Welcome all to another edition of Indie Game of the Week where we dare to go far, far outside of our gaming comfort zones in pursuit of the unknown and the untested. My daring choice this time is an explormer that has Souls tendencies; not something I tend to cover all the time on here, nope. This goof really kinda hinges on the assumption that I have regular readers and aren't just being randomly discovered by visitors who accidentally clicked on the wrong link on their Twitter feeds, huh. So, yeah, it's business as usual in my neck of the spooky, monster-filled woods as I check out Salt and Sacrifice, the follow-up to Ska Studio's similarly grim Souls-fest explormer Salt and Sanctuary. It really felt like this game just disappeared without a trace after its release; besides former staffer Jason Oestreicher giving it props (it made his 2022 GOTY list) I didn't really hear much about it. Shame, because it's shaping up to be something I'm definitely into, given it wisely saw how many more Soulsian explormers had popped up since Salt and Sanctuary—which at the time was a novelty, rather than the norm for modern Indie explormers—and chose to distance itself with a few meaningful changes to the formula. (And also way more color; Ska Studio is best known for their early monochrome enterprises so it must've shocked them to discover their various graphics programs had entire chromatic palettes to choose from.)

The world of Salt and Sacrifice has your morally flexible protagonist arrested for a crime of the player's choosing (this also determines your starting item, like a bunch of bombs for arsonists, though I am curious as to why they weren't taken from you) and opting for the alternative to prison and execution which is to become an "inquisitor": nominally holy warriors press-ganged into dealing with a scourge of villains that have adopted monstrous guises and equally monstrous magical powers, running rampant around several corners of the world. Sending violent criminals to fight monsters must be seen as a win-win for the justice system of this world, I'm sure. Your arrival to the embattled area has your warden killed in action, followed by yourself: however, since you drank some kind of mystical whatsit to bind you to your current mission, not even death can end your sentence prematurely. Not until the mages are all defeated, anyway. Gameplay-wise, it's an action-RPG like its inspirations, with a variety of different attacks (based on the weapon type), a block, a dodge roll, a ranged weapon that is accessed by a different attack button for convenience's sake, and a Rage system that allows you to cast spells and buffs depending on the gear you have. Said gear can be upgraded or replaced as you keep playing, the former option existing for those sets that have particular applications (like high resistance to specific elements) or just happen to be aesthetically "your thing".

As in the previous game, levelling up essentially means buying nodes on a dizzyingly large skill tree: while intimidating at first, the only nodes of importance are those connected to your preferred melee and ranged weapon(s) and your armor type (light/heavy). Every other node just increases your stats: the usual assortment of utility stats like endurance (higher equipment weight limit), vitality (health), luck (more item drops), or will (more stamina) as well as the more focused combat stats like strength (heavy weapons), dexterity (light/ranged weapons), or arcana (magic). Most weapons tell you what they scale with, and if that's not enough of a hint then the nodes that allow you to equip stronger versions of that weapon type will naturally be connected by a bunch of nodes for the associated stat you'll need to use them effectively. It's a bit strange they still have this system for incremental stat increases instead of just the usual left-right sliders, but then those loquacious cads also added a little bit of lore to every single node to give the game that much more flavor text to consume for us fantasy prose-loving nerds.

Truth be told, I was fully expecting this to play out much like the original Salt and Sanctuary, but while the combat and the vibe are certainly similar—wouldn't be a Soulslike without dodge rolls, parries, and a bleakly saturnine atmosphere—the structure's quite a bit different. For one, the game now employs a discrete stage-based format not too dissimilar to the original Demon's Souls, where you can continue to make progress in one world after opening up the route to the next but you'll more than likely run into obstacles both figuratively insurmountable (higher-level enemies and bosses) or literally insurmountable (a traversal tool you don't have yet). I'm the stubborn sort that spent hours in the Hinterlands, the unnecessarily-huge opening area of Dragon Age: Inquisition, so I'm not comfortable leaving this first locale behind until I've explored (and noted down) the furthest contours I can presently reach and all the bosses I'd rather hold off on until I'm better equipped to deal with them. A sensible person might be better off heading to new areas as soon as they're available, as the difficulty curve and key item acquisition is no doubt configured for that approach. Still, though, the bosses I've met in the first region that live beyond the point where I could've bailed and left for the next world have been (mostly) reasonable, so it doesn't feel like I'm getting punished for procrastinating. Will always appreciate a game that can roll with my obstinacy.

The game also takes to another classic explormer, Metroid 2, for inspiration in that in addition to the unique progress-blocking bosses you also need to follow your core directive to seek out wayward mages and devour their souls. A mage, if one's ever nearby, will continue to pester you with magic attacks and summons before vanishing after some amount of damage; however, if you find a certain totem you can "join the hunt" and this will allow you to track your quarry around by following a wispy UI compass marker that will eventually allow you to corner those pesky mages in their lairs and put an end to them. Each mage is focused on a particular element—lightning, fire, ice, water, and venom are the ones I've found so far—and every mage of a single type more or less fights with the same tactics, though the tougher ones tend to add more to their repertoires to keep you on your toes. More importantly, both the mage and its summons drop special elemental loot that can be transformed into equipment tied to that element, such as weapons that employ that element as damage, accessories and armor that can defend against that element or provide other benefits, and trophies to decorate your tent if you're the nasty type looking for bragging rights. Defeating one electromancer, therefore, might provide the gear you need to make the next electromancer that much easier to handle—or, in the case of weaponry, make mages of the opposing elements more vulnerable to your attacks. This first region alone had two "regular" bosses and at least seven mages, so they're a much more ubiquitous threat than they first seem. I've not played a whole lot of MonHun, but I recognize much of this system from that series; especially the parts where the boss keeps running away, because that's always fun.

For a Soulslike game, it's also pretty forthright and user-friendly about most of its mechanics, though perhaps less so with a few. For instance, it tells you what all the stats do, which is something Souls didn't for the longest time. Whenever you level up, you're given items you can then spend on the skill tree: this means there's no point hoarding salt (the level-up currency) if you're holding out for one high-value node or another since those skill tree items will sit comfortably in your inventory until you need them. The other currency, silver, is always halved every time you die (salt just needs to be recovered from your corpse, as is standard) but you can spend it on items that provide a slightly smaller amount of silver when used which works as a sort of makeshift bank system. I was slightly unhappy about all my silver disappearing before I realized what was what, but then so far I haven't found a whole lot of merchant NPCs with anything worth buying. Their XP items especially give you a terrible return on investment. There's no map, which is typical for Souls if less so for explormers in general, but the discrete stage-based format does alleviate this somewhat by making each area manageably compact. You might still want to take personal notes of various roadblocks all the same though: there's been pulley/ziplines I've been spotting everywhere that I now realize I should probably be keeping tabs on. Ammunition also replenishes at resting spots like the usual potions for healing and mana recovery, and all three can be upgraded further with rare items. Subsequently, there's no reason to not go nuts with ranged attacks if an opportunity to kill something from afar affords itself, though most enemies are surprisingly strong jumpers so be aware your distance advantage won't last long. There's also a limited form of fast travel within areas—some of the checkpoint obelisks have torches on them, and these are the ones you can warp to—and traversal in general feels fairly swift, though I've yet to acquire anything along the lines of an air-dash or double-jump yet which really gives these explormers the fluidity of movement that they thrive on (especially if you're going to be backtracking a lot).

On the whole, the significant changes made to Salt and Sacrifice does give its gameplay loop a different enough feel to the original to stand out, while still playing to that original's strengths of a semi-deep combat system of techniques, air-juggles, and careful maneuvering along with a typically bleak atmosphere. The hub area is enormous and slowly fills with NPCs as you rescue them, with multiple options for character and gear improvement should you ever feel overwhelmed with the current degree of enemy opposition, without necessarily diminishing too much the high challenge level for which this format of game is notorious. Progress has been painstaking without feeling too much like I'm getting batted around by foes way beyond my ability to handle—though the hydromancers and their tactic of endlessly summoning flying minions that project invincible shields over the boss and then spend the rest of the time hovering out of reach have definitely been testing my patience—and I'm getting the itch to keep on exploring and activating those little dopamine kicks whenever I open up a shortcut or find a new traversal tool that'll mean a bunch of free loot in the near future. It's all good stuff for this lizard brain of mine.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Playthrough Edit: Despite some iffy hitbox business towards the end of the game (I get that the tougher late-stage bosses would use bigger AoE attacks, but they really ought to terminate at the end of their visual effects) and the amusing chaos wrought by having many optional mages floating around trolling you, the normal enemies, and each other (which, while funny, gets in the way a lot especially in platforming sections) this ended on a pretty positive note for me. I'm still not won over by MonHun mechanics in general but it was novel to see them in an explormer, at least. Very much a worthy successor to Salt and Sanctuary, doing enough different with a sufficient amount of new ideas into which they could transplant their already solid combat and progression systems.

A fully 360-degree salu(ro)tation and a Happy Easter, Xbox to all who celebrate on this fine non-secular (but definitely not non-circular) annual event. Of course, there's nothing too festive about our regular exploration of the Xbox 360 library, one brief three-hundred-and-sixty-minute playthrough at a time, but you have to work the seasonal theme in there somewhere. Maybe I could've gone with an oval/circle motif instead? Well, I guess I'll put that idea off until we're back here again next year.

So yes, welcome to the fourteenth one of these now. If you're just joining us, the idea behind this feature is that I realized that I'd run out of space in both the area beneath the TV for the 360 console as well as room on the shelf for all the new Xbox One games I... haven't been buying (because I just get the occasional free month of Game Pass via Bing-Bux instead). Now that it's time to officially retire Microsoft's '00s-conquering magnum opus I've been trucking through all the backlog I've let build up for the thing. On top of that, we also have the many 360 games available on Game Pass too, provided it's one of the months when it's active (hence why none of the random choices have been Game Pass games so far, in case you were wondering or maybe forgot my original explanation all the way back in Episode 1).

There was a time when Microsoft was the market leader for video games, and that impressive legacy is what we celebrate today as the current future of Microsoft console gaming looks ever bleaker. Remembering the glory days with rose-tinted glasses: the imperative of anyone over 30 years old. Welcome to old.

Speaking of old, it's been a few weeks so you'll probably want (if not need) a refresher on the rules:

• Every month I choose one Xbox 360 game I've been meaning to check in on before I finally leave that generation in the dust, and a random choice from the games I've been very pointedly ignoring up until now. I swear there's stuff in the random pool I want to play too, but I'll be darned if the random chooser app is going to let me anywhere near them.
• Since we're all about coming full circle here, so to speak, each 360 game will be played for exactly 360 minutes. That's six hours straight, as I'm sure you all know by now.
• With each game I'll discuss their history, how well they've held up, and the likelihood of Nintendo adding them to the Switch Online library. Gotta admit, that last one's a pretty remote chance.
• Our final, ironclad rule is that we're prohibited from playing anything that's already in the Switch Online library or announced to be added. Fortunately, that's pretty much every 360 game off the hook.

For past episodes and the full rankings, make sure to check the links at the end. I can't make a table of links here right now. The table button is broken. *Cough*

Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Pre-Select)

• tri-Ace / Square Enix
• 2009-02-19 (JP), 2009-02-23 (NA), 2009-06-05 (EU)

History: Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the fourth game in tri-Ace's Star Ocean RPG franchise and the first to grace the Xbox 360 platform. The series famously juxtaposes science-fiction and fantasy, often by having characters from a Star Trek-like federation of planets get marooned on a primitive world stuck in a medieval-level technological era with the usual (for fantasy, not for our universe) mix of adventurers, magic, and monsters. The franchise's real-time combat frequently employs a "battle trophies" system that rewards players for difficult maneuvers, tactical play, or general milestones with each of the playable characters, thereby organically incentivizing those players to approach the combat system from multiple angles, and The Last Hope is no exception. The Last Hope debuted on 360, receiving an enhanced PS3 port the following year and a next-gen remaster for Steam and PS4 in 2017. You'll probably remember tri-Ace from when we covered Infinite Undiscovery back in Episode 5, but as a reminder: they were a group of developers that were part of the group that worked on Wolf Team's Tales of Phantasia and after that left to create their own studio to continue producing similar action-RPGs with a whole bunch of technical systems to learn. Their most famous output are the Star Ocean series and the Valkyrie Profile series, though they've been known to do the occasional one-off as well.

I bounced off Star Ocean: Till the End of Time so hard I think it had a knock-on effect for its sequels, to the extent that even though I've been sitting on this Limited Collector's Edition copy of The Last Hope (cute name for Star Ocean: Episode IV, you guys, real cute) for what feels like a decade I've yet to crack the seal on it. I'm happy for the opportunity to finally devalue it as a MIB collector's item though: as I outlined back in the very first episode of 360 in 360 half my plan for this feature was to finally settle some hashes with my 360 backlog before I moved on to greener plastics (that is to say, cases holding newer Xbox games). As for Star Ocean, I've always liked tri-Ace even if its output was firmly in the B-game equivalent tier for JRPGs—they were one of the few Japanese companies to do right by the Xbox 360 (along with Mistwalker) despite the system's dire performance in their homeland—but their big flagship series and I have never really seen eye-to-eye. I missed the first (as did we all until the localized remakes started showing up), bought a really scratched-up copy of the second that I barely made any progress in, had that aforementioned whale of a time with the third if said whale was a vengeful and obtuse Moby Dick, and... yeah, I know there are fifth and sixth ones out now but I'm not sure I have the stones to ever buy them. Maybe The Last Hope—which has a lower rating than Till the End of Time on Metacritic—will be the one to finally make this franchise tick for me. Stranger things have happened at sea (of stars (wait, that's the other one)).

90 Minutes In

This first ninety-minute block just breezed right on by as the game slowly introduced its setting, its characters, and its combat system. The first of those was presented as a historical movie of how Earth almost bit it after a disastrous World War III rendered most of the planet unlivable due to nuclear winter and radiation and how mankind's remnants pulled themselves together, invented a form of faster-than-light travel (which, we'd later find out, was the dumb way of doing it), and took to the stars to find a new home and a new future for our dumbass, self-destructive species. This involved creating the peaceful world government Greater United Nations (evidently the last one sucked if it allowed WW3 to happen) (I also appreciate that the world's foremost institution built for world peace has the acronym G.U.N.) and the Mankind's Evolving Geopolitically Universal Science and Technology Administration (or ME GUSTA! for short, exclamation mark optional) for all its humanity future-proofing needs. We play as a member of an expeditionary force sent to check out the distant planet of Aeos, identified as a possible habitable colony world. What could possibly go wrong?

So then we have the characters, who have been—without exception—annoying anime archetypes so far. No worries, I know what I signed up for. There's the protagonist Edge Maverick (...) who's sort of like Luke Skywalker mixed with Tidus and as equally whiny and cocky as both. There's the childhood friend and requisite love interest Reimi Saionji, who exists to scold the protagonist every chance she gets (tsun rise, tsun set). And... that's about it for playable characters as of present. There's also Crowe, our way cooler mentor type who vanishes during the prologue and will probably show up way later either dead or a villain or something, and a tiny squeaky anime woman called Welch who looks to be the one to talk to whenever I want to craft something. Crafting, by the way, is something the game is likely to drop on us very soon given all these recipes and components I keep finding. I've just recalled how involved the crafting was in SO3, so that's... something for which I guess I'll have to brace myself.

Just to briefly touch on the combat system, which the game took its time to tutorialize step-by-step almost as soon as I could move. As with other SO games it mostly plays like Tales—the devs did work on Tales of Phantasia after all, and I assume the two companies continued to pass each other notes once both franchises went 3D—in that there's some situational awareness involved as you pick out targets and try to avoid too much aggro (or letting your other team members such as, hypothetically, a tiny teenage girl with a bow gain more aggro than they can deal with). One novel feature is the parry-like "blindside": the idea is to hold down the dodge button, normally used by tapping both it and a direction to hop around, and then release it just as the enemy attacks—by doing that you can whizz around behind them and get in a few guaranteed crits on their behind. Some tougher enemies have a "blindside-counter" though, so unless the timing's perfect you'll just get punished for blindsides instead. Another issue is that you can only blindside your currently targeted enemy and others can still attack you while you're sitting there defenseless poised for a blindside opportunity to happen, so it works best when enemies are dispersed elsewhere or you only have the boss to worry about. No doubt in my mind that the combat will gain in complexity as the game progresses.

Oh right, I forgot to mention the current plot: Our ship the Calnus and the other ships that were sent out to explore Aeos all got caught in some sort of subspace mishap and crashlanded on the planet instead, and the one furthest from us suddenly just had their comms go offline. They're probably fine. We (that is, Edge and Reimi) have just set off to investigate. So far, the game is... fine. Entirely agreeable. I think this is the breather mission before they start introducing waves of overwhelming RPG feature nonsense that I'll have to weather as best as I am able. For now, I guess I'll just keep mashing these giant space bugs. Don't these guys know I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill them all?

180 Minutes In

This 90 minute segment was pure combat and exploration, having put aside most of the story stuff for the time being, and it ended just before what I believe is our first boss fight—I found something that looked like a save point (yep, those are still here) except it didn't let me save but instead recovered all my HP and MP (yep, save points don't do that). It's been smooth enough sailing now that I've embraced the blindside and can quickly dispatch most enemies in a single combo, and I've learned quite a few other things about the combat... or more accurately, I remembered the combat tutorial at the beginning the game and what it was trying to teach me as I impatiently hurried through its lessons.

More integral than I first realized was the bonus board. The bonus board is a honeycomb-like gauge on the right side of the screen that fills with gems as you perform certain feats, each sticking around in subsequent battles until either the player rests at an inn or the board gets broken (which happens whenever the playable character takes a critical hit, so for the board's sake if not just your own it's best to stay defensive). Blue gems are created whenever you finish an enemy off with a critical hit—all blindside attacks are automatic criticals, so these gems are the easiest to earn—and award 10% bonus XP per gem. Pink gems are formed if you defeat an enemy with skills alone (a tiny amount of HP/MP recovery), yellow ones for defeating two enemies in one attack (bonus money), and green ones for surviving ambushes. Ambushes, rather than having the enemy get the drop on you (which are instead "surprise attacks"), are when you're close to multiple enemy groups and have to fight them one after the other: on top of the green gems, which adds to the Party SP pool, you also get a hefty XP bonus. SP, incidentally, is what you spend to level up your characters' skills—both combat and non-combat, the latter including things like harvesting resource points or crafting—so having a big pool of it that anyone can use is very handy for getting certain useful skills promoted quickly. Anyway, I've been rocking a 120-140% XP boost for most of this segment, and the subsequent level boost has made survival quite a bit easier after a few rocky bumps at the start there.

A few other observations:

• My HP recovery options are extremely limited. Besides this boss fountain thing and the bunk on the ship we crashlanded on, there's no way to fully heal the party. I've been using the finite healing items I occasionally gather from resource points and monster drops, neither of which show up often. After I got my protag killed early on (archer girl was still alive, fortunately) I had the choice of legging it back to the ship or using a very precious revivial item. The eternal battle rages on between my indolence and my parsimony (and the winner gets to take on my vainglorious propensity for loquacious vocabulary choices).
• The horizontal camera movement is flipped. At least... it feels like it is. I wonder if I'm going a little crazy sometimes.
• Whenever you complete a battle, there's sometimes an info screen if you acquired new battle trophies (more on those in a sec) or encountered a new monster and had its data added to the bestiary. In fights when neither of these alerts happen, which is most of them, the game hangs on an empty screen until you press the confirm button. It's kinda sloppy?
• You get a real small amount of XP and SP whenever you open a chest or harvest a resource point. S'cute. Maybe it'll be a better earner later in the game.
• Unlike Star Ocean 3, you don't have to hug the contours of the current area to earn 100% map completion and a free item. Maps are just automatically filled instead. Did map technology regress between SO4 and SO3 (the former being set several hundred years before the latter)? Either way, my OCD gets to take a break.
• Battle trophies are like an in-game achievement system that was also around in earlier SO games. Like I said above they tend to be for combat milestones and weird little accomplishments, like doing 55 damage exactly with one attack. There's an actual Xbox achievement for every 10% of them you earn including one for 100%. Just to clarify things here, there's 100 battle trophies per character and 900 overall. Gotta get to grindin' if I want that 1000 Gamerscore, I guess...

270 Minutes In

Mostly an exposition drop this past hour and change. Shortly before taking on the boss on a beach area close to where the other spaceship had crashed we were introduced to our third party member: an elfin fencer named Faize, who arrived on a very fancy floating spaceship shuttle. Faize, it turns out, is part of the Eldarian race (oh shit, the Eldar! Hide your Slaanesh totems!): an extraterrestrial species that had previously made contact with Earth after our initial warp drive testing some ten years before the game began, very similar to the circumstances behind humanity's first contact with the Vulcans in Star Trek (funny, that). The three of us then pummeled the goofy sea slug creature that had emerged from the wreckage of the ship we were looking into. This was an interesting fight because the boss's weakpoint appeared on its side. That meant frontal attacks were out but so were my blindsides, which attack from the rear. Instead, the idea was to draw aggro with one character and then use another to flank and focus attacks on that weak point while the boss was distracted, switching again when the aggro target changed.

After a quick powerwalk back to the crash site of our own ship (sadly, no fast travel yet) we discovered the Eldarians had built a huge-ass base right next to it. Despite being some "just add water" pre-fab thing the place had a whole bunch of facilities we never had access to previously, of particular note being a shopping area where I could finally buy some damn curatives (and they were super cheap, so I stocked up), a new bow for archer girl, and some skillbooks for the team. The three party members received passive skills that allowed for more monster drops—each character getting one for a specific enemy type—as well as a first aid skillbook that occasionally healed that character after they received damage. Should keep the front-liners healthy, and some enemies do so little damage now that I could probably sit there and let the skill proc enough times to heal me back up to full since the heals works on a % of my total. Of course, I could still get critted during that process, which means losing my delicious bonus board. Hm.

Anyway, a story-mandated rest and a few fetch side-quests later, I'm about ready to embark on the next stage of the story. What I'd really like is to recruit a character that can mine the relevant resource points: I keep walking past those glowy walls, wondering what kind of amazing ores I'm missing out on. The hooks are definitely in, I'm sad to report.

360 Minutes In

Turns out the next thing we have to do on this bug planet is... leave it. In the newly repaired Calnus, no less, which the Eldarians packed with advanced technology on our behalf (curious as to what their angle might be; no such thing as a free lunch). The captain of the Calnus is staying behind to run the exploration base on Aeos, essentially our sole beacon of civilization out here, choosing to drop his old job in the lap of the first underqualified schmuck to enter his field of vision. After Edge becomes the new captain, and the crew is streamlined to just Reimi and Faize (I'm sure that's plenty to run an interstellar starship), we're tasked with heading to the next planet capable of supporting life. One called Lemuris, which has an atmosphere near identical to Earth's before we ruined it. Only issue with claiming this place for mankind (or Eldarkind) is that it's already got a whole bunch of people living on it. Hey, didn't stop American settlers I guess.

And so begins the next arc of the game on the planet Lemuris. Aeos had a humid, hot climate—the game refers to it being similar to the Jurassic period on Earth, though with more bugs than dinosaurs—but Lemuris looks to be fairly cool and temperate. Apropos, given the first town we walk into, Triom, resembles a medieval European village. Naturally, we're hailed as gods as soon as we arrive (someone spotted our spaceship, which we parked about 200 yards outside of town because we're professionals) and we meet the elder (not Eldar) of the village, only to be interrupted by our fourth party member: a monotone gremlin of a pre-schooler calling itself Lymle. She's naturally a genius mage, hilariously outshining our resident magic-user Faize immediately, and the party of four set off to find a cure for this "bacculus" petrification illness that's been slowly killing off the villagers. Like the greyscale of Game of Thrones, only more comically rocky. Beyond that, I had time to do the usual when exploring a primitive world—check the shops for all the superior weaponry and armor they're carrying—and bought the "Parapsychology" and "Elusion" skills ("more shit dropped from undead monsters" and "easier escaping", respectively) for our new party member before my time with this game was finally up.

Our journeys across the star ocean now come to a (possibly temporary, depending on how I feel later) end. I've much to say about my feelings on the game but I'll save it for the usual post-playthrough summation. Honestly, though, for what feels like six hours of not a whole lot happening that time really did just whizz by. The ominous time-consuming power of long-form RPGs at work.

How Well Has It Aged?: Not As Well As The Other "[Something] Hope", But Well Enough. I dunno, I actually quite liked what I've played of this so far. The combat system's enjoyable enough with that blindside mechanic and the enormous boons granted by the bonus board (provided I don't let it shatter every other fight) and even if the characters can be kinda oofa-doofa in that special tri-Ace way the story and universebuilding have that classic sci-fi drive of exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and all that jazz. Anime Mass Effect, perhaps, albeit with a fraction of the emotional intelligence given we're still dealing with children in the lead as per usual. I know this whole invention/crafting system is going to kick my ass once I finally give it some attention and there's probably some degree of the same tiresome BS that eventually had me bail on Till the End of Time, which almost the entire internet seems to agree is the better game, but maybe I'll slum it with "We Have Phantasy Star at Home" for a while longer yet. (The mere half-hour I've spent with Lymle is really making me reconsider that, though...)

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Uhh, zero. Why do I keep including this section?

Achievements Earned: 1 out of 50. That was for that first boss. Look, this game has a lot of game still left in it, you know? There's about ten more story achievements, nine for the endings (there's one per character seems like), and the rest are for sheer grinding by the look of things. Oh, and it expects you to beat the game three times total: Galaxy (normal) to unlock Universal (hard), Universal to unlock Chaos (very hard), and then beat it on Chaos. And, lest we forget, there's the 900 battle trophies too. Hats off to anyone insane enough to get the full 1000 for this one.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies (Random)

• Rare / Microsoft Game Studios
• 2003-10-21 (NA), 2003-11-21 (EU), 2004-04-29 (JP)

History: Grabbed by the Ghoulies is an action-brawler game and the first that British developers Rare developed exclusively for Microsoft after they were acquired by same. Originally, Rare had intended the game to be released on GameCube but modified their plans after the buyout. It concerns the teen scaredycat Cooper who enters a mysterious spooky mansion with his cynical girlfriend Amber after they get caught in a storm. The owner of the place, Baron Von Ghoul, is insulted by their banter and decides to kidnap Amber for funsies and Cooper must fight his way through the place's monster infestation to rescue her before they can escape together.

Now, you might recall back in Episode 11 of 360 in 360—now forever ingloriously known as "The Fuzion Frenzy Fiazco"—that we created a concession for original Xbox games if, and only if, they were backwards compatible with the Xbox 360 (and ideally the Xbox One as well, since that's what I'm playing on). That means ol' Tugged on the Testicles here, or whatever it's called, became eligible for the random choice process if that capricious app ever felt like hopping back a generation. Like many N64 diehards (ooh, I should do some kind of feature with that console next), I was a huge Rare fan and was excited to discover how many more 3D platforming nonpareils would emerge on Microsoft systems after the latter purchased the former outright. What optimistic, deluded fools we were. Even so, I'm for sure morbidly curious enough to see how this game turned out after avoiding it for so long. Maybe there's something to it, and maybe that something has managed to hold up after 20 years? I guess I never did shake that naivety.

90 Minutes In

Oh boy, six hours of this, huh? Not for the first time does this feature seem a little overbearing with its time requirements (Episode 2 being a particularly dire example that had me rethink the "random choice" pool). Well, I honestly can't say GbtG has been too bad so far, just a bit repetitive. The idea of the gameplay loop is to travel room to room in pursuit of a specific goal, usually completing some type of combat challenge in each. These challenges might involve eliminating all enemies, just the enemies of a certain type, finding a key in one of the breakable environmental objects, finding a key on one of the equally breakable enemies, or something more distinct and perhaps based around the room's theme. Right after entering the scary mansion, I was given the lockpicks by Barry a fight tutorial by the butler, Crivens, but the game's entire combat engine can be mostly summed up with "use the second analog stick to attack in that direction" and "pick up objects to do more damage". You know, standard brawler game stuff. Most normal punches and kicks do minor damage but a combo or an item might knock an enemy down, leaving them open for elbow drops and other more damaging attacks once they're prone. Our cowardly protagonist Cooper is a big fan of hitting people when they're down it seems, or maybe he just makes an exception for weird gross monsters.

Progress-wise, I'm a good chunk of the way through Chapter 2. Chapter 1 had me track down Amber, who was moving from area to area despite being tied to a chair, and upon finally reaching her in the basement she was transformed into an ugly green creature (reusing some story beats from the end of the first Banjo-Kazooie) and our new mission for Chapter 2 was to assist the cook, one of the few friendly NPCs here, to create a potion to change her back. On top of that, I've also been noticing other tied-up teenagers around the place: I can't do anything with them yet, since I need a special key, but I'm guessing I'll be going through all these rooms again in a later chapter. To be clear, there's no non-linear aspect like there is in Luigi's Mansion (though even that was limited) but rather you're tasked with taking a very specific pre-determined route to reach every major story-critical location. My one collectathon oasis is a series of books found in each room—including rooms you've previously visited—that unlock special challenges in a different part of the main menu. They tend to be out in the open more often than not, but sometimes you have to break open some furniture or kill a certain ghouly before you can find them. (I checked; you can always use a level select system to go back to where you may have missed one, so that's some pressure off if I mess up and leave too quickly. I'm keeping my eyes peeled regardless; I want to pretend I'm playing a classic Rare game, after all.)

I'm... not entirely sure how much content this game has. If I do end up completing it before dinging the final timer here, I suppose those bonus challenges could keep me busy instead.

180 Minutes In

Still in Chapter 2, though it feels like we're pretty much done with this arc since I've already recovered all the ingredients and used the potion on Amber—it didn't work, as you can see above—so after I escape here I'll probably get another potion-crafting fetch quest that'll take me all over the mansion grounds again. Still, though, the game's been tossing new challenges at me everywhere we go: I recently encountered the first instances where I wasn't allowed to get hit, where I wasn't allowed to destroy any part of the level (the monsters could still do it for me, though), and one where I wasn't allowed to defeat the same type of enemy twice in a row. For as simple as the gameplay is, at least Rare found a bunch of different ways to frame objectives around it.

Some other features I didn't mention last time:

• There's a map of the mansion! It's not super helpful without any notations (or indeed necessary since the whole game is linear, as stated) but I'm still glad enough to have it. Gives me some vague idea what's coming up, you know? All I have to do to summon it is to hit the... white button? Oh right, I forgot that was a whole thing. Fortunately, better Xbox controllers are available and that black/white nonsense has been shunted over to the collar buttons. (Now, collar buttons I can wrap my head around.)
• Almost every time you enter a new room, the antagonist readjusts your health. This can often be bad, like if it's reduced to single figures, but on the whole the system is handy because it won't let you limp through areas if you've just taken a beating and the value it adjusts to is always something theoretically survivable with the current challenge. No randomly dropping me to 5HP when there's a big combat challenge coming up; more likely that'll be one where I'm meant to sneak around and avoid enemies.
• There's a "Super Scary Spook" jumpscare system where you have to quickly input a QTE before it drains your health. Some are inescapable, like traps put around exits, but others might involve bumping into a ghost: you have a brief window to escape the AoE of the spook effect to avoid dealing with the QTE. Can't be a horror game without jumpscares, right?
• Some areas begin with a first-person mode perspective. It's usually just to set up a new room as Cooper looks around nervously, but you'll sometimes go through a whole room in this mode just because the game felt like being cute with its atmosphere.
• In addition to the usual furniture items you can swing around, you'll have stretches of the game where an NPC gives you a weapon to use. These weapons tend to have infinite durability and a ranged mode that has a bit of a cooldown aspect to stop you spamming it. The weapons are then taken away a few rooms later, but they definitely make the game easier while you have them.
• Soup cans! Just like in The 7th Guest, these things are ubiquitous and tend to confer temporary benefits (or maluses) for the current room. Some soups also restore a set amount of health or can instantly complete the current challenge for you. The negative ones do the usual troll stuff like reverse your controls or slow you down. The worst ones are those that sap your health to 1HP; I've often had to retake a room because of them.
• Death (in the sense that you get KO'd, not the grim reaper) is only a minor setback, as it just resets the current room. It's occasionally unavoidable. Or maybe it just feels that way.
• Death (the grim reaper, not in the sense that you get KO'd) will appear whenever you fail a challenge and slowly loom towards you with its finger of instant-death pointed at you. Sometimes that's a cue to get the heck out of there. However, Death's hands are rated E for Everyone so it's also a useful means of quickly finishing off tougher enemies too. Sort of like using the Spelunky "hurry up" ghost to your own advantage.

Anyway, we're fifty "scenes" into the game now—at least, according to how many books I've found—so I strongly suspect we're going to hit the full 100 before it's over: I still have to save Amber (again) and then all those other kids I've seen tied up. If that's the case, I'm on the right pace to complete the game just as I run out of time here; I suspect I'll just miss it though, especially if these challenges continue to get longer/harder.

270 Minutes In

I wasn't quite correct with my guess: rather than escape my mutated girlfriend I just had to beat her up a little (typical Saturday night for us) and the cook came through with the actual cure, having messed up the first time. We were thankfully spared another unnecessary fetch quest that had us jogging to the far corners of the mansion. Instead, with Amber now back to her normal feisty '90s heroine self, I had to go see Crivens to find out how to save everyone else trapped in here. After rescuing him from a room of winged imps—the extra challenge here was to only use weapons to defeat the enemies, which can be tough when they're all breakable and will eventually run out—he let us know we had to solve some sort of musical riddle to reach the boss, the clues for which were... scattered around the far corners of the mansion.

As also predicted, the game is getting magnitudes more unpleasant as it continues to rise in difficulty. I'm at 69 books now (nice), well behind the projected 75 for a game completion pace, so unlike in 360 in 360 Episodes 4 and 7 it seems unlikely I'll be running into that thorny issue of completing the game well before the timer finishes. Probably for the best; we all remember how awkward it was to fill that time staring at those game over screens while talking about the weather. The last room had me spawn at 15HP—barely anything—and then filled the room with skeletons and royal mummies (they can curse; it works like Doom in Final Fantasy in that it gives me a separate timer that kills me if I don't get rid of it, either by defeating the mummy or escaping) and had me survive all that for 90 seconds. Finding the book, as is often the case now, was the hardest part: I had to bust open a vault that also dropped a ton of malus potions that I could barely avoid walking over. Nothing like getting a death curse timer shorter than the timer that lets me leave, all the while my hit points dwindle to single figures as I'm stun-locked by skellies because I dropped my guard after my controls got reversed. The sort of uniquely delightful experience only this game can (or has chosen to) deliver.

Anyhoo, I have one piece of this mystical riddle doodad and am now getting close to the second. Still seeing locked up brats everywhere I go, so I imagine it'll be quite the journey passing back through all these places with the right keys.

360 Minutes In

Alas, or hooray, but I didn't quite make it to the end of Grabbed By the Ghoulies. I'm at 84 books so if my theory is correct the end is almost in sight, but man is the game pulling out all the stops. Difficulty hikes include: getting more of the big hitters on a regular basis, including enemies like the mummies or vampires that are immune to almost everything; the QTEs now require ten-button strings in as many seconds; most of the new rooms are somehow the size of an entire floor so it takes longer to repeat them if I should die; there's frequently a second surprise challenge once you get close to the exit door in case you thought you were home and dry; and if the good Baron deigns to let me have more than 10HP for any room, where most enemies do that much per attack, it's a banner year. Much of this difficulty seems artificially pumped up but in fairness the game has been diligent in teaching me its tricks and shortcuts.

Some examples of what I mean: A particular scene had QTEs every five yards and an enemy with 80HP which could drop QTE scares on you at will or else turn invincible for a few seconds as it charged at you, and you start with 5HP for this area. Not great. However, with enough searching around you'd find a soup to counter every issue: one that automatically does the QTEs for you, one that gives you plus 10HP (not much, but at least you're out of one-hit kill territory), and one that lets you one-shot enemies instead which means a much easier fight against that burly ghouly. Another scene had me search for a key in the environment—it's in one of several scientific experiment tanks, the rest of which drop exploding worms on you—and another key on an enemy, except the enemy in this case is an invincible vampire. The third part of the challenge contained the solution: don't kill any skeletons, which spawn from some of the cages littered around this lab area. To defeat the vampire you have to purposefully lose the challenge by killing a skelly, summon Death, and then position the vampire between Death and yourself so it'll kill the vampire instead. You also have to do all this while avoiding four of those rampaging 80HP enemies I mentioned.

In many cases at this stage of the game, it's a matter of exploring all the options you have available by avoiding enemies for the time being and breaking open the environment to see what soups you can employ: you'll probably die a few times with those enemies ass-slapping you when your back is turned but the added recon can really transform what seemed to be an insurmountable challenge into just a deeply annoying one.

Regardless, our time in Baron von Ghoul's House of Horrors draws to an end and so too does our Halloween vacation in March (or is it April now...?). Time to stop tossing furniture around the room for a moment—I'll leave it to all y'all's imagination whether if I'm referring to in-game or an IRL heated gamer moment—and look at how this game has held up as objectively as I am able.

How Well Has It Aged?: About As Well As Those Zombies. I keep wanting to bring up Luigi's Mansion, in part because there's obvious structural and stylistic comparisons to be made, but more in how the two games both kinda represented what was possible for their respective (and competing) consoles by creating a short, spooky action-adventure game close to the system's launch that could ably serve as a tech demo. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that one game was made in response to the other. Of the two, GbtG has held up the least well because there's just not a whole lot to it. It does its best to keep throwing new ideas at you, but the combat and exploration are both hopelessly simple if not always particularly easy to deal with. It doesn't look too bad at least, and has a typically fun Grant Kirkhope soundtrack sharpened by so many spooky Banjo-Kazooie and DK64 haunted mansion levels, but it feels rudimentary and limited in a way its N64 predecessors did not (or if they were, it was more excusable given their era). Still, though, it was kind of amusing to see so many barfy ghost pirates and skeletons when you consider what Rare's doing these days.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Still zero. Though maybe some other Rare games could get on there? Maybe? Rare? Nintendo? Microsoft? ...Bueller?

Achievements Earned: N/A. If only I was playing the Rare Replay version...

And that's going to be a wrap for this edition of 360 in 360. As I always say, I'll continue to have the patience to make these so long as you all have the patience to read them. A spreadsheet of previous episodes and the overall ranking list so far can be found via this totally normal link.

All that's left is to remind everyone to tune in next week for a new episode of 2600 in 2600, where I'll be playing Atari's Combat for over 43 hours straight.

Welcome back to another Indie Game of the Week where this time we're taking a break in the ol' Casual Corner with the wholesome organizational puzzle game A Little to the Left. Now, if you were to ask me which game best served as a paean to one's OCD tendencies I'd probably point to Donkey Kong 64 and its vast pile of banana-flavored junk to collect—and I'm not comfortable with how many times a month I invoke that game in particular these days; it's getting worrisome—but it looks like there's a new contender for that throne. A Little to the Left is all about being faced with a group of objects and sorting them in the way that makes the most intuitive sense to the player. This might involve placing cutlery in a tray with slots perfectly sized for each knife, fork, spoon, and other tabletop accoutrement, or it might mean sorting a group of pencils by their height, color, or sharpness. Most puzzles have a single solution you need to glean, but others might have two or three: your own organizational senses could intuit one result right off the bat, but you'll need to adjust your thinking a little to glean the others.

The game presents these puzzles one after the other sequentially, with each group of about twenty or so having some sort of connecting domestic theme: kitchen items, living room objects, garden plants, etc. Generally, you can't move onto the next puzzle unless you figure out at least one of the solutions for the present, though there's always the option to skip (this option given the self-aware name of "let it be", suggesting the game knows as much as anyone how slightly insane this desire to keep things tidy and orderly might seem to those without that urge). The level of intuition the game operates on is usually spookily accurate—even if I didn't figure out the current solution immediately, it would make sense once I did—but you do get the occasional moon logic approach, or those where the alternative was basically the same as the first but with a slight tweak. If it can be a little frustrating to encounter these it's probably only because you've no doubt been gliding through a group of intuitively-clear puzzles only to suddenly and abrasively hit a logic roadblock. That the overall ratio, at least for me, was overwhelmingly towards the "oh yeah, of course" side is either a plus in the game's book in being able to presage so accurately its players' idiosyncratic thought patterns, or a minus in mine for being so easy to read.

While there is some inherent appeal of having a large collection of knick-knacks to sort out, as a game A Little to the Left is full of grating annoyances mostly of the QoL and UI variety. I think this is often the case with new developers that just need some more experience under their belt; I don't know how much game design background the two leads of this project had, who appeared in one of these State of Play/Nintendo Direct things as an affable Canadian couple who were maybe a little too obsessed with their cat (more on that in a moment), but navigating the game and its puzzles was often an irritation. For one, puzzles aren't numbered or named which makes tracking them for online hints aggravating. The achievements are completely busted too: there's one for playing its "Daily Tidy" mode a hundred times, and another for playing thirty consecutively, even though these Daily Tidy levels are taken directly from the game's progression and would therefore be puzzles you've already solved. Why would anyone keep coming back for three months to tackle the same puzzles they've already seen? There's also separate achievements for using the hint system (which only ever gives you the most obvious solution, making it near useless for fully completing those puzzles with multiple) and the skip level system several times each but also on top of that some "no hint"/"no skip" achievements that are instantly voided if you use either, and they put these lower down the achievement list than the "use hints"/"use skips" ones. Just sloppy, pointlessly antagonistic stuff from a game that's otherwise so chill and amiable.

I also thought the end was an incomprehensibly weird sequence that essentially deified the game's irksome feline villain as some sort of God of Chaos that kinda popped out of nowhere, and was so unrelated to anything else that I feel fine with spoiling it here. I couldn't tell if the game was ultimately telling us to fall in love with the cat or not, since it was invariably a progress-erasing nuisance in every instance it appeared, but for as fluffy as that little guy was I can't say I had too many positive feelings towards them by the end of the game. Then again, I suppose how else do you end a game like this but with a whimsical out-of-left-field cutscene? Even so, it felt like I understood even less than I thought about what the game was trying to tell me about my own obsessive tendencies and maybe letting go of same. Instead I was stacking Tupperware boxes to help a cat reach the moon so it could be reborn as some kind of immortal nocturnal terror ready to throw the entire world into disarray. Great? I guess that's the result I always wanted as the type of neat freak this game is ostensibly aimed at? ...I'm just overthinking all this, aren't I? Yeah, I'm seeing it now.

I don't want to come off as too negative about a game this cute and low-key rewarding because casual games rarely deserve the derision they tend to receive for not being "real games", especially if they're somewhat novel like this. A Little to the Left is frequently a delight and scratches an organizational itch very few other Indies ever acknowledge: the only example I can recall right now is Wilmot's Warehouse with regards to those rare few games that massage the particular part of the brain that needs to have anything "just so" in a manner that might only make sense to the beholder and be utterly mystifying to anyone else. The whole "well, this desk is not untidy if I know where everything is" paradigm. For attending to that slightly disquieting part of my jumbled mind, and giving me the comfort of knowing a game like this couldn't exist and sell if it wasn't a more universal impulse, I do appreciate what the game is doing here. I just wish the QoL stuff in the periphery was a little more polished, but then I suppose that's what sequels are for.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Game of the Month: Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

What up my Chaos-hating comrades to another Mento's Month and another game that really represents what I'm all about these days: combining legacy JRPG franchises that I've been playing for literal decades and anything that even remotely resembles a Souls game. Just needs some explormer action in there somewhere and we'll have hit the Mento trifecta. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a collaboration between Square Enix and Koei Tecmo's Team Ninja, the latter exercising their particular model of Soulslike that involves a discrete stage-based structure and a whole bunch of colored loot which they debuted with Nioh and perfected with Nioh 2. Playing more Final Fantasy has also become an objective of mine ever since penning this 35 in 35: A Not-So-Final Final Fantasy Retrospective list for the franchise's 35th birthday. Final Fantasy will hit its 37th anniversary at the end of this year so I've been planning various means to maintain this "one played game per year of its existence" quest. The Nioh crossover was the most obvious way I could go about maintaining the ratio for another year, and I've solid enough plans for the next few years too. Thankfully, it's not like the franchise is going away any time soon if the sales numbers of the Final Fantasy VII remakes are accurate, though I'll admit to not being particularly enthralled by the prospect of playing through that game a second time (not that I dislike FFVII by any stretch; its just a very lengthy and memorable enough story that it's going to feel too much like a retread even with all this divisive new alternative story content).

Stranger of Paradise sees the very first Final Fantasy receive a prequel of sorts, but it's not so much a narrative continuation (or pre-continuation, or whatever the prequel term for that might be) but a deconstruction of that game and its surprisingly ambitious story as well as of the franchise as a whole. As the taciturn Jack, an apparent Warrior of Light holding a fated crystal, the goal is to follow the plot of the first game as you hit one temple dedicated to an elemental crystal after another, defeating the fiends that are corrupting their power for their own ends. However, the game is constantly hinting that something is awry with this particular tale, between Jack's flashbacks to an unfamiliar land and the sheer number of extradimensional Final Fantasy (which is to say, not FF1 but FF2-15) allusions. Mostly it's an excuse for a bunch of silly edgelord posturing which just about props up a Kingdom Hearts-level metaverse mindscrew of a story about an advanced society messing around with the world of Final Fantasy I like it was their own experimental petri dish combined with an endless source of natural resources to plunder. Like a Final Frackersy, if you will.

Nioh always had a penchant for loot and featured overly complex character building and combat systems that took half the (very long) game to figure out, and that's what Stranger of Paradise is all about too. Manna for number perverts. Yet there's also an expediency to Stranger of Paradise where you never feel like you're getting an opportunity to feel things out with a new class since by the time the mission's done (provided you have a sufficiently high attunement rating) it's likely you'll have maxed it out or progressed far enough to unlock the nodes needed for the superior advanced and expert jobs: little point hanging around the basic jobs unless you have more of those job nodes to activate.

Stranger of Paradise is to Final Fantasy what Rising: Revengeance was to Metal Gear. In some ways it feels almost like a parody; an overly edgelord mirror put up against the franchise's infamous foibles with regards to its inscrutability that only nominally resembles the original source. However, that funhouse mirror distortion also feels like it has a lot of truth and affection behind it, and as you get further into it the game becomes less like an unkind pastiche and more like an adaptation of some familiar material in the style of an entirely new creator. Metal Gear also had another case of this: The Twin Snakes, which amped up the degree of competence of Humanity's Greatest Soldier to almost ludicrous levels in the hands of a very different kind of auteur. Stranger of Paradise might be narratively bonkers and emotionally discordant but which Final Fantasy isn't, at least some of the time?

Don't get me wrong, by most metrics Stranger of Paradise is not a great game, let alone a great Soulslike RPG. The loading times on PS4 are abysmal, ironic given that the rough textures makes it look like a PS3 game half the time, and between the sheer density of the features it throws at you from the jump and the obtuse density of its meta narrative it takes a real long while until you're able to match its wavelength and I wouldn't fault a single person who bailed on the game long before they could reach that point. The loot spam is almost out of control: this game is close to doing to loot RPGs what Donkey Kong 64 did to collectathon platformers, with just as many color variants to its tchotchkes. There's also the aforementioned rush through all the jobs, without enough time to fully absorb the approach to using them effectively. Yet, I have to admit that Stranger of Paradise's particular brand of crossover insanity is exactly what I was looking for from both this franchise and format—if not all the time then at least some of the time—since "playing it too safe" is a sin most Final Fantasy games have done a tremendous job in avoiding up until now (even X-2 and the XIII sequels, despite recycling a lot of assets, were so damn weird both structurally and narratively to compensate). (Rating: 5 out of 5. Yes, I'm crazy.)

(Plus, Stranger of Paradise really does know its FF lore: For instance, there's a side-quest inside a dungeon inspired by the tomb from Final Fantasy XII where you have to open random chests hoping to locate the one containing a specific spear. I found that very amusing.)

Darling Indies and Other Gaming Tomfoolery

Pictlogica: Final Fantasy

What else have I been playing in March? Well, I'm ashamed to admit this, but I fell into a deep P-Hole this month. That is to say, a picross hole. (There's probably a better way of phrasing that.) Continuing the above theme of pursuing a personal goal of playing one Final Fantasy game per year of the franchise's existence, Pictlogica: Final Fantasy is a F2P 3DS picross game devised by Square Enix and picross Picassos Jupiter Corp that functions similarly to their later F2P Pokémon Picross in that you can absolutely play it for free but it'll just randomly insist on making you wait for long stretches unless you fork up a small fee to hurry things along. It's one of the more obnoxious developments in the F2P market that'll have you wishing for a season pass, but it suits my purposes since I'm fine with playing picross games stretched out across a long duration. I tend to get too attached otherwise, as I'll get into in a moment.

Like Pokémon Picross (or similar FF spin-offs like Theatrhythm), Pictlogica found a novel and germane way to integrate standard Final Fantasy RPG aspects such as character progression, party dynamics, and tactical real-time battles. Occasionally, when you complete a picross and it happens to be the portrait of a playable character, you can take part in a "quest" where you have to defeat several waves of enemies followed by a boss to unlock that character for use. You do this with a team comprised of your currently available characters, which you can level up with special gems you collect by completing conditional goals when taking on the regular picross mode (where the assignment might be "turn the assist modes off" or "complete under this time") and the quest mode ("complete the battle with only sword-users/female characters/fewer members than usual"). Levels are capped until you make further progress in the game, and there are battles which are way too tough for your current party that often involve recruitable villain characters like Golbez and Gilgamesh, so there's spots where you might need to come back later for a particularly tough playable character recruitment quest. I've been gravitating towards my personal favorites when it comes to the party, but there's a few like Bartz (who cares about Bartz?) where I'm motivated to keep them around because of their useful skills—he has a strong opening attack called Barrage that activates whenever you use him first. The way these battles work, incidentally, is that they generate little five-by-five picrosses that you're meant to complete as quickly as possible: keeping up a decent pace without making mistakes quickly increases a "break" gauge that, when reached, causes additional damage to monsters with your attacks similar to how the mechanic is employed in Final Fantasy XIII and a few later games.

Between those artificial timers meant to gouge money from impatient players and just the way I tend to approach picross games in general, I imagine I'll be chipping away at Pictlogica for a while to come yet rather than hashing it out across a handful of lengthy sessions. Once I finally exhaust its content I'll be relieved (in maybe an odd OCD way) to update my "35 in 35" list to a "37 in 37" one. Those numbers gotta match, man, they just gotta. (Rating: 4 out of 5.)

Continuing to push even further down my P-Hole, I've also been playing a fangame called Zelda Picross. Now, this is not the Zelda Picross that Nintendo themselves put out on 3DS exclusive to My Nintendo patrons to celebrate the release of Twilight Princess HD for Wii U, but rather one devised by Zelda fangame creator Vincent Jouillat as a spin-off of sorts to his series of A Link to the Past ROM hacks. It borrows the graphics of that venerable SNES paragon here too, only in the service of around a couple hundred picross puzzles. It's a fairly ingenious take on both The Legend of Zelda and picross in how it'll block off areas of dungeons and the overworld until you have the right item or a necessary key, but at almost all points there's usually more than one path to keep exploring if a path is blocked. Some upgrades open up routes where you can proceed further (like the hookshot or bombs) but others (like the Pegasus Boots or Book of Mudora) provide features to make the puzzles easier instead as they ramp up in size and difficulty.

There's both a time limit and a mistakes limit while playing, the latter being Link's usual stock of hearts (which, of course, can be upgraded), and there's some real nice QoL features for the picrossing itself. One such example, and one I don't think I've ever encountered before, is being able to draw boxes around multiple squares at once like cells on an Excel sheet and either make them all positives (definitely part of the image) or negatives (definitely not part of the image), and that convenience can really help when the timer's looming over you. I still of course prefer no timers and letting the player screw themselves over by never correcting their mistakes, which I call "Wario Mode" after the same model in the Mario Picross series, but I can't fault how this system is utilized here. A surprisingly solid picross game and Zelda game alike—though granted it looks cheap as heck given it's made out of recycled sprites—and worth a recommend if you like either. Though, yeah, I'll admit to kinda getting hooked to it—I think I would've been done with Stranger of Paradise a lot sooner if I hadn't been so distracted with its numerical charms. (Rating: 4 out of 5.)

Oh yeah, @gamer_152 mentioned the chill bee-searching game I Commissioned Some Bees 0 in his last Lo-Fi Plays column so, since it's free, I also downloaded it and gave it a spin. The Where's Waldo genre's really taken off on Steam in the past decade or so and there's been no shortage of games where the developer just paid some artists for busy pictures of crowds and then sprinkled in a random assortment of crap for players to find. Not that I'm insinuating that this game, or the thirty or so others the dev has published on Steam in the past couple of years, didn't take a long time and much consideration to produce. Still, video games are often about realizing the sort of fantasy experiences that couldn't be recreated in the real world, and I'd say "poking hundreds of bees and not dying" is certainly one of those.

WonderSwanning, Mega Driving, and Sixty-Forging Ahead

Let's check out the retro corner for this month. Hmm, yes, very old and mostly irrelevant. But enough about me, let's review all three of these regular features and see what's developed. First, our new feature that explores the mysterious WonderSwan—which I ruefully named Anyway, Here's WonderSwan without realizing I'd get that awful song in my head every time—processed and ranked another five games with a surprisingly positive result of three games I could just about follow to two that remained inscrutable due to the language barrier. Tweaking that ratio is really going to be a driving force of this feature, I suspect: I've already pored over a full master list of games for the system and, oof, maybe I would've reconsidered a few things given how many of them are text-dense RPGs, strategy games, and graphic adventures. I think it's safe to say that I completely missed the turning point when many handheld systems became dedicated RPG devices (the Vita being perhaps the most prominent example); since I don't care for playing long-session games on handhelds due to eye/hand strain it's certainly not something I'd really registered before now, but this era in time looks to have been the start of that shift. Even so, I'm having a great deal of fun unearthing all the WonderSwan's hidden treasures and will remain indefatigable in navigating its choppy anime tie-in waters to reach them.

The Mega Archive polished off October 1993 and entered November and the holiday rush of thirty years hence in earnest. We'll be stuck in the release windows of November and December for quite some time yet, and this coming month won't see us move through that list any faster as we'll be taking another break to investigate the Sega CD's no doubt fuzzy Halloween period instead. Highlights... hmm... highlights, you ask? Well, there was Columns III. I didn't know that there was a third Columns, so that was exciting to find out. I guess. I enjoyed ripping into the flagrant clone that was Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt and its preachy environmentalism; I might go so far to suggest that recycling should probably end at glass and plastics and not the intellectual properties of others. The actual best game of that group was almost certainly Disney's Aladdin, being the polished platforming classic that it is, but the dark fantasy pinball sequel Dragon's Revenge seemed like a valid contender too.

Finally, we have this month's episode of 64 in 64. Similar snag here as with the WonderSwan feature in that I bumped into one of the very few N64 games that required a high degree of Japanese literacy to enjoy, given Yakouchuu II: Satsujin Kouro is a visual novel, but all the same it's the only game of its type for the system so for the novelty factor alone I was eager to give it a try regardless. You can see how well I struggled with some translation woes by checking out that episode. The other game, selected by me, also indirectly homages that WonderSwan feature somewhat in that it's a fun (albeit in short sessions) puzzle game of the type that has (so far) been the best the WS has had to offer. Bust-a-Move '99—or Bust-a-Move 3 DX or Puzzle Bobble 64 depending on your territory of origin—sees Taito's bubble-bursting, accuracy-demanding series make its second appearance on the N64 and was surprisingly packed with content given how relatively shallow most block-stacking puzzle games of the era tended to be.

Your hint for the next 64 in 64 pair: The pre-select pick is a game I've referenced in over half the episodes so far, while the random pick is yet another untranslated JP exclusive I'll have to feel my way through (but given its subject matter I imagine I'll do just fine this time).

The "Indie Game of the Week" of the Month: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Snoozy Kazoo, 2021)

Super close-run thing this month, since all of the IGotWs were strong "four out of five"s: exceptional games that were just missing out on true greatness due to one drawback or another. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (#360) takes the crown this time just because it had some unanticipated depth to what looked, at first blush, like a meme-y Zeldersatz. In retrospect, the Undertale comparison was apt: that game captured the imaginations of those that played it due to its emotional depth and sometimes dark and sometimes hopeful twists, but since everyone walked away from that game convinced they'd experienced something special that they'd never want to spoil for others (beyond, "hey play this game") it ended up having its dumber and less essential moments turned into references that could be shared between the faithful and outsiders alike. I could see Turnip Boy having the same kind of internet presence had it been a skosh more substantial, but even as a lesser product it proved to be a similarly potent package of a great and bizarre soundtrack, some decent puzzles to decipher, and some wraught moments I definitely did not see coming in a jokey game about a felonious vegetable.

As to the runners up, we have a pretty solid "exploraction game" ("explormer" wouldn't really work in this case) Depths of Sanity (#359) which has the more uncommon free-movement approach seen in other sub-aquatic games like Aquaria and Song of the Deep. Bit more of a story focus as you delve deep underwater into what is essentially R'lyeh to find out what happened to your submarine crew of misfit The Abyss scientists and engineers; everything outside of that was decent too, from the exploration to combat, though graphically it was a bit underwhelming.

We also had This Way Madness Lies (#361) a typically excellent example of Zeboyd's compact 16-bit JRPG throwback design at work. Maintaining the comedic flair they're best known for, they dip into Shakespeare's works to create a magical girl pastiche where the heroines from those plays live their lives as regular highschool girls one moment and then magically change to fight monsters in other dimensions the next. Definite "monster of the week" flavor to its episodic approach and some catchy VGM with lyrics, building on the musical aspirations exhibited in Cosmic Star Heroine's memorable set-piece with the live band performance. Really, though, the star of the show is how the meta seems to change after every battle, as characters learn new skills and passives that focus their strengths elsewhere, meaning your approach to their role in combat could shift by the minute. It's an impressive feat of "ADHD RPG design" and continues to be Zeboyd's most prominent contribution to the throwback RPG market.

Finally, we have the vaguely antagonistic physics platformer I Am Fish (#362) that tasks you with escorting four fishy friends to the ocean by fishhook or by fishcrook. The game never stops throwing inventive scenarios at you that test your skills and patience alike, though the frequent physics engine "boo-boos" can really throw a spanner into any carefully conceived plans: trying to speedrun the game for the time trial achievements is often an irritation due to this engine's mercurial whims. I did eventually discover the "next checkpoint" button: this will void any time trial scores you were trying to earn, but is at least helpful for grabbing missing collectibles or the more stage-conditional achievements—or, if you're a casual player, skip the sequences that you simply don't have the energy left to take on after so many failed attempts. Think of it like those EA Trials games, only with more guppies rolling around in fishbowls.

(I still have one more IGotW for March but I'll punt the post-script for that into next month's edition of this feature. Kinda like when a game arrives in December too late for the GOTY deliberations.)

The Bonus Indie: The Looker (Subcreation Studio, 2022)

As ever, the Bonus Indie is a place where I can stash indie games that wouldn't really fit the IGotW feature for one reason or another. In The Looker's case, that's because it's an elaborate hour-long shitpost at the expense of Thekla's The Witness. You might even say it's the modern equivalent of Pyst: the idea being to take a first-person puzzle-adventure game with, let's say, a certain amount of pretension and then replace all instances of erudition with crude jokes and sarcasm. That said, The Looker does a few similar "thinking outside the box" puzzles that not only elevates it closer to "actual game" status but would also suggest the developer aimed for this to be a bit more of an affectionate parody than it would first appear.

In The Looker you're dropped inside a futuristic tunnel that leads out into a medieval courtyard filled with monitors plugged together in a daisy chain series. Each monitor only comes alive when the previous one in the chain has had its puzzle completed: invariably, these puzzles involve drawing one continuous unbroken line from a start point to an end point (or the end point to the start point, if you're feeling nasty). The puzzle difficulty isn't as humorously easy as it initially seems and the game will still throw the occasional melon-scratcher your way. One instance in particular required me to take notes about specific symbols, which was a level of investment I didn't anticipate from a parody game. That said, it's about a fifth the length of The Witness and really only exists to deliver some goofs at Mr. Blow's expense for the most part. The parody element is felt (or rather, heard) most keenly through the audio logs lying around: in the original game they were quotes from famous geniuses or classical literature, whereas here they're mostly specious stream-of-consciousness ramblings that only vaguely resemble something an academic might say.

I actually found the game pretty funny for the most part, though most of that comes from my antipathy towards The Witness and its barfy lack of UI, and the puzzle variety turned out to be surprisingly involved. One memorable instance has you playing a version of Snake (called Snek, because internet) with the same rules as the other line puzzles, which required some expert-level Snake strats to solve. Given the game is free, it practically serves as an elucidating demo for what The Witness is all about so I hope Blow's team didn't take too much offense to its (mostly) gentle ribbing. It's a whole lot better than Pyst was, at least. (Rating: 4 out of 5.)

The Weeb Weeview

This month on the Weeb Weeview: Cute shit. Promised, delivered.

Fluffy Paradise

First up is Fluffy Paradise, an isekai about a tired office lady who collapses from exhaustion (the truck drivers union was on strike, I guess) and wakes up as Neema, the newborn daughter of the noble Osphe family. Her wish for her new life is to be surrounded by "mofu mofu": fluffy animals she can hug to her heart's content, and it helps that her new kid form is exceptionally cute enough that beasts and people alike are naturally drawn to her Disney-style. We do get a lot of cute animals—and not just fluffy ones either; one of the first animals Neema charms is an enormous ancient dragon—though the show's kinda weird about determining how precocious an adult trapped in a child's body would be. Sometimes she's clearly sharper than the average 3-5 year old but other times she's entirely at the mercy of our own childlike whims—I guess the show excuses this as being an adult consciousness in a child's brain, prone as it is to doing whatever the hell it feels like no matter how petty or self-injurious.

The show's kinda interesting in how it recontextualizes Neema's wish from "cute animals to pet, plz" to "savior of the noble monster races through her endless reserves of empathy and goodnaturedness", which I guess would need to be the hook given the genre and how there'd be too little conflict otherwise, but towards the end of the season she's some iconic freedom fighter rallying various monster tribes together in the face of their human oppressors and I'm left wondering how the character went from a cute animal lover to Susan B. Anime. I guess people can have multitudes. Anyway, even when fluffy kobolds are dying left and right defending their homes the show mostly keeps on message about being goshdarned adorable. Curious to see if a second season ever surfaces and whether it'll lean harder one way into this dynamic or the other.

The Dangers in My Heart (Season 2)

Dangers in My Heart returned fairly quickly after its first season last year, and once again sees emo short king Kyotaro Ichikawa grow even closer still to his tall, glamorous, but mostly just an airhead classmate Anna Yamada. The show established the pair's unlikely but natural chemistry across the first season, justifying how the two might enter each other's orbits due to their various quirks and strengths aligning the right way (I made this sentence unnecessarily lewd), and the second season see them edging (I swear I'm not doing this on purpose) ever closer to actually dating. That's about it for the story, by the way: these school day romance stories tend to be mostly slice-of-life character studies more than something with an elaborate overarching plot to follow.

It's hard to describe exactly what makes this show so endearing. Partly it's the two leads; as is typical for shounen romance anime, the male lead is a relatable self-defeating nobody unable to appreciate his low-key qualities (the usual "be nice to girls" once again winning the day, though again the show sells it pretty well) while the female lead is an impossibly charming fruitcake who is defined mostly by her naivety, clumsiness, and bottomless stomach but also a sweetness that is occasionally a source of misery for her, as she hates feeling like she's let other people down. It's also just really well paced and animated, deeply sincere, occasionally funny (mostly the contributions of side characters, like Ichikawa's perverse moron sorta-friend Shou or his meddling older sister Kana), and nails the awkwardness of adolescent love in a way that doesn't feel pandering or demeaning or overly precocious. S'cute. Also why it's here this month.

Mr. Villain's Day Off

Mr. Villain's Day Off simply follows the daily routine of the evil overlord of an extraterrestrial group of invaders looking to conquer Earth, frequently having to fight off the Super Sentai-esque hero group that thwarts their attempts. When he's not doing that, though, he's a huge fan of pandas—the only creature he intends to keep alive once his organization's fully taken over—and goes to see them at the zoo in his limited amount of free time. He also eats a lot of panda-shaped food and collects panda , and has started to become fond of other Earth animals. Pretty similar pitch as that Too Cute Crisis show from last autumn but far less wacky and animated; Mr. Villain is rarely a histrionic sort and approaches his passions with the same measured calm he approaches his battles with Earth's heroes.

I've only seen a few episodes of this show so far but its the real languid pace serves its deadpan humor as the villain finds ways to be less villainous every time he appears. The show also explores how he gets closer, in a manner of speaking, to the heroes as they also spend time off from superheroics in their casual clothes. The show's been slowly developing the people in Mr. Villain's orbit, from subordinates to antagonists, and how his desire to crush everything before him and laugh over the burning remains of our frequently irksome civilization (he's irritated by a lot of everyday things, only encouraging his war further) is mostly for those days when he's "on", and the days when he's "off" is mostly about eating ice cream and watching nature documentaries about pandas. I've been meaning to go back to it: now that we're in the last week of this "cour" and at least half the season's shows have ended already, it might be a prudent time to catch up.

Before wrapping this up, let's talk about some of the previous shows I've brought up on here now that they're close to finishing their current seasons (with one exception):

• Solo Leveling continues to be extremely entertaining. The fight with Igris in the season's penultimate episode was one of the most electric things since, well, the last big fight scene in Solo Leveling I guess (also, best protag juggle since Pierrot le Fou). It's getting me back into hyperactive (and hyper-animated) shounen again. The series-pivotal event in the next and final episode of the season is going to explode some brains and I can't wait to see those reactions.
• Delicious in Dungeon is entering its second cour and will be around in spring too, so I can't speak on its overall arc yet. Seems like the current situation will cause the quest to shift direction somewhat but for now I'm content with it being a gently amusing hangout show about cooking monsters and running afoul of various D&D tropes.
• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End ended on a high note and now that it's officially the highest rated show on MyAnimeList I suspect the animation studio will be working on the next season. Seems like there's some demand at least. I know some folks were less than enthralled with the mage examination arc but it gave the show an excuse to expand its cast severalfold and to see how modern magic has changed since (and because of) Frieren's heyday. There's a certain evenly-matched mage battle during that arc with some insanely great animation, the sort where the creative team just let their imaginations run wild with visual effects akin to the dimensional stuff in the Spider-Verse movies, so I'm hoping they have more opportunities to flex those muscles in the next season.
• Villainess Level 99 just kinda fizzled out in a flash—I guess the anime studio figured a second season was out of the question, so they wrote an alternative ending that was a bit nicer and more definitive than the LN's—but I still dig the pitch of "what if Daria was also Ultima Weapon and how would that affect her already miniscule HS social cachet?" and it did do some cute stuff with protag Yumiella and her obliviousness regarding her beau Patrick's overt feelings for her. But yeah, everything kinda got settled in a hurry with those last two episodes and I doubt we'll see a follow-up. I'm still on the look out for any isekais that double as deconstructions of video games—ideally with the levity such a concept deserves—but then I do also have a fondness for predictable anime trash (and I mean that in an affectionate way, like how the Mother's Basement YT channel uses the term). Just something to stick on while I eat dinner, you know? S'fine.
• The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic had been pretty interesting as an isekai that avoided many of the usual tropes that tend to bring those of its genre down, so it's a little dispiriting that the big villain of this season is now shaping up to be a second (or possibly third) love interest for the protag. These things don't always have to turn into harems, you know? But nonetheless, it looks to be largely done with the current demon war storyline and plans to explore some other territories in season two, maybe expanding Usato's perspective a little more in the process. Dunno if we'll get an international conference of healers or what, but I'm always down for some worldbuilding and road-trip bonding.
• My Instant Death Ability is Overpowered had some real crappy pacing towards the end there due to squeezing in too many manga volumes at once but at least it ended on a semi-decent note that, as is often the case in this unpredictable market, could work as ably as a series finale as it does a season finale. There's an arc they had to cut out which I hope they get back around to somehow—it doesn't really fit into the overarching plot, so I could see why they'd cut it, but it's also a really neat (and deeply disturbing) mini-narrative about the main character's ability's "reach"—so maybe they can turn that into an OVA to hype up a second season or something. Overall, I wish it could've been better but it's still a fun property and concept that I'll probably continue to follow via the manga.

I also said something about rating the opening themes of this season's anime last time, so here's my five favorite ranked (granted, there were many shows I did not watch):

1. Solo Leveling ("Level")
2. Shangri-La Frontier ("Danger Danger")
3. Villainess Level 99 ("Love or Hate")
4. The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic ("Cure")
5. Mashle Season 2 ("Bling-Bang-Bang-Born") (I don't know why I picked this)

Too Long, Do Relinks?

• Indie Game of the Week 359: Depths of Sanity
• Indie Game of the Week 360: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
• Indie Game of the Week 361: This Way Madness Lies
• Indie Game of the Week 362: I Am Fish
• Mega Archive: Part XXXIX
• 64 in 64: Episode 40
• Anyway, Here's WonderSwan (Part Two)

Hello, I Am Mento, and I Am Reviewer for I Am Fish. It's a 3D platformer, sorta, wherein you help four superpowered fish escape from human bondage (not that kind) and reach the ocean so they can continue to, uh, bro out I guess. Fishbro out. Pretty much if someone turned that one aquarium part of Finding Nemo into a whole video game with a lot of dramatic twists and turns, albeit of the mostly action-based dialogue-free kind. Given all the protagonists are of the piscine persuasion there's certain limitations to their movement, especially outside of the water, and that creates a game that is sort of awkward and not even only sort of frustratingly challenging but also endearing in a way some of these physics-heavy action games can often be once you've finally mastered the obtuse foibles inherent to their systems. The other game that immediately came to mind while playing this, even though it's an entirely different class of chordate, is Sumo Digital's Snake Pass in that any unintuitiveness to the controls is mitigated by how the titular creature would necessarily have to get around the world in this fashion, and getting into that frame of mind makes it much easier to comprehend your options and far easier to approach the game as a whole.

The game's inventiveness is on display almost from the get go as you start off in a spherical fish bowl with a convenient airtight seal to keep the water inside as you're rolling around (forget how the fish are supposed to breathe). As you hamster-ball it around you need to keep in mind that the bowl is both fragile and beholden to momentum, as you'll quickly lose control over it after picking up speed or when going down slopes and other downward trajectories. However, much of the level design accounts for this to make sure you regularly hit a soft (or soft-ish) landing and it'll checkpoint frequently to ensure a minimum amount of annoyance. Other sequences have the fish outside the bowl (or another aquatic conveyance, like a mop bucket) and in its natural underwater environment, where it can freely swim around and has a limited-height hop to clear small barriers between bodies of water. You spend a lot of time in both variations and both offer different challenges and perils to overcome, though I'd perhaps argue the more physics-y ball mode is perhaps the tougher of the two. Leaping over barriers in the water is, however, something that might take a bit of practice to do right without just flopping onto the divider and slowly choking to death like an idiot.

Where the game starts to take off is after the first three courses, during which you're escorting the goldfish to the ocean. The goldfish has no special ability beyond being very reflective: it's this showy beacon that alerts the other three fish friends as to his location, and they all set off on a cross-country journey to join him. You can play these three other campaigns (swam-paigns?) in any order, or mix-and-match if you'd prefer the variety, and each is built around their specific fish's special ability. There's a pufferfish that can increase its size and turn spherical, a piranha that can use its jaws to munch parts of the environment, and a flying fish capable of gliding across small distances. These naturally provide even more difficulty and variation to the level design, especially the flying fish whose gliding ability is another that takes some time to master effectively—you also have to consider that you are as unable to breathe in mid-air as you are on the ground, and to maybe not try to glide across the whole level if that idea strikes you.

Naturally, a game like this has more to offer the would-be dedicated fish savior than the simple A-to-B-to-C level progression. Each stage has five bread collectibles—Bossa Studios are the same developers behind I Am Bread, in case you were wondering about the collectibles and/or the game's name; awkward 3D physics simulators are kinda their thing—for which you get a few hints pre-level. However, even for a collectible-sweeping freak like myself I can't say I Am Fish makes this part of the game as palatable as that sweet starchy dough: for one, you can't access the hints or find out which bread items you've already found while in-level and that's irksome if you wanted to confirm you hadn't missed one or needed a refresher on the clues. The collectibles also won't register unless you hit a checkpoint, so that sucks if you need to backtrack a little ways each time because you'll be resetting those checkpoints a lot on your first run through a level, and they also won't register unless you complete the level (which can be ten minutes or longer even when you're doing them right). It definitely disincentivizes popping back into previous levels for any baked goods you missed. There's also a star rating system that judges you based on the time taken and the number of deaths you've incurred: however, again, the game doesn't really surface the information on exactly what amount of time or fish corpse frequency is considered an acceptable amount for the full five stars—I imagine the criteria is different for the longer/harder levels, but I'll be darned if I'm allowed to know to what extent. Just some QoL disappointments that mar an admittedly optional set of bonus goals.

Visually and especially with the sound design the game's presentation is really slick. The developers have now made several of these 3D games with simplified, stylistic graphics (as well as I Am Bread, they also made the comically malpractical Surgeon Simulator series) and each one has looked sharper than the last; some of the environments of I Am Fish, even while embodying that simple and cartoonish style, look great and detailed. These detailed environments don't always lend themselves well to signposting your next destination, but the exploration is often how you find those sneaky breadcrumbs so it feels like an intentional decision not to put big arrows everywhere—the floating icons for the checkpoints often serve as an idea of where you ought to be swimming towards, at least, though they tend to be rather far apart. Might also be worth stating for the record that the game is very British: this doesn't necessarily come across in the story (though the dark humor of the exceptionally cute fish protagonists gulping their last as their eyes slowly close on a cruel and unfeeling world definitely feels like something we'd come up with, as averse as we Brits are to earnest pathos) but certainly does with the strongly-accented voiceovers of the oblivious humans you might find yourself avoiding as they stomp around and threaten your precarious em-balléd situation. I'm barely halfway through so far—the brainworms demand that I replay stages for those max score and collectible targets despite my stated reasons why both should probably be avoided unless you're a glutton for punishment—but the game's evoking a lot of both animosity and admiration from its many challenges and set-ups. Ambivalent but certainly not indifferent, is the way I'd say I'm feeling about this game so far. Definitely sticking with it though; I got through Snake Pass eventually and that became one of my more recent favorites of the genre despite a similarly rough start.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-playthrough Edit: This game is certainly one of highs and lows right up until the end, though I still respect its ideas even if its physics engine didn't appear to see eye-to-eye with the level designers much of the time. The frequency in which I'd just glitch into an early demise or fail to properly launch from one body of water to the next (the game is extremely finnicky about this) really compounds the frustration that the already challenging gameplay foments, and like most physics-y games that aren't just silly hanging-out sims like Goat Simulator it's the physics themselves that are often the game's biggest downfall. I think I also played the fish out of order: for those getting into the game, I think the ideal path is pufferfish, piranha, and flying fish. The last of those three definitely has the hardest time due to those awful flight controls, while the pufferfish can roll around on dry land which allows him to escape a lot of asphyxiation deaths. Still, between discovering the "next checkpoint" button (a godsend for return trips to sweep up achievements/collectibles) and not taking setbacks quite as seriously, there's much to enjoy here.

Welcome back to another brief glance—the briefer the better for some of these—through the game library of the Bandai WonderSwan, an ill-fated portable system that nonetheless found some success dwelling in the chronological gap between the Game Boy Color and the Game Boy Advance. When it wasn't being sandwiched between two boys, the WonderSwan managed to produce a surprising number of games that ran the gamut from disposable anime tie-ins all the way to acclaimed debuts for franchises that are still going strong today, and somewhere in the middle you have a bunch of system-exclusive Squaresoft RPGs and some other obscure treats. I'm hoping to discover five more this month.

The rules are... well, there aren't really any. I just randomly pick five games from my master list of WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color games to feature on here and then discuss my experiences along with the duration I was willing to spend with them. That was the format I had resigned myself to, at least. However, after further negotiations with the powerful Randomizer Union (see Part One), we've agreed to implement a fortuitous new rule: Every seventh game will be one I've chosen, rather than plucked from the list haphazardly. I've exercised that privilege to choose the launch game Gunpey as this feature's seventh game. There's a few other big WonderSwan games I wouldn't mind checking out, as well as a handful with fan translations, so this little bonus rule should come in handy for those. Well, at least for the updates that have multiples of seven in them anyway.

For more on the WonderSwan's history and what I'm doing here, as well as rundowns for the previous five games, be sure to check out Part One.

Anyway, here's WonderSwan:

#006: Metakomi Therapy: Nee Kiite!

("Meta Communication Therapy: Hey, Listen!")

• Developer: Yoshidayama Workshop
• Publisher: Media Entertainment
• Release Date: 2000-03-01
• Inscrutability: Maximum
• Is This Anime?: Nope.

Field Report: Metakomi Therapy: Nee Kiite! is... uh, I guess I would categorize this as an adventure game, or maybe educational? The idea is that you have this animated stick figure character, named Yuyu, and you talk to it about your day and the things that trouble you. Yuyu then provides a number of canned responses that help calm you down and make sense of things, and then just kinda goes about its business until you have another question for them. "Goes about their business" in this case meaning a bunch of quotidian tasks and chores like vacuuming the apartment or watching TV or preparing food. It's like that old Little Computer People game that pre-empted The Sims and other digital people-watchers. I guess the idea is to provide a virtual confidante for lonely folks who might be feeling overwhelmed by daily life. I'm not really versed enough in psychiatry to know what the deal is with "meta communication therapy" and how it relates to this game in particular—I figured meta communication meant like subconscious gestures and body language, which the game struggles to get across with its lo-fi stick figure protagonist. Either way, it's a weird product. Hopefully it still helped people though.

Yoshidayama Workshop has a few credits but they're mostly in supporting roles. The company itself was a contractor that worked with larger publishers like Namco or Taito and going by their GDRI credits they usually helped out bigger game projects with their sound: music, sound design, and programming sound drivers. Metakomi Therapy looks to be entirely theirs, as opposed to them just contributing part of a greater whole. They have a couple more WonderSwan games they're attached to, including—coincidentally enough—the WS port of Puzzle Bobble, a game series I talked more about on this month's 64 in 64 episode. Media Entertainment is one of those companies with an "SEO poison" name that is hard to dig up dirt on, but they were mostly active during the PlayStation era producing low-budget pachinko games. Work is work, I suppose.

Man, what a game to start on. This might be the most mystifying WonderSwan release I've encountered yet. Naturally, I can't make heads or tails of it given it's all text-based and in Japanese. I just inputted my own name in katakana a few times here and there and the rest of my interactivity was limited to answering questions I couldn't read and watching Yuyu do his (her? their?) thing once I'd let the game idle. It felt like I was trapped in a Don Herztfeldt animation that I understood even less than usual. Realizing Yuyu wasn't about to bust out a deck of cards or an arcade cabinet and turn Metakomi Therapy into a real game any time soon, I said my goodbyes to that amiable stick figure. May they continue to assist the more deserving.

Time Spent: About ten minutes.

#007: Gunpey

• Developer: Koto Lab
• Publisher: Bandai
• Release Date: 1999-03-04 (Launch Game)
• Inscrutability: Minimal
• Is This Anime?: No. If anything, it feels more like Looney Tunes.

Field Report: Gunpey, sometimes styled GunPey, is a puzzle game with a wild west theme in which you're having to draw horizontal lines across a grid. However, these lines are all diagonal and displayed as pieces: the goal really is to assemble those pieces so that the line can reach, unbroken, from one side to the screen to the other. The points scored from these lines include bonuses for additional lines—say, if the main line splits at some points into separate smaller lines, which count as long as they all still connect fully between the two opposite sides—or if you're able to add more to the line in the brief window before it vanishes. The blocks in the grid are regularly being shunted upwards where a row of spikes await at the top: if any piece should hit these spikes it's game over. Gunpey received a few more variations on WonderSwan and was eventually ported to Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, and Mobile where it also saw its first official localizations.

This is our second encounter with Koto Lab so far, after the inaugural episode's Flash Koibito-Kun, but it's the first game the developers put out into the world and one of the system's four launch games. Koto Lab was the baby of Gunpei Yokoi who already passed away before this game went into production: the game is named in his honor. Console manufacturers Bandai are the publishers here, as they were for more than half of all the WonderSwan games ever made, so I'm probably just not going to mention them from here on out.

Gunpey is... OK? I guess? There's a certain simplicity to it that's charming enough but that also means that it gets dull fast. The longer you waste time with enormous and complex branching lines the quicker the game pushes them into the ceiling of death so it's usually best to not get too ambitious, but that also means being somewhat dissatisfied with lines that are only good enough since it's perilous to get fancy with it. I also spent a lot of time just juggling items lower in the same column as they got closer to the top while waiting for any line piece at all to show up in the adjacent empty columns—it's one of those puzzle games where you really have to hope for some good fortune to come along or you're just screwed. I tried out the default Endless mode first to get my bearings, then attempted the Puzzle mode for a while where you have to use every piece of line on the screen in one combo or else fail, and finally the Story mode that had the game's frog-like protagonist drifter take on a series of bandits to protect some kind of foxwoman or coyotewoman (wasn't sure if it was a Fubuki or a Koyori, in other words) in distress. The Story mode introduced enemy attacks—they mess with your field in some way, such as darkening everywhere except a small area around the cursor—and ?-blocks that served to obscure whatever pieces were behind it. You can gradually fill a power bar to perform your own ultimate but all this appears to do is clear the ?-blocks away, which really aren't that much of a bother. Gunpey's fine but I wasn't willing to keep playing it for long; maybe its two other variants on WonderSwan will find a way to hook me in deeper.

Time Spent: Half an hour.

#008: Densha de Go!

("Let's Go By Train!")

• Developer: Taito
• Publisher: Taito
• Release Date: 1999-03-04 (Launch Game)
• Inscrutability: Moderate
• Is This Anime?: Nope, this is as real as it gets.

Field Report: Densha de Go! is a long-running Taito arcade series that has players carefully driving locomotives through urban areas and countrysides across Japan. The goal is to follow the game's instructions to the letter, accelerating and decelerating to specific speeds when prompted, and coming to a full stop in stations at the designated times. You're scored on your accuracy more than anything else, though players need to be quick-witted to account for unexpected complications on the journey—some of these complications are truly random, not always appearing in every playthrough of a specific route. The original Densha de Go! debuted in arcades in 1997 and quickly saw ports to PlayStation, PC, Game Boy Color, and Saturn. The WonderSwan naturally saw a port too—hence it being here—and a few months later would also receive a port of the game's sequel, Densha de Go! 2.

Taito probably needs no introduction—they were the arcade pioneers behind Space Invaders after all, and I might as well namedrop their Puzzle Bobble spin-off franchise for the second time this episode—but weren't actually all that active on the WonderSwan themselves. This and Densha de Go! 2 are the only games I believe they developed personally; the other WonderSwan games based on their properties tended to be outsourced to contract developers (like Yoshidayama, above). Likewise, this is also their only published game: mid-tier publishers CyberFront published the WS Densha de Go! 2. Still, we've got plenty of "indirect Taito" (why'd I go and make it sound dirty?) yet to explore on this platform.

So, I was moderately pleased to see this pop up on the randomizer because I had a pretty good time playing Densha de Go! 64 a few months back on 64 in 64. However, that game was fortunate enough to see a fan translation which made the process of driving the train a bit more accessible; I was only able to get as far as I did in this one because of that past experience and, well, they aren't exactly easy games in ideal conditions. Like many arcade games the learning curve is extraordinary and it'll be punishing even if you know what you're doing because by design they want you to keep putting in quarters to improve your performance. The thing I always get stuck on is remembering to decelerate way before the station comes into view: whizzing right past it hands you hella demerits, which is fair when you consider the entire concept of public transportation. You also have to know when to sound the horn and I wasn't sure which of the many informational pop-ups was a horn scenario so I just kinda used it liberally. Nothing like terrifying your passengers in addition to making them late and/or physically ill from the sudden speed changes. Either way, for as much as those YouTube videos of long train journeys might be relaxing actually driving the things often proves to be the exact opposite.

Time Spent: About fifteen minutes. I don't feel nearly confident enough playing this in Japanese. Maybe I'll try a bit more Densha de Go! 64 to make up for it.

#009: Final Lap Special

• Developer: Soft Machine
• Publisher: Bandai
• Release Date: 2001-11-15
• Inscrutability:
• Is This Anime?: No. (The Pole Position cartoon doesn't count, pedants.)

Field Report: Final Lap is Namco's famous arcade "behind the car" racing game franchise, their equivalent of Sega's OutRun or Midway's Cruis'n, which began as an evolution of their older Pole Position series. Final Lap Special serves as a spin-off of sorts, accompanying Final Lap 2000 as WonderSwan-exclusive entries in the series. Loosely based on Formula 1, the goal is to complete courses quickly and efficiently without crashing (well, doy). The two Final Lap games, as well as Bakusou Dekotora Densetsu for WonderSwan, are the only racing games to hit the WonderSwan. (At least, I think that's the case; one of these dozen or so Digimon games might also secretly be a racer, I dunno. DigiMonteCarlo? DigiLeMans? Yeah, probably not.)

Namco's another like Taito and Capcom in that they had an early and persistent presence on the WonderSwan platform but mostly through intermediaries like Soft Machine, a Japanese contract developer who worked behind the scenes on several NES, SNES, PS1, and WonderSwan games. According to GDRI Soft Machine has credits on the Top Pro Golf games for Mega Drive/Genesis and the deeply strange Lovecraftian PS1 horror game ...Iru! ("...It's here!"). We'll be seeing them a few more times on here: one of their weirder games in particular is going to be a future "Lucky 7s" pick if the random chooser doesn't beat me to it. Bandai were of course the publishers. Might be worth pointing out that these two weren't Bandai Namco yet: that happened in 2005, years after the WonderSwan had already ceased production.

I don't really care for racing games but at least this is arcade-style and not simulation-style. I swear playing those F1 sims for N64 almost killed me (with boredom). Final Lap Special is so named because it features the standard open-wheel F1-style cars as well as GT vehicles, which I understand to mean "Grand Tourer" (as in, suited for a mix of endurance and speed) and not "Giant Truck" so I'll admit to some disappointment. The GT mode has more of a progression to it as you upgrade models from one successful race to the next, while the F1 mode gives you a near-full selection out of the gate with the usual differing ratios of speed, grip, and acceleration. I won the first few races on the Rookie Championship mode of the F1 cars before hitting a course with more hairpins than an entire branch of Supercuts. I didn't even get as far as "won the first few races" with the GT mode: I suspect because of the progression factor it's better suited for veterans. It's going to take a while to get better at the game and I've no real interest in doing that, but I didn't hate playing it at least.

Time Spent: Let's say 25 minutes.

#010: Meitantei Conan: Nishi No Meitantei Saidai No Kiki!?

("Detective Conan: The Western Detective's Greatest Crisis!?")

• Developer: Tomcat System
• Publisher: Bandai
• Release Date: 2000-07-27
• Inscrutability: Maximum
• Is This Anime?: Sure is.

Field Report: Meitantei Conan: Nishi No Meitantei Saidai No Kiki!? is the second of three WS games to be based on Gosho Aoyama's Meitantei (Detective) Conan manga and anime franchise, about a highschooler genius detective who gets de-aged to an elementary school student by an experimental poison created by a powerful criminal organization and decides to keep his identity a secret while still solving mysteries and uncovering more information behind this sinister cabal. He apparently insists on wearing a bowtie throughout this process, so we're talking a construct that's somewhere between a Young Sherlock and a Young Sheldon. As you might suspect from that synopsis, the Meitantei Conan games are invariably adventure game whodunnits that have you gathering clues and evidence from various zones and gradually putting all the pieces together.

Tomcat System's an eclectic bunch that have worked on a number of licensed games, ports, and original creations from the 16-bit era to the present. Some of their games include the comedic photography PC Engine game Gekisha Boy (fond memories of that one) and site-favorite Sanrio World Smash Ball! for SFC. They also developed all three Meitantei Conan games for WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color, as well as another WS game I hope to show off eventually.

I mean, there's not a whole lot to say here. I'm vaguely familiar with the license—though I haven't watched any of the Funimation localizations, which renamed the show Case Closed due to licensing issues with either the Barbarian people or the O'Brien people—but for as much as I like the venerable "Satsujin Jiken" (Murder Incident) genre of Japanese adventure games there's no point in playing one if it's entirely in a language I can barely comprehend. A few things though: before you're allowed to play you have to fill out an ID card that includes your full name, D.O.B., blood type (very important), and phone number. The game even switches to a vertical mode to make the data entry that much easier. The other is that many of the clues Conan was given became "keys" that fly off into a different part of the UI: the idea is to take those keys and, I guess, combine them to make important deductions. I've seen a few other detective games do something similar to this, though I'm blanking on them right now. Maybe those Miles Edgeworth spin-offs? Beyond that it looked kinda cheap and cheerful, like you'd expect an anime tie-in to be if it was one of three near-identical games that were all released within eighteen months.

Time Spent: Ten minutes. Much of that was digging up the Voicemail Dumptruck number.

Current Ranking

(* = Don't need fluent Japanese to enjoy this.)

1. Flash Koibito-Kun* (P1)
2. Magical Drop for WonderSwan* (P1)
3. Gunpey* (P2)
4. Judgement Silversword -Rebirth Edition-* (P1)
5. Final Lap Special* (P2)
6. Densha de Go! (P2)
7. Inuyasha: Fuuun Emaki (P1)
8. Meitantei Conan: Nishi No Meitantei Saidai No Kiki!? (P2)
9. Metakomi Therapy: Nee Kiite! (P2)
10. SD Gundam Eiyuuden: Musha Densetsu (P1)

Man, it's good to be back with another Zeboyd joint. Last time I took on one of their delightfully compact JRPG throwbacks was way back in 2017 with Cosmic Star Heroine (IGotW #32)—an uncharacteristically current IGotW subject at the time—and I keep missing Cthulhu Saves Christmas whenever it goes on sale (oh wait, it's on sale right now. £2? Sold!) so here we are some scant seven years later with a new IP of theirs. This Way Madness Lies, a line taken from Shakespeare's King Lear, is a magical girl anime combined with the Bard's less celebrated plays. Not the historical ones, just the ones that tend to get fewer movie adaptations. A group of highschool girls named for Shakespearean heroines have an after-school part-time job of sorts where they transport to the worlds of Shakespeare's plays and clear them of extradimensional horrors that did not feature in the original texts, tying the game in nominally with the developer's previous Cthulhu games. Between these missions, they hang out as a group and sometimes put together Shakespeare performances as part of their school's drama club; these hangout sequences serve as breathers and sort of resemble the downtime of the Persona games, where you might still find yourself embroiled in an unexpected battle or two or be forced to answer trivia questions from teachers (that you can just look up on the internet; the characters even suggest you do so if you get one wrong).

This Way Madness Lies displays the same slick and compact approach most Zeboyd RPGs do to its combat and character development mechanics, where you're constantly acquiring new abilities and traits and figuring out how to incorporate them into or around your current battle strategy. Each character—there are six, though the leader Imogen is the only constant and she's only ever accompanied by one, two, or three others—has their own role in combat, though eventually you learn so many skills for each (with only so much space on the active skill bar) that the roles become a bit more loose and versatile. Some play into their inspirations a bit—Miranda, named for the heroine from The Tempest, uses a lot of wind-elemental spells and likewise The Winter's Tale's Paulina has ice-based magic—though it's usually a mix of offensive skills, healing, buffs, and debuffs. So far, my party has always been pre-determined by the story rather than by my own choosing, which has sometimes led to groups I don't feel really mesh too well. For instance, Beatrice and Miranda are both largely debuff-heavy types and yet I always seem to get the two together which adds to their redundancy.

However, I could get real deep in the weeds about all the cool ideas this game presents, or at least carries over from Cosmic Star Heroine. One is an increasingly common take on consumable items where you can only use one of each type in any battle but they always replenish themselves afterwards, giving those of us with an aversion to consumable usage (just in case we need them later!) an excuse to freely partake of their useful if often conditional utility. Another mechanic is how characters will reach "hyper" state after a round or two, and this changes every one of their skills and sometimes drastically. You'll have skills that might alter their elements, do an extraordinarily higher amount of damage, change from just affecting one enemy to several or all of them, and so on. Some characters reach hyper state easier than others and have skills that are more malleable as a result: Miranda, for instance, has a set of skills that are debuffs when in her normal state and become buffs and heals when she's in a hyper state. The trait system confers various passive skills, but you have to be judicious as you only have three slots for them: as you unlock new traits their inherent stat boosts become stronger and stronger, so you'll often have to make the decision to sacrifice a powerful passive ability of an earlier trait to make use of the higher stat gains from those recently unlocked. Again, like the abilities that get rolled out incrementally, they can really change how you approach that character and their efficiency in combat. Even if I don't care for the debuff-focused Miranda (who I namedrop a lot, I'm realizing) there's no guarantee she won't become the party MVP in due course. For that reason, I'm glad the game is taking party composition out of my hands to let me spend equal time with all of them. (Incidentally, you level up as a party rather than individuals, so everyone's always at parity.)

I can't say the comedy writing in this one is hitting all that well, at least not consistently. The stuff outside of the missions tends to be anime or Power Ranger-style shenanigans of little importance that just serve to set up the next adventure more often than not, and the team quickly settled into a set of quirky archetypes like Viola's assertive sporty Chie-type (she's based on the androgynous protagonist of Twelfth Night who spends most of that play in drag, so I guess a tomboy character makes sense) or the catty Beatrice (based on the feisty and combative Much Ado About Nothing heroine). One running gag that occasionally pays off is a "translator" option for the game's occasional bits of Shakespearean dialogue where the game helpfully truncates flowery statements like "Lo, for I must depart post-haste" to a simple "Seeya!" but often takes the opportunity to jump in with some meta commentary, like when the group perform The Comedy of Errors and every "translation" points out the play's sole joke is that the twin characters are frequently mistaken for one another and how it kinda sucks. Definitely a "your mileage may vary" humor situation, though at least it doesn't really talk down to its audience too often given the relatively heady subject matter of 400-year-old plays beloved of crusty academics and histrionic theater kids.

For me the mechanical ingenuity is doing more of the heavy lifting than the presentation so far, but the latter is certainly not bad by any stretch. It's a cute idea to have Shakespearean heroines work together to save a literary multiverse one magical girl transformation at a time—like the Disney Princesses teaming up, only for intelligentsia who maybe also happen to be Sailor Moon fans—and as I continue to get further into the story the deeper its mechanics become. I've since bumped up the difficulty to the second-highest level because I've been enjoying tinkering around with these ever-evolving skill sets and seeing what synergies seem most advantageous; for example, Beatrice has a dark element-aligned attack that does bonus damage to poisoned enemies, and has recently acquired a skill that hits every enemy with a poison debuff (and poison's pretty strong already) which makes for an effective pairing. Few characters seem to have much damage output outside of leader and all-rounder Imogen, the physical-focused Viola, and the omni-elemental glass cannon mage Rosalind (from As You Like It), but I'm hoping that'll shift as the whole team continues to unlock new abilities and passives. I've yet to bail on a Zeboyd RPG for two reasons—they're pretty short, if not under ten hours in most cases, and that they continue to re-shape themselves as you play to the point where they might even become unrecognizable by the end—so I'll be seeing this one through to the end too. As well as, eventually, Cthulhu Saves Christmas I guess. (How often do I impulse purchase games in the middle of writing a review? That might be a new one for me.)

Rating: 4 out of 5.

(Post-playthrough edit: The end-game was pretty much the same as the rest, though you do eventually (and I'm talking the last two dungeons here) have the means of editing your party to suit your tastes. I eventually finished the game with a team of Imogen (the only compulsory member), Viola, Beatrice, and a new character that gets recruited towards the end: a very offense-heavy party with limited healing opportunities being its only detriment. It also got pretty tough too: I stuck it out on the Challenging difficulty despite how sponge-y enemies were becoming and I had to retake the final boss three times before I could finally out-attrition its absurd amount of HP. Little weaker overall than Cosmic Star Heroine but still a worthy demonstration of Zeboyd's finely-tuned mastery of this concise throwback JRPG paradigm.)

Hey all and welcome to another episode of 64 in 64, wherein I scour the archives of Nintendo's first fully 3D console (that is, the games were 3D; the consoles themselves have always been 3D) to find anything worth preserving for future generations via Nintendo's official retro game channels. I'm working pro bono here to find these Ninten-nuggets for those inclined to play or just read about '90s video gaming history, so here's hoping Nintendo doesn't just up and Yuzu a guy for trying to be helpful.

For every even-numbered entry from now until the finale I'm going to throw in a list of N64 games focused on a specific topic or pattern. Since this is our 40th Episode Spectacular, I'm going with the peak of lists this time: all the N64 games that I, me, this guy right here, own. Truth be told it's a fairly anodyne assortment of must-haves and bargain bin impulse buys and probably of little interest to most but it might provide some insight into some of the odder pre-select choices I've made over the previous 64 in 64 entries (as well as those to come, perhaps).

• Banjo-Kazooie: Bear and bird is a requisite though I never picked up the sequel since it arrived too late to matter. Ineligible (NSO).
• Body Harvest: DMA Design's GTA-adjacent alien insect squisher. Only good bug is a dead bug. Covered in Ep 28.
• Bomberman 64: Flinging bombs in this strange 3D take on Hudson's pyromania sim. Covered in Ep 8.
• Buck Bumble: Boom to the boom to the boom to the bass, and so on and so forth. Covered in Ep 30.
• Chameleon Twist: Sunsoft out here ensuring Yoshi isn't the most cunning linguist on N64. Eligible.
• Diddy Kong Racing: The best kart racer ever made? The right minds seem to think so. Covered in Ep 6.
• Donkey Kong 64: After that whole RetroAchievements completionist debacle, keep these apes far away from me. Covered in Ep 13.
• Doom 64: Like Doom, only murkier and pre-rendered. Covered in Ep 38.
• Duke Nukem 64: Like Duke Nukem 3D, only... well, bad. Probably still better than Forever though. Eligible.
• Extreme G: Nothing extreme about "G" since it's a constant but futuristic racing games have to have their cool titles. Eligible.
• Flying Dragon: Very unusual fighter/brawler/sim/RPG from your boys at Culture Brain. Eligible.
• Gauntlet Legends: Oh hey, we just covered this one. It's Gauntlet, but modern(er)! Covered in Ep 39.
• GoldenEye 007: Just sayin', Harold Sakata (who played Oddjob in Goldfinger) was 5'10". In no universe is that "so small you can't even be headshotted". Ineligible (NSO).
• Hexen: Is this a bad Hexen port? I genuinely don't know, I never played the original. Eligible.
• Holy Magic Century: This has another name in the US. And no, I still have no plans to cover it. Eligible.
• Hybrid Heaven: Is it possible to make MGS more incomprehensible? Konami's brightest minds found a way. Covered in Ep 12.
• International Superstar Soccer 64: A great soccer game (for those into them) that has only endured because a bootleg version's title sequence became a meme. Hua hua hua haaa. Eligible.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: When the moon hits your town 'cause you missed the countdown, that's-a Majora. Ineligible (NSO).
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Help, I'm becoming addicted to punishing randomizer runs of OoT. Send help. And the cheatsheet that tells me where the hookshot is. Ineligible (NSO).
• Lylat Wars: Get released under your original name in Europe? Can't let you do that, Star Fox. Ineligible (NSO).
• Micro Machines 64 Turbo: The only game on this list I genuinely don't remember playing. Must've been good? Eligible.
• Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon: Hmmmm, abababa, hmmmm, abababa... PU-RA-SU-MAAA! Covered in Ep 3.
• The New Tetris: Building the great wonders, one line at a time. No wonder it took the ancient Tetris slaves so long. Eligible.
• Perfect Dark: The very serious sci-fi thriller FPS where you hang out with an alien called Elvis and get high on tranquilizer darts. Covered in Ep 19.
• Pilotwings 64: The sex jazz of Birdman mode is reason enough for this to exist. Ineligible (NSO).
• Pokémon Snap: Like visiting a nature reserve except you can throw dangerous trash at the animals. And still be allowed back, I mean. Covered in Ep 11.
• Pokémon Stadium: Weird they had so many mini-games and yet no-one ever thought of making a Pokémon Party. Ineligible (NSO).
• Rugrats Scavenger Hunt: I couldn't begin to tell you why I have this. I'm not even a fan of the show. Eligible.
• South Park: In this case, I was a fan of the show. Still not a fan of the game though. Eligible.
• Space Station Silicon Valley: Take heed Horizon, this is how you do robo-animals right. Covered in Ep 17.
• Star Wars: Rogue Squadron: The only good Star Wars N64 game. Coming soon, possibly? Eligible.
• Super Mario 64: Well, yeah. What are you even doing as a N64 owner if you don't have this? Covered in Ep 1.
• Wetrix: Wetrix isn't just for the dolphin show at SeaWorld any more. Covered in Ep 21.

Anyway, that's enough navel-gazing (or, at least, gazing through a repurposed sock drawer at my collection of loose carts) so let's move onto what everyone really came here to see: The Rules!

• Two games. Sixty four minutes each. Do the math. No wait, I'll do the math: it's two hours of my weekend wasted.
• I chose the first of those two games and the other was chosen for me. I'd like to finish that sentence with "by a panel of retro gaming experts concerned for my mental well-being" but no, it's just a cold, unfeeling machine intelligence that I somehow wronged in a previous life. It calculates in megablights per second.
• I've provided some history, some deep musings about how well the games have held up, and the likelihood of them ever joining the Nintendo Switch Online premium service with all the system's highlights. Figured that would make for better reading than just one long protracted scream.
• Speaking of NSO and its honored assemblage, we're not going to cover any games on there or slated to be on there unless I got to them before they were added. If Nintendo's already vetted them, they need no additional scrutiny from little old me. (They finally added Blast Corps, by the by. Like the fifth or sixth most requested N64 Rare game.)

Be sure to check out any previous episodes here or in the links in the ranking table at the end. There's some good stuff in these. Might need to dig a little though.

Bust-A-Move '99 / Bust-A-Move 3 DX / Puzzle Bobble 64 (Pre-Select)

• Distinctive Developments / Acclaim (NA/EU) + Taito (JP)
• November 1998 (EU), 1999-03-05 (JP), 1999-04-30 (NA).
• =135th N64 Game Released

History: Bust-A-Move, known elsewhere as Puzzle Bobble, is a competitive puzzle game franchise from Taito that they spun off from their Bubble Bobble platformers, in a manner similar to how Compile's Puyo Puyo originally spawned from their RPG series Madou Monogatari (or, if we're talking platformer-to-puzzle examples specifically, the Puyo license-crossover remakes Kirby's Avalanche and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine). Puzzle Bobble's been around since 1994 as an arcade original and has seen many home console ports and sequels since: Puzzle Bobble 64 itself is an enhanced "Deluxe" version of the third arcade game, one that was created specifically for N64 and PlayStation. On a related note, Bust-A-Move 2 Arcade Edition was also made available on N64 a few months prior to this—hence why this game is branded as the "'99" edition in North America—and I suspect the randomizer might choose it for next month's episode just to screw with me.

While Taito published the N64 game in Japan—this is the third of four N64 games that they worked with, and the second we've covered on 64 in 64 (after Densha de Go! 64)—it was not developed by them. The developers in this case, Distinctive Developments, are actually British: they began porting games for platforms active in the mid-'90s (this is their only N64 game) and have since transitioned to making annual sports games for mobile platforms. Might explain why this Japanese puzzle game arrived in Europe first.

Feel free to blame my WonderSwan feature for this, but I've since reignited my passion for puzzle games. Specifically, the type of fast-reflexes, block-stacking puzzle game that is fun for about an hour before I get bored; as opposed to, say, picross where I can lose entire days to those accursed things (and I'm once again sorta thankful that the N64 was never embraced by any nonogram time-vampires). The fact that it's yet another UK game, in a manner of speaking, was unknown to me before I started the research for this episode but it fits into my ongoing agenda to prove video games from this country aren't all just soccer and rally games. Sometimes we make games with talking eggs in them. Or talking bubble dinosaurs, in this case.

16 Minutes In

I didn't get into how it plays but just in case this is your first time seeing a Bust-A-Move while it's mid-move-bustin', essentially the goal is to fire spherical gems into the playing field from your little ballista thing at the bottom to create color chain combos that reduce the throng of gems, otherwise it'll keep dropping and eventually overwhelm you. It's like if you took a Tetris template and added some Space Invaders "death from above" tech to it, which is fitting given it's Taito. Gems are fired at the exact angles you aim them and you can use this to bank shots off walls to get behind rows, though this naturally requires a great deal of precision that you might not be able to summon in the moment if the situation is getting too dicey. Fortunately, the Control Stick is accurate enough that aiming the gems isn't as awkward as it might've been on 16-bit systems.

I've been chugging along in the single-player Puzzle mode so far, which has a branching map screen where you can choose your own route like Darius, but there were a surprising amount of options on the main menu for both single-player and multiplayer content. It's all the same game type pretty much, but some effort has been made to vary it up as much as is possible. I was also surprised to see multiple playable characters: I guess this series went fully Puyo after all and just tossed in any character designs they felt like. I went with this sleepy/drunk gyaru type since she has my kind of energy. Alternatives, besides regular ol' Bub and Bob, included a cyborg superhero, a fortune teller, and a Ryu knock-off (the game's plot, such as it is, suggests these characters were all summoned from other arcade games, most of which are fictional if only in the "let's avoid litigation, shall we?" sense).

32 Minutes In

Still in Puzzle mode, but it looks like the end is in sight. I've died too many times to give myself anything close to a decent highscore (it wipes after every game over, naturally) but I'd like to see what happens when I reach the end of all this. I can see the last node on a map and it, unlike all the others which are named for single letters, simply has an ominous question mark. Could be an unlockable character, could be a new mode, could be something else entirely. I'll keep you posted, provided I don't get tossed back to the title screen for sucking too much. Speaking of sucking less though, I've discovered a few new features: on your first attempt after a game over, you're given a Peggle-style cursor that gives you some idea of the gem's trajectory and this cursor will change color depending on whether the spot you're aiming at will attach the fired gem to another of the same color, making it much easier to line things up. You can also fine-tune your aim using the Z trigger and R button to make gradual adjustments, though since the game often pushes you to shoot if you dawdle too much it's really only suited for moving a few extra degrees either side.

After Puzzle mode I might go see what the competitive modes are like. There's also a mode I want to check out called Collection which lets you take on maps designed and contributed by normal players; these maps occasionally show up in the other modes too, and it's neat to see someone's name immortalized as the creator whenever a stage like that begins. Reminds me of the contests that helped create the various Mega Man robot masters.

48 Minutes In

Well, I completed Puzzle mode, eventually. As far as I can tell, I earned a cheat that activates on the main menu (B, left, right, B if anyone's curious) that caused a little gremlin guy to show on the main menu but I'll be darned if I can figure out what it actually did. Anyway, once I start the final segment it'll be the Win Contest mode, which has you compete with CPU opponents one after the other. I'm not sure if that involves split-screen or what—there's not a whole lot of room on the screen already—but I'm hoping to find some of the "surprises" that mode claims to have in store.

As for the game, well, I'm getting to that point that I predicted I would where the gameplay is already starting to wear a little thin. I don't think the game is timing you—the stage drops seem to only occur after so many bubbles have been fired—but all the same there are times where it feels like the game has become unwinnable due to sheer bad luck. The bubbles that are served up by your gun are always based on one rule: that there's another one like it already on the playing field. But sometimes it's just the one trapped right up on top which makes any extra ones useless to you and instead make the field busier and harder to deal with. If the field's as low as it can get and threatening to drop again, and the bubbles you need to clear out some much needed wriggle room simply aren't there, then there's nothing you can do but hit that game over and try again. Obviously, with better planning and aim you're less likely to be in that scenario, yet the arbitrariness can still rankle especially if you were super close to clearing the stage.

64 Minutes In

The versus mode is every bit as capricious as the rest of the game: if your opponent gets a streak on, your field starts filling with junk way faster than you can deal with it. Obviously, the same is true for you as well, though that would rely on a whole bunch of factors being just so. Only reason this matters here is that in order to unlock anything you need to get a winning streak: my highest was three and that was enough to arrange one of those sliding puzzles (it arranges itself, thankfully) about a third or halfway so I suspect the number to hit is around 7 wins. But yeah, one bad shot from you or several great ones from your opponent is enough to kill any streak dead. I never did get around to the Collection menu, but I did see enough of those created puzzles to get an idea of what they were going for: some of them have a clear trick to them, like some linchpin you have to take out, while others might require a very precise and steady process of eliminating bubbles.

I took the liberty of doing a little background research into this playable cast, since I was curious:

• Bub/Bob: The requisite protagonists. There's also a bunch of other dinosaurs of various colors.
• Musashi: The karate guy. As I suspected, he's just a copy of Ryu though with Guile's hair. I suppose that puts his design closer to Virtua Fighter's Akira.
• Twinkle: Short-haired girl wearing some kind of clown outfit. Based on Taito's arcade quiz game Yuuyu no Quiz de Go! Go!.
• Priccio: Goofy-looking pixie with palm tree hair. Based on New Capriccio, a Taito claw machine.
• Marina: The bikini gyaru I was playing as before. Apparently based on the type of characters that show up in arcade strip mahjong games, though not on any one in particular.
• Luna Luna: Purple-haired fortune teller. Based on Arcanum, Taito's fortune telling arcade "game".
• Jack: Androgynous dude who looks like a prince. Based on the card sharks you'd see in video poker, though again no specific one in particular.
• Super Sonic Blast Man: A superhero cyborg-looking guy with boxing gloves. Based on Sonic Blast Man and its sequel Real Puncher. (Maaaan, I kinda want to see what Real Puncher is all about.)
• Debblun: An evil Bub/Bob clone. Penultimate boss. Based on a bizarro world Bubble Bobble.
• Drunk: The main antagonist. He's one of those little caped guys from Bubble Bobble.
• Paya Paya: A monkey wearing a hula skirt. One of the game's secret unlockable characters (that I was nowhere close to unlocking).
• Pitch and Chap: Two cute little tadpole things. The game's other secret unlockable character.

Anyway, we're all done here. Turns out I was correct and an hour was the perfect amount of time to go around bursting bubbles. There's more content that I never got to check out though, so I'll give the game some credit for having more to offer than I originally anticipated.

How Well Has It Aged?: Old and Busted(-a-Move). Nah, it's fine, but between the unlucky draws and the punishing level of precision required for some shots it can often be an exercise in frustration, especially when it forgets how luck-based it tends to be when the chips are down (like suggesting you need to beat so many versus games in a row to unlock new characters). Of course, I could just get gud instead. That's always an option. As stated above, there's an impressive amount of content considering the type of game it is and I barely scratched the number of modes available, such as the mode where you have to complete levels in a limited number of moves. By the way also, there's like 1,000 of those user-made puzzles in there too. It's far from being the worst puzzle game on the system at any rate.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: It's a Bubble Bobble Trouble/Boggle. Taito's owned by Square Enix these days so I could feasibly see them signing off on porting this over. Question is, why would they want to? You can buy the arcade Puzzle Bobble 3 on Switch already—as well as its predecessor Puzzle Bobble 2 and the modern reboot Puzzle Bobble Everybubble!—without anyone having to negotiate with Nintendo for a spot on the Nintendo Switch Online service. I've no idea how they feel about this internationally-outsourced port either; they'd probably be happier knowing Taito's arcade original was the only one still available.

Retro Achievements Earned: N/A.

Yakouchuu II: Satsujin Kouro (Random)

• Athena / Athena
• 1999-10-22 (JP)
• =257th N64 Game Released

History: Yakouchuu II: Satsujin Kouro is a murder mystery adventure game and—as far as I know—the only visual novel (VN) available on the N64. Specifically, it's a sound novel: a term coined by Chunsoft (the original Dragon Quest/Mystery Dungeon guys) to describe a narrative-focused adventure game that relied on sound design for much of its dramatic impact, as most of the visuals simply involved text on static backgrounds. Sort of like an audio book but for video games. The title roughly translates to Noctiluca II: Sea Route to Murder, noctiluca being the sort of bioluminescent sea life you might see from a ship deck late at night (while a murder is happening, perhaps). As you could probably deduce Sherlock-style from the numeral, it's a sequel: the original Yakouchuu was a 1995 Super Famicom game that was later ported to GBC. Neither of the Yakouchuu games were localized in English nor do they have fan translation patches, so that's fun.

Yakouchuu II is the fourth and last game Athena put out on N64, though it's the first one of theirs we've encountered on 64 in 64. The others include a bowling game, a mahjong game, and an entry in their shoot 'em up construction kit series Dezaemon. As for the company, it's a semi-obscure Japanese team that was known primarily for their shoot 'em ups though they evidently liked to dabble. Two of their arcade games, Strike Gunner S.T.G. and Daioh, have since been revived by Hamster's Arcade Archives (Hamster having bought all of Athena's IPs after the latter folded).

A sound novel, huh? Managed to find the one Japanese N64 game that was almost entirely all text did you, Mr. Random Chooser? Well, I could muster some enthusiasm just from the novelty of playing the N64's only VN but I suspect I'm going to be in for a slow, confusing time as I try to piece together what little I can read into a functional narrative. Unless a cat or a dog wanders into view and starts ominously chanting numbers out loud I know I'm going to quickly run out of kanji I can recognize at a glance (and the only reason I can read 1-9 in kanji is because of all the Ryu ga Gotoku mahjong I've put myself through).

16 Minutes In

Ohhh man, I vastly overestimated my ability to read any of this. Here's what I've gathered so far: we're on a ship—I believe its name is "Dynasty" or maybe "Destiny"—and the scene opens on the dining suite which seems like a fancy place. I heard a bottle of champagne being opened, that sound novel magic at work, so even if I can barely read anything I can surmise from the upbeat jazzy casino music and restaurant sounds that this is a luxury cruise sort of affair. Pretty sure I saw the kanji for sofu (grandfather) so maybe the protagonist is vacationing with his grandpa, or maybe the boat belongs to him. I also hit a decision point where I think I'm revealing my name to someone. It starts with "boku wa..." ("I am" or "I will") and the first and second options included the name Kenji, with the first ending in "yatta" which seems like a positive response so I went with that. Just re-emphasizing here that I have almost zero clue what I'm reading here.

While researching I did find a fan translation on YouTube (thanks "Teary_Eyes"_Anderson!) that is kinda winging it like me, albeit with way more accuracy, so I'm thinking what I'll do is after every sixteen minute update I'll summarize what I think I've learned in the first paragraph and then clarify what's actually going on (according to this more fluent YouTuber) in the second. Should be proof enough that I'm not just spending this whole time watching a video instead of playing the game, though with this genre it can be hard to make the distinction. So, while this might spoil the fun of watching me spend an hour floundering around in the water as it were, here's what's really been happening so far: You're a highschooler named Fuwa Takashi (or you can choose your own name: I went with Mento because... immersion?) and are joined by your classmate Hayami Arisa on the Dynasty (called it!) cruise ship's maiden voyage. The diner scene is a party hosted by the captain to celebrate the ship's successful launch. Arisa and I are here because her grandfather (yay) was the one who designed the ship's state-of-the-art computer systems and he'd invited her to join the maiden voyage; it seems I'm a "plus one". That multiple choice prompt actually refers to Arisa's cousin Kenji, a grade schooler, who is sitting with us and being a bit of a brat about the two of us not actually dating. The options are to 1) pinch his cheeks in affectionate retribution (what I did), 2) lift him up, I'm guessing to display dominance, or 3) laugh directly in his face like a psycho. The cheek-pinching doesn't seem so bad in comparison.

32 Minutes In

The captain went on for a while as the background switched to the suite's stage area but then I got my second prompt, and I couldn't get anywhere with translating either of the three. The second option started with "no"—presumably I'm declining to do or accept something, so maybe there won't be any follow-up prompts if I reject whatever this is from the jump. I'm a pretty negative person in general so this response probably suits me best. I just hope the question wasn't "do you need a life preserver ring?". Well, not that the Dynasty's actually sinking or anything. Suddenly, the Dynasty starts sinking! Someone set off an explosive device somewhere in the center of the ship! Finally, the game is speaking my language. The universal language of explosions. More from the context and sounds than anything I can actually read, I ascertain that we're all shuffled off to the lifeboats while the crowds panic in the background and we make it to Lifeboat #6. We're then treated to a late title card and a dramatic intro movie where the game zooms in on various background images for, I suppose, a sense of urgency. I'm guessing we're not investigating the murder of a ship though: probably this was a distraction to get the real killing done while we're all out here freezing our butts off bobbing helplessly on the ocean.

I'm sure the translation will corroborate as much since this segment's narrative was mostly of the "show, don't tell" persuasion, though I do want to know what it is I said "no" to earlier. That decision branch occurred after the ship's caddish young owner and his attractive blonde companion took the stage to announcement their engagement, and Arisa caught me staring at her. The first response is to come clean that you were curious about the woman, the second had you denying you were ogling (Arisa sees right through you, of course, since she knows your type), and the third was to suggest you were scoping out the dude instead (Arisa seems grossed out by this; guessing she's not a fujoshi then). Again, pretty much the same option I would've picked normally, being the dishonest evasive type that I am. Man, when did this game start becoming a personality test? The resulting evacuation's description pretty much matches what was shown—visual storytelling is going to be the only thing that saves this playthrough, I suspect—but the video did reveal that new multiple choice prompts will appear if this is the second playthrough of the game: I'm only supposing that Yakouchuu 2 is doing that thing where you can only get a "normal" ending on your first attempt and can then use the knowledge you've acquired to find alternatives, including perhaps a "true" ending.

48 Minutes In

In this segment we spend some time in the lifeboat with a bunch of other folks, including I believe the ship owner and his fiancée, our engineer grampa, cousin Kenji, and some suspicious skinny guy who jumped on board the last moment. After a few minutes of text, we found another ship that had come to rescue us but I didn't see a name (the Dynasty had these ¬ brackets around it every time its name was mentioned, so it stood out). What's intriguing is that the soundtrack took on a very eerie tone around this time, so there must be something ominous about this second vessel. I did make out "kiri" (fog) so maybe the idea is that the thick cover made it seem like it materialized out of nowhere like a ghost ship? I don't think this is a supernatural murder mystery game but I can't say for sure that it isn't. Murders are way easier to solve if the victim's ghost appears afterwards and tells you who did it, yet sadly it's very rare that such witness reports are permissible in court. (Talk about your habeas corpus though.) Couple last notes here: Another prompt came while we were in the lifeboat, two options this time—the second started with "wakara nai yo", or "I don't get it", which felt the most germane given the language comprehension skills on display thus far. Also, "Unrengusu" kept coming up in katakana and I'm not sure what it means, whether it's someone's or something's name (the most common usage for katakana if it's not a loanword).

While we've yet to start on the central murder mystery—I don't think we even know if there's been a murder yet, we were all too busy not drowning—there's certainly enough mysteries to be cleared up by the translation, so here's the rundown: the anxiety was building among the lifeboat's occupants, which as well as the people mentioned above also included another attractive woman of means, the shipyard director who has been carrying around an attaché case ("attaché case" was written out in katakana so I was able to read it, but I guess I didn't put it together that it was worth mentioning. Attaché cases are always worth mentioning in murder mysteries, though), and the junior crewman driving the lifeboat. The prompt was to either try to assuage Arisa's worries (first option) or be equally perturbed (second) so, great, I ended up sounding like a panicky idiot from The Poseidon Adventure. Well, at least it's earnest—I know how much Arisa appreciates honesty. (A third option appears on NG+, where you nonchalantly explain what'll happen next. Seems like cheating, surely?) As for the eerie ship, turns out it's kinda busted on top of being (apparently) deserted so it really did embody some ghost ship vibes.

OK, last section now. Hopefully a body shows up. I mean, that's not normally a thing to be hopeful for, but this is a murder mystery game...

64 Minutes In

Well, I immediately get another prompt. The options are "Understood" followed by a verb, or to ask Arisa for something instead. Since I'm probably on thin ice already with her right now I went for the first one and took decisive action. From where the previous catch-up left off I think it's suggesting that I board this ghost vessel and tie a rope up on the deck for the other passengers (the ship's own rope ladder is long gone) since the crewman can't leave the lifeboat and I'm the only expendable adult male on board. Boy, can I relate. We find the ship's name, written in English: Pandora. We even got a spooky violin sting when we read it out. You know it's Pandora's box that's scary, not Pandora herself, right? She's not a monster, just some ancient Greek chick with poor impulse control. After exploring the deck a bit, we get another prompt. Can't read this one at all, so I went with the first option again. Decisive! That girl and kid I left behind in a boat with a possible murderer will surely respect me if I keep blindly choosing the first option each time. I opened a door and walked through it after the prompt, so I guess it had something to do with whether or not I should explore the interior of the Pandora. The next prompt gave me two near identical options and a third I couldn't make out, but the first two suggested that Arisa was with me at this point and that we're choosing which room or direction to check out. I did the first option again. Decisive! Fingers crossed that if there's a body on this spooky boat, she can be the one to bump into it in the dark. I did all the climbing after all. At this point, I was hurrying through text to see if something else would happen but got stopped at a final multiple choice prompt, halfway through trying to read it when the last alarm went off. So much for all the murdering. Maybe it's an avant garde type of murder mystery where you only find out in the final act that someone died?

Let's see what I missed: First prompt was as I suspected, where I either volunteer to climb up (after being asked to by the crewman) or I try to dragoon Arisa into doing it instead like the manliest man who ever sailed the seven seas (she straight up slaps you across the chops if you try to suggest this, by the way). Bonus NG+ third option is to chicken out completely. Is the bonus route meant to be comedic, or is it because I already know that there's something terrifying on this accursed ship? Second prompt wasn't about exploring the interior—we'd already decided to do that as a group since it was cold as balls outside—but came after Kenji thought he spotted a figure higher up on the deck. You can either try to wave it off as his imagination, or suggest to him that it's some kind of phantom out to eat his soul because, hey, we've already been an amazing big brother figure to him so far. After entering the empty dance hall, we find there's no power and the crewman leaves to find the bridge. The rest then introduce themselves to make everyone less anxious: the skinny guy was a newspaper reporter, as the protagonist had assumed. The other beautiful woman was a doctor. Arisa then introduced her grandfather (who was winded from all the walking), herself, and her cousin, and the third prompt came after the thin guy then asked if I was another relative. First option is to tell the truth and say you're Arisa's friend, second to say boyfriend (that's why these two differed by a single kanji), and third to say a fellow cousin. Arisa is extremely adamant that the second and third options are incorrect if you should choose them. Damn, girl. Looks like the Dynasty isn't the only ship sinking tonight. The last prompt, that I didn't answer but was probably going to pick the first option anyway (decisive!), was after Arisa asked me to accompany her exploring the rest of the ship, with the responses being 1) "sure", 2) "no, I'll stay here since I'm worried about the other passengers", or 3) "uh, wait, I think I'm getting sick?" followed by a lot of fake coughing. Truly the acme of heroism.

Sadly, that's about as far into this groovy mystery as I was able to get. I'd estimate after we all go our separate ways that one (or possibly more) of the ten people named so far turns up deceased and we all start distrusting each other while waiting for a rescue; if the murder victim was caught in that explosion back on the Dynasty it's going to be hard to figure out who killed them if they're at the bottom of the ocean. Not while Fish Police remains cancelled anyway. Hey, pour one out for CBS's Fish Police: the true victim in all of this.

How Well Has It Aged?: As Well As The Titanic. VNs have come a long way since the '90s sound novel era, yet even those being produced on PlayStation at this time could probably fork out for some voice acting. All we get here are a few atmosphere-setting tunes and some passable foley work. It's hard to judge the story itself since I can't read it but the many branches suggests there are some variations to the narrative that might be entertaining to explore across multiple playthroughs, especially since (as stated) some prompts only appear in subsequent runs. For instance, what would a full coward% run look like? Do I just abandon everyone to die? I could certainly see this protag physically throwing Kenji at the murderer to buy himself some time. Of course, it'd be helpful if there were a fast skip text button or some visual representation of the story flowchart where you could jump directly to the prompts not yet explored, but I suspect both of those were later VN QoL additions. Let's just say that this was mostly unplayable for language barrier reasons and move on.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: I Think We're Ship Out of Luck. Athena's IPs went to Hamster but I strongly suspect they only cared about the arcade games in that library. I don't really see them introducing a "Visual Novel Archives" series on Switch et al, as it seems a bit out of character, but then VNs are as popular now as they've ever been (especially in the west). Even so, I suspect both Yakouchuu games will be—much like the good ship Pandora—abandoned and left to rot.

Retro Achievements Earned: N/A. (Darn, this could've been a very easy set to complete.)

Current Ranking

1. Super Mario 64 (Ep. 1)
2. Diddy Kong Racing (Ep. 6)
3. Perfect Dark (Ep. 19)
4. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Ep. 3)
5. Donkey Kong 64 (Ep. 13)
6. Doom 64 (Ep. 38)
7. Space Station Silicon Valley (Ep. 17)
8. Goemon's Great Adventure (Ep. 9)
9. Bomberman Hero (Ep. 26)
10. Pokémon Snap (Ep. 11)
11. Tetrisphere (Ep. 34)
12. Rayman 2: The Great Escape (Ep. 19)
13. Banjo-Tooie (Ep. 10)
14. Rocket: Robot on Wheels (Ep. 27)
15. Mischief Makers (Ep. 5)
16. Super Smash Bros. (Ep. 25)
17. Mega Man 64 (Ep. 18)
18. Forsaken 64 (Ep. 31)
19. Wetrix (Ep. 21)
20. Harvest Moon 64 (Ep. 15)
21. Bust-A-Move '99 (Ep. 40)
22. Hybrid Heaven (Ep. 12)
23. Blast Corps (Ep. 4)
24. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Ep. 2)
25. Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Ep. 4)
26. Tonic Trouble (Ep. 24)
27. Densha de Go! 64 (Ep. 29)
28. Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren 2 (Ep. 32)
29. Snowboard Kids (Ep. 16)
30. Spider-Man (Ep. 8)
31. Bomberman 64 (Ep. 8)
32. Jet Force Gemini (Ep. 16)
33. Mickey's Speedway USA (Ep. 37)
34. Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Ep. 7)
35. Body Harvest (Ep. 28)
36. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Ep. 33)
37. Gauntlet Legends (Ep. 39)
38. Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! (Ep. 29)
39. 40 Winks (Ep. 31)
40. Buck Bumble (Ep. 30)
41. Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage (Ep. 20)
42. Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1 (Ep. 39)
43. Conker's Bad Fur Day (Ep. 22)
44. Gex 64: Enter the Gecko (Ep. 33)
45. BattleTanx: Global Assault (Ep. 13)
46. Last Legion UX (Ep. 36)
47. Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (Ep. 9)
48. Cruis'n Exotica (Ep. 37)
49. San Francisco Rush 2049 (Ep. 4)
50. Iggy's Reckin' Balls (Ep. 35)
51. Fighter Destiny 2 (Ep. 6)
52. Charlie Blast's Territory (Ep. 36)
53. Big Mountain 2000 (Ep. 18)
54. Nushi Tsuri 64: Shiokaze ni Notte (Ep. 35)
55. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (Ep. 14)
56. Tetris 64 (Ep. 1)
57. Mahjong Hourouki Classic (Ep. 34)
58. Milo's Astro Lanes (Ep. 23)
59. International Track & Field 2000 (Ep. 28)
60. NBA Live '99 (Ep. 3)
61. Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Ep. 5)
62. Command & Conquer (Ep. 17)
63. International Superstar Soccer '98 (Ep. 23)
64. South Park Rally (Ep. 2)
65. Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (Ep. 7)
66. Eikou no St. Andrews (Ep. 1)
67. Rally Challenge 2000 (Ep. 10)
68. Monster Truck Madness 64 (Ep. 11)
69. F-1 World Grand Prix II (Ep. 3)
70. F1 Racing Championship (Ep. 2)
71. Sesame Street: Elmo's Number Journey (Ep. 14)
72. Wheel of Fortune (Ep. 24)
73. Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (Ep. 15)
74. Yakouchuu II: Satsujin Kouro (Ep. 40)
75. Mario no Photopi (Ep. 20)
76. Blues Brothers 2000 (Ep. 12)
77. Dark Rift (Ep. 25)
78. Mace: The Dark Age (Ep. 27)
79. Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. (Ep. 21)
80. Ready 2 Rumble Boxing (Ep. 32)
81. 64 Oozumou 2 (Ep. 30)
82. Madden Football 64 (Ep. 26)
83. Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals (Ep. 22)
84. Heiwa Pachinko World 64 (Ep. 38)

If there's two things I enjoy, it's Zeldersatzes and not having to pay anyone money. Fortunately, Snoozy Kazoo's Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion—a title so literal it makes the Japanese light novel industry sigh and wonder aloud how and when the art of subtlety up and died (though if it did, I doubt it'd tell anyone)—is a game that delivers on both of those beloved pastimes. As Turnip Boy, the titular rascally root vegetable, the player is forced to perform tasks for the avaricious onion mayor of Veggieville to pay off an exorbitant tax hike on his greenhouse property. He accomplishes this by wandering around the world in a top-down manner, entering dungeons, solving puzzles, finding items that expand his traversal capabilities, fighting bosses, and repeating the loop as often as is needed. The game's pretty flagrant about the whole Zeldersatz thing—though, like many I've observed in the past, tends to prioritize one aspect over the rest: specifically, the parts in Zelda where it leans harder on the "-adventure" half of its sub-genre categorization and has you provide items to the specific NPCs that request them.

It's not long before Turnip Boy finds a sword, but many of the other items and puzzles tend to revolve around horticulture: the local vicinity is full of plants that need a little watering (the watering can being the very first item you find, which Turnip Boy steals from a blind elderly neighbor like the hero he is) and these are often the linchpin for the environmental puzzles that bar your progress. Boomblooms create bombs that can destroy barriers, though you might need the Bomberman-style boots to kick them into place first, while others might produce damaging fireballs or warp portals. The game will periodically roll out new plant puzzles in the dungeons which then allow for you to explore further around the overworld, beyond where you've seen similar roadblocks, for health upgrades and a few superficial collectibles like documents (receipts, love letters, heavy books, historical records; Turnip Boy tears them all up for fun) and fancy new headwear.

Even if the game tends to focus on a lot of silliness about sapient vegetables eluding their legally-mandated tithes while getting their haberdashery on, there's some darker edges to the game's backstory that find themselves sneaking into view whenever you visit the game's subterranean zones, particularly with regards to the previous occupants of the planet. I was mildly impressed that the game's lore involved more than just meme references and brassy Brassica rapa running amok; one boss in particular was kinda heartbreaking to deal with, albeit a tad ballbreaking too (I had some pretty serious trouble avoiding all those toxic pools). There's also a considerable number of NPCs given the game's tiny size with their own distinct personalities and foibles, and it's worth remembering whenever they mention something they want; chances are, you'll find it half the game later and will need to rack your brain about who may have mentioned dyes or spray paint or a missing apple-cat.

The game's size is often its biggest strength as well as detriment. For one, the game eschews maps completely as each of its areas and dungeons are small enough to not really necessitate them. Some, like the requisite maze that teleports you back to the entrance if you mess up, wouldn't work with them regardless. The overworld is easy enough to navigate though there are times when you might need to backtrack some ways to deliver items to someone; one exchange of correspondence between two tubers has you cycle back and forth between the bottom of one dungeon and the end of the aforementioned maze, which is almost certainly not worth the two free hats you get out of it. I would also say that the game's combat is not its strong suit, as it suffers from some iffy hitbox detection on its weapons and the all-too-probable result of an enemy trapping you in a corner and stun-locking you to death. Your only combat options are the sword and a dodge "trip", the latter ideal for avoiding harm in addition to taxation, but most boss fight arenas will also provide boomblooms that might need some figuring out to use effectively (but tend to be worth the trouble given their damage output).

Overall, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a goofy, slight, occasionally amusing (and occasionally grim) Zeldersatz that, well, has the sort of name that might easily draw your attention as it did mine when I was choosing what to play this week. It's not the strongest in its category by a long shot but its charms are innumerable—in addition to the subjective quality of the humor, the eclectic soundtrack and clean pixel art are both pretty solid—and worth slaking one's curiosity about. I'll have to keep a potato eye out for Turnip Boy's next adventure, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, which looks to be a great deal more substantial in addition to the usual perks that come from a more confident sequel.

(I know, I know, I probably should've picked an XBLA game this week given the number. I'm fresh out though.)

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Mega Archive, your monthly examination of the best (and the rest) of what the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive had to offer the world. 1993 continues apace with another mix of, and let's be honest here, mostly trash. Well, that's perhaps too harsh, but my god do we have a continued downward incline of quality with some of the "highlights" this episode. That said, we do have some genuinely great games too, and those are what keep me going as we move ever closer to 1994 on the horizon. (Not that 1994 will suddenly improve things, but hey. Sometimes reading all about bad games can be just as fun. What combination of factors led to such messes, and so on.)

Let's take stock here before we get into the list proper: three sports games, two licensed games, more Amiga refugees, the most flagrant Sonic clone yet, and something that's not even a game. Oh, and another case of a second sequel to a Sega classic I didn't even know had a first sequel, following from Golden Axe III from a few entries ago. I'd make excuses and say we'll have a banger assortment ready for review in April to make up for it—which will be a Mega Archive CD, rejoice—but it's honestly going to get worse before it gets better now that we're in the shovelware rush that was the 1993 holiday season. Good thing I'm only doing wiki research for these and not trying to play them for real, huh? I'll leave the Blight Club games to the experts.

Oh right, we also hit 500 games covered on Mega Archive. Whee. I'd be more excited for the milestone if it wasn't for the fact we're nowhere near done. Still, that's a lot of Sega tapes, huh? Maybe I should make some graphs or something. Instead of graphs for now, how about this enormous spreadsheet of the Mega Archive, its many featured games, and links to previous entries? (Good thing to keep open as you read this in case you want to refer back to previously-covered games whenever I mention one.)

Part XXXIX: 491-500 (October '93 - November '93)

491: Wonder Library / Electronic Book Decoder for X'Eye

• Developer: Victor Entertainment
• Publisher: Victor Entertainment
• JP Release: 1993-10-08
• NA Release: 1995
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Miscellaneous
• Theme: Reading is Fundamentally Not What the Mega Drive was About
• Premise: Hey kids, *sits on a chair backwards* high-scores and Tetris kill screens are all good and great but you know what's really poggers? Literacy.
• Availability: Extremely rare cart. Might be the least available thing we've covered yet.
• Preservation: So, this thing. It's an ebook reader that was built to be used on the Wondermega, otherwise known as the X'Eye in North America, which was a Mega Drive and Sega CD hybrid. You put this cart in the Mega Drive slot and then an .EBXA format ebook in the CD drive and then you could read it on your Wondermega, I think is the idea. As you might expect I couldn't really get too far with the emulated version, but I did see the title screen. Remember Wonder Dog? He's all over this software too; I guess they were trying to turn him into a mascot for the platform. Sega co-created the Wondermega with Victor, who are also the ones who put this "game" out. The X'Eye fared even worse: its pack-in "games" were Prize Fighter, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, and a karaoke CD that included "Achy Breaky Heart" and "Two Princes". Yikes. Anyway, a hybrid Mega Drive/Sega CD made some amount of sense at the time, but these peripheral products for it far less so.
• Wiki Notes: There's no page for it and I didn't make one. It's ebook reader software, after all. I'm including it on here anyway though because it's kind of neat.

492: Columns III: Revenge of Columns / Columns III: Taiketsu! Columns World

• Developer: Sega
• Publisher: Sega (JP) / Vic Tokai (NA)
• JP Release: 1993-10-15
• NA Release: March 1994
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: Columns
• Genre: Puzzle
• Theme: Isn't It Ionic, Don't You Think?
• Premise: Is this puzzle sequel more like Tetris or Puyo Puyo? Little of column A, little of column B.
• Availability: Available on Steam, along with the first game. The second can be bought on Switch.
• Preservation: We move onto Sega's own match-3 puzzle game franchise, something they tried to make happen several times with mixed results, and with Columns III specifically we see the pendulum shift closer to Puyo Puyo as it takes on a more madcap cartoonish aesthetic and a more multiplayer-focused set of mechanics. The old Columns had you trying to hold on for as long as you could, but this one's all about crushing your opponent in as definitive and humiliating a way as possible. That means stacking up points you earn from breaking gems and spending them on attacking your opponent, which has the added benefit of destroying whatever their current piece is: bonus points if you can do it just before it lands in a spot that sets off a major chain for them (or was a super valuable magic gem). If you're proficient in setting up combos, you can also dump special trap gems on your opponent that messes up their field in a similar way to the power-ups in Tetris Battle Gaiden: penalties like making their whole field monochrome, or flipped upside down. This sequel's multiplayer focus was inspired by the arcade-only second game, Columns II: The Voyage Through Time, and would later make it to arcades itself along with (after a long while) Wii Virtual Console and Steam. It's also one of the fifty or so MD games to support the Team Player/Sega Tap peripheral, which allowed for up to five simultaneous players just in case you had four friends you wanted to subject to Columns.
• Wiki Notes: Very little was needed here. Just a header and minor edits.

493: Pebble Beach Golf Links

• Developer: T&E Soft
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: 1993-10-29
• NA Release: January 1994
• EU Release: April 1994
• Franchise: True Golf Classics / New 3D Golf Simulation
• Genre: Golf
• Theme: Golf
• Premise: Golf
• Availability: Probably a little too dated to see any rereleases.
• Preservation: Oh boy. Golf. This is the first of T&E Soft's flagship golf series, New 3D Golf Simulation (True Golf Classics in the US), to hit the Mega Drive and it would be followed by three others named for and set on different courses (Pebble Beach Golf Links is in California, but you probably knew that). However, this was the only one to get a localization. The Saturn would get even more of the things, so I'll look forward to the day we get to that system (no promises; that would be a bleak project regardless of what Isekai Ojisan might tell us). As you could reasonably interpret from the name of the franchise, it's going for a simulation-style that uses basic vectors and the like to give you a vague sense of distance from the hole, though you'll be relying on information provided by the UI most of the time. While there are a huge amount of numbers and gauges it's fairly accessible, albeit incredibly slow due to all the 3D gumming up the works; I imagine the next-gen versions play a little faster. The only other T&E-developed game we've seen so far on the Mega Archive is Super Hydlide back near the system's launch, so this might be a step up (Psy-O-Blade and UndeadLine were theirs too, but the ports were handled by other companies). It'll be nothing but golf games from them from here on out though, including one more before we're done with 1993.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double dip. Needed all MD releases/box art/screenshots.

494: Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!

• Developer: Tengen
• Publisher: Tengen
• JP Release: 1993-12-25
• NA Release: November 1993
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Platformer (Mascot)
• Theme: Environmentalism, Oddly Enough.
• Premise: "I'll let you copy my homework but change a few things so no-one finds out." - Sonic Team, 1993.
• Availability: Awesomely out of print.
• Preservation: I know it seems crazy in this post-Superstars world but there was a time where people were eager to copy Sonic and rake in at least some fraction of the dough Sega made on the games and the license via his various extracurricular endeavors. Tengen was probably getting bored of porting over Atari arcade games made in the mid-80s and took a chance on a Sonic-killer with Awesome Possum, which aimed to deliver what the hedgehog was lacking: sanctimonious eco-warrior condemnation that took the form of esoteric nature quizzes between levels that you were made to feel bad about whenever you got one wrong. Love to get talked down to about how little recycling I do while jumping on robots as a cartoon rodent (fine, marsupial). Attempts to replicate the speed of Sonic, already dangerously close to being unplayable, coupled with Bubsy's loquaciousness (why was he an inspiration?) sees Awesome Possum fall way short of the mark of being a decent platformer, let alone the type of paragon that could topple Sonic from his throne. Still, points for trying.
• Wiki Notes: Respect, this page was already pretty complete. Just needed the US box art (weird, since we had the JP one already) and a header image. That image of a gallery of animals looking disdainfully at you for a wrong trivia answer seemed perfect, somehow.

495: Pro Moves Soccer

• Developer: ASCII Entertainment / BGS Development
• Publisher: ASCII Entertainment
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: November 1993
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Soccer
• Theme: Soccer
• Premise: Soccer
• Availability: Nothin' doin'.
• Preservation: I couldn't say I was expecting much from a US-exclusive soccer game (way to pick the most soccer-friendly territory there, lads) that our own wiki had never heard of, but I was hit with quite the upbeat jam as soon as the title screen loaded. Turns out the composer for this game was one Jesper Kyd, of eventual Hitman and Assassin's Creed fame, who really was a kyd at the time: 21 years old and freshly emerged from the homegrown Amiga demo scene as a fledgling pro VGM composer. This is one of his earliest known game projects: he and his company Zyrinx (a proto-IO Interactive) would go on to make Sub-Terrania for Genesis the following year. Zyrinx was subcontracted here on behalf of BGS Development, the Danish half of this Europe/Japan team-up (again, the two regions that did not receive this soccer game) with computer game and peripheral developers ASCII; they'd worked together previously on the top-down racer Double Clutch, and after this neither of them would work on a Mega Drive game again (though ASCII would be very active on the Saturn). As for the game, well... it's soccer. It's not even good soccer. That's why I filled most of this blurb with behind-the-scenes stuff. Since it's a US-based game and they don't really follow the local teams so much, it exclusively features 32 national sides including "Cameroun", "Rumania", and the globally-acknowledged soccer powerhouse that is the Jamaican national team (this was the year Cool Runnings came out, so maybe representing Jamaican sports was just the trend at the time).
• Wiki Notes: New page! Don't see these too often. Just wish it was for a more interesting game.

496: The Chaos Engine / Soldiers of Fortune

• Developer: The Bitmap Brothers
• Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte (NA) / MicroProse (EU)
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: November 1993
• EU Release: July 1994
• Franchise: The Chaos Engine
• Genre: Shooter
• Theme: Steampunk
• Premise: Victorian-era UK has been devastated from within due to a retro-engineered "Chaos Engine" computer and its endless hordes of mutated creatures and automatons. Sort of like a clockwork Skynet. A group of mercenaries enter the beleagured nation to destroy the source of the ruin.
• Availability: It's on Steam, or at least the PC version is.
• Preservation: Here we are with The Chaos Engine, the fourth Bitmap Brothers game to make it to the Mega Drive and probably the best known of theirs outside the UK (albeit under the name Soldiers of Fortune instead). It's a top-down shooter with multiple playable protagonists and a grim 2000AD steampunk aesthetic, named after and based loosely upon the William Gibson/Bruce Sterling novel The Difference Engine which kickstarted the steampunk genre in much the same way Gibson's earlier Neuromancer did for cyberpunk (Gibson himself seems like a very nice guy, so why he keeps inventing -punk subgenres is beyond me). As I've said about every previous Bitmap Brothers game featured on the Mega Archive, it looks great but plays kinda whatever; the visuals were always enough to charm the '90s British gaming press into giving these middling games rave reviews which, well, I never had a whole lot of respect for those guys even if I do live here. The Chaos Engine is ideally suited for two players, since it's a bit tough to challenge solo, and the many characters offer different ratios of hardiness and skill versatility: it's usually best to be the tank yourself and depend on your AI companion's support abilities.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double dip. Just minor edits.

497: Cliffhanger

• Developer: Malibu Interactive
• Publisher: Sony Imagesoft
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: November 1993
• EU Release: November 1993
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Brawler
• Theme: Never Letting Go
• Premise: John Lithgow, back when he used to be a scary presence instead of a goofy one, has stolen a bunch of money from the US Treasury and only Sly Stallone's guilt-ridden former mountain ranger can stop him and his gang of merc thieves. Also Michael Rooker's here too.
• Availability: Licensed game.
• Preservation: Part of the fun of this feature for me is getting to relive my memories of all the crappy '90s action movies that were deemed important enough to get video game adaptations. To be clear, I love crappy '90s action movies as much as I do crappy 16-bit video games (which is to say, a lot) so this is right in my wheelhouse. I won't regale the whole plot here—I recommend just watching it as there's much to appreciate in how schlocky it is (I'll just say someone watched a whole lot of Die Hard back then (it was me))—but the genre the developers landed on was a belt-scroller brawler which, honestly, kinda suits the movie. You still get guns but it's mostly punching and maybe some climbing sequences. Not going to claim for a second that it's actually good (like most licensed games of the era, it feels very hurried) but how many Nintendo games have Lithgow as a final boss? It's just this and Harry and the Hendersons for NES (and man, did that game go off script). We'll be seeing this game again real soon on Mega Archive CD, as it—like most Genesis-to-Sega CD conversions—saw enough new content to be considered a separate entity.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip. Screenshots and release edits.

498: Disney's Aladdin

• Developer: Virgin Games
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: 1993-11-12
• NA Release: November 1993
• EU Release: 1993-11-11
• Franchise: Disney
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: "A Whole New World" is One of Them
• Premise: Homeless NEET catfishes a rich girl by pretending to be a foreign prince and gets away with it and they end up together and everything's just fine. Also, like Pekora, he bought a faqin monkey?!
• Availability: Digital Eclipse revamped it and made it available on many modern platforms. Downside is you have to buy The Lion King with it. (SNES Aladdin is DLC, too bad.)
• Preservation: As far as Disney-licensed stuff is concerned, Virgin Games was looking to take Capcom's crown as the King of the Swingers, the Jungle VIP (wait, that's the other game) and it's clear from Disney's Aladdin that they just can't wait to be king (...) by how adroitly they took the license and turned it into a great-looking platformer with plenty of surprises and a pretty decent approximation of the movie's score. I think this was the only Virgin Disney platformer I ended up liking enough to complete: the ones that followed felt worse to play and were way harder besides. I guess kudos are in store for not just taking the obvious route and making a Prince of Persia ersatz. I think it was after this game that Virgin Games officially became Virgin Interactive, but I don't think our wiki makes the distinction and nor should it.
• Wiki Notes: It was missing the JP box art and release. They got that Aladdin in Japan too, turns out.

499: Dragon's Revenge

• Developer: Tengen
• Publisher: Tengen
• JP Release: 1993-12-10
• NA Release: November 1993
• EU Release: January 1994
• Franchise: Crash/Crush Pinball
• Genre: Pinball
• Theme: Dragon Deez (Pin)Balls Across Yo' Table
• Premise: The dragon got woke up by all the pinball you've been doing in his lair and, boy, he's just steaming mad is what.
• Availability: Virtual Console. It was on that while that was still a thing. Otherwise, best bet is probably just playing Demon's Tilt as it's mostly the same deal.
• Preservation: We have another Tengen game so soon after the last, and I'm happy to report that Dragon's Revenge is a better game than Awesome Possum (as hard as it might be to believe anything could be better than Awesome Possum). This is the sequel to Devil Crash a.k.a. Dragon's Fury, but it's one of those "in name only" sequels like the British Strider 2 where its original Japanese creators (Naxat/Compile, who were busy making Jaki Crush instead) are long gone and it's just plain ol' Tengen on both development and publishing duty. As with the previous game, it's some regular pinball couched in a dark fantasy aesthetic that occasionally tosses enemies on the field for you to roll over as well as a bunch of other business that you wouldn't see on a physical pinball table. I know pinball purists are always in two minds about that kind of stuff, but I generally prefer it when video game pinball takes advantage of the medium to introduce new features and ideas that wouldn't normally fly. Bonus points if Kirby's there. Kirby's not in this, I don't think, but then I didn't get too far in it.
• Wiki Notes: Skeleton, so it needed a lot of work.

500: F1 / Formula One

• Developer: Lankhor
• Publisher: Domark
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: November 1993 (as Formula One)
• EU Release: 1993-11-05 (as F1)
• Franchise: Formula 1
• Genre: Racing
• Theme: The Bass Riff From "The Chain" By Fleetwood Mac (In the UK, Anyway)
• Premise: Take pole position in the world's fastest racing series in this barebones approximation of Drew and Danny's favorite motorsport.
• Availability: If you're looking for a modern F1 game I believe there's a few.
• Preservation: I wish I had something more exciting for the 500th entry than this standard-ass Formula 1 racer. I think it has the shortest name of any Mega Drive game, if that's something? It's not? OK. I tried. (If this game was made today we would call that title "Search Engine Suicide".) So here's F1: it's nowhere even near the first F1 game on the system, which feels like the only way you could get away with calling your game just "F1". It's based on an Amiga game, though perhaps that goes without saying given the publisher, and we once again also have to credit UK companies Tiertex (sound) and The Kremlin (extra graphics) for some additional contract work. Lankhor isn't British though; they're French, and worked on a bunch of racing games before and after this game before going under in 2001 (we'll meet them one more time on Mega Archive). I have to admit, F1's got a decent framerate for a Genesis game with some basic polygons in it, but the rest of the presentation doesn't really do much for me; though most of that is because it's Formula 1 and that alone is enough to send me to sleep. What I will say is that it's the fifth best game I've ever played that shares its name with a keyboard key (after X, N, D, and Control).
• Wiki Notes: Another skeleton. Text, screenshots, releases, the whole shebang.