire game and making it one of the hardest games ever to unlock even a single new thing in. One of the best examples of all time on how not to design a game's difficulty and means of progression.
Cold Winter (PlayStation 2)
An overall mediocre FPS with a great physics engine, tons of interactivity and great dynamic lighting and shadows, too bad none of that is used and it plays more similar to Wolfenstein 3D or Doom than, say, a stealth game or something.
Battle Engine Aquila (PlayStation 2)
Good old cockpit view mech shooter. I wish it would've had a third person view but it's still a good game, some repetitive missions and sadly as always with game like this the developers just had to force in annoying protect and escort missions to ruin the fun.
Star Wars Racer Revenge (PlayStation 2)
I like it, it's fast, looks good, controls good, sounds good and has nice levels with multiple paths. I wish it would've had weapons like WipEout, but you can at least damage your opponents with aggressive playing, so it's not completely limited to just basic racing at least.
Star Wars Jedi Starfighter (PlayStation 2)
An okay free-flight spaceship shooter, nowhere near the level of games like StarLancer, Star Trek Invasion, Colony Wars Red Sun or Blast Radius but not bad either, just okay. Framerate issues, some clunky command controls, clunky enemy selection/targeting controls, repetitive defend, destroy all, protect and escort missions and repetitive gameplay keep it from being great.
The SeeD Warzone (PlayStation 2)
I'm getting a little better at this game. I always wanted to be good at it and play through it properly but I've never had the time to dedicate to learning all the depth this game has to offer.
Super Mario Bros. 3 (Entertainment System)
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap (Game Gear)
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Now Playing - September 2018
It's my birthday this month (september 5th) and since I've declared 2018 to be the year of Intellivision of course I have to play a lot of Intellivision games, but it's also the end of the 32-bit/PlayStation year where I celebrated the 20th anniversary of many fantastic 1997 titles, when I got my PlayStation and that I turned 32 all at once, so a throwback to the past year with lots of 32-bit games is also in order, also my new found enjoyment in solving Rubik's Cube I've been doing that a lot, and of course just a bunch of other awesome games in general, as always, but even more focused and intense because arbitrary number of times the planet has spun around the sun since I was born and such!
Rubik's Cube
fastest time so far 1:47
Centipede (Intellivision)
Defender (Intellivision)
Auto Racing (Intellivision)
River Raid (Intellivision)
Rubik's Puzzle World (DS, played on 3DS)
Total Drivin (PlayStation)
V-Rally (PlayStation)
Neo Kobe 2045 Road Rage (PlayStation)
Centipede (PlayStation)
Cyber Sled (PlayStation)
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
Cosmic Carnage (32X)
Shinobi (Master System)
A basic platformer action game with a cool gimmick, you can move into the background and foreground of the level, giving some literal depth to the gameplay, very cool indeed.
Deathtrap Dungeon (PlayStation)
A cool 3D hack n slash game where you either play as a generic knight I forget the name of or a hot dominatrix called Red Lotus, guess who I always play as. You go through levels figuring out the puzzles, avoiding deadly traps and fighting enemies with different weapons you find along the way, the battle system is interesting in that you have an attack button but while attacking you can press different directions and do different attacks based on the direction you press, you can for example attack behind you, which is uncommon in games in general as most games will have you face your enemy and force you to turn around to attack whatever was previously behind you. There's a lot of dismemberment on enemy bodies, you can chop off parts of the enemies even after they've died and see parts to flying and leave blood and splatter on the ground and walls and blood dripping down from the ceiling etc.
Shanghai (Master System)
A basic mahjong game.
Shanghai II (Game Gear)
Shanghai II Dragon's Eye (Mega Drive)
A slight graphical improvement and with some more options for tile graphics and background graphics, but the same basic game otherwise.
Yakyuuken Adventure Part II - Gal's Dungeon (Famicom Disc System)
A weird japanese 3D maze game where you hunt down a woman and play rock, scissor, paper with her for a key to the next level.
Sexy Yakyuuken Adventure II - Gal's Dungeon Part II (Famicom Disc System)
Same as the first, just slightly different visuals.
BurgerTime! (Intellivision)
Bomb Squad (Intellivision)
Finally took the time to learn how to play this. It's really cool and I've had a blast playing it, some pun intended.
You have to figure out the numeric code by replacing circuits inside the LEDs on a digital number display to see if they light up or not, and then systematically figure out what the numeric code is and enter it before the timer runs out and the bomb goes off. You have a set of tools at your disposal accessible via the keypad, a wire cutter, a plier, a soldering iron and a fire extinguisher, fires only happen on the higher difficulties though so on the easy settings it goes unused.
The game uses the IntelliVoice module to give you voiced instructions, taunts and hints, making the game feel even more modern and advanced than it already was, which is really cool and gives a very effective feeling of realistic urgency to the game.
Arcade Classics (Game Gear)
Centipede, Pong and some third game I didn't care for enough to even remember what it was. You have the option of using original style visuals or a slight makeover with some more colors, it makes no real difference but it's nice that there's at least some enhancement that uses the higher color depth the Game Gear has to offer.
Centipede was okay, not the best version I've played but not the worst either, just average.
Pong is Pong, the digital control makes it less fun that it can be when using analog controls like on a proper Pong console, also Pong isn't much even at best so this really is not a reason to care for this collection.
And like I said I don't even remember the third.
Basically this is Centipede with Pong as a very minor bonus and it's not even a great version of Centipede.
Over this was a typical 3/5 experience.
Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble (Game Gear)
A very nice looking game that has some seriously generic and unfun gameplay. It's divided into two levels; 1.) Tease Daffy Duck to chase you past sings to change them from Rabbit Season to Duck Season and 2.) jump on a lion to catch dynamite and parachute down and land on places to blow up holes in the ground without the lion touching you on your way down. Both suck. Great visuals wasted on a fairly poor game, I give it a 2/5.
Daffy Duck in Hollywood (Game Gear)
This game baffles me, either I'm missing something or it's just broken and incredibly poorly made, and it's not like there are that many buttons to pick from so if I'm missing something, they hid it well, FAR too well.
Basically it's a platformer, with some good visuals, where you die in one hit but you can pick up a magic wand which grants you a fairy that will take an extra hit for you.
You have a bubble gun you can use to take out very select few enemies, while a majority of the rest are invulnerable even after you've upgraded your gun to shoot explosive fire blasts! Them be some tough enemies..
The levels are non-linear and confusing and there are lots of places that seem like you could go there but you simply can't, it's a game of constant dead ends and wondering; What do I do? Where do I go?
It's very unenjoyable and the controls are not precise and you jump really high, making it hard to stick landings once you go flying.
You can pick between several levels from the get go but I've not enjoyed a single one, and they're not very varied either.
Sadly this is another 2/5.
Earthworm Jim (Game Gear)
A downgraded port of the Mega Drive/Super Nintendo game. It's playable but just barely, the downgrades are many, sadly mostly in the gameplay.
The visuals are good, as usual for Game Gear games, but it plays stiff, unresponsive and inaccurately, making the simplest of jumps and taking out the easiest enemies a chore.
Sadly yet another 2/5.
Mega Man (Game Gear)
One of the best Game Gear games and a great game in the Mega Man series, a favorite for sure.
Sadly it never came out here in Europe or even in Japan, so not many got to experience it back in the day, such a shame as it's a brilliant and super high quality game, not just by Game Gear standards either, it's just fantastic, plain and simple, end of story.
It looks great, plays spot on, sounds great, has great levels, enemies, bosses and plenty of secrets to find.
Needless to say this is an easy game to give 5/5.
GT Racers (Game Boy Advance)
I didn't know there was a GBA version until now, I have it on PS2 where it's one of those games that is so bad that it's entertaining, definitely not because it's a good game but entirely because it's such a broken, buggy, glitchy mess of a game that you can only laugh at it.
The GBA game on the other hand is wildly different, it's a top down racer similar to the excellent Death Rally on PC and Karnage Rally also on GBA.
I've only played some of it but so far it beats both those games in terms of visual quality and it's one of the most technically advanced games on GBA with 3D polygonal objects all around the track, all fully textured, and running with a constant and smooth framerate.
It even plays well with fairly good controls. There are some tracks and cars to pick from. So all in all it's a good game. I haven't played it enough to know if there are any issues yet but it's made one very suprisingly impressive first impression for sure, especially with the infamous PS2 game in mind.
RollCage (PlayStation)
Batman Gotham City Racer (PlayStation)
Frogger (PlayStation)
Venture (Intellivision)
First time playing this one. I think I beat it on my first try, because after I completed the last level and got all the treasure it just looped the last level over and over again.
It's short, simple, but still pretty good. You move around different overworld map levels with some enemies moving around that you can't kill and enter buildings with treasure and killable enemies until you've been in all the rooms and gotten all the treasure, then you complete the level and move onto the next one, until you've found all the treasure in the game, then the last level loops until you run out of lives or quit the game.
You pick up the treasure and get out without getting killed and repeat until you have all the treasure, simple enough. You have a bow and arrows with infinite ammo you can shoot enemies with, you shoot in the direction you're moving in, there's no strafing in this game, and enemies are kind of like xenomorph aliens in that after you kill them they leave behind their bodies that can kill you until they've evaporated entirely, shooting a dead enemy makes it start the decaying over again making it take longer to go away, so avoid shooting the dead!, and as even one single pixel left is enough to kill you if you touch it you really don't want those things to stick around longer than needed.
If you wait around long enough an invincible enemy that can pass through walls appears and hunts you down, but it takes a while and you can just exit a building to escape from it, so it's something I only saw twice, one time when I was putting down the controller after I had killed the enemies and the building I was in was now empty and I thought it was safe and I wanted to turn down the volume a bit, at first I tried to kill it but it didn't die so I just left the building and it was gone, after that I just paused the game whenever I need to as I usually would in any other game, the second time I saw it was when I deliberately waited around to see if I could see it again, and yes, it appears whenever you wait around inside a building.
I never saw it on the overworld map screens so I'm assuming it only appears when you're inside the buildings.
The enemies can only be killed when you're inside the buildings, the enemies on the overworld map can not be killed as you can't use the bow there, you can only use it in the buildings.
Everything is a one hit kill in this, and you can't get any extra lives as far as I can tell, killing enemies just gets you the usual useless points.
There are no bosses, no secrets as far as I can tell and no other bonus or extra stuff, just pick up the treasure and then kill yourself to end the game as it just loops the last map, level 9, until you run out of lives otherwise.
The music is repetitive and simple, but not bad.
The visuals are simplistic but get the job done and at least have some nice color variations, the main character is literally just a red smiley face, that turns into a red frowny face when you get hit by an enemy, and on the overworld map he's literally just a single red pixel. When in buildings he also has his bow and arrow pointing in the direction you're moving, letting you know what direction your arrows will go if you shoot.
You move with the disc and shoot with the side buttons.
The enemies come on a nice variety and they all have two-frame animations while they move around, other than that there are some moving walls of death and the killed enemies evaporating effect is animated quite nicely.
The gameplay is solid enough but it's far too shallow and simple of a game in total, with some type of bosses and a proper end screen giving some satisfaction to completing the game I would've given it at least a 4/5, as it currently stands I'll give it a solid 3/5.
Armored Core (PlayStation)
Started a new game.
Rubik's Cube
fastest time so far 1:47
Centipede (Intellivision)
Defender (Intellivision)
Auto Racing (Intellivision)
River Raid (Intellivision)
Rubik's Puzzle World (DS, played on 3DS)
Total Drivin (PlayStation)
V-Rally (PlayStation)
Neo Kobe 2045 Road Rage (PlayStation)
Centipede (PlayStation)
Cyber Sled (PlayStation)
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
Cosmic Carnage (32X)
Shinobi (Master System)
A basic platformer action game with a cool gimmick, you can move into the background and foreground of the level, giving some literal depth to the gameplay, very cool indeed.
Deathtrap Dungeon (PlayStation)
A cool 3D hack n slash game where you either play as a generic knight I forget the name of or a hot dominatrix called Red Lotus, guess who I always play as. You go through levels figuring out the puzzles, avoiding deadly traps and fighting enemies with different weapons you find along the way, the battle system is interesting in that you have an attack button but while attacking you can press different directions and do different attacks based on the direction you press, you can for example attack behind you, which is uncommon in games in general as most games will have you face your enemy and force you to turn around to attack whatever was previously behind you. There's a lot of dismemberment on enemy bodies, you can chop off parts of the enemies even after they've died and see parts to flying and leave blood and splatter on the ground and walls and blood dripping down from the ceiling etc.
Shanghai (Master System)
A basic mahjong game.
Shanghai II (Game Gear)
Shanghai II Dragon's Eye (Mega Drive)
A slight graphical improvement and with some more options for tile graphics and background graphics, but the same basic game otherwise.
Yakyuuken Adventure Part II - Gal's Dungeon (Famicom Disc System)
A weird japanese 3D maze game where you hunt down a woman and play rock, scissor, paper with her for a key to the next level.
Sexy Yakyuuken Adventure II - Gal's Dungeon Part II (Famicom Disc System)
Same as the first, just slightly different visuals.
BurgerTime! (Intellivision)
Bomb Squad (Intellivision)
Finally took the time to learn how to play this. It's really cool and I've had a blast playing it, some pun intended.
You have to figure out the numeric code by replacing circuits inside the LEDs on a digital number display to see if they light up or not, and then systematically figure out what the numeric code is and enter it before the timer runs out and the bomb goes off. You have a set of tools at your disposal accessible via the keypad, a wire cutter, a plier, a soldering iron and a fire extinguisher, fires only happen on the higher difficulties though so on the easy settings it goes unused.
The game uses the IntelliVoice module to give you voiced instructions, taunts and hints, making the game feel even more modern and advanced than it already was, which is really cool and gives a very effective feeling of realistic urgency to the game.
Arcade Classics (Game Gear)
Centipede, Pong and some third game I didn't care for enough to even remember what it was. You have the option of using original style visuals or a slight makeover with some more colors, it makes no real difference but it's nice that there's at least some enhancement that uses the higher color depth the Game Gear has to offer.
Centipede was okay, not the best version I've played but not the worst either, just average.
Pong is Pong, the digital control makes it less fun that it can be when using analog controls like on a proper Pong console, also Pong isn't much even at best so this really is not a reason to care for this collection.
And like I said I don't even remember the third.
Basically this is Centipede with Pong as a very minor bonus and it's not even a great version of Centipede.
Over this was a typical 3/5 experience.
Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble (Game Gear)
A very nice looking game that has some seriously generic and unfun gameplay. It's divided into two levels; 1.) Tease Daffy Duck to chase you past sings to change them from Rabbit Season to Duck Season and 2.) jump on a lion to catch dynamite and parachute down and land on places to blow up holes in the ground without the lion touching you on your way down. Both suck. Great visuals wasted on a fairly poor game, I give it a 2/5.
Daffy Duck in Hollywood (Game Gear)
This game baffles me, either I'm missing something or it's just broken and incredibly poorly made, and it's not like there are that many buttons to pick from so if I'm missing something, they hid it well, FAR too well.
Basically it's a platformer, with some good visuals, where you die in one hit but you can pick up a magic wand which grants you a fairy that will take an extra hit for you.
You have a bubble gun you can use to take out very select few enemies, while a majority of the rest are invulnerable even after you've upgraded your gun to shoot explosive fire blasts! Them be some tough enemies..
The levels are non-linear and confusing and there are lots of places that seem like you could go there but you simply can't, it's a game of constant dead ends and wondering; What do I do? Where do I go?
It's very unenjoyable and the controls are not precise and you jump really high, making it hard to stick landings once you go flying.
You can pick between several levels from the get go but I've not enjoyed a single one, and they're not very varied either.
Sadly this is another 2/5.
Earthworm Jim (Game Gear)
A downgraded port of the Mega Drive/Super Nintendo game. It's playable but just barely, the downgrades are many, sadly mostly in the gameplay.
The visuals are good, as usual for Game Gear games, but it plays stiff, unresponsive and inaccurately, making the simplest of jumps and taking out the easiest enemies a chore.
Sadly yet another 2/5.
Mega Man (Game Gear)
One of the best Game Gear games and a great game in the Mega Man series, a favorite for sure.
Sadly it never came out here in Europe or even in Japan, so not many got to experience it back in the day, such a shame as it's a brilliant and super high quality game, not just by Game Gear standards either, it's just fantastic, plain and simple, end of story.
It looks great, plays spot on, sounds great, has great levels, enemies, bosses and plenty of secrets to find.
Needless to say this is an easy game to give 5/5.
GT Racers (Game Boy Advance)
I didn't know there was a GBA version until now, I have it on PS2 where it's one of those games that is so bad that it's entertaining, definitely not because it's a good game but entirely because it's such a broken, buggy, glitchy mess of a game that you can only laugh at it.
The GBA game on the other hand is wildly different, it's a top down racer similar to the excellent Death Rally on PC and Karnage Rally also on GBA.
I've only played some of it but so far it beats both those games in terms of visual quality and it's one of the most technically advanced games on GBA with 3D polygonal objects all around the track, all fully textured, and running with a constant and smooth framerate.
It even plays well with fairly good controls. There are some tracks and cars to pick from. So all in all it's a good game. I haven't played it enough to know if there are any issues yet but it's made one very suprisingly impressive first impression for sure, especially with the infamous PS2 game in mind.
RollCage (PlayStation)
Batman Gotham City Racer (PlayStation)
Frogger (PlayStation)
Venture (Intellivision)
First time playing this one. I think I beat it on my first try, because after I completed the last level and got all the treasure it just looped the last level over and over again.
It's short, simple, but still pretty good. You move around different overworld map levels with some enemies moving around that you can't kill and enter buildings with treasure and killable enemies until you've been in all the rooms and gotten all the treasure, then you complete the level and move onto the next one, until you've found all the treasure in the game, then the last level loops until you run out of lives or quit the game.
You pick up the treasure and get out without getting killed and repeat until you have all the treasure, simple enough. You have a bow and arrows with infinite ammo you can shoot enemies with, you shoot in the direction you're moving in, there's no strafing in this game, and enemies are kind of like xenomorph aliens in that after you kill them they leave behind their bodies that can kill you until they've evaporated entirely, shooting a dead enemy makes it start the decaying over again making it take longer to go away, so avoid shooting the dead!, and as even one single pixel left is enough to kill you if you touch it you really don't want those things to stick around longer than needed.
If you wait around long enough an invincible enemy that can pass through walls appears and hunts you down, but it takes a while and you can just exit a building to escape from it, so it's something I only saw twice, one time when I was putting down the controller after I had killed the enemies and the building I was in was now empty and I thought it was safe and I wanted to turn down the volume a bit, at first I tried to kill it but it didn't die so I just left the building and it was gone, after that I just paused the game whenever I need to as I usually would in any other game, the second time I saw it was when I deliberately waited around to see if I could see it again, and yes, it appears whenever you wait around inside a building.
I never saw it on the overworld map screens so I'm assuming it only appears when you're inside the buildings.
The enemies can only be killed when you're inside the buildings, the enemies on the overworld map can not be killed as you can't use the bow there, you can only use it in the buildings.
Everything is a one hit kill in this, and you can't get any extra lives as far as I can tell, killing enemies just gets you the usual useless points.
There are no bosses, no secrets as far as I can tell and no other bonus or extra stuff, just pick up the treasure and then kill yourself to end the game as it just loops the last map, level 9, until you run out of lives otherwise.
The music is repetitive and simple, but not bad.
The visuals are simplistic but get the job done and at least have some nice color variations, the main character is literally just a red smiley face, that turns into a red frowny face when you get hit by an enemy, and on the overworld map he's literally just a single red pixel. When in buildings he also has his bow and arrow pointing in the direction you're moving, letting you know what direction your arrows will go if you shoot.
You move with the disc and shoot with the side buttons.
The enemies come on a nice variety and they all have two-frame animations while they move around, other than that there are some moving walls of death and the killed enemies evaporating effect is animated quite nicely.
The gameplay is solid enough but it's far too shallow and simple of a game in total, with some type of bosses and a proper end screen giving some satisfaction to completing the game I would've given it at least a 4/5, as it currently stands I'll give it a solid 3/5.
Armored Core (PlayStation)
Started a new game.
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.
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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