Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Gaming Purchases - December 2017

December 5th:

me and a friend went to a secondhand shop where I found an old Action Force (EU G.I. Joe) comic from 1989 comic and after we had some pizza we went to a movie store where I picked up the Lego Batman Movie on DVD

DVD:
The Lego Batman Movie (2017)

Comics:
Action Force (1989)

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December 10th:

Finally the USB speakers I ordered a couple weeks ago arrived, despite their very expensive shipping costs they didn't even send the order until a week and they sent me the wrong information in the email so I couldn't log into their site and check the status of my order and the package they sent had nothing to secure it, it was just cardboard wrapped once around it with a string, it's a miracle it came through without major injury, I'm never ordering anything from BRL again.

PC Hardware:
2x USB Speakers Boynq The Vase

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December 12th:

A shopping trip resulted in some on-sale Lego game finds from GameStop and some cheap DVD finds from another store.

3DS:
Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (pre-owned but complete and in mint condition)

PlayStation Vita:
Lego Marvel Avengers (new)
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (new)

DVD:
Julkalendern 1990 - Kurt Olssons Jul
Lego DC Comics Super Heroes - Justice League Vs. Bizarro League
Littlest Pet Shop Vol. 1 - Littlest Pets, Big Adventures
Littlest Pet Shop Vol. 2 - Lights, Camera, Mongoose!
Littlest Pet Shop Vol. 3 - Sweetest Pets

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December 19th:

A quick visit to a second hand shop resulted in some nice finds today.

GameCube:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

PlayStation 2:
Barbie as The Island Princess
Crash of the Titans (promo)

DVD:
Aliens in the Attic
The Ricky Gervais Show - The Complete First Series
Lotus Lantern (Region 3 NTSC)
Kentucky Fried Movie
Disney's Beauty & The Beast - 2 disc Special Edition
South Park - Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Madagascar 3 (new and factory sealed)
The Legend of Korra - Book 3 - Change
Cloudy with a chance for Meatballs
Agent Freddie
Batman Returns
Batman & Robin
Monty Python's A Liar's Autobiography

Comics:
Min Häst
Garfield special
The Phantom
Agent X9
Stål Kalle

Toys:
Micro Machines
Super Mario Bros. McDonald's figures - Mario and Toad
Lego Catwoman mask
a cream white medium-large SAAB plastic model car, older model from the 70s or 80s, not sure

Other:
Minnie Mouse painting
Snow White painting
wooden figure - sitting body-less lady

CD:
Dynamite Dance

Books:
cat books
two small humor books

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December 21th:

Another quick visit to a second hand shop resulted in some more nice finds today.

Mega Drive:
F1 World Championship Edition
LHX Attack Chopper
Super Monaco GP
Urban Strike The Sequel To Jungle Strike

PlayStation 3:
Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed II
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Dead Space
F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon

PC:
Asterix & Obelix XXL2 Mission Las Vegum

Portable LCD game:
Brick Game 9999-games-in-1 (blue)

DVD:
10000BC

Other:
Sleeping Beauty wooden tablet
Spanish Dancing Ladies, three, yellow clothes, one in original box, one big and one regular medium size
porcelain bikini pigs, three small, one big piggy bank
pink geisha dancing lady
a couple of small art frames

and I found a couple of movies during a quick stop at a movie shop

DVD:
The Smurfs The Lost Village

Bluray:
Storks

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December 22nd:

a trip to the mall didn't result in any new games today, I almost bought one for PSP but when I saw the line to the register I said nah, I can buy this some other time if they still have it then, I did get some other stuff though

Stuff:
a mobile phone 3,5mm headphone jack LED light to work as a strong extra light when taking photos
a Barbie superhero frog girl, it was so weird I had to buy it, I couldn't leave the store without owning it
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Princess Luna figure
three small Mega Bloks Hot Wheels sets (Chromad, Turbo Nitro Booster and Sting Shot)
two Hot Wheels, one of which was a white Lotus Esprit S1, like the one James Bond had in one of the movies that turned into a submarine in James Bond 007 The Spy Who Loved Me, and a Ford Shelby GR-1 Concept (black with green stripe)

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December 24th:

Today I only got one gift worth mentioning, a Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 7-pack of little mouser robots, I always loved those in the original cartoon but I never got the toys they had back then, so even though I don't like the Nickelodeon reboot of the show I still love that we gota second chance at getting some mouser toys.

Good Yule!

Sunday, December 3, 2017

Now Playing - December 2017

Remember Me (Xbox 360)

Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)

Alien Storm (Mega Drive)

Eternal Champions (Mega Drive)

The Story of Thor A Successor of the Light (Mega Drive)

Justice League Task Force (Mega Drive)
A fun fighting game with some cool moves, some very nice visual effects and a fantastic soundtrack. Batman and Wonder Woman especially are a lot of fun to play as in this.

Justice League Task Force (Super Nintendo)
Basically a bad alternative to the vastly superior Mega Drive game, with uglier and simpler visuals, unresponsive controls that require specific timing to do what the AI can do instantly (cheating bastards), less content with some gameplay modes and options being absent entirely, no proper intro sequence and no cutscenes between fights in the story mode, and finally either boring and awful unfitting music for a fighting game with horrible ear piercing noises pretending to be instruments or no music at all with just boring ambient sounds, it's an awful game and should be completely avoided at all costs, go for the Mega Drive game instead and have a great time because you sure won't have one if you play this terrible Super Nintendo version.

Zero Tolerance (Mega Drive)
My relatively new third-party Retro-Bit 6-button controller broke while I was playing this, it's only a year or two old now but the top part of the d-pad broke straight off, the plastic that connected it in the middle underneath had given in, I glued it back and hopefully it'll hold like that for a while but once broken it's a permanent weak spot so we'll see how many games I can play before it eventually breaks again..

Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
Ok so a couple days later the controller broke again and this time I tried to drill a hole through it to reinforce it with a metal screw down the middle, while also gluing it, and so far it's holding up, but I fear the plastic just isn't good enough to last very long regardless, it's a cheaply made controller, plain and simple.

WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007 (Xbox 360)
Just making some custom characters, my OC Farideh, Lara Croft and Bonnie Rockwaller.

Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (3DS)
Pretty good, not exactly a step up from all the other Lego games over the last decade and a half, quite literally exactly on the same level more than anything, but I guess it's what we've all come to expect at this point.
The one positive thing to note about this specific version is that they actually have realtime stencil shadows, a bit pixelated, but they're there, which is pretty impressive for a 3DS game.
Not even the port of Lego Star Wars II The Original Trilogy on PSP had that back in the day despite PSP being notably more powerful than 3DS, however, textures are far lower resolution with some very blurry ones in some places and the framerate is not as smooth or as stable.

Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
I wasn't sure if picking the emotionally distant girl over the aggressive girl was a good choice, but turns out it was, she was actually really sweet and had a magic doll made to remind her of me because she missed me so much

Lego Batman The Videogame (Xbox 360)
I haven't played this in many years now, I never completed it back then and I probably won't this time either, but every step along the way counts, maybe some day I will have completed some of my now many Lego games.
I've gotten a lot farther now though, unlocked tons of new stuff and completed almost all of the Hero missions 100%, just a few things missing here and there where I need specific supervillains to do certain things in the levels to get the remaining stuff.
It's a very good game and I'm enjoying it a lot, so much in fact I've been looking into getting the two sequels, DC Superheroes and Beyond Gotham, for Xbox 360 or maybe PS3. I tried the demos for both on Xbox 360, downloaded from Xbox Live, and I really enjoyed them so I doubt I'd regret getting either or both of them in full version, sadly they're a bit pricey and hard to find, DC Superheroes has been available only once but it sold out again and that was only the PS3 version, so I'll have to keep an eye out.

Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (PlayStation Vita)
Unimpressive, sadly. I haven't played for long but already I have a list of complaints that shouldn't have made it into the final version of the game.
The camera is no longer static and panning over areas nicely all the time making for a good solid experience from beginning to end, like in most other Lego games, instead it's far too often switched to a third person camera with some basic manual control, the problem is that it's way too zoomed in making it very hard to navigate the environment, there's also an insane amounts of up-close and personal pop-up, especially NPCs walking around, they will literally pop-up out of nowhere right next to your character, out of nowhere, and a lot of the time several NPCs will do this as the same time, like two or three of them just suddenly appear next to you as you bump into them, slowing you down in the process.
It's like they're just teleporting around like in Star Trek, but with a severe case of ADHD. It looks worse than anything else I've ever seen in regards to pop-up in videogames, far worse.
The controls are a complete waste of Vita features, the d-pad, left analog stick and touch screen all do the same thing, control your character's movement, with the analog stick doing the best job of the three and the touch screen being almost unusable as it can't turn properly, it moves forward or backward only and very poorly to the left and right, it's completely unbalanced. The touch pad on the back does nothing.
The shoulder buttons and right analog stick both control the camera, moving it left and right only, up and down on the right analog stick does nothing.
I haven't played far enough into the game to say how the controls are different when it changes modes to flying spaceships and such yet.
The minigames are overly simplistic, making the originals they're based on, like Space Invaders and Zaxxon, seem far more modern and complex by comparison.
When you get to play the action sequences with a classic Lego game static camera angle the game picks up and is much better and more fun to play.

Lego Marvel Avengers (PlayStation Vita)
Compared to Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens this is even more of a mixed bag, while some problems that game had have been made better, some are still there and a whole list of brand new ones have been added.
The audio first of all is really poor, the voice acting sounds like it's been recorded from an old radio with an old mix onto cassette tape and then played back and recorded onto computer with a cheap headset mic. It's really bad, dare I say even worse than Remember Me? Yes, yes I do, it's worse than Remember Me, and a lot worse at that as it encompasses the entire cast of characters throughout the entire games it seems, I haven't completed it but so far it's all bad, and I'm several hours in.
The big difference is that this game has an open world where you can free roam, a chunk of New York and a carrier ship.
There are side quests and challenges scattered about and you can jump into vehicles and destroy stuff for Lego studs, the universal currency of all modern Lego games.
The controls are about identical to the previous mentioned game, with all the same shortcomings.
Visually it's a step up and a step down depending on how you see it, the characters don't animate their faces during in-game cutscenes, I don't remember now if they did or not in Force Awakens but I want to say they did. There seems to be a bit more detail and special effects present, but it's had to compare.
Overall I think I like this one a little bit more than Force Awakens, but because I don't like marvel and their characters much, nor do I like Disney's take on Star Wars, it's safe to say I'm not a huge fan of either of these two games, they're okay when the focus is on them being Lego games but when story and characters and such come into play they both drop in quality and so does my interest and patience.

Virtua Racing (Mega Drive)

Urban Strike The Sequel To Jungle Strike (Mega Drive)
Arguably the best of the original 8- and 16-bit generation Strike games and a great helicopter action game. I still prefer Red Zone, Steel Talons and LHX Attack chopper from the 16-bit generation and the Strike games on PlayStation, Saturn, N64 and PC though.
It's nice that they have on-foot missions and different helicopters to pick from during missions, I don't remember if you had that in the previous Strike games, regardless, good stuff.

F1 World Championship Edition (1993) (Mega Drive)
A great F1 game with some fast speed, scaling 2D graphics and polygonal 3D graphics.
It plays very well, it's good and responsive, if you crash into stuff you can sometimes keep going without coming to a complete stop, this was pretty rare back in the day for racing games as a vast majority would force you to see a crash animation or wait until the car or bike or whatever reset to the track before you could drive again, it still happens in this game but mostly for things that are too high to drive over, like sign posts and trees, but for all the shorter objects including the opponent cars you can hit them and get back to driving again without a full crash and reset, it has good control and handling too so for the most part you can avoid crashing altogether, there are lots of tracks to race on and it even has a turbo mode where some of the graphics are scaled down so the game can run at twice the framerate making an already fast and smooth game even faster and smoother.

F1 World Championship Edition (1995) (Mega Drive)
Same name but slightly different game, it also boasts fast speed, scaling 2D graphics, polygonal 3D graphics and lots of tracks to race on, however, it lacks a turbo mode but adds a third person camera instead so you can see your car while you race, it also has many layers of parallax scrolling for the sky and backgrounds and it has a lot more polygonal 3D objects around the tracks.
It doesn't play quite as well as it doesn't have the minor crash physics, just the regular stop and reset to track style, but it does have good controls and handling and is fast and responsive, so you won't be crashing much anyway and it still feels very good to play.
Overall I think both games are fantastic and impressive racing games for the Mega Drive, you can't go wrong with either.
I personally prefer having a third person view so this game is my favorite of the two for that reason alone, but in all other ways they are overall equals, where one is better in one way, the other is better in another way.

New York Race (PlayStation 2)
Back in the day when PS2 launched I got mine with Armored Core 2 and Zone of the Enders as my two first games of the launch lineup available, a couple of weeks later I also got my first PS2 memory card, after some time I had saved up enough to buy more games, the third game I got was Shadow of Memories, after that however I was give the option to wish for a new game that winter, and I had narrowed down my options to two games Jet Ion GP and New York Race, after much consideration I picked Jet Ion GP, thinking I'll probably get NYR not that long after. I enjoyed Jet Ion GP a lot and it remains a classic for me but I never got NYR, not until now, in December of 2017, I had only tried it on PC back in the mid 00's and liked it but I never found a copy on sale again until I now finally ordered it online. It's very nice to finally own a copy of my own and it's a good game, I would've loved to have this back then but things turned out like this and I'll have to try and enjoy it now instead, far after the hype of the brand new PS2 has long gone died off and I can only enjoy games based on how good they are objectively, no added new generation factor giving it a push.
I can gladly say though this is a very good game and I'm enjoying it pretty much as if it was new to me back then, I can usually mentally put myself back in those days and kind of forcefully add the excitement of what it was like had I played it back when it was originally released for games in general, it's not exactly like the real experience but as close as it can get, I've had plenty of practise with games for Mega Drive and other older systems over years and it's been a blast. Great games don't really age, it's just our perception of what games are like that does, thankfully I play enough old games that I can easily keep my mind fully open to older titles and enjoy them as they would've been enjoyed back when they were new, as it should be.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Hyperstone Heist (Mega Drive)

Score International Baja 1000 World Championship Off Road Racing (PlayStation 2)
An overall mediocre game, completely locked down with all content painstakingly unlockable one thing at a time, the bad controls making it almost unplayable and very far from even remotely enjoyable.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Gaming Purchases - November 2017

November 16th:

A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in a Buzz game for PS2, some DVDs, an old Babar book and a few bags of Hot Wheels.

PlayStation 2:
Buzz! The Mega Quiz

Cartoon DVDs:
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
THe Hunchback of Notre Dame (Noble Entertainment)
Superman (1941)

Books:
Télé-Babar (1969)

Other:
Hot Wheels
other various toy cars

Lego:
Ninjago magazine + hovercraft polybag set

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November 24th:

A trip to the local GameStop resulted in a new Vita game today, also got some other stuff in some other places, like some new shoes, a Lego magazine and candy.

PlayStation Vita:
Gal*Gun Double Peace

Lego:
Nexo Knights magazine + Macy Halbert minifigure

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November 28th:

Some second hand finds.

DS:
Littlest Pet Shop Garden

PC:
LEGO Rock Raiders

PC Hardware:
USB numeric keypad

CD:
Citycat's pure dance music tv-cd citycat club essential dance traxx attention 1997
Dance Trance 94
Sonic Dance (1994, 1996 Norwegian edition)

DVD:
Pippi Långstrump
Starzinger Vol. 1
Starzinger Vol. 3
Starzinger Vol. 4
Starzinger Vol. 5

Books:
Garfield Julalbum 2008
Babar Pianisten
Heidi
Kon
Marsupilami 3
Marsupilami 6
Cartoon Network klassiker (Jesons, Flinta, Scooby Doo, Huckleberry Hund, Tom & Jerry)
Pomperipossa

Toys:
Batgirl McDonald's figure (2016)
Daphne Blake action figure
Knuckles The Echidna classic 90s McDonald's figure

Other:
Kasta Gris
Plockepinn

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Now Playing - November 2017

Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)

Jersey Devil (PlayStation)

Sonic R (PC)

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)

Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive, played on 3DS via SEGA 3D Classics Collection)

Baja Edge of Control (Xbox 360)

Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360)

Shadow The Hedgehog (Xbox, played on Xbox 360)

Race PRO (Xbox 360)

Tomb Raider Legend (Xbox 360)

Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
Finally got hold of a Gal*Gun game, it's definitely a game with my kind of humor, I like it already. Too bad there's no instruction manual in the box, it's all digital only.

Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)
pet collecting and minigames aimed toward children, an extremely typical DS game in every way imaginable, mostly touch screen controls, a couple of minigames that are more puzzle focused can be enjoyable for a bit but overall it's nothing I'd recommend to anyone outside of the targeted little girl demographic

Remember Me (Xbox 360)
It looks pretty good with lots of detailed visuals and such but it also looks very cluttered making it hard to see stuff, especially early in the game in the slums where you have piles of garbage and scattered trash all over the place, the combat is sluggish and annoying relying on combos with a really poor timing system that's really hard to get a good feel for, I've managed to get it down enough that I can get through a fight relatively unscaved but it's clunky at best, the audio quality is downright some of the worst I've heard in modern times, more often than not literally sounding like the game takes place in a wooden box streamed over internet radio from the late 90s to an internet modded Mega Drive, yeah if you've played any 16-bit version of Street Fighter 2 you already know exactly what this game's voice compression quality sounds like, it's full of annoying real time info stuff and intrusive tutorials that pop up during gameplay or pause the gameplay entirely forcing you to do other stuff before you can continue doing what you were actually doing, frequently taking you out of the experience and breaking what little immersion there might have been otherwise, the camera is awful with slow control, glitchy and jerky movement as if it doesn't update the camera in real time or something and it's constantly switching between the normal (barely) controllable view and static camera angles for platforming segments and "cinematic" moments, I say that in quotation marks as it's literally just parts of the level where it forced you to walk and no other inputs work while some music plays as you're suppose to take in the visual impressions of the graphics they made, it's as shallow as it gets and because it's done so poorly it fails to have the impact it could've had if only someone with artistic and cinematic expertise had been in charge instead of the janitor or possibly a son or daughter of one of the programmers, clearly no person with any kind of knowledge on how to direct cinematic scenes ever came close to working on this game, the level design is confusing and awkward, especially in combination with the cluttered visuals and bad camera and the game has glitches, lots of glitches, sometimes the characters during cutscenes will freak out like Silent Hill monsters, twitching, turning and spassing out all over the place in the most unnatural ways possible.
Oh, there's no proper instruction booklet in the box either, just a thin pamphlet thing, so they didn't even manage that properly.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Gaming Purchases - Oktober 2017

Oktober 10th:

A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in some DVDs and other random things today.

Manga DVD:
Silver Fang Vol. 1
Stories from the Island World

Cartoon DVD:
An American Tail - Fievel Goes West
Batman - The Man Behind The Mask - Season 1 - Vol. 2
My Little Pony Tales - Vol. 6
SamSam Vol. 2
SamSam Vol. 3
The Swan Princess - A Royal Family Tale
Tintin Vol. 19
Tintin and the Guerilla Vol. 21
Tintin in the Shark Lake

Books:
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)

Comics:
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)

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Oktober 12th:

A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in many comics and a PC game today.

PC:
Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap I Kvadrat

Comics:
Penny
Min Häst
Gustaf (Garfield)
Herman Hedning
Sonic The Hedgehog #2 1991
(I'll add more later, need to organize more first)

Other:
a 3,5mm male to composite female adapter


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Oktober 13th:

Found some random stuff while out shopping today.

Magazines:
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic with My Little Pony The Movie figures Princess Skystar and Tempest

Other:
Fidget Spinners of various different designs (the notable ones were two red metallic ones and a green one with LEDs)


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Oktober 19th:

A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in many comics and a PC game today.

PC:
Kao The Kangaroo Round 2

Cartoon DVD:
Cinderella (Kids Planet, not Disney)
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
Fievel The Mystery of the Night Monster

Comics:
Penny
Min Häst
Ernie
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)


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Oktober 25th:

A small shopping trip today resulted in some fun finds, no secondhand stuff today.

Cartoon DVD:
Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses
Barbie The Data Game Hero
Monster High Double Adventure
Monster High Silence! Action! Vampire action!
Sing

DVD:
Arrival

Bluray:
Arrival

Kinder Eggs:
a Despicable Me 3 figure of one of the three girls doing some kind of spinning karate move or possibly a spinning dance move
some kind of bowling game with a lion that shoots into some point cards
a small red car with three pieces of road that if you collect the rest of the set you can eventually build a little toy race track

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Now Playing - Oktober 2017

September is over so I will dial down the 32 extravaganza a bit and focus on horror themed games and monster games instead, still with an underlying 32-bit focus though.

Metroid II Return of Samus (Game Boy)

Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)

S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)

WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)

V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)

Jersey Devil (PlayStation)

Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)

WRC FIA World Rally Championship (PlayStation Portable)

Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)

Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap i Kvadrat (PlayStation)
Also known as Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap Till Max, is a multiplayer-focused minigame collection for PC and PlayStation developed by UDS and published by Infogrames in 2001.
It's a 3D game with low minimum system requirements and it runs effortlessly without any compatibility problems on my much more modern hardware and software.
The visuals look good enough, not overly impressive by 2001 standards but they get the job done without any issues so I'm not complaining, it plays well with simple and easy to learn and use controls and the gameplay is for the most part fun and varied.
You play as either Asterix, Obelix, Mrs. Geriatrix or Cacofonix.
As I mentioned it's a multiplayer-focused game, so it supports the use of keyboard and a USB controller to allow for 2-player split-screen gameplay, which is very nice to see in a computer game for once!

Asterix Mega Madness (PlayStation)
I decided to check out the PlayStation port to see if there were any differences, and no, it was virtually identical to the PC game, beyond the obvious PlayStation things like loading from the disc causing slightly longer load times (which may be shortened if you play it on a PS2 with the faster disc loading enabled), a lower screen resolution adapted for display on older TVs (which can be changed if playing via an emulator on PC) and the lack of texture filtering (which is available if you play it on a PS2 or via emulation on PC) there are no real differences, some sprites are smaller to fit the lower screen resolution of older TVs better, but other than that the 3D geometry detail, framerate, colors, texture quality, controls, music, animated cutscenes and all other content is completely intact and seemingly identical.
It's an as flawless port as it possibly can be and lives up to the high Asterix & Obelix quality the series is known for.

Kao The Kangaroo Round 2 (PC)
An unusually good 3D platformer, at least by PC standards, seeing as they're usually best found on consoles, this was a multiplatform game though so it's also on PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox but it works very well on PC, even a shitty PC like mine it managed to run fairly smooth.
It seems to use the Massive engine, that powers the excellent AquaNox games, which would explain why it looks as good as it does while still running so well, it's a very good graphics engine.

Sonic R (PC)
Found this game while I was doing some cleaning, I'd put it away in a box with some other older stuff like Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Quake II, Unreal, some racing game and a couple of other games I've never even played because they wouldn't work on the PC I had back then.. maybe I'll give those a try with my current PC at some point as well.
Anyway, I decided to install this and see if I could get it running, and after having found working fixes for the issues I was having (an additional program was needed to make the controls work and a hex edited file was needed for better resolution settings), it works well enough with no major problems, I've seen some minor visual glitches and the resolution is not the same as Windows so it screws up the order of my desktop icons every time I play, but it's no biggie and it plays just fine otherwise.
The funny thing is, I have a russian version of the game, so it's Sonic R.. in russian.
It still plays like normal but all text and the voice clips have been changed to russian, and I don't understand a single word, I can guess what words mean "retry", "save", "load" or "quit" and other such basic stuff, but the rest is just strange symbols mixed with a random handful of recognizable letters.
Still, it's a fun game, I like it, it's one of the few mascot kart racer type games from the 90s I actually enjoy playing because it adds the extra depth to the gameplay with side missions during races, like finding hidden chaos emeralds and stuff.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Now Playing - September 2017

It's my 32nd birthday this month and the 20th anniversary of lots of PlayStation related stuff, I got my PlayStation and my first PlayStation game in 1997, many of my top favorite games of all time came out in 1997 (some in late 96 and as a result they didn't get played until 97) and it's also the 30th anniversary for some really old games like Maze Hunter 3-D on Master System and the legendary R-Type.
I'll mostly focus my playtime on as many of the games from 97 as possible this months to truly celebrate as any gamer in this situation should.

Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)

WORMS (PC)
Wanted to play some old school Worms.

LIERO (PC)
Wanted to play some Liero.

Tenkai Knights Brave Battle (3DS)
got this game as a birthday gift, it's not very good but it has semi-customizable Lego brick-esque transformer robot mech suits, so it's not all bad

Maze Hunter 3-D (Master System, played on 3DS as part of the SEGA 3D Classics Collection)

V-Rally (PlayStation)

V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)

Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation)

WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)
drinking Red Bull for authentic improved reaction speed

S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)
it may be a 1998 release but it's far too good not to play

R-Type (Master System)

R-Type (PC Engine)

R-Type (Game Boy, part of the R-Type DX cartridge)

R-Type II (Game Boy, part of the R-Type DX cartridge)

R-Type (Game Boy Color, played on Game Boy Advance as part of the R-Type DX cartridge)

R-Type II (Game Boy Color, played on Game Boy Advance as part of the R-Type DX cartridge)

R-Type Delta (PlayStation)

Armored Core (PlayStation)

Auto Destruct (PlayStation)

Command & Conquer (PlayStation)
the first PlayStation game I ever owned

Exhumed (PlayStation)

Ghost in the Shell (PlayStation)

Grand Theft Auto (PlayStation)

Disney's Actionspel med Herkules (PlayStation)

JumpingFlash!2 (PlayStation)

Killer Loop (PlayStation)

Metal Slug (PlayStation)

Oddworld Abe's Oddysee (PlayStation)

Overboard! (PlayStation)

Pandemonium 2 (PlayStation)

Porsche Challenge (PlayStation)

Rage Racer (PlayStation)

RayStorm (PlayStation)

ReLoaded (PlayStation)

SoulBlade (PlayStation)

Spider (PlayStation)

Star Wars Rebel Assault II The Hidden Empire (PlayStation)

WarCraft II The Dark Saga (PlayStation)

Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
finally got around to play this, it's okay so far, starting with a painfully long and unskippable intro sequence then introducing the painfully annoying and unnecessarily large cast of main characters in the form of way too much annoying text based dialog has made it a very slow game to get rolling, but I like the buggy driving and monster battles, the excavating of fossils is a shitty touch screen tapping minigame but it's at least over fairly quickly and not that hard to do (so far), it's an okay looking game for the system, the monsters have nice bumpmaps, or possible normalmaps, on them, it's hard to tell exactly but it's some kind of sub texture map that adds additional visual detail, which is nice, it's also very bright and colorful and plays smoothly, so it's far from a bad game, it's not exactly close to a good game yet but it's okay overall, I hope it will get better once the gameplay starts to take center stage over all this forced tutorial/introductory story garbage, also the humor is pretty juvenile, a "joke" they've already repeated multiple times, believe it or not, is that the fat kid is so fat he literally rolls around if he falls over, and he's a bumbling idiot who trips and falls over a lot, yeah it's not well written, it's very poor indeed, the gameplay is the saving grace of this game so far, to say the very least