Currently Playing
I'm still playing Culdcept. I'll do a write up of this when I actually beat it, but it's taking a hell of a while to do. It's not an easy game by any stretch. But it's really interesting. It's basically Monopoly crossed with Magic the Gathering (and it plays as literally as you can imagine that would play).
Having beaten Samurai Shodown I've moved onto Dillon's Rolling Western
Enjoying this one a lot too, but I'm four stages in out of ten. So I may be on these two for a bit. There's also some extra content in this I'm probably gonna want to do. It's kind of like an action-oriented tower defense, but it's very unique and I'm having fun.
As I mentioned I'm playing two games at random simeoultaneouly until I beat one. On beating one I move onto my next random game. Only rules are I have to play the first game in the series (or which the game refers to), and I can't play the same series twice (so I can't keep playing Mario over and over again). Despite this the Random.org gods have managed to give me 3 Mega mans and 2 Zeldas already (:
Anywho fate decided and my next adventure will be:
I'm super hyped about this actually. I picked up the localised version now on Switch, even though they have messed with the sprites so it's not the true original.
My preference is to play official localisations first though when it comes to games that are technically JP only (and this has only been released outside of JP in the past year or two). I will fall back to fan translations if I have no other choice. I would prefer to play the unaltered one, but I don't think they've changed too much.
Dragon Quest is one of the biggest franchises in Japan, possibly even bigger than Final Fantasy. I've never played a single entry, so I'm excited to see what it has in store. I'm not expecting something on the scale of Final Fantasy personally but this run hasn't ceased to surprise me so far. So we will see!
In honour of this occasion I purchased the Hero DLC on Smash Ultimate. I hadn't actually used or even bought him until now. But now I will have a frame of reference, it makes sense.
I'm trying to document the references inside Smash for each of these games I'm playing too, but this is really nerdy stuff and even less interesting for folks than the game reviews. So I'm on the fence as to whether to post these here or wait until I do a more proper write-up (probably the latter)
Next game down. Beat it over the weekend. I started playing this approximately a month ago and have beaten about four other games alongside just playing this, so needless to say it was a tad challenging. More just time consuming I think, but definitely worth the ride.
Unfortunately it's even more obscure than the last one, so hardly too relatable (:
Still, read on if you're into stuff like Magic the Gathering. Otherwise I'll get to something a bit more interesting in due course (I hope!)
Culdcept
Release date: 30/10/1997 (DS port in 2008) Console: PlayStation/Sega Saturn (DS port later) Developer: OmiyaSoft
The best way I can sum up Culdcept is by saying it's essentially Magic the Gathering meets Monopoly. When I first heard that description I tried to picture how that would work, and to be honest the reality isn't that far different.
The game is set in a fictional universe where a great goddess named Culdra created a divine book of creation called Culdcept. However a demon named Baltias (Baltheus?) destroyed the book, splitting it into shards which became essentially trading cards. Magical people called cepters go around and collect the shards of Culdcept (the cards) and fight each other to collect all the cards and become powerful.
You are a good cepter, trying to save the world. You are aided on your quest by Golligan, a walking talking magical staff with facial hair who is generally very helpful if you can ignore the fact he's a living monstrosity. Together you stop the bad guys from rebuilding the book and...taking over the world? I think one guy was being brainwashed by his cat? There was a king in stocks who wanted to rule a desert? One of them was a huge talking gorilla?
I spent about a week being beaten by this guy incidentally...
Honestly I kind of lost track of the story a bit! But this is yet another game where the story is largely an irrelevancy. The game offers a number of modes and the one I played incidentally was story mode, but that's largely just a formality to allow me to play a number of maps against a number of opponents. As you progress in the story you unlock more opponents and stages, allowing you to generate a new game outside of story mode against those AI opponents and on those stages. The story isn't important. This one is 100% solid gameplay.
Each game is effectively a board game (the Monopoly aspect). It's turn based with you vs. up to three opponents, although you'll face at most two in story mode. Each round you roll something resembling a die but which can go up to values of about 10/11. You then move spaces around a game board until the end of your turn.
The goal is to acquire magic power. As you progress around the board you visit a number of fortress squares. Visiting every single fortress on the board allows you to progress to the central castle square which rewards you with a bonus of magic power. Think of it like Monopoly and passing Go to collect $200 etc.
Each game has a preset magic goal. The first player to both hit that goal (usually 5000 or more) and reach the castle wins. The game is over and everybody else loses, it doesn't play on. That part is relatively simple, but the complexity comes from the card game aspect.
To add to the base game, every player has a deck consisting of 50 cards (the Magic the Gathering aspect). When the game starts, everybody has five random cards in their hand from their respective decks. At the start of each turn, the player draws a new card. A hand can contain up to a set number (I think 7?), after which a card must be discarded. It's not possible to skip drawing so there's an incentive to try and use the cards to avoid throwing stuff away.
Cards can either be equipment (e.g. weapons/armour), a spell or a monster. Monster cards are the bread and butter of the game. Think of these as like properties in Monopoly. At the start of the game, each game square is vacant. If you land on a square and you have a monster in your hand, you can spend some of your magic to put your monster in the space.
Monsters occupy a space idly until an opponent lands on the space. At that point, they have two choices. They can either pay a toll (basically rent in the Monopoly analogy) or challenge the monster. If they pay a toll, you gain a present value of magic based on the current level of the space. As you progress around and land on certain squares, you have the option to level up your occupied spaces. This will mean players will need to pay a higher toll if they land there (like putting a house/hotel on a property).
If your opponent is not content in paying the toll, and if they also have a monster card in their hand, they can fight your monster with theirs. This kicks off a battle between the two cards. This gets quite involved, so it'll be difficult to sum up here concisely, but the outcome depends on a series of factors. Every monster is unique and has their own attack/defense stat and HP, plus in many cases special bonus abilities. For instances some monsters always fight first, some poison the opponent. Some cast instant death (or in the case of a cockatrice, turn the opponents monster into a stone wall).
To further add to the complexity of the battle system, there are also weapon and armour cards which you can have in your hand. You can pick one weapon/armour at the start of the battle (and so can your opponent). This can greatly affect the outcome of the battle, as a seemingly weak monster with a huge sword can kick your ass. Needless to say this sometimes gets...frustrating. But in time as you learn the system more you can turn it to your advantage quite nicely.
If your opponent beats your monster in battle, they get to take the square with their monster and they now own it. Furthermore, unlike selling/trading property in Monopoly, the land value is retained. This means if you spent a ton of money upgrading the square to have a horrendous toll and your opponent kills your monster, they get to own the square and keep the toll value absolutely free of charge.
This delightful chunk of nightmare fuel serves as your handy guide throughout the fair adventure
There are also spell cards which you can use at the start of your turn to destabilise or mess up opponents (or grant yourself bonuses). The value of magic you have is more based around the value of tolls you have, and each square has an elemental property. Some monsters have elemental bonuses so the squares are best suited to them. Not all monsters can be placed on all squares. There are offensive and defensive monsters who are optimised to certain conditions. Having multiple elemental squares in an area increase what's known as a chain, further increasing your tolls. You can buy tokens and sell them back at a higher prices, sort of like a stock market. There's a shrine with random effects. You can buy/sell cards in game at card shops. You can swap and move monsters around on certain turns to gain an advantage...
I'll just stop there because for the sake of a review there's not much point going on. The important point is that this game is not simple, to say the least. There is a learning curve of sorts. Each map on story mode introduces a new element for time so you aren't thrown everything all at once. But even then, the expectation is you hit the ground sort of running. There's not much in the way of build up, you're just sort of expected to learn as you go. But as is the case with most board games, this will honestly naturally just happen.
Again though, not downplaying it. This is a hard game. There's a reason it took me a month of plays to complete. There are 10 maps on story mode and I played a total of 36 games. Games vary in length, but I'd expect to spend anywhere between 30 mins-1 hour depending on the complexity and the magic goal. My total doesn't even count the times I reset the console. When you fall really far behind, the game isn't unwinnable per se but it does have that sort of Monopoly effect where your opponents have all the hotels and you're kind of just praying you can make it around the board.
This whiny little edge-lord is your main rival and will cause you no end of frustration
Each time you win or lose a game, you gain new cards for your collection. You can use these cards to build your deck in between games. You can save multiple decks and pick whichever best suits a game at the start. Generally speaking I found this was very much a trial and error process. You might go in with a ton of powerful monsters but get swept off the board because your opponents have good equipment. Similarly you can throw in too much equipment and have no monsters to play when you land on a really high toll space.
I refined a deck over time by making very small adjustments, everything else seemed to not work so well. There is a random element here, because this is a board game and that can be frustrating at times. You may just get really shitty dice rolls over and over again. You may just draw literally every worst card in a row for many many turns. Similarly you get really lucky and thrash your opponents despite having a terrible deck. The random aspect is one of the two main frustrations I had with this, but it's the nature of what it is so there's nothing you can do about it.
The other frustration was with the AI. When fighting multiple computer opponents, I often found the opponents would not act in their own interests, doing stupid stuff like boosting each other despite the fact I was already losing. They would also do stuff like attack me/my monsters when there was another AI in first place literally a turn or two away from winning (and if they had attacked the other AI, would have stalled the win). Zeneth, your main rival and resident edge-lord is the absolute worst for this. He just seems to be obsessed with destroying you (even though his story dialogue says otherwise) but it happens with other AI too.
Overall though I would definitely say the learning curve and the difficulty is worth the grind. I found this game incredibly fun and addictive to play. It has that "just one more go" quality, which is equal parts great and dangerous considering how long it takes to play a game. Thankfully you can quit and save a game mid-flow, so you don't need to do it all in one sitting.
In terms of audio/visuals, the graphics are quite dated given the age of the game but they do what they need to do. It's a board game, and flashy visuals would be a distraction. The artwork on the cards are all very nice though. Some of the monsters designs are incredibly creative and will be burned into your brain long after playing. Some of them are quite horrifying too!
The music is largely forgettable. It's not bad, but it's an annex to the experience. Randomly generated, not unpleasant noise to focus on the actual important stuff. The sound effects are quite neat, hearing monsters roar and shriek as they fight. Not to mention the English VAs who call out the name of every monster as you play them ("GOLEM", GIANT AMOEBA", "WALL OF STONE"). I can still hear them really clearly narrating in my head, so it obviously has a fairly profound impact.
But as I can't state more than enough, this one is 100% pure gameplay. And I can't fault that in the slightest when the gameplay is as rich, deep and rewarding as this is.
How to play it:
Okay now on to the bad news. This is not an easy game to play in any sense. At least I should say, not the original version.
This is because sadly, the original Culdcept has only ever been released in Japan. It has never been localised. Whilst it's possible to emulate any version of it very easily with a bit of Google help, getting an English version isn't as easy. To make matters worse, this is a game where the translation does matter. The game is driven via dialogues and choices. If you can't read the text you pretty much can't play this.
This is the problem I faced, and the reason why I didn't play the original version. My preference is always the original localised game where possible, but in this instance I had to make do with a port. This game was eventually ported to the DS, so you can play that version too. However that version was also only ever released in Japan.
That being said, there is a fan translation available online for this. If you get a version of the game, you can emulate the console and patch it with the translation and it's perfectly playable. The translation project (like many others) was never finished. However it's 90% complete. This is the version I played, and although the odd bit of Japanese text occasionally appeared, there was enough translated to more than get by. I genuinely barely even noticed the non-localised stuff.
A fully localised version would have been really nice. I wish there was more of an appetite to bring this stuff overseas. I'll also point out that the game doesn't really use the touch screen feature of the DS, so if that's a concern with emulation (it is for me, I'll make another post about this at some point) it should be fine here.
As an alternative, there are two versions of Culdcept which were released overseas. However these are both sequels and not the game I'm actually reviewing here. That said, both sequels were generally very well received and have strong standing in the fan community so are probably both valid if you're keen to play the game. The second Culdcept game (Culdcept Second) was simply released as Culdcept in NA on the playstation 2. This might be a simpler way to play the series without playing the specific game.
There is also another sequel, Culdcept Revolt for the 3DS. This game was released in all territories and is also generally well received. It's actually on my playlist (as is a remake of Culdcept 2 incidentally), so I'll review it myself in time when I pull it out.
Song of the Game:
This is kind of tough. As I said, the music wasn't bad, but it was kind of just there. Forgettable and not really striking in any sense. It's sort of like picking your favourite elevator music.
At a push I could stump for this, I kind of remember it. But yeah, it's a hard sell:
x Smash Bros.:
So since this was all driven from a curiosity around Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, I figure I should come full circle and tie in how this relates at all. Since a lot of these games are really really out there, it's kind of hard to fathom how they have an inclusion in Nintendo's big mainstream fighter.
In terms of the original Culdcept, there are only two references in the game. Both of these are spirits. There's a Goligan spirit (this one does actually stand out to me, because I saw his spirit before playing these and he's so god-damn creepy looking). There's also a Culdra spirit, which comes with a battle. Her spirit event is vs. Palutena (representing her goddess status) and there's a bonus to magic attacks because it's Culdcept.
Neither spirit is represented via artwork from the original game, but my rule is that I count the game the character first appeared as the "reference". Both Culdra and Goligan originated in this game, so this game gets on the list.
Currently playing Dragon Quest and Dillon still. Both games are really fun! But I haven't had a ton of time to play games this week so it's slow progress. Will get to them in time.
It's also a good job nobody is reading this, because I was talking total shit in my last post about Dragon Quest. It has been localised in the West, it was released on the NES under the moniker "Dragon Warrior". It was fairly successful I think. I've never personally played it, but it was still out there. Albeit nowhere near as big in the States as it was in JP.
The reason I don't know this and am so hazy is because it's never been released in Europe. It only ever had an NA release. So there was absolutely no chance of me ever playing it growing up because it didn't exist in my world.
So I am playing Dragon Quest right now, the new version on the Switch with the weird sprites (a remake of the OG Dragon Quest which was also Dragon Warrior stateside). But I could also have played the original NA release. I'm half tempted to do that after, just to experience the unaltered game.
My intention by the way is to go back and review the 20 or so games I played before I started writing these. There's fairly big stuff in there like the first three Mega Man games, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Super Mario Bros. etc.
So I'm not just gonna brush those aside. Hopefully I can still remember them (:
I'm not really excited about this tbh. I played 5 minutes of it to check it was installed and get the controls working and I absolutely hated it. Apparently it's a bit of a cult classic though (:
I beat Dragon Quest. That was a fun game, enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Kind of want to play the original now (at least, the original Dragon Warrior) but I might just settle for a lets play on Youtube.
I'll write it up at some point. Onto Virtua Fighter I guess (:
And after that...
This does interest me greatly. This game gets a ton of praise online, but I've never played any Mega Man game that wasn't in the classic series. Looking forward to this quite a bit.
I actually rolled a Mega Man Zero game but I'm trying to at least play games in a series in the order that they were released/characters were introduced. Since Zero originated in the X series, it feels like a precursor to play these first so I'm doing that instead.
I do get tremendously confused about the whole chronology of this series though in general. Playing all the classic Mega Man games doesn't seem to be a pre-requisite, since from what I can tell the X series is entirely different. I guess I'll find out.
And I genuinely am looking forward to this, but it's still kind of funny that I've played 28 games now out of a total 800~ and Mega Man has come up four times (:
Probably helps that there's a ton of these. Combining all the spin-off series' together it's the second most prolific series on my list outside of Mario.
I did decide to play Dragon Warrior so I'm shelving that review for now. In the meantime since I'm not ready for a new one, I'm going back into the archives and reviewing the first game I played in this whole silly experience.
This one is at least a bit of a classic, so maybe somebody has actually played it :)
Pilotwings
Release date: 21/12/1990 Console: Super Nintendo Developer: Nintendo
Pilotwings was not a franchise I grew up with, or had even particularly heard of more than a few years ago. I think the first time I came across it properly was around the launch of Pilotwings Resort which had a bit of buzz at the time. I was curious, but never enough to actually dive in and play it. Flight sims have never really been my thing. I used to enjoy the old X-wing and Tie Fighter games (and Rogue Squadron much later down the line) but that was more to do with the sci-fi/Star Wars element. I liked Star Fox too, but that's just another sci-fi shooter. Something about flying a real plane just seems boring to me, even in the case of side scrolling shooters like 1942.
Curiosity only really got the better of me thanks to partially Super Smash Bros. and partially the launch of the SNES online service for the Switch. Smash Bros. 4 featured content from Pilotwings, in the form of an entire stage. I got curious about the references, although not enough to pay to play it. Then the Switch SNES online service came and I got the option to play the game for free (save my membership costs). I think it was the first game I played when I downloaded the service at the time.
My initial experience was mixed. I wasn't having a bad time, but I did find the game incredibly challenging. With the use of save states, I was able to muddy through and make some progress. I liked the music, the aesthetics and the variety of courses. And I slowly but surely unlocked the helicopter mission (which at the time I felt was out of place and weird). I completed it, got commendation from Big Al and realised there was a whole other expert mode to play. Curiously I dipped my toes in, took flight on course 5, crashed horrendously, and switched the game off. That was the first and last playthrough of the game I'd do until now.
Big Al, who is above you until your eventual masterful skills make him cry with joy
I should reiterate once more that this game is incredibly hard. It does introduce you slowly and ramp up at a decent pace, but flying any vehicle for the first time takes a good degree of practice. The initial "easy" courses will see you likely crash multiple times. This level of challenge might be off-putting to some, but one thing that Pilotwings excels at is the degree of replayability it offers.
There are relatively few courses (4 on each difficulty track, with a bonus commando mission on each). You get awarded a license of varying degrees for completing a course to satisfaction. Each course is governed by an instructor who has a name, backstory and certain temperament. They don’t impact the game and are simply a minor piece of background dressing to make things a bit less dry. You’ll become a bit more familiar with their dialogue through the many attempts at retrying each course you’ll need before securing your license.
To gain your license you'll need to do a training exercise on the course with a number of vehicles. The number increases as you progress, until the final course where you have to train via all four. You are awarded points per training session based on criteria unique to the vehicle and course. Each course has a preset level of points you need to attain to get your license (and the points you need get higher and higher). The four vehicles you use are: The Light Plane, Rocket Belt, Hang Glider and Skydiving (yes I'm aware that's not a vehicle. Maybe the parachute is your vehicle?)
The Light plane is a small Bi-plane you fly around in. Missions include landing the plane, taking off and flying through a variety of rings. Taking off is relatively easy, although I still screwed up a number of times. The rings are straight-forward enough provided you don't go too low and bomb into the ocean. Landing is the real pain here. You have to land straight and touch-down on the runway. This is...a lot harder than it sounds. At least for me! You lose points if it's not straight, and if you take too long, so you really have to strike a fine balance.
Get used to this, you'll be seeing it a lot!
The Rocket Belt involves you riding around in a jet-pack, legs dangling comically beneath as you fly through yet more rings in a variety of combinations. Again you have to land (on a tiny platform no less), with the wind blowing you off course and potentially plunging into the water after several attempts at adjustment (Big Al scolds you for harming the expensive equipment). I found this to be the easiest of the four, although probably the most tedious because of the constant fine tuning against the wind at the end.
The Hang Glider involves more rings, but to hit them at the correct altitude you’ll need to fly into updrafts dotted around the course as you’re always losing height. Once you secure all the rings you’ll need to land yet again. There’s a bit of a knack to this one that feels counter-intuitive at first, largely because it feels hard to judge exactly where the vehicle will end up and you need to allow a bit of grace in terms of position (and be upright enough to not wind up in a crumpled heap). But once you suss it it’s relatively easy to get it right every time.
Lastly the Sky diving. This one was the bane of my run-through, by far the most challenging for me personally. You dive down and have to soar through various rings in your plunge to the ground. It’s very easy to over-position yourself and fly past the rings (although thankfully the scoring doesn’t weight them overly highly). Finally you open the chute and need to land on the target. Again the wind plays a big role in how far off target you’ll fly and it’s easy to miss by a mile due to coming in too fast. Also if you don't slow down at the end, you become a crumpled heap and don't get any points.
The really tricky aspect is that you have to do all the vehicles in one playthrough. If you mess up, you need to start the course again entirely, without being able to salvage whichever good training exercises you had that course. e.g. if you landed the plane beautifully but plunged your jet pack into the sea, you'll have to do both all over again. This makes things a whole lot more challenging, because you can't game it and get lucky. You have to actually have the skill to repeat your succcesses a whole lot.
The upside is you can play the vehicles on a course in any order, which does offer quite a few nice benefits. For example, you may find (like me) that the skydiving is incredibly tough, so you might choose to do that first. If it all goes wrong you don't waste any time on the other vehicles and can just start the whole course again.
This aspect adds a level of strategy to which vehicle you choose. Do you start with the ones you know you can ace to ease the pressure off the harder ones, or start with the hardest ones to get the experience in early without having to redo everything? When you've completed three vehicles with just one left, the tension is very real. You might feel like you've sussed the Light Plane, but when everything is riding on you landing the thing the pressure is suddenly on and it's very easy to choke.
Pilotwings did it a whole 9 years before Superman 64!
Another critial aspect to successis that each type of vehicle except the light plane has a secret unlockable bonus stage. This is achieved by landing in a very tiny and specific target spot. If you manage to land in the bonus target safely, the rest of your scoring will be dismissed and you’ll hit 100 points and play the bonus. This means you can ignore all other objectives like accuracy, time and rings. The bonus itself offers the option to earn an additional 50 points, allowing you to over-compensate for expected poor performances in other vehicles by having a good run with a bonus on one you’re better at.
The bonus stages are fun little diversions that see you control a penguin or a bird man trying to fly or jump into various point thresholds. I never quite got adept at doing any of them, but it really doesn't matter. Unlocking the bonus means you get 100 points for free anyway. That's good enough.
One thing I think was definitely missing from the base game is a training mode of sorts. The game does frame itself as if it's all training (you're training to get a license) but having something like a free run to just try out each vehicle easily with no restrictions and a quick restart would do wonders for allowing you to skill up. I did make extensive use of the online service's rewind feature to upskill some things, like my glider landing. My "rule" however was that I needed to do every vehicle from start to end on a stage without rewinding or loading state or I couldn't progress. At least that way I felt as if I was playing it like I would on the base console.
Does kind of look dated now, but this was on 1990 hardware so credit where credit's due
Aesthetically the game has aged a fair bit, but also for the time didn’t do particularly badly. The courses give you a faux 3D environment to roam around in courtesy of Mode 7. The ground and artifacts and vehicles are basic sprite overlays. However the game is still not unappealing to look at, especially when you consider the 1990 release date. This was a good 3 years before the induction of the Super FX chip and Star Fox which would revolutionise the graphical capabilities of flight games. The ground overlay is a little dull, but it’s not really the crux of your focus. The de-briefings and menus also have some little animations for the various instructors avatars which adds to the charm.
The soundtrack was composed by Soyo Oka and Koji Kondo and is definitely a standout aspect of the game. Kondo composed only the commando mission theme to my knowledge, with Oka composing the rest. The music is upbeat, whimsical and incredibly relaxing. It makes crashing your vehicles ad infinitum a much less daunting experience and eases your nerves to hear catchy jingles which wouldn’t feel out of place on an advert for a resort holiday. The only complaint I really have are that there aren’t enough tracks. Each vehicle has one, so with that, the various menu themes and the commando mission the soundtrack is sadly very short. Soyo Oka would also go on to later produce the soundtrack for Super Mario Kart before eventually going off to work independently (a great loss for Nintendo I feel).
All in all Pilotwings is a very enjoyable experience. It’s hugely challenging and repetitive. But there’s always that sense of “if I have just one more go, I’ll get it right this time” to spur you on. The challenge curve is never unfairly steep, so the formula works enough to keep you playing again and again for hours. And when you finally receive your coveted pilot wings, there’s a genuine feeling of pride. You really feel like you earned them through solid work.
This harkens back to a much simpler time, when games were not about grinding for levels or paying to play. The repetition isn't to make the game artificially easier, but to learn every single possible permutable mechanic you need to master the game through sheer skill. If this is your thing, I strongly recommend Pilotwings. It's a standout example.
And if not, the worst that will happen is being told off by Big Al.
How to play it:
I've already answered this in the review, but your best option today is to download the SNES Online application that comes free of charge if you already have a paid Nintendo online account. Pilotwings is one of the games you get, so you can just play it straight away with no extra cost.
Failing that, you'll need a SNES or an emulator.
Song of the Game:
All the various jingles in this are catchy, up-beat and delightful (except the commando mission, which is FOREBODING). Unfortunately they're all also very short and there aren't an awful lot of them. Still this is one of those rare examples where I'll just flat out link the whole soundtrack for posterity:
That is kind of a cop out though, so I will call a direct favourite too. But generally there's not a lot in it, the soundtrack is delightful and the songs are all earworms you'll be humming for days.
Still, the absolute winner is the Hang Glider theme:
While the Light Plane is the one that sticks in my memory the most, the Hang Glider is just so chilled out. Listening to it feels like I'm floating away on a sea of clouds.
x Smash Bros.:
Pilotwings has a fair bit of abundance in Smash Ultimate. Whilst there are no fighters (later games they were Miis, so you could argue there kind of are...), there is an entire stage devoted to it which is the next biggest deal.
The stage is representative of the whole franchise, but there are elements that originate from, or in some cases are directly lifted from the original SNES game. You fight for part of the stage on a red bi-plane, which is the classic Light Plane from the original game rendered into modern graphics. You also see Miis flying around on rocket belts (although they take their design from a later game).
As you whizz through the sky on the red plane you'll fly through rings, as in the original game and eventually skim over the surface of a 2D island. That island is lifted, pixel perfectly, from course three's Bi-Plane stage in the original Pilotwings. Very solid reference!
Smash Ultimate also features the Rocket Belt as an item on stages. If you grab it you can float about like you can on the game. The design also comes from a later instalment of Pilotwings, but it did originate here.
There is one Spirit to collect for the Light Plane, which doesn't feature a battle. It's just an image, the design of which comes from a later game (but again, it originates here).
Finally there is music, but sadly all of it is just the Light Plane theme remixed in various ways. There are four versions of it, which is a tad excessive. I'm happy the music got in, but I wish they'd have used more than just the same track repeatedly. Still, the remixes are pretty solid!
I beat Virtua Fighter. It did grow on me...a little. What helped was actually discovering there was music and modding my game to include it (the PC version won't play music on a new OS, which is annoying). Somehow having music, and replaying a few times did allow me to enjoy it a bit more. I still wouldn't rate it in the same ballpark as Samurai Shodown, which was an absolute delight. But it's not terrible!
Still playing Dillon. I'm a little stunned at just how much there is to that game to be honest. Considering the price it's pretty good value for money. It's actually quite challenging. I have beaten the game in a sense, but there's a couple of post game stages I want to unlock so I'm seeing it through to the end because I'm having a great time with it. Definitely one of the best surprises I've come across thus far.
However beating Virtua Fighter draws out the dice of fate and the dice of fate have decided my next game:
I could arguably skip this, because when I talked about games I play over and over, Zelda is 100% in that zone. Link to the Past is probably one of the games I've beaten the absolute most. It might be second to only Super Metroid in terms of total playthroughs (:
But I am going to play it, because I'm only doing this stupid thing once and I don't want to cut corners. It's also not a very long game when you know it inside and out!
Mainly because I put a fair few hours into it yesterday and today. It was very very good! Might have a new favourite for the whole run, not sure yet. I'd definitely rank it up there as one of the best games I've played in quite some time. Can see why it gets the hype.
So starting Zelda again possibly tomorrow? Still playing Dillon in small doses, determined to see it through.
As soon as I beat one of those I'll be moving on to...
I'm fearing this, quite honestly. I have played this game on and off for my entire life and never once beaten it. And even then that's the Super NES remake which has nice features such as the ability to save the game every single level. I'll be playing the OG famicom version, which is far more punishing.
They never intended to release this game in the West because of how brutal it was. I found playing through the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES incredibly hard this go round (took me a full week to do since you have no continues, have to do it all in one go!). This is a whole level beyond.
Will see how it goes. Maybe it'll be better than I expected.
No reviews today, I know you're all very sad to hear it.
You will be incredibly saddened to learn, with a heavy heart, that I've decided to stop writing my reviews on this forum. I don't think too many people are keen on logging onto FE and reading a very long post about a game from 30 years ago generally. It's a fairly niche interest and this is the wrong platform for that.
I'm still perservering with the project and the ridiculous goal of playing 800 games though, and even reviewing them all. I've just decided to create a blog for this purpose which I'll share in due course. If people are interested they can check it out, if not, it's all good. I'll be posting it around on various dedicated Smash Bros. forums since it's a bit more pertinent to that community so I might get readership, or not.
I'm still going to document this project regardless, because I will never ever do anything this stupid or insane with gaming again in my life and it would frankly be a travesty to not record it in some fashion. I did think about Lets Plays or video reviews, but that would be even more time consuming and prone to fail.
I may update this thread with a few snippets rather than incredibly detailed reviews, but in all likelihood this thread will die a death. I can move my playlist to the "recently play" thread instead perhaps.
I'll post a little about what I've played since (not a huge amount tbh, life has taken over a bit).
Incidentally the new Smash character was revealed to be Kazuya Mishima from Tekken. I already had two Tekken games on my list courtesy of a Heihachi Mii costume and Pac-mans taunt, but this little addition has managed to bring the entire Tekken series into the fold (a grand total of 12 titles in all).
Not only that, but the Mii costume reveals brought in Tales of Symphonia, Devil May Cry...
And Skyrim.
Yeah, Skyrim is now in Smash Bros. That means I'm going to once more play Skyrim. The entire project will probably pause for several months whilst I do. I've already got Fallout and Fallout IV on the list, but they had to go and add the Dragonborn as a costume (:
I'm not really complaining, I'm deciding to do this silly thing. And I'm actually really stoked they did it. It's insane to me that a first party Nintendo IP now has the option to fight using skins from Devil May Cry and Skyrim on a Tekken stage (an arcade franchise which has only really seen home console sucesses on the PlayStation).
I'm fairly pleased with Kazuya in the game because Tekken is a game I grew up with and one of the few fighting games I've played through and through. So definitely stoked to play through the whole series.
I beat Link to the Past and Lost Levels. Lost Levels is more insanely difficult than I anticipated, not aided by the fact I decided for whatever reason to do it all as both Mario and Luigi (it's the first time Luigi does his stupid skiddy running thing, I actually found it a bit easier with him in the end).
You also have to beat the game 8 times to unlock the final worlds, but I did that using save states mostly because life is too short. I did have two runs without states for each of the bros.
Not a lot to say on Link to the Past. It's a bonafide classic but I've beaten it so many times already. It's probably my most beaten game outside of Super Metroid. Probably numbers at least 10 or 11 full playthroughs. I'll post a full review somewhere, sometime.
After that I played Link's Awakening (fate really likes Zelda) which was a joy, particularly because I bought a Super Gameboy adapter for the SNES for the sole purpose of playing it, plus an original copy of the gameboy game itself. Gotta go with the OG hardware. I love that game, one of my favs.
I played Rally-X next which is a Namco arcade game from 1980 which is incredibly hard and dated now. Played it for maybe a couple of days before moving swiftly on. Fun in its own way but doesn't warrant a lot of attention. I played Tomodachi Collection for the DS after that, which is like a stripped back Sims crossed with a Tamagotchi where your Sims are Miis. Mildy entertaining.
I've now started the Wonderful 101, which is an absolute delight so far. Hard to get into, but paying off big time. I'll be playing Doki Doki Panic, which is the game that Mario Bros 2 (the US release) was reskinned off, just an interesting bit of gaming history. And after that it's onto the original Street Fighter, which I don't think I've ever played (2 is the prolific one, the first is a forgotten relic).
Probably my last update, but I might switch gears to the more generic gaming thread since this won't be an ongoing thing here.
Incidentally the new Smash character was revealed to be Kazuya Mishima from Tekken. I already had two Tekken games on my list courtesy of a Heihachi Mii costume and Pac-mans taunt, but this little addition has managed to bring the entire Tekken series into the fold (a grand total of 12 titles in all).
Not only that, but the Mii costume reveals brought in Tales of Symphonia, Devil May Cry...
And Skyrim.
Yeah, Skyrim is now in Smash Bros. That means I'm going to once more play Skyrim. The entire project will probably pause for several months whilst I do. I've already got Fallout and Fallout IV on the list, but they had to go and add the Dragonborn as a costume (:
I'm not really complaining, I'm deciding to do this silly thing. And I'm actually really stoked they did it. It's insane to me that a first party Nintendo IP now has the option to fight using skins from Devil May Cry and Skyrim on a Tekken stage (an arcade franchise which has only really seen home console sucesses on the PlayStation).
I'm fairly pleased with Kazuya in the game because Tekken is a game I grew up with and one of the few fighting games I've played through and through. So definitely stoked to play through the whole series.
Only one more fighter left to add games to your list!
Definitely post the blog link if you end up doing. I will be interested to read what all you've been playing.
"So, uh, what are we saying here? If we save LA from a nuclear bomb, then you and I can get together for dinner and a movie?"
I'm coming back here to grab some of my reviews (I lost the files, but they're on here anyway so whatever).
I haven't had much time to play a whole lot of anything. Briefly played Street Fighter 1 and completed the Wonderful 101. Would hugely recommend that game, especially now it's been remastered on Switch and PC and so on. It's an absolute delight from start to finish.
I'm playing catch up and writing reviews for a lot of the games I've historically completed. I want to have a bunch of content ready for when I start posting this stuff. I've now beaten 37 games, with only 9 reviews written in all, so I've a way to go. But I've started writing all of them and will have something out there hopefully in a month or two.
Looking forward to getting some time back at the end of the year and carrying on with that madness. New Spirit events for Smash have brought in another Monster Hunter stories game, the new Mario Golf and Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (for some reason). The list keeps expanding!
