Saturday, December 31, 2022

Mega Man ZX: Advent (Nintendo DS, 2007)

 

The last ZX game is a little bit divisive. Some people like it, some don't like it at all. I think it's a step up from the previous game just because you don't get lost nearly as much. However, there are some big downgrades here. The voice acting is horrendous and the transformations / special weapons tend to not be as good as the previous game.

Regardless, for the Eleventh (My God) Day of Christmas I took a stab at it for the second time ever, let's go.

Friday, December 30, 2022

Mega Man ZX (Nintendo DS, 2006)

 

On the tenth day of Christmas... MORE MEGA MAN. This is the followup to the Mega Man Zero games. It's sort of MMZ5, but not. Plays similarly, but on newer and stronger hardware. Unfortunately this game has a lot of problems. I played it once before, in 2010 or so, and it depressed me.

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Mega Man Xtreme 2 (Game Boy Color, 2001)

 

Xtreme 2: It's 2-xtreme, like The Hardy Boyz. This one seems way harder than the first, which was already pretty hard. Also, this one doesn't work on an original Game Boy like the first did.

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Mega Man Xtreme (Game Boy Color, 2000)

 

On the 8th day of Christmas, stuff your stocking with Mega Man. The two Xtreme games on the Game Boy Color are kind of interesting. I totally missed these in-era because I never had a GBC. Funny thing is, apparently this game actually works on a regular Game Boy too, and I didn't know it. So I could have played it! By 2000, though, I'd pretty much completely winded down with the original Game Boy. The last thing I played on it was Final Fantasy Legend 3 in late 2000 / early 2001 and that was it.

Regardless, the Xtreme duo are sort of a followup to the five Mega Mans on Game Boy in that they mix and match bosses. Except now, it's the X series.

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

River City Girls (Switch, 2019)

 


On the 7th Day of Christmas, it's time for some Season's Beatings. I've always wanted to play a beat 'em up type game where instead of rescuing the princesses, the princesses grab some brass knuckles and just beat the hell out of everybody. Now we have that game! It's on a few systems, but I played it on Switch.

Monday, December 26, 2022

Live-a-Live Remastered (Nintendo Switch, 2022) Pt 1 - Prehistoria

 

Got a pretty sweet 2D-HD remake thing goin' on here. After how good the SaGa Frontier remake was, I had high hopes for this one. It still shows its age, but it's worth a play. They fixed some of the issues the original had, and the new visuals are great.

Going to be a bit more concise with this remake since the original had a massive amount of posts. One scenario : one post. It's different enough to be worth covering all over again. It even got an "RPG of the Year" nomination which is pretty awesome. Then Elden Ring rolled over it like the HK tank rolling over the skulls in the Terminator movies, but Live-a-Live was there. It was there.

Sunday, December 25, 2022

Dragon Quest V (Super Famicom, 1992)

 

It's the Fifth Day of Christmas, and the actual day, which sounds like a good time for a 5 game. Today on DQV, we go back in time. Way back in time.

Saturday, December 24, 2022

Final Fantasy Legend (Game Boy, 1989)

 

For the Fourth Day of Christmas, it's SaGa 1! One of my favorite Game Boy games. Top ten for sure. It'd almost be my favorite RPG on the system, except that the second one improves on it quite a bit.

Friday, December 23, 2022

Highlander 4x13 - Something Wicked

 

The 12 Days of Christmas continues with a Highlander post. This is the first half of S4's big two-parter. 

Brought to you by Established Titles! ...no it's not.

Thursday, December 22, 2022

Dragonball Z: Kakarot Part 10 - Resurrection F

 

On the second day of Christmas, my true love did NOT come to me. Instead I get Freeza.

That's right, time for the return of Freeza. Except now he's gold, because he trained. I liked it more when Freeza's power was largely static and new forms were his only avenue for powerups. Being able to gain power incredibly fast through training is a unique Saiyan trait, and to a lesser extent a Namekian trait. Now that Freeza and his minions can all power up super-fast from training, the specialness of Saiyans is diminished a bit, and it raises all kinds of questions about the Freeza Force. Regardless, load up your Maximum the Hormone playlist and let's get to it.

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Dragonball Z: Kakarot Part 9 - Battle of Gods

 

The 12 Days of Christmas begins: 12 days, 12 posts. Every day at about noon, a new post. No reposts, just entirely new ones.

A variety of stuff, some of it leading into projects that I'll do more with in 2023. Starting things off with some DBZ.

This DLC is mostly just a grind, very little to it. They can be excused because they made this DLC in 2020 while short-staffed. Movie 14 was pretty cool though and I'm glad they added it to this game. Beerus is a great "villain" (though he's more like a neutral party).

Monday, December 19, 2022

Live a Live Finale - The Eighth Statue

On the final episode of Live-a-Live, the seven heroes battle to save time and space itself from the Demon King. Well, more accurately, four of them battle while three of them do whatever it is that benched party members do in RPGs. Get crunk and look for shorties, probably.

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Live-a-Live #17 - Stabbing Eastward

The next character I go after is Kino, hiding in some bushes. Going to get the three characters I'm missing, and their weapons, then it's off to the final battle.

Saturday, December 17, 2022

Live-a-Live #16 - Murasame

Oboro finds Masaru the wrestler in the basement of the castle. They could join forces against Odio, but first... they must do battle. It is the ancient way of the pro wrestler.

Thursday, December 15, 2022

Batman: Return of the Joker (NES, 1991)

Let's see if this is as ridiculously hard as the similarly-named Game Boy game. It's a similar-controlling game, but very different in terms of level layout, bosses, weapons, etc. So far, it seems like both of them are insanely hard and I don't know why I'm doing this.

I should just quit this site and become a Hot Tub Girl Streamer.

Monday, December 12, 2022

Batman: Return of the Joker (Game Boy, 1992)

 

This is another of what I know as "Nintendo Power Games". Things I saw in Nintendo Power and was really interested in as a result. Never got to play it...until now.

This did not win Game Of The Year in 1992, probably because it doesn't feature The Reformed Rabbi Beel Clinton.


Sunday, December 11, 2022

Batman (NES, 1989)

The "Sunsoft Batman" has been highly-acclaimed for a long time, but I didn't get around until playing it until the 2000's. I found it to be somewhat overrated and frustrating, but it's still worth a look. Originally, this was going to be the 1989 game in the Three Decade Project, but I got stuck on Stage 5-1 and gave up. Bad Dudes got the nod for that year instead. Later I found out that Stage 5-1 is actually the final level of the game, so it seems I quit too soon.

Saturday, December 10, 2022

Batman (Game Boy, 1989)

This is another of those "could have been the first game I ever owned", like Terminator 2 or Mega Man III on the Game Boy. It's a surprisingly good game and I would have probably loved it if I'd gotten it back then. I was a little obsessed with it for a time thanks to the Game Boy Player's Guide, which made every game it covered look great.

Friday, December 9, 2022

Thursday, December 8, 2022

Live-a-Live #14 - The Heir Apparent

"Big Sexy" Kevin Hash is mortally wounded, thanks to that brutal battle we just had. And it isn't over yet...

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Live-a-Live #13 - The Knight's Tale

Time for the secret eighth scenario. The Knight looks a lot like Dart from Legend of Dragoon.

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Highlander 4x12 - The Blitz

 

Today on Highlander: Emotional episode with a nice epitaph. We finally find out what Duncan has been restoring that house for over the whole season. And more Richie! Enjoy it while it lasts because he's about to disappear for like ten episodes. Also featuring the greatest Sassy Female Reporter in this entire series.

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Live-a-Live #11 - Mech Suit Mayhem

Our heroes have no choice but to flee from the evil laboratory. They'll be back, though. Watanabe will be avenged, as the second-longest chapter in the game continues.

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Live-a-Live #10 - Park Street

Time to start powering through this game to get it done. Next up, Dr. Toei shows Akira the giant mech he unearthed from some ancient excavation site. When did this turn into Xenogears?

Monday, November 28, 2022

Live-a-Live #9 - Akira

Two chapters left... the future chapters. I take on the near-future chapter first, and it turns out to basically be a ripoff of the movie Akira.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Highlander 4x11 - Timeless

 

Very good episode here. It's a tale of two women, one who'd like to be immortal and one who'd like to be mortal. And also Duncan dressed as a woman.

Saturday, November 19, 2022

Live-a-Live #7 - Red Dio Redemption

Following on the heels of the shortest chapter (the wrestler), I go for the second-shortest chapter. This one is nearly all dialogue and story, oddly enough. These chapters are wildly different from one another so far. We had the dungeon crawl, the training minigame-fest, the fighting game, and now a story-heavy scenario. Wonder what the last three will have in store.

Monday, November 14, 2022

Live-a-Live #6 - The Masaru Smackdown

 Fast forward to modern-day Japan, as we meet a pro wrestler who is training to be the greatest fighter in the world. So... pro wrestling is a real sport in the world of Live-a-Live? It's still real to Square, dammit!

Friday, November 11, 2022

Live-a-Live #4 - The Highest Monk

No one gets higher than Roshi, as he meditates atop a mountain. Really wondering why this game didn't get a U.S. release; it's very playable. Finding it more entertaining than the often-confusing Romancing SaGa III, the closest thing to this that Square put out at the time. It's like one of their other departments thought they could out-SaGa the SaGa department, and made this game.

Thursday, November 10, 2022

Live-a-Live #3 - Tiger Style

Level 10 and decked out in Genji equipment, Oboro is very prepared for the final chapter. But first, he's got to finish his own. Too bad I missed out on Muramasa, because Oboro's attack power is on the low side.

Sunday, November 6, 2022

Live-a-Live (Super Famicom, 1994)

The next Super Famicom RPG that I'm going to cover is the relatively-unknown Live-a-Live. In the vein of the SaGa games, this one has a bunch of characters to choose from. The difference is that rather than each of them playing all the way through the same game with slightly-to-moderately different scenarios, in this game they all have a chapter of their own before converging at the end. It's most comparable to Dragon Warrior 4, but the way you can choose the order of the chapters puts a new spin on things. It's almost episodic. You can't really go wrong with mid-90's Square, so let's get to it.

Originally Posted in 2014

Sunday, October 30, 2022

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 (Lots of systems, 2020)

 

This one is scary because they cranked the difficulty way up. It's like going from Mega Man 10 to Mega Man 9, roughly. While the first Curse of the Moon was intended to tide people over until Ritual of the Night was finished, the Kickstarter for ROTN was so successful that they did a second retro throwback side-game after it, and here we are. The purpose of this one seems to be to just obliterate people.

Friday, October 28, 2022

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Lots of systems, 2018)

 

Time for me to finally take a dip in the Bloodstained series. These games look and play just like the Castlevania games, only a bit modernized. This is because they were made by the same guy, via crowdfunding. And the series has been very successful, much more Shovel Knight and less Mighty No. 9. The main goal was to create the game Ritual of the Night, and the crowdfunding overachieved enough that we also got a couple of NES-style spinoffs including this one. Starting with the shortest and easiest of the games, let's get to it.


Thursday, October 20, 2022

Carrion (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

 

WHAT HAS GOD WROUGHT?

This is a John Carpenter's The Thing inspired game where you play as the creature. In Soviet Russia...bug hunts YOU.

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Aliens: Fireteam Elite (Playstation 5, 2021)

 

Bug Hunt concludes with the biggest bug hunt of all. This game turned out a lot better than I expected. It isn't great, but it's a fun play, and what Colonial Marines probably should have been.

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Earth Defense Force 4.1 - The Shadow of New Despair (Playstation 4, 2015)

 
BUG HUNT continues as I play an EDF game for the first time. These are known for being super fun shoot 'em ups. This one is a PS4 remaster of an XBox 360 game, so it looks a little antiquated at this point, but hopefully the gameplay is as good as I've heard.

Sunday, October 9, 2022

Cosmo Tank (Game Boy, 1990)


Next I'm taking a look at an interesting Atlus game from 1990 that is remembered fondly by the few people that knew about it back then. This is a fun game with great music, and it has the boost of being featured in the Game Boy Player's Guide. To segue to Halloween, the next couple of posts will have a Bug Hunt theme.

Monday, October 3, 2022

Highlander 4x10 - Chivalry

 

Today on Highlander: Richie gets laid! Methos returns! And the story of how Duncan learned to dress respectably!

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Highlander 4x09 - The Wrath of Kali

 

Highlander posts seem to be the most-read and most commented on posts on here, so it's time we do more of 'em. This one here is probably an average episode by most standards, maybe a shade above average. However for me, it's one of my favorite episodes. I think it was one of the first ones I saw as a kid, since I started really watching this early in S4. Prior to that I'd only sometimes caught it in the first 3 seasons. I had no idea who Kalas was until the DVD sets came out years later. In any case, here we go, one of my first episodes and one of my favorites, and I'm going to use WAY too many words.

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Highlander 4x08 - Reluctant Heroes

 

This episode contains a Fop. A Dandy Lad. Anyone who has seen Rob Roy knows how despicable an evil foppish dandy can be. Outside of a strong villain (another of the many who should have lasted more than one episode), there isn't a lot to this one. We get some good Duncan and Richie hangout moments though, and I'll enjoy those while they last since Richie is entirely absent from the last 40% or so of the season.

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Dragonball Z: Kakarot Part 8 - Mystical Brohan

 Moments after this picture was taken, Vegeta went on a blistering media scrum and buried Gokou and Gohan!

Thursday, September 1, 2022

Dragonball Z: Kakarot Part 6 - Cell Games

 

This game could have easily just ended after the defeat of Freeza and left the rest for a sequel. In this day and age, it's pretty cool that they just went ahead and kept going with it.