Gameboy #-B

Blade

So Occasionally I go completely out of my mind and start playing every single game in a Romset.  Usually it's for some 3rd-rate console.  This time I went head deep into Gameboy and Gameboy Color.  There are a lot more GBC games than I expected, almost all of them licensed crap.  Starting out I'm surprised how many games Digital Eclipse made.

This time instead of me trying to remember everything I played weeks after the fact, I'm going to try and document as I go through this.  Mostly this will mean screenshots of random games.  If and When I discover a gem I've never heard of I'll talk about it.  I'm fairly certain other people have done the work for me in that department.

Let's get on with the screenshots!

Tamage: Tamachi High Lane

I love Game Center CX.  It's almost my ideal TV show.  A common segment is where Arino visits a game center in Japan.  I did my own Tamage (たまに行くならこんなゲームセンター).  

Tamachi High Lane
website
東京都港区芝浦2-12-13



I woke up really early the first day of my most recent Japan trip.  Having lots of time to kill I decided to take a walk.  I spotted this Bowling Center near my hotel in Tamachi on the JR Yamanote line.  A few days later on the way back from Odaiba we stopped inside.

We passed on actually bowling.  We were both tired, and the last time I went bowling I pulled a muscle on the first swing.  I didn't need more injuries. 

The first thing that catches your eye is the surprisingly empty UFO catchers.

 The main attraction of this arcade is Rave Racer the 3rd game in the Ridge Racer series.

We sat down head to head.  I, actually having driven a car and played more than a few video games, ended up winning.  She didn't do bad though.

There was a broken down Basketball machine, and a pile of stuff covering half the arcade. You could tell at this point the arcade was stuff that hadn't broken yet.  Not pictured but it did have a beer vending machine.

Tetris.

Virtual Striker 2 and a Shanghai game

I was pretty close to taking that old style poster.  Everyday Bowling girl is of course in AKB.

Won't you check out Tamachi High Lane Sometime?

The Cursed Crusade (PS3)

Man I sure did enjoy the demo for this game.  It had a nice - if rough - feel.  It had banter between the main characters that looked like it would develop healthily.  Maybe the battle system would also develop into something cool.

NOPE.

I got about 4 hours in and came to notice two different enemy types.  The guys I could kill quick and the guys I'd have to break their guard about 4 times.  And I have a bunch of different weapon options and none of them were nearly as deep as DeDa Souls.  You kept slamming that button.  There were chests I could find in the level (or not) if I found all of them I got a bonus point for my weapon customizing that didn't matter. If I didn't find all of them I got nothing.  There was nothing in these chests outside of the chance to find them all.

I could also use the dark world mechanic (where you totally go to hell (It actually looks kind of cool but) to find a beating cross or solve a stupid puzzle (like finding a specific wall to see a cutscene where I punch through it.)

Then there's the bear minimum of co-oping because occasionally you have to use your partner to get over a ledge.  Or he holds the last enemy so you can stab them in the head.  I couldn't figure out how to grab an enemy at any other time.

The the story is a C minus given an A performance by the voice actors.  Good job voice actors.  I'm sorry you're in a complete nonsense game.  It supposedly had a complete bulshit non-ending.  I went to youtube and watched the last stage where the player flipped around trying to figure out where to go like I did.  Fighting roughly the same enemies the same manor I did (I was playing on Hard and the only difference was they took longer to kill.)  Then I witnessed a cutscene that setup something (maybe).  Then the credits rolled.

It was like "we clearly can't complete this game but we have it done to this point so let's release it .  Then they did!  And I'm kind of angry over having good will about it.  Hey Rudie for post 100, why don't you actually address the culture part of this blog's title.  Maybe I will (Or be at a loss for a topic and just talk about some music I got.)

Pulseman (Megadrive)

Pulseman is known for being one of the few games that GameFreak made before they became the Pokemon game making company.  It got a Wii Virtual Console release against all odds which I'll totally buy if I ever own a Wii.  (Probably not going to happen.)

It's got great sprites and occasionally gorgeous areas.  The electronic worlds are a little sparse.  Most of the bosses are great and clever and the voice samples are catchphras worthy.

It's got a problem them.  There's this part in stage 4.  It's like some hideous asshole Sonic hack.  You have to spin around these orbs and move ever higher and to the right.  You spin around these tiny orbs way too fast.  It's a screaming match because you can't predict when to hit jump.  You're just spinning and hitting buttons and praying it'll be over.  The thought of playing that section again fills me with rage.  Some of the later stages are great!  The lead up to that part wouldn't take 30 minutes.  But thinking of going through that stage again and any good feelings I have for Pulseman evaporate and are replace with screaming.

Also while I was playing Pulseman on my PSP Lighting struck a tree outside.  That lightning strike killed my desktop computer, my router, and every Time Warner modem on my block.  It was also right after I beat level 4.

Siren (PS2)

I sold Siren so that I couldn't try and play it again.  It always frustrated me with it's difficulty.  Then I needed to play it and jumped it to the top of my Gamefly.

It's a good game.  Once I stared gaming the game the difficulty took a big nose dive.  Each level is only 5-15 minutes long depending on patience and knowledge. 

I love how big and convoluted the plot is even if the characters involved aren't that interesting.  There's space aliens.  Why you replay stages and die and can continue is built into the narrative!  This is a bigger deal in the remake, but the basics are in here.

The remake is probably even better 5 years after it's release.  Sad that no one took it's bundle of ideas.  It was one of the games to use episodic content and episode openings and closers.  Then a bunch of other games used it and every time g-journs claimed it was a new and exciting thing. 

There are some really nice nuggets of goodness in Siren.  It's not even that the travel to those nuggets sucks.  It's just the little tiny nuggets of goodness are bigger in my mind than they are in reality.  What I can infer and speculate and imagine from those nuggets is great.  But that's also playing a separate game on top the game. The material and story is great I just wish it was presented more.  The aesthetic and method they give is fine, but showing an incoherent 5 second clip sucks.  They could gives 2 minutes of madness.

Tamon's British dub actor has a really really great voice.  Still dubbing a very Japanese game set in rural evil other-dimension Japan?  Bad choice Sony.  But Sony likes doing that.

Siren's great y'all.  Now to replay the remake soon and hopefully not have the urge to go back to Siren 2.  Thankfully I watched a trailer and went, "Oh yeah I hated fighting just about every enemy in that game."

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood (PS2)

I love Jojo.  Or I love what I've experienced of Jojo.  It is a really long running manga that would easily require more than 100 hours to fully consume.  Since Capcom's game about the 5th arc was so good, I picked up this game about the 1st Arc.  It's by Bandai-Namco and specifically PS2 era BN that loved making a mediocre but faithful licensed game.  That's pretty much the deal here.

The best part was getting a very good summary/display of the 1st story arc.  It taught me who Dio Brando was before becoming an immortal vampire.  I also got to meet the first Zeppeli which is a running name/family in the series.  Like the Capcom game the voice acting is terrific and they put a lot of money into a throw away game for that at least. 

As for the game you punch a bunch.  It's got some nice cell shading but mostly you are punching a bunch then using your super attack to end the fight.  Don't expect no Godhand.  It does have some objective based levels, but mostly those reduce to punch a bunch.

It has side modes where you can play as other characters, but the fighting system isn't that deep so I didn't look into it that much.  If you play a lot you can eventually play through the story as Dio.  That's a pretty good reward, but I did the calculations and decided it wouldn't pay off.

Kirby and more Kirby

I keep looking into the dark void that is Kirby games hoping I'll find something I enjoy.  I remain conflicted whether the item searching present in the Dreamland games is a good thing or a bandage on the low difficulty.  I tend to admire the sprite work and sound.  I like that Kirby's Adventure has a level made up like a gameboy game.

I've owned Hoshi no Kirby Super Deluxe (SFC) for several years.  I've finally sat down and played through all the games available.  I ended up coming off as indifferent to the game as I began.  It's solid, I would have liked a few more the mini-game mini games (and the DS version has them apparently?) 

In most of them you're still doing the Kirby thing, sucking in things and taking their powers.  When that gets boring you inflate like a balloon and pass over the whole stage until the end.  You'll almost feel bad and then you won't.  You'll then fight a boss.  The boss is usually well designed and yet your body is trained at that point to muscle through, and they usually give you enough energy to win by minimal effort and attrition.

Screenshots tell me Kirby's Epic Yarn looks great a Wii emulator.  It could stand to be sharper on an actual TV.  It's just not sharp enough on a Wii in 480p.  Everything already looks fuzzy on a Wii.  Super Mario Galaxy 2 kept asking me, "AREN'T WE HAVING FUN?"  Yarn kept asking me, "Isn't this nice?"  Yes it is.  You are very nice Epic Yarn.  Using the yarn lasso is very nice.  It's just not engaging.  In the best way possible the game is take it or leave it.  I was going to quit playing, but then there was a set of levels set on a cake.  I had to play levels set on a cake.  It didn't matter.  It still felt like the game was asking me to confirm it's niceness.  I eventually got tired of saying yes.

Retronauts lead me to believe Kirby's Dreamland 3 (SNES) had a really great art style.  It has a weird art style.  The backgrounds are that heavy pre-rendered 3D that is somewhat present in Super Deluxe and overpowering in Super Mario RPG or Donkey Kong Country.  I've gotten through the first world.  I play these games are research and I had to stop because I was getting nothing out of KDL3.  I was just playing it and then I win and then that's it?  It wasn't annoying.  It wasn't fun.  It was just nothing.

SHORT VERSION:  Man Ranger-X is pretty great and I'll talk about it soon.