Sometimes it is hard to appreciate good reviews, and I think in the end, any review that is not able to describe the game as it plays is a fail, no matter the score or the reviewer or what-not. I want to understand what the game is like, what it plays like, what it sounds like (and in case of a written review, what it looks like in motion). I try to do that in my reviews, but even I sometimes fail, because I like to keep my reviews short...

That said, I hope the site remake will allow for good reviews for all the games I played and finished (or declared finished, in case of the endless ones). We should be really close to it. =)

Oh, flickering graphics suck, no doubt about that, no matter the genre.

I did not expect you comparing erotica games to comedy games. But hey, I like to be surprised.

Well, I guess the difficulty curve will settle at some point again. I guess many casual gamers of 10/15 years ago are serious gamers now, and they require a new challenge. The market was swarmed with casual gamers in the mid to late 2000s and the market changed accordingly. I guess we will see and inversion of this again, sometime soon.
The ebbs and flows of the industry, I guess...

Hmmm... I think the best D-pad is still the one on the GameCube controller; yes, it is terribly small, but I actually quite like it because you can easily hit all the directions you want, and it is quite precise. The PlayStation Dual Shock has a nice directional input cross as well, like you say, having single buttons helps, but when are you ever gonna need to press left AND right at the same time.

Either way, most X-Box D-Pads somehow really suck, no idea how Microsoft can get something like that wrong, but they do, every single time... the SNES and the N64 also have nice D-Pads, IMHO, even if the one on the N64 controller barely saw any use...

Anyway, I stand by my point, the controls of the Resident Evil games somehow contribute to the atmosphere (at least, they did it for me), how broken that may sound. =)
I understand perfectly that people disagree with me, and all Tank-Controlled Resident Evil get my "Broken Controls" Badge (see my review notes section in the games), but... they aid with the atmosphere. I guess you can call it a "the best thing my worst feature did for my game" kinda thing.

Okay, I see what you mean now by a desert sketchbook.

This was probably why the 2005 remake gave them a unique special skill to make them more useful (Hugh, for example, has the Sulfer skill, which can paralyze any enemy).

So it's not a ongoing story? I see.

Technically, it's a spinoff brand, but yeah. they sold them in different flavors; you had pizza and nacho-flavored cheeses, for example. I actually didn't came across them myself, but heard about the commercial via TVtropes.

Oh... right. I remember you telling me over the PM that you disliked mac and cheese.

I, um... wow. if someone greeted me with that message, I'd be disturbed.

I didn't know you could buy emotes on Steam... or that there existed exclusive emotes.

Yeah, it definitely made playing through some of these Famicom games less of a pain when you know where to go and how to get there.

Huh. I thought it was a music genre, not a station (unless I misunderstood).

That name doesn't ring a bell, I'm afraid. I never heard many artists names growing up.

She ends her sentences with "Dechi", when it's common to end sentences with Da/Desu. it's a variant of Dechu, usually used by very young characters like the aforementioned Watt). conversely, it's common to see very old characters end their sentences with "Jya", and refer to themselves with "Washi" (a shortened form of Watashi, a gender-neutral pronoun for which Atashi is derived from).

This article talks about some of the japanese dialects. [Link]

Learning this made traveling through Duncan's Factory a lot easier, given it that it had all of those exploding robots.

I didn't know the Bomb summon was non-elemental.

I noticed that when I was playing the sequel on VC almost a decade ago.

Like SMB, where you can get a Game Over by having "too many lives".

Probably won't be long with the rate this is going.

It was actually mentioned in the manual, on Page 5. the GB version also has this feature (mentioned there on Page 15).

Yeah. they're also using the GBC version rather than the GB original because it has less lag.

It's kinda similar to the bug you see in the Castlevania NES TAS.

Not quite. if you're low on health, you can exit via the hole in the floor and return to the terminal to restore your health and ammo, then return back to the queen. the only drawback is that her health will be fully restored when you get back to her.

Thank you! That sounds a lot more fun than abusing rewind.

I want to like the Vectorman games more (the mid 90s CGI aesthetic definitely has appeal), but I just have too many issues with the "combat" and how enemies just pop up seemingly out of nowhere as you traverse the screen. If you're going to make a game where it feels like you can never stop shooting, why not add auto fire?

I dunno. Maybe I'll try them again on an actual Genesis someday. I don't have too much patience for games with limited lives anymore, I guess. Or, more accurately, the thought of "you still have 500+ other games to check out and you're not getting any younger, so hurry up" is always in the back of my mind, and being kicked back to start by cheap shot after cheap shot really sours a game experience for me.

Hmm... you probably did if it reminds you of something.

The people responsible for keeping profanity off the air were knocked out on the desk that day.

Oh, okay.

I guess they felt the official translation is good enough. you'd have to play the fan-translation for the GBA version if you want a more faithful script.

Mato explained on EB central that Mother 2 uses a MUCH more complicated scripting language to load text compared to the first game. so while it was easy for him to work on 1, 2 would require almost as much time and work as 3. also, some people found the GBA port to be a disappointment (mostly in regards to the music/sound), which further discouraged him from working on it.

Sorry for assuming. in Magicant, you can buy three different pendants that will halve damage taken from specific PK attacks. H2o (Fire), Fire (Freeze), and Earth (Thunder). then there's Sea which halves all three. PK Beam and Plasma Beam are non-elemental. self-destruction attacks done by certain enemies have the PK Fire element (as does the Flamethrower item that Lloyd can use). the sequels gave enemies weaknesses and resistances.

This video explains the weird color schemes. [Link] and as for the run, there's a whole video on how the kill screen got reached. [Link]

DG did a Part 2 on this. [Link]

Yeah, that's the Konami pause tone you're hearing. it's a simple bug; pausing the game or pressing left, right, left just as an enemy appears will cause that enemy to not spawn.

If you die just as you collect a health item, the game thinks you've cleared the level instead of restarting it. it's similar to the Contra III death bug, so "undead" actually fits.

If you press the Select button in Metroid II to turn on/off missiles, it actually freezes the game for one frame. this causes the game to fail to update the area you're in, leading to graphical glitches (Metroids showing up as letters, Samus shooting downward while still in her "facing the screen" pose, etc) and allowing you to sequence break.

Yeah, you can kill her with either bombs or missiles. the former is way more effective (5 hits) than the latter (150 hits).

The picture is not showing up, I'm afraid.

I see.

For me, I choose Amy (since she can heal), Rudo (high HP and defense), and Anna (her slicers can attack all enemies in a group). the Snow Crown can also be used to cast Deban if Amy goes down. the visiphone is gotten by having Shir steal it from the central tower in Paseo while she's at Level 10. enter and exit until she leaves the party, then return to your home and she'll have it in her inventory. also, by entering any tool shop, you can have her steal other items, like Star Mists (there are only two in the whole game) and Moon Dews (which can revive people at anytime, whereas Rever only works outside of battle).

Yep. no vehicle or final boss music. and yes, the boss music is also used during the ending.

It does, yeah.

Quite the aesop.

I see. not sure if I want to watch a show that goes downhill the further along it goes, though.

It's a slice of cheese that's meant to be microwaved so they can melt onto whatever food you placed them on. the joke is that this guy who was basically going on a meltdown (getting angry), and that he should instead have a Meltdown (cheese), so I tried to apply the same joke to the game. didn't mean to upset you.

I can't imagine what was weirder than that.

Robust how?

I recently used it to replay through Ganbare Goemon 2 (FC) last year. it was very helpful.

It's not that I didn't understand; I did. but as someone who's trying to be more optimistic and isn't big on indies like you are, I didn't had anything I could really add.

I see.

Fine in small doses, basically.

What's adult contemporary?

The lack of pronouns can be a problem when translating; for example, in the original JP version of Paper Mario (Mario Story), Watt (known as Akarin) doesn't use a gendered pronoun, instead speaking in the third person. this likely made it difficult for the translators to figure out what her gender was, and may explain why the English version called her both a male and a female. the only way you could learn her gender was via the game's JP website, which had profiles for each partner written in the first person (Watt used Atachi, a baby-like version of Atashi, a feminine first-person pronoun).

As for verb conjugation, here's an example I found; you have Taberu (Eat). if you want to be polite, you'd use Tabemasu. for past events, Tabeta (ate) becomes Tabemashita in polite speech. for negative, Tabenai (didn't eat) becomes Tabemasen. and so on.

I thought you'd probably find it worth looking into.

Ah, that's interesting then. I take it you had an NES around that time, and later got the SNES when that came out? I found a PDF of that guide book, and turns out, it does indeed cover the whole game. It's not very in-depth, but it has maps for all of the dungeons, at least. Could be a little better with the labels, though. It just kind of labels things like stairs and chests as colored squares, and that's it. Dungeons like Ikuto would be a major pain in the ass, with or without it lol. Fuck that place. If you don't remember, that's the one with nothing but pitfalls everywhere, and you have no choice but to get through it for the two pieces of Nei equipment.

Well, I am not someone that can say what folks tend to do what games, as I am part of the stupid majority of people, but I think this will even out, after some time. Just like some genres evened out in the 2000s (remember the times when you could not spent a trimester without another Guitar Hero variant showing up? Happy those days are over... even if their end was quite abrupt). At some point, the stories the queer folks wanted to tell will have been told, and the people will focus of making those stories the central focus of some other genre, thus enriching the media. I at least hope this is how things will go.

Bugs can exist in any game. In any code, really. So visual novels are no different. The more elaborate the story, the easier it is for bugs to find their way in...

Most erotica in games is incredibly tame. Or it is at the forefront, and then the game suffers for it, as the developers focussed only on the fetish/es that are central to the game, and on nothing or little else. That media, too, will grow. I hope.

If by bullshit hard you mean the Souls-like games, then maybe... I guess... I tried Demon's Souls a couple of times, that game is hard, but nothing unbeatable, in my eyes. Most of those games are hard at the beginning, then you figure out how the games work, and you adapt. Ikaruga is still the epitome of "bullshit" hard, and there's people playing and beating the multiplayer game solo. So... yeah...

Well, the people that developed Final Fantasy VII are not the people that developed Resident Evil, were they?
It's always easy to judge developers for not doing this, when they did that and should have clearly done this. Yeah, Resident Evil's tank control can be a hindrance, Squaresoft did do it differently back in the day, but those are different games in different genres. Maybe Resident Evil's panic moments would not have been so panicky if you would have been able to run away at the turn of a stick. Also, what sticks? The original Resident Evil was developed for the Play Station's excuse for a D-Pad, so they had no stick for that...
I don't feel like blaming the developers of the mid-90s for their foray into early 3D graphics. They were pioneers. They wanted to explore the edge of what technology allowed them to do. I applaud them. I think many of them did great, and those that did not, made mistakes that then maybe the great ones avoided. For every Tesla there are five Edisons...

Ah I'm so glad you read and enjoy the blog! Honestly I would still do it even if nobody read it. It's really for me to nail down what I really want to keep and to have a written record as to why. But it's a nice bonus that a few people actually like it. Part of the reason why I sometimes explain some pretty basic things is that I have some non-gamers and very casual gamers on Facebook who sometimes read it, so I want to make sure it's at least somewhat understandable for people like that. (I also happen to kind of like the thought exercise of actually thinking up the best way to explain stuff that for me and my circles is common knowledge)

I was gonna reply with some more words about Soul Blazer, but I'd be saying things that will be in the future blog post about the game, so I'm gonna hold off! I never knew about ActRaiser nor Soul Blazer until I got the internet at home so that fan reaction you mentioned was indeed something I was unaware of. I do recall reading, however, about how much fans of the first ActRaiser disapproved of the second one, especially since it removed the sim elements.

I never really got into Granstream Saga, and I don't think people consider it part of the series that started on SNES. It's a pretty flawed game from what I hear. One of those that I would have played if I had it as a kid, but now that I'm an adult with a jillion better choices, I probably won't without some unforeseen incentive.

[Link]

Oh, this is by the same hacker that did Limbo Edition.

Random Phantasy Star II question: Did that little guide book that came packaged with the game cover the whole game, or only up to a certain point? I might have to see if there's any good PDFs of it out there.

Oh neat, I've never heard of Smelter. I'll throw it on my Steam wishlist. Thanks for reading and then dropping line!

Of course later Quintet made Soul Blazer which can sort of be seen as a successor to ActRaiser of sorts since it's about "constructing" a town paired with action sequences, and I'll likely mention that (if I remember lol) when I get to that game, but it's also very different in a lot of ways so it doesn't feel like it's truly comparable.

Do you know that the difficulty was toned down for the US release of ActRaiser? I guess they included the original Japanese difficulty as an option in the European release. And there's also an English patch from Aeon Genesis for the Japanese release as well. Maybe I'll have to try out one of those when I eventually replay the game.

I have to be honest, I tried to play a couple of somewhat more erotic visual novels, but the ones I tried were largely "meh" or worse. But I also have to say, my experience as far as visual novels in general is concerned is very superficial. I played they first two Phoenix Wright games (Ace attorney and Justice for All), I played the Love Hina GBA game years back (before I even knew visual novels existed) and I played through Doki Doki Literature Club with my lady. And then, during my Corona week in South Korea (worse time to get Corona, ever!) I played Sakura Spirit and Sakura Angels... and they sucked! But I definitely want to get more into the genre (and replay DDLC)... someday...
Anyway, the two Sakura games tried to be somewhat erotic or so, but failed miserably. So I lost a bit of interest in the genre, for now... it will return at some point, I know that...

Just like you, if I go for reviews, I tried to focus on what is being said, more than what the final grade of a game is. I guess we just have different taste in what we like and what we do not like. But that's completely fine. Imagine what a boring world it would be, if we would all like and dislike the same things...

I am also getting less tolerant of bad controls, and I somehow cannot imagine how Doom can actually work nowadays. Also, games that are just brutally difficult somehow just fail to make me feel challenged, and all I see is the devs thinking "How can we get more quarters out of our arcade customers? Oh, what, it's not an arcade game... oh, who cares?".
I admit, once a game just annoys me, I have no more shame in lowering its difficulty or use cheats for unlimited whatever. For some games I definitely see the difficulty being part of the experience, and if the game is actually good I am also willing to go for it (Ikaruga still being my greatest example there), but if the game is not good enough... sorry, my time on this spinning rock is limited...
Still, I got used to the tank controls of Resident Evil from back in the day, so while bothersome, they do not make me want to rage quit.

The biggest issue is less about the glitches and more about the animation (and lack of sound) when you get hit. It's not clear how much life you have left, if you even got hit, or how much damage you took (the life meter is in the pause menu, but it appears a few seconds after a hit if you're 50% dead as well, but then you can take multiple hits and just die).

The glitches are oddly beneficial and don't crash the game, specifically a couple that let you "double kill" important enemies for extra rewards. For example, the dungeons have a "boss door" that requires killing a set number of boss door unlocking kudzu roots. I found if you kill them and keep mashing the attack button through the "you killed a kudzu root" text you can score a double kill and reduce the amount even further, meaning you can technically unlock the boss a little earlier than you should. It doesn't really break anything though. There's also pokeweed monsters you can kill for leaves that can be exchanged for life potion storage upgrades, and I somehow glitched the game into respawning one of the pokeweed monsters (which presumably would have given me another pokeweed).

The other one I found was some sort of overflow glitch with the purchasable kudzu jelly (life refill potions). It kept letting me buy more than the storage screen showed. Maybe this is intentional, but I don't know.

The biggest letdown was that I somehow screwed myself out of an optional dungeon. You can find a key late in the game that opens a door seen earlier, but the key disappeared from my inventory. Maybe I moved too fast or something? I don't know. I'll probably play the game again soon though.

I'd recommend checking it out. It's not overly long, it's not overly dialogue-laden like these tribute games tend to be, and it's not derivative to the inspirational material at all. I was having a fun time the whole way through. If you do decide to play it, I'd be curious if you could find a GB rom of it and plug it into an emulator with Super Game Boy capabilities, because I think it could benefit from a splash of colour that wasn't just shades of green (I know that's on theme but some variety would be nice)

The movement is nice but is also wasted by the level design never particularly doing anything with it either. You have the few Missions that were platforming challenges but they were pretty basic in the end, and pretty much every single secret upgrade was simply hidden behind sliding, ground pounding, or wall jumping. Basically the game as a whole can be summed up as good ideas with lackluster execution.

Thank you! haha that was awesome! He really is a tiny boy! We're doing well. It was a crazy beginning, little man was born 7 weeks early and spent 4 weeks in the NICU, but he's been home for 4 weeks now, and is thriving. We're hanging in there going on next to no sleep, but he's worth it.

I'm late to reply, but thank you, MotherKojiro~

I had a good birthday

So I take it you played HoniePop and other games like that, to be able to say some graphics are good and H?

I also have a tendency to rate games high, but, to be honest, I also tend to play games that are somewhat lauded by critics. My tastes are rather vast, which will make my quest to play all the games I find interesting accordingly difficult...
Still, I avoid games that critics deemed bad... at least, most times. A couple of times I ignored that, and that is when I found Ar tonelico and Tales of Legendia, games I really liked!

I wonder if I will also slowly becomes worse at some games. I know I am having a lot of difficulties with Resident Evil Zero right now, and I wonder if that is age or just that I am less careful with survival horror games because... well, because I'm not so scared of them any more...
Last time I played it was twenty years ago, but I somehow do not think I had as many issues with the game as I am having right now...

The combat system is neat, it just doesn't really do anything with it. Enemy variety is really small, and there's only a scant handful of bosses, with a disappointing final boss. And then the plot is underutilized. It could have been so much more than it ultimately ended up being. Oh well.

I ran Daggers+Shotgun in the end. My daggers had a chance to cause Aftershock, and a chance to have Aftershock reset the cooldown on Raze (the Kamehameha beam skill), and since I also had Raze specced to deal Aftershock, I was a beamspamming machine. The shotgun was an explosive charge vending machine that had a special trait for massively larger explosions. I deleted everything I came across.

It's actually a misspelling of Ushas (for whatever reason, it's written in all caps). the goal is to find four pieces of a jewel in four different areas so you can assemble it and place it on the titular statue. you can also collect coins and then exchange them to restore your health or improve your stats. the ending is pretty interesting, too.

Ah, I see. I screwed up. and I see what you did there. clever.

I'm surprised that song was left uncensored for so long.

TAS runs never use patch codes. if you slow down the footage, you can see Robocop attempt to block with his arm whenever he's about to get hit.

Yeah, each character can set their own "warp points" with the Bread item. reading about the glitch in detail, what's happening is that the warp coordinates for Ninten are set at 00 when you start the game, 00 being that bizarre garbage area. when you return her home, she gives you all of her items, including the crumbs, even though the warp coordinates for Ninten haven't been set yet. the glitch doesn't work with Loid/Teddy, because the item disappears when they switch places.

As I mentioned, the NES version fixed the Bread Crumbs bug. there is no fan-translation of the original FC version. the Japan-only GBA version was fan-translated, but it's based on the NES version, so you can't perform the bug there, either.

Remember that Ninten doesn't have any offensive PSI powers like Ana does; only healing and defensive PSI powers.

Also note the up-down ladder bug and the "enemy levitate" bug (at the waterfall area of 3-1); the latter glitch can't be done in any other version; (not even Doki Doki Panic.

DG made a sequel video about Dr. J & Mr. H. [Link] and one about the kill screen in Tetris. [Link]

Here's some more interesting TAS vids I found. [Link] [Link] [Link]

A desert area looking like doodles...
---
This was the first turn-based RPG to have an Auto feature. the next RPG to use it (Mother) just had it as a menu option.

Having Megid (deals around 400 damage and never misses), some Star Mists (fully restores everyone's health; can be used to "negate" the recoil damage of Megid), and the Deban technique (halves damage) will give you the best chance of winning, and the Visiphone will prevent you from having to walk all the way back to him if you do lose. also, only 3 of the 6 status effects he can inflict with his possession spell will fully disable a character; the rest only disable you for a single turn.

Now that you mentioned it, this is the only PS game to not have a vehicle or final boss theme.

I remember you mentioning that. didn't know it became a running joke between you and your GF, though.

Reminds me of Little Nicky where the titular character gained the ability to release rainbows from his hands. didn't kill anyone with them, though, just made them good.

I think I remember you talking about that game, too. [and BTW, I was referencing the slogan for Kraft Meltdowns in case it went over your head.]

Pug of Fascination? umm... fascinating. as for conversation, it's good to know that the option to be private is there, but I likely still won't join Steam.

I used the website to look up the maps for obscure Famicom games.

So it's not worth it.

I was actually saying that "variety" line regarding the DJ who got fired; I didn't really had anything I could really say regarding your comment on the current state of gaming.

I remember you telling me that you didn't like that there's no left-handed option in Wii games (since you're a lefty).

So it's better to just not listen to the radio.

Now that would be an amusing parody line.

Yep. Romstar actually did it in January 1991.

I see.

From what I've read, Japanese is considered a "prodrop" language, where they basically omit terms if the context can be understood; you can even omit gendered terms, making it very easy if you want to keep someone's gender a secret. they also don't use verb conjugation with subjects. Japan has many first-person and a few second-person pronouns (enough so that you can tell a person's gender, age, and even personality just by looking at the pronoun they use to refer to themselves).

A step in the right direction, at least.

Linus Tech Tips covered the Stop Killing Games story on their weekly WAN Show. Hopefully more big names jump on this and convince their audiences to act.

Thanks! Though my banner/theme has changed again since then. Giving this whole "light mode" thing a shot for a change, mix it up.
I really like Kirby 3's 16-bit manila paper aesthetic in its menus, trying to reproduce it here. Kind of wish they'd stuck with it a little longer. It also took me way too long to notice that it reuses KDL2's Game Boy font for its menus and credits.