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.
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.
If you were an animated psychiatrist in the late-'90s/early-'00s it was required that you were all squiggly.No idea what the question was but when in doubt just answer 'Giant Bomb'. Well, unless it's someone from TSA asking you about the contents of your luggage.I dunno, something about Yuyu just getting the housework done in the middle of our conversation kind of felt rude. Attend to your guest, dang it.
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.
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.
I think the protagonist is a frog. Kinda looks like a duck here though.I suspect this has a Wild West theme because most of these gameplay screens end up looking like the Colorado Rockies.The classic 'finger down the gun barrel' trick. These Story Mode vignettes were fun and, thankfully, dialogue-free.
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.
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.
The four main lines of this version of the game. I love that these photos all appear as if they were taken by a Game Boy Camera.The graphics are... well, honestly, this is about as lifelike as the WonderSwan could probably handle. At least I can tell that's a tunnel coming up. Ooh, speaking of which I should probably slow down, huh?That's the station at the back, and that's me in the train speeding right past it because I underestimated my braking speed again. See you in hell, commuters!
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.
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.
Given the limited screen space, the game does a pretty good job of showing the road ahead as it creeps into view. The better WSC games definitely look more in line with what the GBA could pull off.Gracing the high score table with wit and decorum, as is my way.Look at this Ford Fiesta-looking box on wheels. Am I partaking in a race or a grocery run?
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.
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.
Remember to call 707-EXIT-FLU for all your Detective Conan questions. Our anime advisory panel is standing by to help.I dunno what this says but going by the background I imagine it's something like 'When DEATH Gives You Lemons'.My four means of interacting with the world: skateboard, magnifying glass, journal, bowtie. What more does a child detective need? (Please don't say 'a gun', I don't think it's that kind of anime.)
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.
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.
I didn't realize wanting to skip transformation sequences made me history's greatest monster. Lesson learned.
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.
You haven't enjoyed Little Shop of Horrors until you've read the original Shakespeare version. For one, he didn't wuss out by nixing the apocalypse ending. Fie on thee, thou accurs'd arboreal menace.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Sometimes you don't have that one linchpin to aim for and it becomes a slow battle of attrition. It'd be nice to get a yellow in that valley on the left though.
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
I'm in a perilous spot here, but there's two places where a white bubble would really help. Of course, no such bubble is forthcoming.
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
I wish. Still have sixteen minutes left.
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
I kinda love that Not-Ryu has the Taito logo on his back instead of the usual Akuma 'ten' kanji.
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.
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
I'd say this was the scene of a luxury cruise ship's elegant dining suite, but it kinda looks more like a regular wedding reception. Someone on development staff must've conveniently got hitched during production. Mazel tov.
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
Dynasty more like Dyblasty. I'll be here all week, folks. Not on this ship, though, since it's about to sink.
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
This is just that earlier screenshot except they just took all the decorations down and turned the lights off. I can't be fooled! Unless it's another language!
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
Wait, am I driving the ship now? In Japanese? This is like two layers of having no idea what I'm doing. Ooof, where did I leave my antacids...
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.)
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.
Sure thing, I'll just file this away under 'get bent, the government'.
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).
Definitely looks dangerous. Let me just smack it with my shovel a few times though. For science.
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.)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Welcome once again to Explormer of the Week: a feature wherein I play explormers and nothing but explormers. Well, that's probably how it appears by this point—I'm not going to argue that coming up with a new spin on reviewing these things isn't getting as challenging as the developers themselves coming up with new variations. The aquatic, submarine-based Depths of Sanity would appear to be a novel take on the "explore a map and use upgrades to make progress" format... if I hadn't already played so many of these things that I quickly recognized where it may have borrowed a few ideas, namely Aquaria, Song of the Deep, and The Aquatic Adventures of the Last Human. Still, I'm not averse to getting my "Ecco the Dolphin Presents Cask-Strength Thalassophobia" business on, so let's go ahead and frame this game up right.
Depths of Sanity is presented in media res some time after explorer entrepreneur Abraham Douglas is fished out the ocean after his single-minded quest to find out what happened to his company's submarine craft The Baroness and its handpicked crew of five, one of whom was his own son Clay. They had been investigating a "bloop" signal from deep below the ocean's surface before their communication was suddenly cut off, and so Douglas took off in an adaptable mini-submersible to hunt them down. He relays all this to a company therapist after he wakes up, with the player living through his adventure as he tells a dark tale of visual hallucinations, ancient architecture of unknown provenance, monstrously deformed versions of common maritime fauna, and a trail of text and audio logs left behind by the crew that chronicles their unfortunate fates and the moments in their lives that led them there. Douglas himself goes through some shit, to put it mildly, so the game definitely has that "psychologically unravelling hero in the face of inscrutable madness" Lovecraft tone on lock. A natural fit given the themes of the deep ocean being a dark and terrifying place at the best of times.
If you can put up with its constant pinging, the sonar is a handy way to find secret destructible walls as well as a workable light source (of sorts).
As you might expect, most of the time you're exploring aquatic locales dealing with unusually large versions of lionfish, sharks, octopuses, pistol shrimps (which are real, but maybe not the "Yosemite S(c)am(pi)" you're picturing), moray eels, and other already-dangerous sea life. As you keep descending, you see new variations of these fish with some gross mutilations and even more dangerous (and occasionally bizarre) attacks to elude. Your craft can move in any direction—there's an alternate control scheme where you simply hold the movement stick to go in that direction, otherwise you're meant to turn with that stick and hit an acceleration button to move in a "tank controls" manner—and most of your weapons tend to only fire in the direction you're facing. Upgrades include a light for dark areas, hull upgrades that reduce damage or allow for harsher environmental conditions, multiple weapon firing types, torpedoes and depth charges for alternative firepower sources, and a handy little Castlevania backdash thing that is more useful than it first appears. The map tech is fairly basic but it does highlight doors with colors relating to what they need to be opened (a red line indicates an explosive you need to detonate with the right weapon in order to open the passageway, for instance), and the game offers a fair number of fast travel nodes (though it takes a while to unlock them) and save points. Survival is pretty easy outside of boss fights, as most enemies can be safely avoided; they only ever drop health and ammo refills, and even then only sparingly, so if you can avoid them it's best to do so. Some of the more persistent types will get in the way of any investigating though, so those can get fried and added to the menu at Red Lobster for all I care. You can also leave the sub Blaster Master style to explore narrower passageways, and these present their own dangers as you keep in mind your limited oxygen and a very vulnerable one-hit death status outside of the protective hull of the sub.
Overall the gameplay's been pretty standard for one of these, with no particular exceptional characteristics beyond the slightly uncommon submarine/aquatic aspect. If the game stands out at all it's for leaning on that unsettling deep sea atmosphere and the way things get ever darker—both figuratively and literally—as you continue to sink further than any man has been before. The regular influx of logs as they get ever more bleak and distressing, the protagonist's own fracturing mind as he starts to hallucinate that his onboard computer is his dead wife (I suppose this is a Solaris reference, but I can't help but think of Samus and Adam's little chats in Metroid Fusion), some honest-to-goodness body horror as the entity down here communicates to Abe through his employees' waterlogged corpses, and just the way the environment itself appears to be growing more hostile and alien with every vertical kilometer descended. It's been some effective slow-burn horror so far, only slightly let down by the game's MS Paint-friendly graphics (whatever, it's better than anything I could muster up). Decent use of sound design too, though sadly the audio logs aren't voiced.
The loading screens are an opportunity to dump story updates on you, including Abe Douglas's current state of mind. They've been getting a little more desperate lately...
I'm close to the end of the game as I write this—I just entered a thriving biodiverse graveyard of whale carcasses, which is a real thing called a whale fall, but the wiki article doesn't tell you just how gooey these places are close up—and I've been making notes of where to backtrack to once I sweep up the last of the upgrades. The highlights so far, besides the grim storytelling, have been the boss fights: I've narrowly beaten them all on the first attempt, which to me is perfect boss difficulty. Nothing like walking away from a tough fight through the narrowest of margins without having to suffer the ignominy of having to start over after one too many bumps. They can be a bit long and beholden to patterns where it's hard to damage them for a while, but they work within the confines of your limited movement set: it's not like you could reasonably expect to walk away from a full on danmaku battle with how deliberately the sub moves around, but these boss patterns do give you a moment to get your butt in gear and avoid telegraphed attacks. As an overall package Depths of Sanity been pretty solid despite the evident low-budget feel, and I look forward to seeing how much worse everything gets for these doomed sailors. I just looove misery, I dunno what to tell you.
Fairly productive February, given it's the shortest month (even with the little bonus this year). Well, I say productive, if productive can also mean "played and wrote about a lot of games". I'll have to check with Merriam-Webster. (They still haven't gotten back to me about "explormer" yet.) We introduced a new feature on the WonderSwan I'll probably return to a few times until I hit an unholy pentafecta (see Merriam and/or Webster? I know difficult words. Call me an obsequious charlatan, will you?) of five Digimon games; my other regular features are still going strong-ish; and I managed to squeeze in a whole two big high-profile games between the many indies and retros and in so doing reduced my backlog from "catastrophically large" to just "monstrously large". High five, me! Hell ye- huh? How the hell did I miss? Oh, right, the drinking.
Next big game for March will be... hmm, I just realized my "35 in 35" Final Fantasy list is out of date. Might have to address that. Comin' after you, Chaos.
Game of the Month: Super Mario Bros. Wonder
It's no surprise (to me, at least) that the new Mario game was also my favorite of all those I played this month. I love crushing turts (perchance) as much as the next paisano but at the same time what keeps me coming back to these games is the sheer amount of creativity each new Mario squeezes into every square inch of its level design, to the extent that it'll take the time to program in some brand new mechanic or an enemy with a specific type of behavior and have it only exist for that one stage alone. Super Mario Bros. Wonder goes one step even further by allowing you to take some of these mechanics with you: the badge system gives you access to a whole bunch of extra skills in addition to passive boosts (sadly, you can only have one equipped at a time) that can absolutely transform your approach to any given stage. I think my favorite was the vine whip that acts just like the horizontal grappling hook in SteamWorld Dig 2; if you wanted you could probably just waltz through the whole game with it alone, though it obviously works best with vertical levels or those with a lot of solid walls to hook onto. Even the passive badges have serious consideration put behind them: one sprinkles !-blocks around levels like those generated by the Switch Palaces of Super Mario World, and it always astounded me how worthwhile an investment it was to keep that badge equipped as I'd see those blocks everywhere covering pits, blocking enemy-spawner pipes, or dispensing useful power-ups at opportune moments, and I wouldn't be surprised if large chunks of every level were designed with the !-blocks in mind. It's fine to focus on the unpredictable level design variety, the amount of bespoke challenges big and small in its non-uniform length stages, those chatty flora, and the madness that unfolds whenever you pick up one of its Wonder Flowers—and how great it is that the Mario universe is experimenting with psychedelic drugs again? Feels like it's been far too long since the halcyon days of "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy"—but as a gameplay delivery service Super Mario Bros. Wonder has so much happening further down on a subtle level that can be easier to blank on when you're singing its praises to others. I'm just imagining what a Mario Maker 3 with the same specific badge-mandated system as all those expert badge challenge levels could offer to creative armchair designers.
The fact that this and Odyssey had random musical numbers kinda explains why the movie went the direction it did. (Not the Chris Pratt as Mario part. I don't think an adequate explanation will ever surface for that.)Gotta say, these timed combat arenas were not my favorite part of the game. Still, the game can't help but throw around a variety of challenges; Wonder definitely has that ADHD spirit.Damn straight, my doctor keeps saying the same thing. As do the epidemiologists he keeps calling in for consultation. (I'm getting something named after me, I hear. Very exciting.)
What soured the experience a little, as it has in every Mario game since maybe around 3D World, is the post-game super challenging gauntlet, and the reason these things are always super challenging is because there's barely any checkpoints and it's really just an endurance contest to see how many times you want to keep repeating the same 1-2 minute sequence for another opportunity to hit your head against the tougher next one. The first time I finally beat the Final-Final Secret Course I realized I missed the flagpole top by inches (I was invisible at the time, in my defense) and that in order to get the super secret final reward I'd have to replay all ten of its consecutive sequences again. And I did. Twice. It's good that it was the last level because I was thoroughly done with this game after that whole sorry episode was over. I wonder why the Mario devs feel like they need to hold back 100% to all but the most determined individuals? Don't get me wrong, the Secret World levels of Super Mario World were no picnic either, but they still didn't feel the need to make things artificially difficult by depriving you of sufficient checkpointing. Checkpoints exist for two reasons: it makes the game easier, sure, but also makes it far more palatable as you're repeating less of the content over and over ad nauseam. Anyway, rant over. Game's still fantastic by any practical metric and it's only when you compare it to its older siblings and their lack of insecurity about how challenging they need to be that Wonder feels anything less than a modern paragon of the genre. (Rating: 4 out of 5.)
I'm making my way through the few big Sony exclusives left—and given recent news, I don't expect we'll see too many more in the near future—and this sequel to the 2018 God of War reboot, that takes the very angry Greek man who can't get a gyro the way he wants it and transplants him into the great snowy north of "Scandinavia-ish" to contend with some very un-Marvel Aesir and Vanir, was definitely a game I had been anticipating playing even before its 2022 release. Granted, I've recently been less attached to these massive-budget, massive-sized, open-world games that still remain the only AAA single-player game anyone makes any more, but I do still like this particular franchise. God of War: Ragnarok's exploration and storytelling is generally superb, especially the smaller incidental stuff as you walk around and the characters converse to fill time between loading areas (playing this on a PS4, it sure does feel like Kratos and co. spend a lot of time crawling or sidling through cracks, or strolling around Yggdrasil's branches until the next realm opens its spectral doors). There's been a huge expansion in the number of lore-apropos characters that show up to deliver exposition, offer side-quests, or otherwise shoot the shit with our hero team and I'm glad to see also that they switch around your protagonist and his companion more than a few times as the game proceeds for a refreshing change of pace. I even like the villains: this Thor's a boorish, divided drunkard less than pleased about his current lot in life and almost uses violence as an escape from his awkward domestic issues, while Odin's even more of a trickster than Loki and played with a perfect amount of mean, sarcastic derision by former West Wing staffer Richard Schiff. They even gave Atreus two love interests, which is honestly two too many for that little twerp. Given the saga-sized length of the game, easily the match for many JRPGs I've played of late, the characters have plenty of time to grow on you as well as develop on the redemptive arcs they began in the previous God of War. Thoroughly impressed with both the presentation and the parts where you're just roaming around figuring out how to reach and open puzzle-locked chests or hunt the skies for where Odin's many Mountain Dew-colored raven spies are hiding.
The combat's still really meh, though. In theory it's dynamic and exciting as you juggle a hundred different moves to suit the enemies you're fighting, but in practice it's a deeply annoying chaotic mess of a system that feels like Dark Souls if you were in permanent fat-rolling mode and had a whole bunch of elemental facets and colored circles to track. Enemies tend to teleport short distances just so their attacks, once flailing randomly in mid-air due to what look like some very expensive and elaborate animations, now "retroactively" appear to have accurately aimed at you as if you were having a showdown with an online opponent and at least one of you had terrible lag. Healing between battles is a rare privilege, and thus you'll enter so many fights with a sliver of health left looking for death just so you can start that battle again in earnest with a full bar (not like there's any penalty for dying anyway, so why they don't just regen after battles is anyone's guess). Stats make a huge and appreciable difference when it feels like they probably shouldn't given this is an action-adventure title that relies on skill, like parries and dodging. The one good thing is how easily you can bounce between melee and ranged while in the thick of things, dispatching one up-close opponent before quickly switching modes to take down its ranged friend some distance away. Yet it's perplexing that a game with this high a budget that's a sequel on top of everything still has a combat system this sticky and ungainly. I struggled to tolerate the previous game's combat shortcomings long enough to complete its little valkyrie side-quest, but I've no idea if I'll have the same patience to pull that off again here with its numerous superboss "berserker" encounters. Yes, I'm sure I'm missing some nuance or other that'll make the combat considerably more palatable, but the game has a thousand different systems in it; I feel like I'd have to open up a grazing animal and stare at its intestines long enough to divine the arcane solution to make these fights less sucky. And no beast deserves to die for that.
I know Greece invented mathematics but there are way more numbers in this game than there needed to be given the general jock timbre of the original series. It'd be like taking a Donkey Kong game and adding arithmetic to it. (Yes, that was on purpose. Everything I say is on purpose.)Atreus gets more independence in this game, being old enough now that he's not just a squeaky brat, including one relatable adolescent episode where he gets super high while hanging out with an artist chick that speaks in riddles.There's a massive number of bosses just hanging out, waiting for some bald guy to come along and hit them with his flying axe. Happy to oblige.
But hey, we have a mad Viking writing poetry about other Sony first-party games and a talking squirrel voiced by ProZD. So it's not all bad. In fact, outside the combat, very little of it is bad at all. If I had to point to one more issue it's that it did make me think about death a lot; specifically, the death of my PS4 which had a whale of a time running this thing while doing its best (and, I have to give it to 'em, accurate) impression of a jet engine that just ate a whole flock of migrating geese. (Rating: 4 out of 5.)
I now have three retro gaming features now, which I suppose is my own fault for being too cheap to buy anything new. The WonderSwan is a fascinating little guy: the missing link between the Game Boy Color and the Game Boy Advance, released between the two when I guess Bandai figured there was a gap in the market. Since Bandai mostly trucks with anime tie-ins that have limited international recognition (or appeal) they didn't think to release it outside of Japan. Either that, or the GBA torpedoed any plans they might have had cooking. I spent a brief amount of time with five randomly chosen games across both the standard black & white and color models, with Flash Koibito-kun—a puzzle game where a little ninja cupid helps a dude unlucky in love—being the highlight. I'll continue to build that list over this year, though I might not settle into a monthly schedule just yet.
What will remain monthly, at least until November, are the Mega Archive and 64 in 64. This month's Mega Archive had one banger in Shining Force II, which was yet another reminder to play it at some point (I picked it up on Steam a ways back); the memorable Haunting Starring Polterguy with its then-unique premise; and an unfortunate amount of sports games (they always pop out of the woodwork around autumntime). The 39th Episode of 64 in 64 found us entirely unable to avoid the ubiquitous Midway Games with both games having some relation to the western arcade giant: Gauntlet Legends and Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1. Neither were objectionable choices in the end—there are many more Midway games I'd be less eager to try—and while I'd probably suggest finding other ways of playing the original arcade games they're based on, both now occupy semi-respectable mid-table placements in the overall ranking list. (At some point I'm going to have to separate that list into concrete tiers to give people a better impression of what's great, good, whatever, and worth avoiding.)
By the way, your hint for the next 64 in 64 duo is as follows: Two extremely Japanese games, one of which I'm fairly sure is the only game of its genre for the system.
Oh, also, I've finally updated the three most recent "GOTY (Adjusted)" lists as of the end of 2023. 2021 in particular saw a significant amount of reshuffling—including a new number one—though I've not yet played enough of 2022's offerings to work on that year's GOTY Adjusted list yet (that'll definitely change by the end of 2024 though; and who knows? I might even have a top ten for 2023 by then).
Kind of a low-key February, moving through a few of the obscurities I'd been sitting on for a while in the ol' Steam library (and, more recently, a whole lot of EGS freebies too) but I've splurged quite a bit this past month on bundles so I'm back to being spoiled for choice for future IGotW entries. What's wild is that I have thirteen explormers on deck: no idea when I'll get through them all but it's a fortuitous problem to have. Of February '24's four Indie Games of the Week my favorite would probably have to be Joe Richardson's Renaissance-art-inspired shaggy dog story of a graphic adventure game, The Procession to Calvary (#357), in which a bloodthirsty knightess embarks on a quest to murder the only man it would be morally OK to butcher, at least according to the kingdom's new ruler (and naturally the target would be the kingdom's previous ruler, now deposed). As an adventure game it's fairly straightforward and only starts getting a little complicated towards the end with the final scavenger hunt, but the goofs and the striking art style do much to elevate the totally fine gameplay.
The rest of the month's offering were a, uh, jumbled pouch. A heterogeneous haversack, if you will. Golf Club Nostalgia (#355) had an intriguing "last remnants of humanity swirling around the drain" post-apocalyptic bleakness that sliced (or maybe hooked) through the misery with a quiet, contemplative game of golf across the scattered ruins of human civilization while listening to a nostalgia-rich radio station, though any chill atmosphere it was trying to foment was undercut by how frequently annoying it was to try to play the game seriously as a golfing sim rather than just the tone piece I think it was earnestly aiming for. An example of trying to be two things at once and not quite managing either due to the split focus; the old "bird in the hand" dilemma.
Suzy Cube (#356) was a super low-budget attempt to recreate Super Mario 3D Land/World for those of us unwilling or unable to part with the cash Nintendo always demands for their premium first-party offerings (or were already well acquainted with the game). It definitely looks like it cost almost nothing to make, but gameplay-wise it comes pretty close to the fluidity and precision of the Mario games: it's evident the developers spent much of their post-production tweaking time getting the controls down pat, and that was the right call to make.
Finally, there's Costume Quest 2 from last week (#358). Another case of Double Fine delivering on their endearing cartoon charm while sacrificing any deeper nuance or elaborate mechanics or a more focused difficulty curve that other turn-based Indie throwbacks employ to set themselves not only apart from their peers but from the older games they wish to homage, all the while also elevating the format and making a case for themselves as the next step in the evolution of the genre. On the other hand, it seems obvious Costume Quest is meant for kids and teaching them the ropes of this hoary genre by oversimplifying everything was probably more the intended goal. Still, rough to come off Trails from Zero last month and have this be the very next turn-based RPG I play; it doesn't stand a chance in that comparison.
My criteria for "The Bonus Indie" (where do I even come up with these wacky names???) so far has been either games too short or too straightforward to lend themselves to the 1,000 word weekly Indie reviews like the above, or those that might not otherwise qualify. Like this one: LEGO Builder's Journey definitely has an Indie feel from its modest length to its modest aspirations, but it's still published by one of the largest toy manufacturers in the world and the presentation exhibits the sort of budget a company like that would have to throw around on vanity projects. I'm always butting heads whenever I cover an Ori or an UbiArt or something else a major publisher tosses out there in the "smaller games made for less with sometimes an archaic genre construct that collectively we have no better name for than 'Indie'" sphere as an aperitif between their huge-budget tentpoles, so this segment will be a fine place for all those big fishes in little ponds.
I appreciate any Lego game that acknowledges the Lego Shoehorn. The Mighty Undoer itself.
As for the game itself, it's... well, it's a trip. In at least two senses of the term. It follows a parent and child as they hike through the forest to their home, using bricks in the vicinity to build little bridges for themselves across rivers and up inclines. Once they get home, the parent is called away for menial labor making solar panels or sound buffering or something abstract leaving the toy castle the two were building unfinished. The child goes into the basement, crafts themself a helper robot that spits out random pieces, and chases after the parent by first competing in some kind of game show before getting lost in the innards of a massive factory, one that eventually meets up to the mobile platform the parent is working on. The factory starts exploding due to the child's tinkering and the two pursue one another through the wreckage, eventually making it out via a flying machine. I'm not sure if it had any greater meaning to impart, but it kind of felt like I was having a dissociative episode half its duration. The proggy jazz music in some parts didn't help. I want to say it's going for that contemplative, artsy, somewhat entry-level gameplay difficulty puzzle-platformer type of route with its simple enough building puzzles, but there were times where the obtuse nature of the presentation also bled through into what you were meant to do to progress. A few times where I thought I wasn't gleaning the right solution despite the relatively low number of moving parts was actually just the game glitching out, so that was fun. I will say it's a very pretty game and almost kinda daringly weird given the Lego license is one almost as zealously protected and revered as Mario or Disney; that Light Brick Studio were allowed to make something that felt this strange to potter around with is a merit to those wacky Danes and their love of interlocking building blocks, or whatever the non-generic name is for Lego. Otherwise I just thought it was kinda whatever. (3 out of 5.)
The Weeb Weeview
Last time I focused on a trio of anime shows I've been watching that seem to be the big headliners, at least of those that are enjoying their first seasons. Delicious in Dungeon, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and Solo Leveling have all been steadily improving since I sang their virtues last month, so I've definitely been sticking with them. This month I'm changing tracks slightly to talk about three isekai shows that might be a little more divisive, disposable, and/or obscure: isekai's now one of those genres that have become far too preponderous for most anime fans to follow too closely, instead looking for whatever few can break out from that crowd as legitimately great shows and leaving the rest to us hopeless isekai freaks. Your mileage may vary with the following three choices, but they're all shows I've been enjoying for different reasons.
Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I'm Not the Demon Lord
Coming from the Japanese light novel school of giving one's properties overly literal titles, Villainess Level 99 follows Yumiella Darkness, what was at first a side-character from a highschool fantasy otome game (those where a female protagonist has multiple male romantic conquests to pursue) and now host to a reincarnated spirit from Japan. In the original script, Yumiella was an underling of the local mean girl who inexplicably was revealed to be the secret superboss of the game: one considerably more powerful than even the Demon Lord antagonist. Knowing her fate is to die at the hands of the heroine and her harem, Yumiella decides to make more of an effort to ingratiate herself with the student body and avoid "evil" decisions that will push her towards that bad ending. Unfortunately, she's as socially inept as she was in her previous life and her sheer overwhelming power, her affinity for creepy dark magic, and her obliviousness concerning her abnormal hobbies leads her to be misunderstood as a monster more often than not. In fact, half of the student body seems convinced she's the Demon Lord herself. But, yeah, I guess you could get most of that from the title.
Yumiella recently acquired a baby dragon. It looks evil as hell, grew to the size of a bear overnight, and keeps trying to eat people. She loves it.
There's been a few isekai looking to subvert the whole "protagonist is OP" trope—The Eminence in Shadow is a notable example, and obviously there's One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100 before that—but this one's fun because it's couched in a Degrassi/Harry Potter teen romance format and follows relatable themes of being unable to fit in with the social cliques and accidentally poisoning your own reputation through any number of very public faux pas (which is something Harry Potter's author knows well enough too). Yumiella's a blunt character who reveals nothing of her emotions and thoughts to the outside world, though as the protagonist we viewers get plenty of both from her inner monologues as she flops through one misjudged social encounter to the next. Her immediately making an enemy of the game's romantic conquests by effortlessly blowing them all away in the disciplines they're the proudest of—the supercilious mage, the meathead warrior, and the haughty prince—is always funny and would indicate that the romantic content of the original game won't be something she'll get to enjoy in her side-character role, but the provincial noble's son Patrick who has a good head on his shoulders and a more understanding attitude might prove to be a better match for this stone-cold monster-massacring goddess. Tonally it's been an interesting mix of HS shoujo and fantasy shounen so far, though its story has been spinning its wheels a bit for the sake of setting up more of an episodic sitcom format. I also can't forget to mention the banger OP track from Mayu Maeshima: she performed the (equally great) OP for Isekai Ojisan too and I dig her deep singing voice and cool attitude.
The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic
Ken Usato is a self-professed "regular guy" who admires, along with the rest of his school year, the beautiful and brilliant student council president Suzune Inukami and her handsome vice-president Kazuki Ryusen: two exceptional people who feel like higher beings compared to the rest of the school. However, unexpected circumstances affords Usato the chance to befriend both of them, discovering that they have their own insecurities and down-to-earth personalities that make them far more approachable than they first appeared. However, later that same day all three are whisked away to a fantasy world to learn how to be heroes: Usato assumes he was a stray caught up in the summoning spell by accident until he discovers that his magical aptitude was for the rare healing school of magic. This immediately makes him the target of the intense former knight commander Rose, another healer, who then puts him through the most arduous training imaginable to make full use of his magic. Specifically, physically pushing oneself way beyond one's limits while constantly healing any muscle damage and fatigue that occurs. Despite growing buff in mere days, Rose is adamant that Usato only join her as a "Rescue Team" member: those that act as battle medics that are required to charge into the front lines in a non-combat capacity, with the intent of the training being to keep him alive.
I've noticed that the internet seems to be into powerfully built, assertive women of late. The Spike Spiegel 'I want a woman that will literally just kill me' type.
The show's arc is now poised to get into the big war the human kingdom has been preparing for against the demon armies (there's some tragic flashbacks of Rose's to get through first) so the sort of comedic tone it's been displaying so far might be taking a backseat to some battlefield drama before too long. It's not been that "huge" of a show so far in terms of its set-pieces and animation: the slower pace and levity suggests it's a bit more focused on characterization. Usato's an unassuming guy thrown into a situation he's struggling to deal with, but is good-natured enough not to let it change or overwhelm him (though he's been growing more of a backbone as he gets ripped from all the intensive training); his two peers are genuinely nice people who have been using this little adventure to escape their own crushing responsibilities and take a breather, though other responsibilities have taken their place (I particularly like the female lead Suzune, who is a bit of a secret otaku and the only one of the three to be stoked about the current situation); Rose is just a straight up badass hurling entire trees at people with a cold, samurai like attitude; and we have at least two cute mascots now including a large blue grizzly cub very particular about who gets to pet him that Usato has to carry around everywhere as part of his training. It's not the kind of show that keeps you on the edge of your seat (at least not yet; this war arc might prove otherwise) but it's solidly written and animated and one of my low-key faves for this season.
My Instant Death Ability is Overpowered
Another isekai playing around with the "OP Protagonist" trope, though in a slightly more unexpected direction. The lethargic and video game-obsessed student Yogiri Takatou is isekai'd while on a field trip, along with his entire class, by a woman announcing herself as a Sage: a human whose prodigious magical powers has made them something closer to a deity. She immediately kills the teacher and bus driver, adults too old to receive her blessing, and gives all the other students a magical infusion complete with distinct abilities and status screens to peruse and challenges them to become Sages like herself, or else be drained of their magic potential as living batteries for the world's elite Sage class. The few students that escape this "gift" are abandoned by their fellow classmates to be bait for an approaching dragon, including Yogiri. However, Yogiri does have a unique ability of his own: he simply has to wish a being to perish and it does, instantly. Using this skill, he defeats the dragon and escapes the bus with the only other survivor of the "non-Sage candidates", the plucky straight woman character Tomochika Dannora, and works to catch up with his double-crossing classmates while getting caught up in any number of incidental struggles along the way.
The Dark God's flying army of invincible demon soldiers. Or, well, it was a moment ago.
I read the manga of this first and was floored by some of the big twists around the extent and source of Yogiri's powers and the more parodic tone of the story, which tosses in characters that greatly resemble those from other major isekai properties and have them be arrogant, murderous dickwads that Yogiri is invariably forced to put down in self-defense. The amusing deadpan nature of the "nope, not dealing with this, die" response to every scenario threatens to become old quick, but the show has the same unpredictable energy as One Punch Man where the set-up is sufficiently different each time that it doesn't even matter that you can see the punchline coming from a mile off. However, the show—compared to the manga at least, I've no clue about the original light novels—seems to be moving a mile a minute, making it hard for many of the goofs to land properly. After all, it's funnier when a villain has a huge amount of build up before they're summarily dispatched in the blink of an eye. I really love the material though, as it somehow manages to merge a standard overpowered isekai comedy with the online spookfest SCP Foundation of all things (let's just say Yogiri was extraordinary long before he got isekai'd), and displays a very refreshing hostility towards the trope-laden isekai genre. I've been seeing some folks turn around on the show (in a positive way) after the revelations of the seventh episode, which is starting to more strongly hint at just how terrifying an existence Yogiri Takatou might be.
Not isekai but isekai-adjacent—shout outs to The Unwanted Undead Adventurer and Shangri-La Frontier. The former's about a kind if physically unimpressive veteran adventurer who is killed by a freak encounter with a powerful dragon and is mysteriously revived as an undead still retaining his memories and personality; like The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic it has a more gentle pace and delves into character interiority more often as well as the daily struggles of adventuring, but the protagonist's design is kinda cool and it's been hinting towards a darker tone of late. The latter's a MMORPG-based show carried over from last year about a dude who pushes himself to complete shitty and broken games for the sake of the challenge and is able to transfer those skills to a globally-popular MMO with absurdly difficult "unique monster" fights that no-one has been able to overcome. The manga was said to have been the inspiration for Elden Ring's own magnanimous champion "Let Me Solo Her", and the show's vibe is very similar to their fearlessly taking on the strongest bosses with minimum armor and stupid headwear. It just finished an arc involving fighting one of these unique monsters, an undead robot samurai, and it had some of the best animation I've seen in an anime lately. Also two more banger OPs: that's a list I'm going to have to put together towards the end of March's Weeb Weeview.
Speaking of which, the theme for the shows I'll talk about there will be as follows: Cute shit. Just, y'know, cute shit. Even I, the legendarily unflappable Mento, need the emotional equivalent of a colonic irrigation from time to time by watching cute animes do the darndest things so look forward to hearing about those. Anyway, enough out of me for now; It's time to punch Chaos while listening to Sinatra, or whatever that game's about (I still haven't been able to figure it out).
I wonder how common it is to have developers where you're a fan of their whole style and maybe a few of the people who work there, but mostly only just tolerate the games they put out. Like you appreciate their moxie, or their adherence to a perhaps archaic way of doing things that appeals to your sense of nostalgia, or they're someone you followed over from game journalism and are rooting for them in the next leg of their careers. I have two myself: Supergiant Games, which no longer needs any grassroots support from me to bat for them after the unbelievable hit that was Hades, and Tim Schafer and co.'s Double Fine. Everything I've played of Double Fine's, from Psychonauts to... uh Psychonauts 2, has been good if not great but they're able to bump up my appraisal of those games due to the comedic style they exhibit, much like Schafer's earlier work with the LucasFilm graphic adventure games for which he became a known industry figure. Some DF games I didn't care for at all—Brutal Legend's affectionately silly metal leanings and Jack Black's full commitment to his role really carried that playthrough whenever the tepid RTS sequences threatened to derail it—but I've always mostly liked most of them. One game that I thought could've been a lot better, to the extent that a sequel that built on and fleshed out its mechanics had a real shot of being a truly great DF game, was the kid-friendly spook 'em up turn-based RPG Costume Quest. The sequel Costume Quest 2, which is this IGotW if that wasn't clear from the title and image, doesn't quite fulfill the concept's potential either, alas.
Costume Quest 2 is set directly after the story of the first and works to resolve its cliffhanger conclusion as twins Wren and Reynolds, along with their neighborhood friends Everett and Lucy, pass through a mystical portal on the way to defeating their nemesis, the killjoy dentist Dr. Orel White whose hatred of candy and Halloween night pushed him into unsealing and controlling a realm full of goblin-like monsters to build his own sugar-free dystopia. The sequel pulls a BTTF2 and sees the pair of siblings appear in a future some twenty years removed from the present after Dr. White has already built his grim Biff Tannen hell world. The adult Everett and Lucy, now married with a kid the twins' age, inform the duo that they can still save the present by going twenty years back (or forty years from their perspective) to before a time-travelling Dr. White originally snatched the idol that kept the monsters safely locked away. It's an excuse for some time-hopping hi-jinks, not too dissimilar to the middle act of Schafer's own Day of the Tentacle, as the pair along with a rotating third member run into any number of excuses to fall into the original game's pattern of having a number of houses to trick or treat and either receiving candy (which doubles as currency, as well as a quick pick-me-up for emergencies) or being forced into a fight.
I'm doing like 30 damage per hit at this stage of the game. The specials are the only way I'm going to finish this fight before my butt falls asleep, and the Clown's doesn't even attack enemies (it's the only heal you get for a while, and it sucks).
Most of the gameplay loop involves running around these new neighborhood equivalents, from the town's Louisianan past as a bayou connected to a New Orleans-like "French Quarter" to the future dystopia with its goblin-run metropolis, all the while collecting candy while assembling new costumes and completing side-quests for useful (and often progress-mandatory) items. The costumes confer new "jobs" for the combat, in which each has a particular elemental type they're strong and weak against (which affects both incoming and outgoing damage), a unique special ability that requires you to max out a gauge first, and their own ratio of health and power increases. Beyond the one special, though, they all fight more or less the same with a few minor differences: for instance, the wizard (which takes a penalty to health for more power) has a normal attack that spreads a small amount of damage to the other enemies, while the Wolfman's attacks leave behind a damage-over-time bleeding effect. What counts most are the elemental superiority/inferiority traits, as it'll help immensely to ensure you're always able to do more damage and take less from the local enemies. (Unfortunately, you only get one costume—the founding father—that is effective against "tech" enemies, making it the only compulsory one.) The game, like its predecessor, also employs a "timed hits" system that further boosts or mitigates damage with accurate timing, and later provides a means of countering attacks albeit with some risk: you have to start charging the counter early, which means making a 1 in 3 guess as to which of your party members is about to receive the attack (it's sometimes obvious, but not always).
Outside of combat, many of the costumes have their own traversal ability attached, most of which become essential for progress at one point or another. In fact, there's very few truly optional costumes in the game for this reason. Annoyingly, you have to switch your main character to this costume whenever you want to use this traversal skill and then remember to switch back if you already have a party dynamic planned out. Given Psychonauts 2 also had a lot of this constant menu tinkering with its powers, it's evidently not an issue DF has found a way around in the years between the two. Despite that, I found the exploration to be the game's highlight, including the many ways it would hide chests and other valuables around the vicinity and task you to uncover them while also being chill enough to sell you maps that give you a firm idea of how many secrets there are to be found (as well as which houses you've yet to "trick or treat", crossing them off afterwards Silent Hill style). The writing and presentation in general is still pretty good, albeit aiming for a younger audience. Of course, you could say that about every facet of the game too: much of the very simple gameplay and lack of features or variety definitely hearkens back to one Final Fantasy Mystic Quest for SNES, a game designed from the bottom-up to be an "entry-level RPG" for those unfamiliar with that subgenre.
Moments like this just about save the game. The jokes that is, not the hopelessly easy boss fights.
That's really where I have an issue with the two Costume Quest games, which are fairly interchangeable if we're talking features and advancements. Anyone going in expecting the bar-raising of a Trails in the Sky SC or Baldur's Gate 2, where character levels have a higher starting point and the game feels secure enough to start rolling out the really heavy stuff for you to contend with, isn't going to get that here. It's as much of a softball as the first, albeit one where instead of a wider range of tactical considerations leading the difficulty curve it's instead ever more damage sponge-y opponents that inevitably do enough serious harm to your party that you have to pause your exploration momentum after every fight to go find one of the healing fountains to refresh—an inconvenience that makes little sense given the game's lack of random encounters (in the sense you always know one is coming, either because the enemies are wandering the overworld or the door you're about to knock on may have a fight behind it). It's a slog, in so many words, and the appealing wrappings around it can only do so much to keep you engaged for the long haul. Mercifully, it's not too long at around a sub-10 hour playthrough, so it at least earns my respect for not stretching things out to eternity like a few other turn-based RPG throwbacks out there. Much like Sonic fans and their own eternal struggle, I'll keep on buying Double Fine games enjoying their style while hoping that they're someday able to nail the gameplay half as well.
Welcome and/or apologies for this month's edition of 64 in 64, depending on your tolerance for second-hand suffering. This would be my regular glance into the library of the divisive Nintendo 64 console on the hunt for games worth preserving through the Switch Online service; the system certainly saw some strong first-party offerings, but what of its third-party support from those companies willing to put up with Nintendo's obstinate refusal to move on from cartridges? Well, there's one western company in particular that stuck by them to the extent that they published almost as many N64 games as Nintendo itself: Midway Games, the arcade giants of the mid-'90s. (Were I a less kind sort already exhausted by this developer, perish the thought, I might even say they got that name by following the Way of the Mid.) We'll be seeing two Midway games this month, such is their ubiquity on the platform.
Actually, truth be told, this month's duo were entirely unobjectionable. The random pick turned out to be a game perfect for this kind of structure, and I was prepared to have to deal with the pre-select being a game that has aged very poorly but fortunately hadn't too much. Sometimes I prepare myself for a bad time out of pessimism, paranoia, or plain old pattern recognition but then you'll get instances like this month where I kinda lucked out a little bit. Just a little.
Speaking of p-words, here are the prules. (No, these segues aren't getting worse, what are you talking about?)
Two games are selected for every episode. I picked one, one was picked for me. Sometimes the random pick ends up being the better game, but the odds are startingly low.
Each game is played for 64 minutes exactly, give or take human error (I sometimes forget to turn the timer on). I just recently discovered that Windows 11 has a built-in clock app with a timer in it; I've been using a website in a browser like an idiot this whole time.
I've tried to be a little more educational by providing some historical background as well as figuring out the various legal reasons why these games can't come to Switch Online in a hurry. I'd say the journal entries as I play through the game in sixteen minute chunks could be considered educational too, were constantly bemoaning one's lot something you could get an academic degree in. Like a "Bitch, Bitch, Bitchelor of Arts".
We're not to approach those games that have already passed the vetting process and been added to the Switch Online's N64 library. They are under the auspices of a host of powerful entities I'd as soon rather not deal with, otherwise known as Nintendo's legal team. Anything else is fair game though, even if they trend closer to "bad games" than "fair games". Pretty sure that's how the law works.
If you feel I didn't torture myself sufficiently this time, maybe your latent sadistic tendencies can be better satiated through these previous episodes. Last month's was a real doozy if you missed it:
History: Gauntlet Legends debuted in arcades as an official entry in Atari Games's Gauntlet franchise—an action-adventure series in which you must zealously protect your characters from harm and hunger as they traverse ever deeper into a precarious dungeon full of traps and monster hordes. Legends brings two notable changes to the blueprint: it's fully 3D, and it's fully an RPG with characters that can level up and grow stronger as they kill enemies and collect treasure. It still has that arcade mindset where there's little plot and a whole lot of fighting but it's easier to get invested in your character once you've levelled them up a few times, rather than just thinking of them as expendable "red warriors" and "blue wizards". The N64 was the first console to see a home version of the game (as well as its debut in Japan) though ports quickly followed for the PlayStation and Dreamcast.
This would be our eleventh featured Midway game, following Doom 64 from last month. I only have myself to blame if I'm the one selecting them but given there's almost 40 Midway games for the system it's only natural I'd like at least a few of them. Atari Games is listed as the developer in most online sources but at this time they were more or less interchangeable with Midway, having already been acquired by Midway's parent company WMS Industries which eventually consolidated their multiple video game divisions under the Midway brand.
So, I've been sweeping up the few remaining translated RPGs that we western N64 owners were fortunate to receive in order to complete a themed mini-project of sorts for the ranking table—a completionist cause I'll be returning to several times for my pre-selected game choices for this final season—and I'd almost forgotten that this Gauntlet reboot was a bona fide action-RPG, albeit a fairly mashy one best suited for breezy multiplayer sessions between games of GoldenEye and Smash. I'll lose something in playing it solo, no doubt, but it's a game I've spent some considerable amount of time with on the original hardware so I didn't want to finish this season of 64 in 64 without one last dungeon crawl smashing up monster spawners for old time's sake. My guess is that it will not have held up, if indeed it was any good in the first place. Let's find out, shall we?
16 Minutes In
This is a high level spawner. As I do damage to it, it'll downgrade to produce weaker enemies. Either way, prioritizing the spawners is essential unless you just feel like grinding for a while.
I kinda suspected that my memories of this game would be a little rosier than the real thing, but then that's hardly the game's fault. It definitely embodies what an action-RPG made in the late 1990s would resemble if it also had to adhere to the mechanics and quirks of Gauntlet, a game developed in 1985. Choosing a character class and a color—I notice that there are four secret classes too, maybe a NG+ reward?—you also get to personalize them with a name and then you're sent off to a quest to recover runestones that'll eventually allow you to fight the evil god Skorne. (It's Skorne! A big demon with knobs!) Thing is, there's not a whole lot to it: you fight through monsters until you can remove their spawners, you collect keys and power-ups, and you just kinda make your way to the end of these of these little zones. Once back at the hub between levels, you can purchase other power-ups to take with you.
It feels like it's trapped in a limbo between something with more juice like a Diablo (Skorne's got the juice too, and I can't imagine a more beautiful thing) and its barebones historical antecedent. It's not been bad so far, but it's shaping up to be one of those 64 in 64 entries where an hour's about all I need before I feel like I've seen everything I need to. I'm two zones into the mountain/volcano area—the volcano's called Yserbius, presumably named after the not-at-all-esoteric online multiplayer CRPG Shadow of Yserbius (unless there's some common source from Tolkien or something)—so I'm going to see if I can conquer this part of the game before my time is up.
32 Minutes In
Switches look like tiny round red buttons on the ground. These things aren't that. This is a lava trap that will roast my nethers when I step over it. Worth knowing the difference.
I have to say, this game's affectionate dumbness is starting to work its charms on me. As I've said, there's nothing particularly sophisticated about the combat system—you can swing to attack enemies from a distance, which is generally preferred if you're trying to keep your health up, but the character will attack anything automatically in melee range so they don't even let you have that much—and exploration boils down to having enough keys to open doors or finding switches off the beaten path. Most of the enemies I've found so far are goblins but the last couple of zones have started introducing scorpions (which the protagonist just stomps on instead) and these tougher lava golem things. When I say the game's affectionate dumbness, it's in the way the narrator gravely intones the name of every power-up you find ("you received... the triple shot!") or whenever you level up or have low health—the voice sample commentary being a Gauntlet staple—but also when you collect apples or meat or something for health your own character happily exclaims "I like food!" and I'm left wondering if this isn't a game meant for kindergartners. Definite "baby's first RPG" feeling as I keep going. Might explain why kid-me was so into it.
Only noteworthy thing was finding a secret (though not that secret; it was just lying out in the open) portal to an old-school top-down Gauntlet level full of purple minotaur coins. I have no idea what these things do—I couldn't use them, and I was only allowed to pick up 50—but I was warped back to the hub afterwards having completed the level I found the portal on, so I guess it was just a bizarre shortcut. The two big progress-important collectibles appear to be obelisks (there's three per area, and you need to activate all of them to access the next part of the game once the boss has been defeated) and runestones (there's thirteen in the whole game and I think you need them all to fight the final boss). The wizard you buy stat boosts and power-ups from in the hub area will also tell you where the next obelisk/runestone can be found for free, so they're really foolproofing this.
48 Minutes In
This would be a nightmare to deal with IF they could reach me. They can't. Let's see how well they catch these knives.
We're getting to the point in the difficulty curve where you can't just wade into a group of enemies with your sword swinging as you'll get swarmed and pecked apart way too fast. The zone I just completed had a maze-like structure of bridges connecting islands that demonstrated how effective it is to destroy monster spawners from a distance and, ideally, from somewhere enemies can't reach you. Precious few enemy types can attack from range and they're also the only ones that don't pop out of spawners en masse, so distance is your best ally throughout the game (and it applies to all character classes too: even melee/tank characters like the warrior and valkyrie have ranged attacks). I've also discovered that any power-ups that seem kinda whatever can be sold for quite a high price back at the hub, giving you the cash you need to recover health or improve stats or get yourself a few extra keys and potions. The potions, by the way, don't heal you: instead, they're smart bombs and they're the only way to destroy the life-draining grim reaper enemies that occasionally hide in chests. Seems prudent to keep a stock of both keys and potions with you at all times.
I'm enjoying my time here, I suppose. The zones are starting to take on some more elaborate level design between the hidden switches, circuitous routes, and tougher enemies that require more tactics by way of kiting groups until you can whittle down their number or the aforementioned "neener neener neener, can't reach me" abject cowardice strategy, which has always been a firm favorite of mine in any game. I've only got the boss left for this first main area—it's a dragon, which seems a bit harsh this early into the game—but I suspect I might've missed an obelisk somewhere that'll require me to backtrack a little.
64 Minutes In
I have a key for this door, but... well, that wall looks pretty low. Like I could shoot over it.
The dragon proved to be... troublesome. Maybe I'm running up against the limitations of the single-player approach, but that thing was murderously powerful and I couldn't hold onto my health or do anything like serious damage against it so I've opted for a path I call "screw this, I'm out" and have returned to the Cliffs zone for that obelisk I'm missing. Turns out the zone has a second route from the start that I somehow missed and I had just embarked on this other, higher road when the timer rang for the last time. I also read a hint scroll somewhere about an ice axe and a scimitar that might prove to be effective weapons against the dragon: I only found the latter of those, and it sits in a separate page of my inventory for key items being all inactive and such. As always, calling something a game for babies boomerangs on me without fail when I inevitably then hit either an insurmountable obstacle or a puzzle I can't solve, or both in this case.
Anyway, I saw a decent vertical slice of this game and, well, it's a modern remake of Gauntlet. The RPG levelling doesn't add much from what I can tell, and as always your main issue is keeping your health up (though it did at least drop the "health draining every second because it's also your hunger meter" aspect from the original games) and not allowing yourself to be swarmed, either by using power-ups to out-DPS the regenerating hordes until you can reach their spawners or finding yourself a nice bottleneck or vantage point to whittle those numbers down in relative safely. I liked also that I could enable or disable the timed power-ups I kept finding, because it's not like I needed a triple-directional shot or a strength boost with no enemies nearby (though some, like the invulnerability, can't be left for later; darn, I thought I might've had something to help with that dragon). Either way, we're all done here.
How Well Has It Aged?: As Well As the Food I Just Shot. I think if you approach this game as a reimagining of an arcade classic with a few extra bells and whistles, rather than a contemporary RPG of that era, it's probably not the worst game out there. They did of course reboot Gauntlet again in 2014 with even more modernizations and QoL features, and you have Indie throwbacks like Hammerwatch that use that top-down style and crowd control-focused combat but added more considerations for a single-player RPG experience, so maybe Gauntlet Legends isn't really the best way to experience this series any more (if it ever was). Entirely acceptable though, especially given how few action-RPG options you had for the system.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Warning, "Public's Interest in Gauntlet" is About to Die. Depends on what Warner Bros. wants to do with this franchise. The 2014 reboot didn't do a whole lot for it and I'm not sure there's enough demand for this particular iteration of Hungry, Hungry Hack-and-Slashers. If they ever did decide to start leveraging their old N64 Midway library for Switch Online they would definitely be spoiled for choice, and I doubt this will be at the top of the list.
Retro Achievements Earned: 3 of 44. Curious mix here, including the unlockable characters (I think they are what the purple coins were for), some boss speedruns, and various level- and item-related accomplishments.
History: Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1, a compilation of arcade games that were first released in the 1980s, is a little bit of a misnomer as they were all historically developed by Williams Electronics. As discussed above, Williams purchased Midway and switched the name of their video game division to that branding, leaving the Bally and Williams brands for their pinball tables. This compilation includes most of the same games released in the earlier Williams Arcade Classics: Defender, Joust, Robotron: 2084, and Sinistar. Exclusive to this N64 port were two more: Spy Hunter and Root Beer Tapper.
And so here's our twelfth Midway game, so soon after the eleventh. I'm going to have to take a break from these jokers next month, provided the randomizer lets me. This is also our first encounter with Digital Eclipse. Back then, DE was a port developer that largely focused on converting arcade games to handheld systems like the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. They became Backbone Entertainment for most of the 2000s (where they continued making arcade ports, this time for XBLA) and then relaunched as Digital Eclipse in 2015 with a string of well-regarded retro compilations like the first Mega Man Legacy Collection and The Disney Afternoon Collection, often praised for their vast amount of bonus materials like concept art and interviews. Fans of this site are also aware that one Drew Scanlon currently works for them, presumably pitching in on games that run into H-button compatibility issues. This is the only DE game on the N64: there was a Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 2 but it remained a Dreamcast exclusive.
I hadn't really intended to go full classic Williams arcade game-themed this month but I guess the randomizer app had other ideas. Still, though, I'm grateful it's something like this rather than some inscrutable NFL thing or the near endless number of other N64 sports games we've still yet to see from Midway. Having a selection of arcade games to choose from here means those 64 minutes will just fly by... or, at least, that's the hope. Six games for about ten minutes each seems very doable so let's see if I can earn some high scores before we're through today.
16 Minutes In
Would've thought that survival would be reward enough.
Just so I don't spend this whole session trapped in a "Buridan's ass" loop of indecisiveness over what to play, I'm going to go by how they've ordered these in-game. The first game the cursor sits on when starting it up is Root Beer Tapper, so I guess I'll start by slinging some suds. The emulation is a little rough—I'm dealing with two layers of it here, between the N64 emulator and the game's own emulation of the arcade games, so I can't quite point to a weak link but it seems incredibly sluggish given arcade hardware is always custom-built to avoid such technical issues. Or, well, I guess that would be the case in a perfect world. Root Beer Tapper might just be a sluggish game in general: you pour out pints of non-alcoholic beverages and send them across multiple bars to thirsty patrons, occasionally having to then intercept the empty glasses they slide back. One of the earliest examples of a "plate-spinning game", like Missile Command, where the true test is in your ability to multitask effectively while being conscious of the whole playing field. I got tired of it before I lost—I did lose the mini-game though, didn't expect all the shaken up cans to start shell-gaming themselves—and moved onto the next game.
That next game was Joust, which I would've probably said was my favorite of the games included here and definitely the one I've spent the most time with (via another home conversion, this time for the Atari ST). Designed by a newcomer to Williams's development team, who I'll call John Newcomer, the goal of this flying combat game is to collide with flying enemies—they're riding buzzards, you're inexplicably on an ostrich—but do so at just a slightly higher altitude to knock the enemy off and turn them into an egg. The egg, if left for too long, will hatch into a tougher opponent so it's important to follow through with every successful joust by collecting it; despite what Senator Armstrong might tell you, it is important to fret over every egg here. As the waves continue, you'll see more changes to the field: the lava will burn away most of the bottom layer platforms (which can help, since enemies and eggs will fall into it occasionally) and eventually the other platforms will disappear one by one to make the field more open and perilous. Gets tough quick, and this version also has some of Root Beer Tapper's slowdown which can really mess up the timing on your flapping (you have to hammer it to gain altitude quickly). I'll play it a bit longer for the next segment and then switch to a new game.
32 Minutes In
Your reward for destroying the Sinistar is an epileptic fit, apparently.
That next Joust run didn't last long: I lost all but one of my lives to the same guy (it was the ping!) and when I finally beat him, the pterodactyl had already arrived. Completing the stage causes the dactyl to withdraw quickly, but it can still kill you if it collides with you as it escapes which it did for me. Snatching failure from the jaws of success, as it were. Our next game was Spy Hunter and I swear it felt like the emulator was dying: not only was it so slow that the famous Peter Gunn theme was unrecognizable but I swear it spent the whole time in a single figure framerate. I can't pinpoint this being the game's fault, necessarily, but it is telling that the two slightly more advanced arcade games they added to this port specifically were the two to give me the most trouble. I'll have to check some reviews from when this compilation came out to see if there's any corroborating experiences. Anyway, in theory Spy Hunter is a fast-paced driving game in which you're also required to eliminate enemy drivers who are trying to ram you off the road or otherwise destroy your flashy vehicle: you have weapons to deter them, each configured to attack from a different direction. I spent almost the whole run in low gear because the lag meant it was nearly impossible to react in time to stuff flying at you in high gear, though of course this meant I ran out of time before hitting the checkpoint. I've never been all that great at racing games to begin with, so I don't imagine I'll have done much better even if it had been emulated perfectly.
After that is Sinistar. I've always liked the idea of Sinistar and I do appreciate a variant of Asteroids where the asteroids don't actually hurt you—the only things that can are enemy starfighter bullets and the titular cosmic terror itself—but it's chaotic as hell and always kinda frustrating when you're chasing a pixel around and can't quite seem to touch it. For those unfamiliar, you're in a race to collect ore from asteroids to create heat-seeking "sinibombs" while the red worker enemies around you are trying to do the same to build an in-progress Sinistar, a sapient dreadnaught. Once Sinistar is complete, he'll warn you with a "Beware! I live!" voice sample and start chasing you while screaming. Very perturbing stuff at the time. With enough sinibombs though, you can just blanket the playing field with them and let them do the work annihilating the scary space monster. The biggest problem is usually those starfighters, since they show up quickly and only take a moment to home their guns on you. Since I've been powering through these games and only have a couple left, I might spend a little more time giving Sinistar the run around before moving on.
48 Minutes In
So this is what we have to look forward to in 60 years. I expected more triangles.
I tire of Sinistar. So for this block I played a little of the two remaining games: Defender and Robotron: 2084. I've never particularly liked Defender since the speed of the game makes it far too easy to run into enemies and we go back to that whole plate-spinning thing where you're constantly rushing around saving humans from being abducted. In Defender, if an alien successfully snatches a human and takes them to the top of the screen they'll transform into a powerful "mutant" that will chase you down mercilessly, as if some trace of the human soul still within is pissed at you for letting them die. It does have some admittedly cool visuals, like the main laser weapon and the way it trails off into particles after being fired, but I've always sucked at it. What's more is that the game had its main fire and the hyperdrive (good for escaping a dangerous situation, much like its function in Asteroids) bound to the C buttons rather than A/B like most of the others. Fortunately, we're far enough along with console UI/UX design at this point in time that I could go into a menu and change the control settings.
Last, we have Robotron. Similar deal in that you're protecting humans from hostile forces (this time it's other robots) but instead it's a top-down affair with a dual-stick shooter control scheme. This lends itself well enough to the controller I was using, though I should check to see if they let you switch between D-pad/Analog Stick, Analog Stick/C buttons, or D-pad/C buttons. Given you can move and fire in eight directions, the Stick would be handy for either. I think this one is my actual favorite of the bunch (sorry Joust) just because there's no slowdown and having two sticks makes it closer to the original arcade experience, but man do I need some practice at it. You can tell Geometry Wars got many of the same ideas from this: it's not just a case of being surrounded at all times by enemies, but recognizing each type and what they can do so you can prioritize destroying the most annoying ones first.
64 Minutes In
Try 40.
There's one last game of sorts but, well, it's not really much to look at. It's a quiz game that drops the most esoteric trivia imaginable about the games included in the package, like what brand of coffee the developers were drinking while developing the game (Folgers) or how many cumulative seconds the game has been played between its release and the start of 1999 (3.25 trillion). Best I managed was 9 out of 15 and those were softballs like "what company is advertised on Robotron's title screen" as if Williams was going to drop some hot shout-outs to Namco on there or something. Whatever, I don't feel too bad for not knowing who Root Beer Tapper was sponsored by: it'd been better to put that information elsewhere, like an elucidating slideshow that told you all about the history behind each machine and maybe some less obvious high-scoring tips.
The menus do provide some decent options though. In addition to changing the button bindings you can also mess with arcade toggles like the number of lives you start with and how much you need to score to gain a bonus life, which overcomes the issue of these all being 1CC attempts by design. I embarked on a 50-lives run of Joust (they won't last long, I'm sure) to see how far I could get before the final timer was done. Absolutely massacred, but I held on in there until the 9th Wave. The 8th was hardest: the pterodactyl is summoned immediately and remains a lethal presence throughout. I lucked out and managed to bop it on its snoot, which instantly kills it for a big reward, but that's not something you can rely on unless you're super accurate. I feel like I've accomplished everything I set out to do here, which was to play Defender exactly once before bailing, do a fair job getting some distance into Sinistar, Joust, and Robotron (the good ones), and commiserate over the dire states of Spy Hunter and Root Beer Tapper, neither of which I had much of a fondness for anyway. Mission success.
How Well Has It Aged?: Arcadeic. Archaide. Arc- Let Me Workshop This Some More. I mean, what are we discussing here? The 40-year-old games or the 25-year-old emulation tech used to preserve them? Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1 is not a good option if you want to play these classics in as close to an arcade perfect state as possible. We've seen many more revisions since and those tend to have better controller support to boot. Also, the work Digital Eclipse does now is so much better than it was back then so I'll just wait for them to revive this bunch in some future compilation.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Thy Relevancy is Over. As I said, many better options available, so I can't see Warner Bros. signing off on bringing this specific compilation back. I have to imagine (without looking it up, because I'm lazy) that most of the games here can be played on Switch through some other fashion, reducing its value further.
Retro Achievements Earned: N/A. Too bad, I might've had more incentive to stick with some of those games longer if there were achievements to earn.
Way back in the mid-'90s, British comedy group Monty Python—or maybe just the one of them that felt like getting involved—worked with American developers 7th Level to create what they felt would be the most apposite video game experiences for their particular surreal brand of humor. What they landed on was a trio of classic graphic adventure games that were packed with FMV clips and Terry Gilliam's striking use of animated Renaissance-era artwork. I feel like that spirit of making absurdist goofs via the medium of high-brow (but is it really? There's a lot of butts and stuff) classical art is alive and well in the games of solo developer Joe Richardson, of which The Procession to Calvary is the second to have this style: the first, Four Last Things, is yet another 2017 game I'm going to have to add to the pile while the as-yet-unreleased third, Death of the Reprobate, was recently featured on Steam Next Fest.
The Procession to Calvary, named for the Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting (which I totally knew and didn't look up), sees its unnamed protagonist on the winning side of a holy war against the tyrant, Heavenly Peter. However, being in peacetime means she cannot righteously murder people any more, which is her favorite thing to do. Learning that Heavenly Peter is still alive and that the current, more benevolent monarch, Immortal John, would not be particularly upset upon hearing of his death, the protagonist sets off to gleefully eviscerate the fugitive ousted ruler for less than noble reasons. Naturally, as this is an adventure game, you'll have various roadblocks to overcome by talking to the right people, collecting the right items, using them in the right places, and eventually doing enough favors for people to reach the next area en route to Heavenly Peter's equally heavenly basilica. Optionally, you can just murder anyone who stands in your way, though—surprise, surprise—there may be consequences for your sins later down the road. Kinda like an Undertale thing, but far less altruistic: even without the killing, you're still stealing tons of stuff while insulting (and optionally punching) people.
Trouble with a lot of these throwback adventure games is that you feel like you've seen all these hotspots before.
Every asset in The Procession to Calvary has been carefully carved out of an actual honest-to-goodness Renaissance-era painting and given animations, where applicable. The violence-happy protagonist herself is taken from Rembrandt's portrait of Bellona, a Roman goddess of war. There's an art museum you can visit that's related to a single puzzle but otherwise mostly just exists to show you where the majority of the game's art originally came from: even at its most irreverent and silly, the game and its developer clearly have a deep admiration for the Old Masters. Or maybe they just didn't want to risk getting haunted by a bunch of 500-year-old ghosts pissed that their life's work was utilized for the sake of fart jokes (though I have to imagine they were as popular then as they are now). As much as I sound like I deride the game's base sense of humor, I found it pretty funny on the whole as it locates a middle ground between the smart, sarcastic LucasFilm adventure game humor that became the bar for would-be point-and-click comedians to pass and slangy, more modern (if not too meme-y) turns of phrase and meta jokes. I've left one achievement to collect after I'm done writing here where you simply murder as many people as possible: looking forward to seeing what might result as the body count rises to ludicrous levels (I'm personally holding out for a tough Sans boss fight).
The Procession to Calvary does stick to its traditional point-and-click guns for better and only occasionally for worse. One puzzle has you opera singing at a talent show for a needed piece of bling and it means memorizing the Italian lyrics beforehand: there's about eight lines you need to rattle off one after the other, and if you pause too long to look up a screenshot your protagonist will shrug and tell the audience she forgot the lyrics, causing the mini-game to fail which means talking to the NPC hosting the thing again and repeating the process. The only way to get past it is to either memorize the whole movement or drag in an external notepad: it's the only puzzle of its kind in the game, so it stands out as a particularly annoying lapse into the sort of substandard quality-of-life some older games often exhibited (I still occasionally have nightmares of what the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade game put me through). Still, though, it's not the end of the world if I'm forced to learn some opera music. Lord knows my uncultured ass could use it. The other big problem is that it takes a while to traverse multiple screens if the solution to a puzzle is on the opposite side of the world: your protagonist has a jaunty run but it's only mildly faster than the normal walk. Many throwbacks let you skip the movement animations to new areas if you double-click the exit, but that sadly did not appear to be the case here (though it does highlight all hotspots with the middle mouse button, so it earns points back for that).
The cliff was not a shortcut. Though I guess it kinda was, in a way.
The positives far outweigh the negatives here, including even the generally short runtime since it offers multiple endings depending on how bloodthirsty you chose to be. The puzzles were approachable and only mildly difficult (it did the player a kindness in hinting as to an item or hotspot's use when you examine it, if any), the writing and humor were generally excellent (albeit with a few typos here and there, though I'm convinced I'm the only person left alive who still cares about those), and the striking presentation made great use of its particular theme and the less, let's say, realistic depictions of those old paintings (genuinely surprised at the lack of fucked up cats). I particularly liked that the game was scored by classical music that was entirely diegetic: the musicians appear in every scene, and you can even applaud them if you wish. I'll have to check out Richardson's other works when I have the chance (and once Reprobate is out). And maybe those old Monty Python games again too; I recall them being fun if hopelessly (and deliberately) stupid.
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