Tag: SNES

Cowboys, Giant Robots and a Pink Dame! Pinkie plays Wild Guns

Hear Ye Hear Ye  Princess Pinkie has returned with a new gaming post!

Salutations my loyal subjects and island guests. As you might know I love retro games and especially the SNES era of gaming.   I have done a fair few reviews in the past! Recently with Covid rules becoming a bit more lentient I have been meeting with a friend to play some cool SNES Co-Op titles using my Nintendo Switch Online subscription.  Today I will talk to you about a game we recently beat! A game that is about shouting cowboys and giant robots. Steampunk meets Cyberpunk in the SNES cult classic. Wild Guns!

Clint and Annie’s date at the Saloon

Wild Guns - Wikipedia

Wild Guns was one of those SNES titles that saw a very diverse release date. Released in Japan in August 1994, the US in  July 1995 and finally in Europe due October 30 1996 Wild Arms is a classic game in the very obscure shooting gallery genre.  While the game has an incredibly arcade feel Natsume developed and published it exclusively for SNES. It would not be until 2016 and later that a “remaster” was released on anything else but a Nintendo platform. But nowadays a four player variant of this game with new characters and new stages is also available for pc and playstation 4. Of course the updated version is also available on Nintendo Switch. Wild Guns Reloaded is available on steam for around 13 euro. While I would love to play as a dog on a drone (which is an reloaded exclusive character)  I will talk about  the  base game.. because if you pay for Nintendo Switch online it’s free!

I have no idea what the story is of this game! I don’t remember if I skipped it or if I needed a manual to read it .. but   in the base game you play Clint .. a gruff classical looking cowboy or Annie a blonde in a pink dress and a fancy hat! Guess which one I insisted on being!   Each character comes with four colour variations which also change your crosshair. I played better as Blue Annie then Pink Annie because  I lost track of my crosshair less! White Annie I found unplayable.. but that might just be me!  The game has  6  stages of which the majority consists of 3 parts.  In the end you have to defeat.. some chinese/japanese looking guy. The stages and subsections are pretty varied and most enemies are unique to each stage.. though the classic SNES colour variants show up. The game features 3 difficulties and a versus mode, so there is some replayability. 

SNES Longplay [243] Wild Guns (a) - YouTube

My friend and me started at the normal difficulty, which had Clint and Annie already die quite a bit. The first stage is themed after a saloon. With the first part being a shootout against cowboys outside the saloon with enemies shooting at your from windows or behind barrels. It was pretty neat and the cowboy vibe clearly can be felt.  The way this game work  is basically as follows. The first two subsections of a stage you fight against a clock, you have to survive against an onslaught of enemies until the timer runs out after which you face a mini boss.  If you score enough points you can earn more lives , better weapons and screen wiping bombs to make the rest of the stage easier, so you always have to balance how much risk you take killing people versus. Risking how much you want to upgrade versus how much you want to live. Which is easier said then done.. because this game comes at you , guns blazing.

After you have survived against your first wave of cowboys you have to face a giant robot cowboy with machine gun arms which  tries to mow you down remorseley. Luckily Clint and Annie have some sort of spider sense and they will tell the player to watch out and make them dodge when projectiles fly their way. In their jump they are also near invisible. If you listen to your character you have a good chance to survive , and with a bit of learning you can take down this first mini boss pretty easily. Clint and Annie beat this stage after only one game over. The second bout of this stage takes place inside the saloon!  This one is already a bit more tricky, not only do bullets fly your way, there is also dynamite to deal with.   Which limits in what directions you can block.  Jumping into an explosion will end up getting you killed and if you do not kill enemies quickly they will keep piling up turning the game into a true bullet hell.  

Wild Guns: Reloaded adds an adorable dog who controls a machine-gun drone to its chaotic roster | TechnoBuffalo

It took us two attempts.. but when we found out we can use a Lasso to stun dynamite throwers, while the other would gun them down  we cleaned out the saloon and took down the wimpy Miniboss.  The final area of this stage put us on the roof of the Saloon where we take down a Mecha equipped with a missile system that rains death from above.. and gatling guns that sweep half the screen.  Playing smart we saved up a lot of our bombs which made short work of the boss. Clint and Annie finish their date at the saloon after dying only like 40 times (21 times Annie and 19 times Clint) ! Hey I have been on worse dates!

Crazy Cowboys

Amazon.com: Wild Guns - Nintendo Super NES: Video Games

After this the game lets you pick one of four stages,  A goldmine, a train,  a canyon and an arms depot.  Each stage pits you against a crazy mix of cowboys and robots.  Each stage gives you a point total which you can see as bounty for taking down the boss. Not every stage has the same bounty and of course the stages with the higher bounty offer higher difficulty! Yet bounties also go up if you beat a stage, so if you are interested in score there are some tactics to have fun with… for me bullet riddled Annie, we just decided to play the stages from high to low! Only to give on medium difficulty after 4 attempts of desolation canyon. We really wanted to beat the game and play through it and despite having unlimited continues that keep track of which stages you beat, having to do all three subsections of a stage on 3 life each.  Now Normal is a doable difficulty but we did not have enough practice time.. and due to the world state we can’t play this as often as we would like.. so we would just try easy mode, hoping the game would not insult us at the end.

It gave us a perfect insight at what difficulty would do. The higher the difficulty the higher the health pool of enemies is  and thus how smaller your window to dodge becomes. This will also result in you having more enemies on screen to deal with at the same time, as you can’t kill everyone quick enough to keep your screen rather clear.  The higher the difficulty the more likely enemies are to use their special abilities, like drones throwing their own lasso or one of those deaths from above missile barrages. All in all easy was a lot more manageable, though still not  very easy. There is a lot on the screen to manage. Powerups, your dodge notifications, enemy placement, the placement of your crosshair and the missiles falling from the sky , powerups and ground traps.  Funnily I discovered that me and my friend struggled with different things. He kept getting hit by traps and missiles while I failed to see a notification of a bullet.  Which helped us get a flow where we warned each other of one of those. 

Voyeurism – Wild Guns | Games and Junk

The single player mode of this game as such is a bit tricky, there is so much happening I am convinced you will always have a weakness and there is no one to polish it out, and it is not as fun either. The action is a bit repetitive, even though all stages offer a pretty diversive, way of approaching things. The mine has enemies as tiny dots in the distance, the  train has enemies zipping past and changing positions, the canyon has a lot of enemies that can stun! So each stage is different in how you approach it .. but it is all very samey in it’s pacing, which is  why you really need a friend for this.  Competing for the higher score is also a  lot more fun than getting a highscore in some random list.  The set high scores are super easy to beat.  We beat the game and already set the high score.. while we actually did pretty terrible.  So just beating high scores by yourself would not be fun at all! Maybe if you beat the game once or twice to beat your personal best.. but with how many games we have access to nowadays , no one will do that.  So it really is a game for two.

This also helps with the game’s biggest appeal. Finding out what craziness is next. The enemies are really crazy and most bosses are really fun!  There is one really boring flame tank thing but there are also some bizarre bosses that are super fun to learn and face.  The mid stage bosses are fairly fun as well, though unfortunately these are the ones that are reused the most. In a way there are some similarities with Cowboy Bebop ..but without the break. Think Bebop meet’s Gurren Lagann, while graphically reminding me a bit off Final Fight mixed with Metal Slug.  That feeling and craziness is also the biggest appeal. You don’t play this game for the challenge , you might not even play it to beat it every single time you play it for the fun, in a similar way why you play Pacman or Tetriis.  There is just something fundamentally fun about this game. 

Wild Guns - Retro of the Week

That same appeal is unfortunately also it’s biggest downfall.  Because it has that arcade appeal it’s linear/level based setting makes it less repeatable than it’s competitors.  Where you can play a Pacman a bit every day, this you will put down for a fair while after you beat it. It feels more like a beat em up with guns. However where  Beat Em ups let you play another character that does really play differently as the other, here it doesn’t feel that way. Because you walk on a 2d plain instead of a 2.5d plan your actions are much more set and because enemies target you in specific ways , knowing how they will  react will get you past them each time. At least in Beat ‘m ups they will move slightly differently.  This makes Wild Guns a perfect game to beat once a year with a friend. I really like this game a lot but I also don’t want to play it again any time soon, maybe I want to get the reloaded version someday so I can play the dog on a drone trough the extra stages! Now  I just need to hope the Dog on a drone comes with a pink skin!

Wild Guns Reloaded no Steam

Did you ever play Wild Guns?! Do you have a favourite arcade like title? What character would you play? I have so many questions for you I might have to sleep on it! In the meantime you can already babble in the comments! Because remember, Friendship is Magic but Dreams are even more wonderful! Oyasumi.

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Pinkie’s Quest for Meat… I think : Mario’s Mystery Meat

Hello little lights, I am trying to streamline my content a bit.. focussing on anime , games and even pokémon things that might seem odd or straight up bizarre. The Princess of weird.. after all that always facinates me.. on this hunt to get a bit more focus, due to limited energy.. I encountered something very strange. A Rom-Hack unlike any others.. Join me as I play … Mario’s Mystery Meat!

Disclaimer

I am aware that the journey I was about to take would take me deep into VineSauce Lore… and I have no idea about what that entails. I assume I will move trough some very specific memes that I might not get.. but I don’t even know what VineSauce is.. all I know is they apparently have a lot of custom Mario lore. A very skillful rom hacker named Enimus decided to turn this all into a game that is more or less cohesive. Do keep in mind though that I have no idea who these characters are, I am here for the rollercoaster of weirdness that awaits me and that will be my perspective.  So please don’t yell at me for describing a character as that “duck thing” ….because let me tell you there are a LOT of “things”  in this game! It all starts with what Mario brother you play. Care to take a guess? It’s not Mario.. so the title is a bit deceptive.. Of course you are not Luigi either, you play the orange brother…. Sponge.
(Pronounced Spongée)

Mario and Luigi love spaghetti but what is spaghetti without a lot of meat. Unfortunately Mario and Luigi are always too busy to save the world to get the meat for their spaghetti so they delegated this to their third brother.. the outcast one.  Sponge is a chronically depressed man who never really goes on adventures but just on trips to the butcher shop.  However on a normal meat run.. suddenly a giant worm thing shows up , to the sound of a PlayStation One starting up. Sponge jumps in his mouth and gets transported to a strange new world.. where has to save Princess Bleach for himself.. from the evil Will Smith and get meat for Mario and Luigi by killing the giant worm. Unlike classical Mario adventures this all happens in a seemingly seamless 2d world. Though  the word world would imply this is a cohesive mesh.. but I am not full sure about that!  Let’s dive into this adventure. 

Virtual Boy… for Real Men (and Women)

Mario’s Mystery Meat, is a Rom Hack for Super Mario World, which means it can be played on an emulator or put on a fan cartridge if you find the right guy!   But it is a very special romhack, that features many different forms of Gameplay!  We are introduced to Sponge in a very classical Super Mario World level.. but very much in hte style of how a stage randomiser rom hack works.  Elongated sections of blocks and sped up enemies immediately will show you, this Rom Hack won’t be easy.  Clearing the stage will send you to a twisted Dimension and the Playstation theme boots up.. the worm thing shows upand you jump in it’s mouth. The map we got promised from the beginning is gone.. there is just one stage.. called Meat!

I am filled with confidence that I can handle whatever this game will throw at me.. and it begins with the drop in a pit! Bart Simpson pig shows up.. Peter Griffin with a mushroom cap hat.. a guy cosplayed like Simon Belmont.. and a Luigi shouting NUT! Then I fall even deeper and land back to the 2d stages… a Duck man tells me he hates me.. a duck tells me his dad is mean and so are his brothers. To the right a series of Piranha plants block my path.. so I have to go left where a Chozo statue gives me my first power up! Crying!

Crying is Sponge’s variant of the fire flower, but instead of throwing fire from his hands he throws water from his eyes if he hits something that can be hurt by his tears it turns into coins… like Piranha flowers!  I move on and get faced with an onslaught of ducks and I mean an onslaught! So much that there has been a variant of this rom where the number of enemies was turned down to a more reasonable amount…but I played the regular difficulty version, although later admittedly with save states to save me from some checkpoint tedium.  It is a stage that is somewhere of a 6th to 8th world difficulty in Super Mario Standards.  It is tricky for sure but very doable! I find the letter B and take it with me.. it has to be here for some reason right? I die a few time and can not activate the letter B no matter how hard I try.. so I take it with me across the entire stage.. until I encounter a bird tomb! Which of course is missing a letter B! I place the letter and get access to a new location!

There is some lore to be found in this next room but also a duck that is made out of five duck heads.. all of them a character from Animal Crossing, they , he, it,  gives me a quiz mostly about ducks!  I struggle with this quiz because I am not aware of VineSauce lore but luckily there is no penalty for failure other than starting the quiz over, as a bonus question I have to answer who is fatter Ringo Star.. or Mr Dink.. I chose Ringo .. because why not!  Eventually I pass the quiz and the duck lets me pass a sarcophagus.

I now am in a tomb.. filled with ducks! But everything is shown in Virtual Boy graphic style, black and red with huge scanlines and pieces of picture missing.   I have to jump on huge pigeons who are reskinned Montey moles.. dodge evil   glowey eyed pigeons and skeletal ducks! .. I wonder of this will be all ducks and immediately after. While the screen is still kind of red.. it’s not a virtual boy anymore… a strange eerie clown melody  is playing.. cheerful, almost circuslike.  So of course I get chased by Smiley faces! … This stage is HARD!  Those smiles can be quite unforgiving! By spinjumping on their heads I can avoid harm.. but they chase me hard! Think .. sun in Mario 3.. but now there is like 7 of them!  In batches of 3 and they mad! 

Stranger Things

The weirdness hardly ends there,  I go back to pigeon riding for just a bit .. but when a pigeon takes me into the darkness, I suddenly end up on Howard the ducks head.. it absorbs me… and I fall into a deep pit with no way out! A chime from game Earthbound can be heard after which Sponge hears the voice of god! He will help Sponge.. by pissing all over him. This game can be quite infantile at times, with an AWFUL lot of piss jokes! I am not sure if it is is god’s piss but the next series of stages or sections are swimming levels that get increasingly weird. The one that is the least weird has pink blocks with cute little piggies depicted on them launch pigs with lady legs swimming real fast and torpedoes like you. It is a very pink stage.. despite potentially being set in god’s urine so I did really like it. This stage feels by far the fairest in term of difficulty. Just be careful and you will get by just fine. For the second bout of swimming we now are in a very spacy environment.. besides the pigs, there are UFOs and aliens as well. It is super colourful and cute.. so once again I like it… obviously by taking a warp pipe… we would end up in a restaurant.. because that makes sense.

I am then quickly attacked by Ringo Starr.  Had I told the five headed duck from earlier I thought Mr Dink was the fattest, he would have been in the restaurant instead. So from moments like these it is really shown that this game pushes rom-hacking to the limit. The fight is completely in Earthbound RPG style as well, so not only does the game now have branching paths based on choices you made.. it also features elements from other games! Something you don’t often see in Rom Hacks which is incredibly ingenious and only further contributes to the fever dream that is this game. Ringo is defeated by crying in front of him and then giving him 1 cent.. he got what he came for and he wishes me love and peace.. as he fades into thing air. In Earthbound style Sponge Levels up and learns Crying B.. a power that now makes sure he can cry with whatever power up he is using..even when tiny! Cool! But leveling up made Sponge hungry and on the table is a plate of spaghetti that Ringo left untouched…. of course that plate of spaghetti is the next stage……

The Spaghetti stage is where things start to become a bit tedious, as it combines elements of Donkey Kong Country , with classic mario elements.. but also elements from later mario games that weren’t even used yet.. So we got Dk’s spinning barrels, now rebranded as shoes, typical mario moving platforms , now shaped like Pizza’s and the bouncy donuts from later mario games, in a almost sonic style maze, with multiple paths to take.  Not all jumps are doable it seems but across the stage you find several pools, that offer certain upgrades. Liquid Bread bloats you up like a balloon, while CBT oil makes you jump higher but more slippery, Tears make the world seem darker and Pee.. makes you curl up into a ball and shortens your jumping range.  I avoided reading what was in the white pool.. and i did not jump in it either.. I did not trust them! 

Regardless, in this stage I used save states a few times, as we get a lot of “jump chaining”  where you have to do 12 incredibly hard and specifically timed jumps in sequence and a fail on  any one will reset you to the beginning. When a lot of enemies are on screen the game can slow down a bit.. which makes precision jumping that much harder. The enemies you encounter here are pirate knives, ..which is a kitchen knife with a pirate costume, a teletubby throwing meatballs and a frog spitting bath toys at you. Oh and weaponised pizza’s!   The stage ands in a fight against an evil sausage.

Go to Hell Will Smith!

After Sponge finishes the sausage he finds the meat he was looking for and it seems my quest is over.. but the game glitches and I now have play a kids games.. Pick the Triangle.. says a kids voice.. so I pick a triangle.  Select the sun.. the kid voices tells me while I can select either a sun or a moon!  Then a Mario yelling piss, shows up and a picture of Jay Leno.. with the assignment to pick the opposite of funny! Since I assume this game thinks piss is funny… I pick Jay Leno and it is the right answer. Next random letters show up.. when I click on one the kid begins to count how many letters there are… there are 6! Six!, SIX! The kid tells me he will send me to hell and soon Sponge finds himself trapped in Hell.. I get consumed by hellfire on a auto running stage and just as I get ready to repeat this ad infinium, I find myself in an alien village that worships Hatsune Miku, the worm and Will Smith. The aliens seem rather violent minded but also to lazy to act on it.  In a bit of an adventure style, I can talk to all sorts of villagers to find out what item to use to get to the right place.  To advance the story.

The goal was to find Yoshi.. but he refuses Sponge because he is just a depressed crybaby, the only way Sponge can prove himself to Yoshi is in Gladiatorial combat against the aliens,  which unfortunatly doesn’t use any different gameplay and just uses classic Mario gameplay, with a lot of hammer brothers to fight! Overall this is all fairly doable but after this the game becomes obnoxiously hard. After getting the approval of Yoshi we have to move through another glitched style setting, trying to raise the creature up to his big form and reach the end of the stage with him. Rough edges are shown here because it is SOOOOO easy to lose Yoshi and there are puzzles to solve that can cause Yoshi to just fall through the floor and you have to start all over again. And all over this time means.. track back a stage or two to get Yoshi back. It’s more annoying than it is hard…. but we are still at Megaman 2 difficulties herre.. not the boss stages yet.. but the trickier regular stages.  If we make it through this stage we get an air combat stage that really is just the level of another game.. but the final boss has been replaced by two will smith stone heads.. with an enlarged forehead.

That stage I would say is the last one that is truly fun to play! After this the difficulty ramps up so hard that it becomes quite frustrating.  The whole sense of being on an adventure also comes to a bit of a halt as things feel even more random.. before   the weirdness had a bit of story to it and this to me is where the game derails. In the last stage that features Yoshi , I am dodging Verizon logo’s giant sorcerers and have to use the cape  and liquid platforms into enemy jumps to progress. It’s a very specific jumping style that feels so horrible.. like a nail on the chalkboard sensation of platforming. Yoshi gets lasered to death by the Will Smith castle as I answer what I assumed was the last stage. 

The first step of the castle however is quite fun!  It feels like a great final stage for a Mario game. It is challenging  by riding floating blocks.. doding will Smith shaped Twomps.. and  Will Smith shaped Lava fish and features an enemy that eats the stage! It offers some interesting jump puzzles… the second part of the castle however… made me almost rage quit. In a vertical autoscroll, race to the top against lava, filled with one block wide precision jumps, fake out twomps and trial of error segments we get a stage that is so blood boiling it almost made me quit! Savestates made this manageable.. but this is on the level of those insanely difficult Mario Maker stages.

A Mysterious Rom Hack

Through the power of artificial checkpoints I do pass this stage, but it has broken me!  I notice I do not enjoy the game as much as I did before.  With still two more stages to go the game has become a bit of a slog, yet the weirdness continues to drive me! At the end of the Will Smith Stage you find a button to rewind time.. and suddenly we are back in ancient times.. We get a stage that is entirely upside down.. as in.. you stick to the ceiling.  This is a very long stage that is filled with random shapes like roman arches etc… I honestly considered flipping my lapttop upside down because I feel like this stage could be really cool, but I could not appreciate it as much because everything is upside down for a very long stage.  It is really compelling gameplay wise but there are some rough edges.  You have to grab onto vines  and only on vines controls are inverted meaning up is down and down is up. It made things a lot harder for me to wrap my mind around.. but that could be just being a bit feeble!  What really ruins this stage is the fish! 

In this stage , if you wait too long for a jump a fish comes and eats you up, rather than outright killing you it transports you to an alternate dimension of worm things, who sing the Hong Kong 97 loop of I love Beijing Tiananmen. While I love the reference these things are a spawn from hell!  While they can be used to skip through parts of the stage they also can catch you in a loop!  So besides dying.. you can “soft die” .. the game deciding.. you went to slow.. . you have one chance to not start over at the checkpoint but somewhere in between.
I do really love how weird it is.. but it just feels to punishing again. You can’t be fast, you can’t be slow, you gotta move at just the right pace while dodging unicorn Anime girls heads and Donkey Kong heads.. Mr Dink Blueberry inflations and green things! I have no idea what they were. Why is gravity so weird, why is Sponge Naked.. and how did he get his clothes back at the end of the stage.

The build up to the final boss fight is hidden behind an interesting puzzle!  With multiple bad endings and a screen that is so filled with Mario love it makes up for a lot of frustration.  I just have accepted that I think this game was made with emulation’s potential in mind.. you have to cheat because I honestly see now way to do it without it!  The final Boss battle has a very cool first stage similar to Bowser final Clown Car fight.. I really enjoyed it .. especially since we return to a very black and red stage like how our journey started…. the second stage of this fight though is completely impossible to do in a very legit way!  It is just soooo hard.  I could barely even cope with safe states. Most other players I have seen this play used rewind functions and they used that to get through!  Did I miss a rewind power or was it emulation! I am not sure!  For 80% of the game we got an amazing and fascinating adventure but the final 20% is just difficult porn. That isn’t for me.. but it is a very common romhacking thing so I can see a few people get to the end with a very big smile on their face.

A Strange Conclusion

Except for the final stages this really is a great game to give a try, it’s weird, it shows a lot of style, Sponge is quite compelling and the wonderful weirdness does give this game it’s own right to exist.  This is a very good meme game, and it really feels like such a trip! I enjoyed the journey.. I just did not enjoy the car trouble I had on the final stretch and the horrible road at whatever strange place I have landed now. If you like challenging Mario games, this might be a bit too weird though and a bit too easy in the beginning. If you like weird games you will probably experience the same as me. You will love the first part and really hate the late game. The game managed difficulty quite well up untill the very end. Even the verizon stage is still kinda fair.. just with an annoying jump! Just the penalty for losing Yoshi is a bit too harsh. It seems this Rom Hack was made for a too specific audience.

Now I do not know the Mario skill of the VineSauce followers or people who made it for someone to stream or something.. I don’t know how VineSauce works or how it works.. I barely know what it is. So perhaps I am missing something and this difficulty serves the purposes I am not aware of. So honestly, this is a weird one..  in all sense of the words. Do I recommend you playing it? I’d say yes… maybe up until you defeat the sausage?! You get the meat  and you can see that as the game ending.  Up until that point it a super fun game, after that there is still some fun to be had.. but see that more as your “lost levels” Bonus content you can play!  The Princess Bleach plot line gets abandoned and the story doesn’t really resolve in any way in the end, so  there is no real ending.  So just play the game until it stops being fun for you! That is the best way to play this!

Now normally I would end with a nice picture.. but this time I wil lend with the I love Beijing Tiananmen Loop for you to enjoy! Shine on little lights. Oyasumi!

Pinkie Plays: Final Fantasy VI Return of the Dark Sorcerer -Episode 5 – A Stream of Hard Encounters – Finale

Romhacks are strange little creatures my little lights! I encountered an amazing rom hack of one of my favourite RPG’s of all time! While it shines in all it’s weirdness it also has the writing style of a 13 year old goth kid that writes fanfiction based on My Chemical Romance songs filled with “my first fantasy”  tropes!  Add in an increased difficulty and we got a Rom I both love and hate at the same time!  As we draw closer to the conclusion of the first “arc” in this game the question remains! Will we continue this journey ?  Let’s find out!

Bye Bye Butter..uh Starmie?!

Last episode we left off right before the boss fought against the Skull Train. If you want to read more about if you can find the entire series at the bottom of this post!  We need to solve a puzzle and I discover the little Onion Knight works like Celes! He has Runic.. except he has no magic.. which might make him more useless, except for a very situational pair up.. like the party I am in now… minus the Drakkar who can actually cast magic!  Regardless the Onion knight looks like he might be great for the fight against the Skull Train…. and he is not going to fight along! Great! Oh that other Reaper they talked about last episode joins in and casts doom on my best party member?! Of course!  Go right ahead… Fuuuu , this will be a hard one won’t it?!

I get absolutely destroyed within SECONDS of starting this fight, Mr Grim can burn 350 hp easily and the train can attack as well!  I get whooped so fast my doom counter did not even drop below 60!  That’s a bit ridiculous… but it turns out I forgot to heal! I was at half health…. heh! Whoops! The next fight goes a bit better, and I actually manage to win though everyone was one blow away from death and I completely drained my supplies of revives and I think potions as well! Turns out however this is a double feature!  Another Boss fight appears right after this! Luckily it’s not my main party who gets in the fight here but Arc the Onion Knight and Reaper.. the uhm.. Reaper..WAIT let’s call him Shinigami to avoid double words!  That fight is pretty easy though as I can exploit Arc’s Runic to pretty much not be touched while Reaper deals heavy damage to the evolved Mister Grim!  The fight is so easy that it is almost a cutscene.  After that whole thing the story continues mostly like normal Avalon who takes over the role, but not gameplay of, Cyan sees his wife and son depart to the afterlife with the train like normal. After literally being forced to wait for a while gameplay resumes and we can wrap up this part of the story.

The Waterfall scene! The group hits a dead end and Sabin normally solves this by jumping off a waterfall!  If Shadow accompanies you he leaves you here.. but this time his counterpart decides to come along despite refusing the parties friendship! We jump off the waterfall and get YET another bossfight this time against Starmie and Staryu, while the pokemon theme plays!  This fight is HARD! Logic dictates to take down the weaker Pokémon instead but that turns out to be the wrong strategy and I am sent to a watery grave! The second time I focus my damage on Starmie  and barely scrape by!  It was fun to hear The Pokémon Wild Encounter theme rendered in Final Fantasy Style fanfare music though. A nearby town tells me about the ravenous Pokémon! I also discover the Oboro has gone…. *sigh* just when I spend tons of money in shuriken! … Well I guess at least we defeated Starmie!

The Onion that Tracks

The new town is a sleepy little town, I stock up on supplies, buy a new weapon and give him some relics to make him deal more damage by holding a weapon with two hands.. it makes sense since he is a kid and would be small!  Lots of references in this town though! There is a Legend of Zelda II , Zelda sleeping in a bed!  There is a Miqo’te shopkeeper and some reference I do not understand.. something about being born to be a farmer.. and Luffy..  the Pirate King is a shopkeeper!  I don’t know why.. I don’t why the man gave up on his dream but now he sold me a pokey stick!  Maybe this is what he will do after he has found One Piece.. but where is the rest of his crew! The other store keeper was “some bald guy” so his Nakama are gone. Either way it is sad to see your heroes fall. So to cheer me up I decide to let Arc play some hide and seek with some local kids! I win  the game and they tell me about a diving helmet.. that the three heroes plan to use to cross yet another river to get closer to where they need to be! 

This leads to a small treasure hunt on the map to find the right location Luckily I find my location fast and Arc doesn’t take long to find the treasure either! He is such a good little hero!  The wild enemies before here I could take on with relative ease, but now that we jump into the river I begin struggling a lot!  I barely make it to shore but I already wasted a lot of my recently purchased supplies!  If the difficulty keeps up being this tedious I will admit I am going to end this series at the end of the first story arc. I don’t mind difficulty hacks  but I have trouble rhyming them with games with such a silly tone! I just wanna see all the strangeness not grind for hours on end or learn movesets by  wiping without a hint of a chance!  It’s kind of annoying that way!  If i wanted to play a difficulty hack I’d download a difficulty hack! 

The Onion Knight guides us through yet another cave and I waste a great item that gives more MP on him by accident.. whoops! I really did not mean to do that!  Might come in handy after I get some Espers though!  If I ever will.. I am kind of curious to see what they did with Espers though. I might have missed an encounter with a Mermaid but after so many pretty tricky boss fights or at least back to back boss fights I am happy that I can take it a bit easy!  I follow the dungeon and wash up in another town.. I guess this midway point was made so I could heal a bit and find an item?!  I was never really sure!  Regardless in the new city we encounter Final Fantasy VII character Cait Sith who tells us we will find a treasure, so I venture into the wild to find enemies too weak to level on and no treasure anywhere! That is a shame. I had back to town and boarded a ship towards our avenger end game reunion thing!  The little Onion Knight gets seasick and says I don’t  feel so good.. then it seems as if he dies…..but he probably is just very seasick just like I would be on a boat!  This finally ends this chapter.. that is a fair bit too long! Time to reunite with our main character!

To Boldly go where we have been before

This story bit was always my least favourite, because it does not involve a whole lot more than backtracking to areas you have previously visited. Not that long ago either!  Plenty of enemies are still the weak ones with only a challenge here and there!  We go to Fraust which is most definitely not Narshe and go back through the caves where our adventure began, with enemies at the level as if our adventure just began. I almost can not contain my excitement.. I know I asked for easier battles here but this is a bit ridiculous!  And then Gilgamesh shows up on a bridge…..not the one from Fate though which I think is a missed opportunity but it’s classic Final Fantasy Gilgamesh.. and traditionally you fight him on a bridge so I guess all is well.. the fight is challenging but fair, if not a tiny bit tedious due to his insanely large health pool. I do manage to slowly chip away all the damage though and I come out on top. Time to walk through an old dungeon again! Strangely this is the entire storyline Aurora gets.. this is it.. nothing more happens except for some plot exposition about the enemy that is coming, after this we jump straight into the arc finale!

After exposition that is almost exactly the same as the original it is time. The Blackthorn empire attacks! We have to make our final stand to protect the Esper and prevent the Magi Wars… all changes here are strictly in name only and for once I am fine with that. This is indeed the moment this arc has been building up to!  It’s okay to keep this intact as is it such a pivotal moment. After this battle i have to decide if I will continue playing or not.. but as it turns out the game has made the choice for me.  We start the battle with one of those sieges, where you move your troops to block all paths to an npc or the battle will end.  Everything goes well but these npcs are quite tough to beat and there are a lot of them. After spending about an hour on these few battles alone there is a boss that wipes the floor with me.. Luckily due to the format here I can try again . After three attempts I succeed… and then I have to beat Kefka still.

Kefka is insanely hard by now you have the ability to make 3 parties and you have 9 people.. so three people per party right? No… if we  do it this way I found Kefka completely unbeatable. He cast Confuse, he can petrify , he can silence to avoid you healing from that, he casts regenerate he casts slow.. the only way you even stand a chance it with the Onion Knight hoping to absorb his spells, but my damage output is to low if I don’t put him in the party with Ronan.. and I did not!  Kefka regenerates so fast I can not deal damage… or while I can I need to spend every other turn healing.. and that means Kefka goes back up to full again.  He has spells that halve your level so if the battle lasts too long you don’t  deal damage anyway, the only option I think is Avalon who is actually with Arc.. but I can’t keep him healthy enough to deal enough damage. I spend 20 minutes alone in this boss fight and with no way to swap your party after your initial choice I have to go through another 90 minute slog to reach the boss?! No.. this is where I am done..  already doubted to continue as it’s just worse written Final Fantasy by now.. but with this type of difficulty I can’t have fun in a weird game like this.. The fate of the world refused to change and with my game being saved at an awkward spot.. I can’t go back to fix it either..Too bad the journey ends here.

Onwards!

I do not mind difficulty in games, but I am a bit iffy about it in RPG’s! Playing a 40 minute turn-based battle, just to find out you took the wrong party members and you can not actually beat the final stage of this fight isn’t fun! Let alone if it is preceded by another 40 minute long strategy thing, that was also hard. In the end the Romhack falls into the pitfall of a lot of rom hacks, being to hard to be enjoyable. I am sure I COULD beat this.. but I would not be having any fun anymore it would become homework. The amazing encounters do look amazing later on… but the story is just to rough at other places for me to care. It is a great cross-over.. but a very mediocre game that can be insanely unfair and unfun.. even though it also shines brightly at times. Let’s hope our next adventure will be the best of both worlds.

If you have a weird or fun Rom Hack you want me to play trough let me know in the comments! Due to my health not being that great I am trying to decrease the amount of episodic content I put out, to fit my currently more “when able” upload schedule! So lots of recommendations would be appreciated! Thank you for keeping reading this blog, even while I am not producing as much stuff as normal and struggling a bit!

Image by Mallow!

The Return of the Dark Sorcerer Series

Pinkie Plays : Final Fantasy VI – Return of the Dark Sorcerer Episode 4 – Poison Pokemon and Pigs

This is little lights! The make or break episode to see if I will put a lot of time in this game or not!  Last week I absolutely adored what was going on, after a rough start!   I am playing Final Fantasy VI .. remade with characters from all over Geek Media.  From Fighting Raditz to having Cloud Crossdress to get Shang Tsung some Booze!   It’s all possible in this game!  Yet when the writers have to create their own dialogue.. that is not referential it all feels flat a bit! Now on an adventure with nothing but original characters I wonder.. Will the game be as good as it is when Cloud is there? Or will it fall flat on its face?! Find out today with me!

Familiar but Edgier

As Ronan washes around the shore I find nothing on the map but a little Orphanage, I make my way there after defeating a few slimes with Parasols!  A kid makes a comment about stranger danger, which is pretty accurate since Ronan is a half naked man talking to strange kids!  However a nun tells me a story about Arc.. a boy who became an Onion Knight after he saw a thief kill his mother.. or he thought he did , in fact that man just robbed her and was a good guy!  He feels sorry for the kid while his partner killed him in cold blood!  I assume this blue haired bandit will play the role of our Locke..  The kid being an Onion Knight suspect will have the role of Gau. I am not sure yet but the story is a bit mediocre just as I expected.  It’s good enough but it can’t hold a candle to the original … all the names of locations and characters feel so.. “My first Fantasy story” .. but okay let’s see where this goes I am kind of intrigued!  Time to get into the Imperial base! 

The first bit of the base plays remarkably similar to the original. Kefka is here and he is laying siege to a castle, as things seem grim a new hero shows up. Normally it’s Cyan but this time it is the Magic Knight “Avalon” I assume he will play like Celes with runic but so far I can’t play him yet. He is incredibly edgy though keeping talking about reaping and how his blade thirsts for blood. Seriously he sounds like a 13 year old’s first roleplay character. He has a pretty great battle theme though!  Not long after his introduction we are introduced to his mechanic. He can deal his total health in damage to an enemy and maybe inflict damage to an enemy. It’s neat enough, his design reminds me of Lancer from Fate.. and I do think most lancers look the same at least the one from Fate Zero and Fate Stay.. I am not sure if they are different people or the same.. but you know that look!  He kills his boss .. although barely and it’s time to go back to Ronan again.

General Leo has been replaced with… General Leo so once again this story is super duper similar to the original. However that Thief is in the background!  He seems to replace Shadow! His name is Oboro.. kind of a gothish name.. .. so whoever wrote this part of the story must be some massive kind of edgelord.. I’ll ask Indigo if he wrote it! I am half surprised the battle music isn’t “My Chemical Romance” Unlike I what I had expected he doesn’t play like Locke though he actually does play like Shadow as well, except he has a lot more stuff to throw and it is all a bit more Naruto like! He has a bunch of Ninja Scrolls that give all sorts of neat effects and a healthy amount of Shuriken from the get go!  So that is nice! The Kefka fight isn’t that hard and a Ninja Scroll deals with the troops I face while he gets away.. but Kefka manages to poison the river! It sucks to be at Mist castle right now!

Valkyries and Pokémon

We move back to Avalon, hoping to find something of a fun reference,  somewhere but so far this scene has been pretty bone dry. I always wondered how Kefka’s poison worked.. he put so little in and did not get poisoned himself yet the castle is completely wiped out!   Avalaon spouts more edgy crap about praying to the dragon god and being the dragon’s right claw that will get revenge and all that.. and this really just feels needlessly edgy and there is no fun to be had here… I know this scene probably lends itself to humor less as we see a man’s wife and kid die.. but common.. give me a snippet! Mamma wants a joke or a cool screenshot to share on Twitter.. but no Mamma is starving .. like a moth with no mouth! (Those are  a thing by the way).  I finally get one on the battlefield as Ronan and Avalon meet up! It’s a Valkyrie!?!

Okay I did not expect that.. it came out of nowhere and she looks strange but hey I will take it! The music here is awesome and some more Mega-Drive’ish tunes!  It really conveys “edgelord going ham!”  The Valkyrie fighting the people of the dragon culture though?!  I think that is a bit off a miss! Let’s kill her for being a not so amazing thing in this game! It’s a fight that is a bit harder than I had anticipated but eventually the Valkyrie goes  down. We steal a bunch of Magitek armor and after a bit of Magitek fighting we clear the camp and we find out the only way to go to Fraust is by going through some sort of haunted forest. Time to suplex a train! I love suplexing trains!  As a Kaijuman that is something we do in our spare time.. but Gidora’s son keeps beating me! Gamera’s as well. .really getting some lift out of that shell of his.On our way to the Dreaded Forrest I only encounter some spikey generic alienish creature that seems out of Metroid or something .. we can just use the fight command to win… but everything changes as soon as we hit the forest.. the first fight is super hard.. but then I see a Gengar!  Ooooh this can be good!

The forest itself offers a fair bit of a challenge but I discover that Ronan’s Kamehameha Wave is really good for dealing with the Undead so we make good progress. I encounter two creatures staring at a lake .  one says he wants to see the Ocean, the other says he wants to see a pig watching the ocean. That’s .. random!  We encounter a few elite soldiers , who then turn into zombies  who then turn into dust and we spot a little Onion Knight in the forest boarding the Skull Train.. a guy named Reaper says he will only let us pass if we give him our souls when we die.. I refuse and have to do the area all over again.. not because I die I just got teleported out. Frick! Eventually we agree and this is the moment the random soldier in my party decides to sacrifice his own life…Wait.. you mean to say the guy with no abilities ISN”T a mainstay party member.. I am so shocked by his death! That’s right Moths speak Sarcasmn!

The Skull Train

Reaper takes the spot of the generic Knight and now we have to board the soul train! Reaper has to promise to leave Avalon’s family alone..and it turns out he is like a Dragon Born .. seriously.. Indigo did you make this character?!  The Ghost train normally has you rolling around with several ghosties which can make minced meat of the fights to come in trade for their existence.. that doesn’t happen here. Reaper tags along all the way and he has some interesting abilities but he lacks the quick kills! Which results in a much slower train experience!  Being the expert that I am however I progress more and more!  Fighting some ghosts that look like a pair of sheets and some demony gluttony demons that look quite horrible! I actually do like these designs and while not referential this is a segment is quite enjoyable so far! The music is just okay here though! Funny though is that the characters are aware of the ominous music and seem  to use it to indicate they are in danger. See even when you don’t use famous stuff you can be weird and funny! 

I make my way up to a save point which comes rather later, and I fully expect to almost be up to the final boss battle! Little did I suspect that I had to face a mini boss before! It’s Arc the Onion Knight, who attacks me! Avalaon however has a peculiar ability in which he deals his total HP in damage to an enemy and might cast a random debuff..  the debuff he casts this time is DOOM. This puts the Onion Knight on a clock and  the fight is pretty easy after that.  Arc does take down Ronan though .. after the fight so the little guy gets away. While the fight was easy I am left on relatively low HP and while I go to use a shelter on the save spot I just past.. my safe spot turns into the wreck of the Ralph icon! That’s a thing! Why does my mind work the way it does and try to figure out how that would be a shelter in Real life?!

The rest of the train lasts pretty long, I eat some ghostly food, I get healed, I face the Onion Knight again, I take damage, I move trough passengers carts, I discover a Mini Boss that guards an Angelic Pendant that is a REALLY good Item for Avalon as it gives him Regen.. I fight the Onion Knight again.. I encounter Finn and Jake from Super Adventure Time.. that’s right they are in a random cart having what they claim to be a near death Experience. There is so much content in this train and it’s pretty awesome.. there is just one thing lacking! Another Save Point! We get ANOTHER fight with the Onion Knight and this one is even easier.. because it’s not a fight.. our Party Member beats him up for us. However then the ghost of his mother appears and tells the boy the truth this man feels regret for the role in her demise yada yada yada, please take care of my boy Blabla. She then trades her soul with the reaper for her boys safety and he brings her to the afterlife… now  that’s cute and all and I guess the guy gets points or something.. but you are literally ON A TRAIN TO THE AFTERLIFE! Why would she need to be TAKEN there when she is going there anyway… well who knows! 

The Young Boy takes Reapers spot in the party and we prepare for the final boss… but I am spent… and I get rewarded with a Save Point! We save the game and will continue next time. While flawed this arc had some interesting events that are actually very different from the original game. The problem here is that it does feel to edgy! When it’s not a fun refference it’s all doom and gloom and the tones clash so hard for me! Even though in fairness I did not even really mind this arc on it’s own! I like he inclusion of an Onion Knight and Avalanon’s mechanics are interesting and their backstories at least have weight to to them… but is that good enough in a game like this?! I wonder! It is a great game.. but some of the writing is just to edgy or nonsensical for me to fall in love wih this version.  I DO wanna find out what happened to Raditz though. Maybe i’ll just play a little bit longer after the first arc.. maybe not.. we will cross that bridge when we get there. Time to crawl into Ralph again.. and see you all next time.

The Entire Return of the Dark Sorcerer Series

Pinkie Plays: Final Fantas VI – Return of the Dark Sorcerer Episode 3 : Old Love

Hello Little Lights, I once more return to one of the more bizarre Rom Hacks I have played. My favourite Final Fantasy got transformed into a bizarre mix of RPG and Anime references. So far we recruited Cloud Strife, fought enemies from Dragon Quest and Disgaea and in the last episode we fought against Predator, Vega (from Street Fighter)  and of course Raditz! The heightened difficulty might make this a bit troublesome though! Let’s see how our adventures go this time and if we will go for a fourth instalment!.

It’s Boring Again

I just left from a fairly challenging dungeon so I expect the game to go lenient on us, yet the first enemy of the new area is a Mind Flayer, which takes a lot of violence to take down, two ki blasts, a poison nova and and Blade Beam from Cloud!  Why don’t I mention Aurora! Didn’t see anything? No she did not because she got turned into a pig! Now this is a change from the status Toad.. but I would think a Toad is a bigger punishment?! So why a pig?! Doesn’t  Gi Nattak, the creator of this Rom Hack know that frogs are better than pigs?! Except as pets!   Bulbasaur is a Frog and Tepig is a pig… and guess which one is the better starter! I do like the little light the mind flayer has on top of it’s staff though! I feed the party pig a Tulaberry and it turns back into Aurora.

I decided to level everyone up to at least level 12 and kind of make a promise to myself that in each new area i will gain one level for everyone… However I do spend very long grinding and getting this done!  However the result is pretty good! Aurora learns a spell that should petrify but for now seems to insta kill at the cost of costing a lot of Mana and Ronan learns a new combo.. as I try to master this new combo I  spend a fairly long time to familiarise myself with it, the shoulder buttons followed by up down seems simple but for some reason I kept messing it up! After what seems like a long time for search an early level however everyone is the level I want  them to be and I can enter the lair of the Crimson Blades and speak to Astral.

Unfortunately for me Astral is not the spirit thing from Yu-Gi-Oh ZeXal, I didn’t really expect it to be.. but that was the only Astral I know and with how this game has been going I would not even be surprised to fight the Robot Micheal Jackson from Moonwalker so who knows!  It’s just some fruity old wizard who upsets Aurora by talking about Pandora’s box though!  She got controlled by the slave crown and all that.. but once again I find myself a bit disinterested when the story takes itself so seriously. I know this stuff happens in the original game and I like it there but here it is just told much less adequately which comes from the lesser sound design 

Bonetrousle on a Rivier… with Rick James

This game shines best when it is being out of the box and here the creators are once more stumbled by their own ambition. Cloud begins talking about how someone important to him was killed by the Empire and that is kind of interesting.. is it Aerith?!  Locke had a sleeping beauty of his own … will Aerith be that person..does that mean Tifa will be Celes?!  The scene is ruined though by his second line “I joined the Crimson Blades to avenge “That Person” .. that’s not how you talk about people that are important to you! You address them with a proper pronoun.. I might be nagging here.. but this is annoying to me.. it just feels like a fake line to keep us in suspense. It feels written. FF VI was so organic.

I decide to let Aurora join the rebels without much issue and the river scene is next, for some reason the trees are blue  and the rocks are green.. it does feel nice and otherworldly and Ronin plays like a bunch of Moogles. He can inverse (shift the enemy to a backrow)  or cast Miracle which I think is a group heal but I am not fully sure what it does!  Choosing my directions I assume the choices will differ from the original so I go wild and pick! I do find some treasure underway but nothing all THAT special! The music here though  is killer! It has this Sega Genesis Vibe to it that I really really like! See this game is at it’s best when it is like this! I make my way down the river fully expecting a hard boss battle. I spare Aurora from using her magic!  So she can nuke the boss which normally is Ultros… but this time it’s… RICK JAMES?!!

No just kidding,  it’s Ultros.. whose saying he is Rick James! That’s ..random?!  Ultros does look a bit different though all orange like and more defined.. like in later editions. Bonetrousle plays as the boss theme! What the heck am I in for?! Turns out it’s nothing special! Ultros is a bit of a push over! It does spout a lot of referential stuff though. Boondock Saints, Lord of the Rings and much more!  He even calls people out on their class which is kinda cool!  Then the whole Not-Sabin gets separated from the group bit and that will lead to what normally is the Cyan meet.  Or I could play as Cloud and meet what would be Celes.  Thirdly I can play the main party and go back and go Fraust… that one I will save for last! ..I guess I will go Cloud’s adventure first! I assume this will lead to meeting Tifa. She seems to fill Celes role in more ways than one! 

Shape Shifters

So for the first part of Cloud’s Story I am going to have to do that weird item trading thing that happens in Final Fantasy 6.. however this time random NPCs are replaced with characters throughout gaming history. Shang Tsung wants a drink for example..why?! Not sure!  He fills no role but they edited the sprite to look like him! It just gets better after that though! Cloud buys a Silk Dress.. seeming very eager to buy it too!  When the sales woman asks him if it is for his girlfriend he just says.. yeah  something like that! Oooh this is going to be good! Little did I know it then.. but what follow would be a sequence of events so good I could not tear myself away!  So I am all writing this after  I stopped playing at this point! The goal here was simple.. find a merchant that gives you a Hourwatch,Give that Shang Tsungs grandson for access to another part of town, by the silk dress Cloud is known for.. a guard meanwhile has lost at cards and will let you on if you beat the guy who took it from him. From there on out you can go to the inn, beat a shady merchant for some rum and give that to Shang Tsung who gives you a riddle towards a secret entrance..

However there is so much more in town, the love returns, random houses have completely customised sprites such as the I am Error Guy from Legend of Zelda II.  He looks like a 16 bit rendition of the original who said it while it would have been way easier to just let another guy say it , the reference would have landed anyway.  There are little things like this everywhere. In the secret base Cloud transforms into his crossdressing form and he can investigate the enemy base. Inside there is a room for playing children. Much like normal..BUT, this time there is a Chrono Trigger pet in the room,  there is this gameboy creature that is a reference I do not get and there is a Yoshi doll on the table. Non of it has a function but it all moves and is interactable with. Then you find the Dungeons and my suspicion turns out to be true!  Tifa indeed does take the role of Celes!

Gameplay wise however she is a combination of Sabin and Setzer and Celes’s Magic. Tifa can cast a few good White Mage spells, such as Protect, Shell and Cure as well as some ice magic. She also can punch twice with both her weapons equipped. However Tifa also has Reels.. her Limit Break ability makes an appearance in this game so  the character feels sooooo much like Tifa. Get three boxing gloves in a row and you get Beat Rush as an attack, get three slimes in a row and you get Water Kick..  get a non matching combination and you get Lucky rabbitt a weak heal that also casts Esuna on the entire party clearing them of any negative effect. Tifa is really powerful in this game and I really like playing as her.  While her dialogue is a bit stale when it comes to seeing Cloud, they barely know each other in  this world, and she wonders why he cross dresses. You have to rescue some other prisoners before you leave and the key the enemy drops is the boss key from the legend of zelda. It’s not on screen for more than two seconds yet the original item was painstakingly replaced with a new item . Kudos .  During all of these events various Final Fantasy VII music plays. I love being a gamer!

The Trip to Fraust

After escaping town you’d think we would be just about done with the awesomeness, but no, we get two random Crimson Blades travelling with us. One is called Gus.. and the other.. I forgot his name already.. something like Winston. Winch.. Winny! It’s getting late and I got sucked in so I forgot to take a proper screenshot of his name!  Let’s call them Good Guy Biggs and Wedge for convenience sake!  GG Biggs has  the ability Mimic, which  allows him to Mimic whatever party member goes before him.. although at a bit lower power… this is awesome! It means I can cast Cloud’s Limit Break .. TWICE.. Tifa’s Reels.. Twice.. and well GG Wedge is a dragoon so he can leap up and come down.. and GG Biggs can copy that as well.  It feels so delicious!  Do I risk it all on the slots?! Those sure are my most powerful moves but there is risk involved, if I pull if off though I totally decimate the field and I love it.  It feels a lot easier to get pairs than with Setzer as well, I miss about 1 in three times I think  Which means that fighting with Reels is about as effective as attacking normally, with Reels more focussing on burst damage and normal attacking on reliability.

The final boss of the chapter is the iconic Guard Scorpion, the final  boss from Final Fantasy VII , while it’s appropriate boss theme plays as well. But that’s not all, it’s being pilotted by classical final fantasy monster Tonberry… it’s so hard to notice but my friend pointed it out to me while we were discussing how awesome this is!  Suddenly that Dragoon Jump ability is super useful because the Guard Scorpion targets people for it’s more powerful attacks.  Jump.. kind of works like fly in Pokémon so imagine seeing your enemy use Solar Beam on you and then you choose Fly.. dodging the Solar Beam next  turn. I felt nostalgic seeing those attacks being rendered in 16 bit.. and after that false start I had a blast with the gameplay session I had.  When this game is paying tribute to stuff it is amazing! Cloud and Tifa have a cute interaction before leaving and now I have to pick if I will follow Ronan’s story or Aurora’s. I will go with Ronan’s story next and that will be our next episode!

That episode will be an important one as well. For now I have established that the content that Gi Nattak makes to highlight our amazing geeky history is amazing.. but the story content they create themselves.. is much less captivating. If I enjoy Ronan’s story I might play this game until it gets too hard for me to progress (I know I will hit that point)  if I do not like it I will play the game up to the Esper Transformation and remember the amazing refferences fondly… but I will move on to a new project cancelling the show after a season finale as it were.. soon we will find out…but not today!

All Posts in this Series!

Pinkie Plays: Final Fantasy VI Return of the Dark Sorcerer (Episode 2) The Level 1200 Boss

Welcome to another gameplay post with my little lights! I have been steadily taking you on many of my gameplay journeys and the result so far is .. a bit so so! I am having fun and have a lot of games to explore in terms of people liking and interacting with the pots! But I am having fun!  Recently I started a little Romhack of Final Fantasy VI .. called Return of the Dark Sorceror which retells the story of my favourite game with other characters. Last time I discovered this game was kind of weird, meeting characters like Cloud and Mr Meeseeks.. what will I find this time?!  Well let’s find out

I am experimenting with a new type of featured image that will blend in more with my upcoming YouTube Idea

Serin and Ronan

The second session with this game fills me with a sense of ..  I do not know..  I really wanted to play again.. but now I booted the game up I can’t help but feel… meh?! As the novelty of a weird Rom Hack has already lost a bit of shine and in a way it does. at What used to be Figaro castle but now called by yet another name  feels… dry.. and not just because it is in the desert. Nothing new is really being done here. Serin is just a king.. though they say he is an alchemist. He also has a brother.. but the change made is that he is a half brother.  The dialogue with Kefka is virtually exactly the same as before.  The first minutes of my second sesion feel a bit like a deception..the weirdness is gone and instead these are just name swaps. It is a bitter pill to swallow after taking the extra effort to get my characters here. 

The tale of Serin and Ronan is told through a cutscene where the dad is dying of being poisoned and we see the classic events unfold.. but here I think it would have been rather easy to change it into something a bit newer and more impactful. The majestic theme of Figaro Castle has been replaced with something a bit more generic and peppy! It feels pretty Final Fantasy … but there is no weight! … In the first game I could feel Edgar’s pain and Sabin’s as well.. here though because these characters are not someone like Cloud.. and they lack that tongue in cheek humor.. I feel they are more weak imitations of the originals. I might have preferred it if they were the original characters… Let’s hope the events coming can change my mind.

Serin wakes up later that day and smells smoke! He immediately thinks.. the cook has set fire to the castle again. Which apparently is a thing because as soon as he talks to a guard about it the guard takes it rather seriously!  Not this time sir.. it is Kefka he  set the castle on fire with some spells! It is time to escape the submerging city!  Serin asks a guard to hide his magazines before some called Elenor finds them. It’s Funny enough but a lot of Dialogue is still repeated and the music that plays while the castle is burning is really a miss!  It’s tonally totally off! Of course I do like the fire animation and stare at it for a while.. but hey.. I need to press on! 

The Zombie Cave

The Escape scene once again has some pretty bad music.. that is NOT this  Rom Hacks strength, but we do get a nice extra battle against some Magitech armor .. it is pretty challenging and I get to see Serin in use for the first time.. it turns out he indeed does play like Edgar.. but with other abilities based on “pills” with him being an alchemist. He can for now use a bow Weapon much like Edgar could.. but he can also confuse enemies, which is a lot more helpful early on than Bio Blaster. Aurora learns the spell Virus to cause toxic damage so this is a nice way that the two don’t overlap! Kekfa  is left with his face in the dust as things seem to proceed fairly normally for now! Making my way to the caves goes pretty easily as I do know this game pretty well and we get a new sort of event.  Apparently this cave is filled with beings that can cast the Zombie status…that’s fast!  Also a random guard called Hector joins the team! He is Allergic to Chocobo’s so he is always late!  Hey I got a friend who is always late.. perhaps she is allergic to her car!   The game also commits a grave sin!  They REPLACE the Chocobo theme!  Boooooo!  Inside the cave Zelda music plays.

That is not all they have in common though! The creepy wall hands also show up as enemies and some creepy voodoo dolls! Now I am beginning to like this stuff again!  I do like the creepier music vibe here.. as we use the Zelda Dungeon music remixed in a much more ominous version! That is the better way of sound design..my head screams dungeon now and the tone screams dark which is reflected by the enemies.. of course they are also kinda hard to deal with! The Wall Crawlers can leap up and walk across the wall.. making them untargetable for a good while. The voodoo dolls want to cast horrible spells on me but seem to always be low on magic.. maybe I need to remember these things because at a later level they won’t be so weak?!  We encounter a lot of enemies and struggle on.. eventually making our way through the caves.. in the final room Hector decides to leave us saying it is lucky we did not encounter any zombies… Apparently Jinx is a Final Fantasy spell now.

We get in a fight with a ginger zombie.. and he immediately casts the status on Cloud. I know I have the items to heal it with me .. but since all these item names make no sense to me like Tulaberry Aqualine Echo Herbs and Karma Jolt.. I have no idea how to cure him.. I need to let him be a zombie and restore him once the fight is over. Annoying..there is no need to change the name of the potions! We make it through the cave and now it is time to look for the resistance! I know this game is fairly hard so I decide to head to “Not Sabin’s” Cabin to restore and I find Echo Herbs in the Field.. which cure Silence and Aqualin.. which cures poison.  After sleeping in the hut a old man shows up and tells Ronan.. the not Sabin.. went away after Raditz…. has slain his master. OMG! OMG! OMG! .. Raditz Actually got a kill!  I am so proud of him!

Spain!

Raditz is said to live up on mount Zephyr.. a mountain up north of where I am at now. I don’t see the town near or maybe I missed it as my mind is only focussed on one thing! Raditz!  I am gonna fight Raditz! For those who don’t know , I am a big BIG Dragon Ball Z fan and I do love the character Raditz a lot so I would love to see how they did him in this game!  I rush into the caves and discover some interesting new monsters.  Like Ferocious birds, big swine.. and Vega from Street Fighter.. a lot of them! Would that be two Vegas or two Vega? I don’t know.. I just beat their scrawny touchie and I know just how they would sound like when they slowly fade away. Kind of like a seal dying I mean not that I would not know how a seal dying would sound but I could imagine it would be a bit like Vega’s death cry.  As an immortal moth I don’t need a death cry.. but maybe I do need to work on a Kaiju cry?!  I like Wrrrrrryyyy but that is taken already!

It doesn’t take too long before Aurora gets petrified by fighting a Cockatrice. Of course that is the one status that I don’t have a cure for!  So while I am looking for a savepoint to use my Shelter that looks like Inky from Pacman .. I get attacked by a Predator! Of course he is here, he must have come with Raditz from outer space!  I do manage to beat it with just Serin and Cloud and we find a save spot!  Since Predator outlevels me I farm the caves dry for treasure to get a few levels as we go along! I have a shelter left before the Raditz boss fights anyway!  Serin finds a new weapon! I also find a Moogle Salesman that sells me the cure for petrify.. instead of soft… it’s Tissues! Uhm.. sure?! I also picked up a nice blade for Aurora! It powers up strikes if you use MP and she is the only character with MP sooooo yeah!  Then it is time.. I see a familiar long haired man with black and brown armor hopping about! Oh boy! It’s Raditz fighting time!

Raditz

However .. this game likes to throw me a curveball and Raditz summons two Saibaman saying that a real Saiyan can easily defeat these! Oi, YA know those things are the exact same power level as you right?!  Raditz power level and that of the Saibaman both clocks in at 1200!  Well I guess there is the boss then?! Nope! Raditz is but I bet you can guess what the function of these Saibaman is in a fight that takes place right before the Raditz fight! “Yay this Saibaman is super close to me and glowing like a lamp! I love it. I am gonna call it Ed and make it my best friend the whole wide…………BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Ouchies!”  The Raditz fight starts and of course I can’t scan him.. because why would I! This means Raditz gets a free turn because I have to send Serin into Ether up Aurora who drained all her magic in the Saibaman Fight. Cloud bravely takes on Raditz.. but we weren’t strong enough! I wipe out and I see Serin crying at our graves!  Oi! Why does the generic sprite swap get to live?!  Luckily XP is retained so I go back.. buy the magic weapon again..but give it to Cloud this time.. he can’t utilize its effect but it has better stats then his current weapon.. he will be our main DPS.  While fighting our way back he also learns the new Limit Break: Blade Beam.

 Okay…so it’s rematch time!  This time I managed to kill at least one of the Saibaman without it exploding in my face and I invested a bit more money in potions at the shop.. rather then buying those tissues right now. This means Serin can offheal if he needs to!  I discover Raditz is super weak to the Virus spell.. I guess a weakness for viruses runs in the family! This time I luck out a lot. Aurora blocks a lot of Saturday Crashes so she can attack a bit more often.  Raditz also attacks a lot more into Cloud this time around whom I can keep healed with Aurora. At one point though Raditz begins screaming about Saiyan pride and Not-Sabin shows up!  Raditz uses a Double Sunday to blow away the party but . Ronan keeps standing. He fights Raditz as hard as he can..eventually realizing he has to use the Ki-Blast combo technique his master taught him. A big beam is fired and Raditz is critically injured..but he teleports out! The battle has been won.. and the journey to the resistance can resume! But that .. is a story for another time.

If you are reading this and are like “come on girl, play some actual games”  well I have a Kofi that helps me buy real games! I am not asking you to support it.. I am just Saiyan!
If you like me playing through some of these weirder Rom Hacks though .. let me know in the comments! Comments are like my lamps!  I love staring at them!

The Return of the Dark Sorcerer Series

A Love Letter To My Favourite Steampunk Game: A Love Letter to Final Fantasy VI

Dearest Final Fantasy VI, you may not know who I am, you might not remember me. Many have coveted you, many have written about how amazing you are and I know you will long endure after I have gone!  Many will desire you, many will claim they love you as I do, and though I do not question their devotion to you! There is one thing you must know! You are by far my Favourite Final Fantasy game! While I may look at other games and even enjoy spending time with other games a tiny bit more.. Know that while I may prefer to play Chrono Trigger over you.. You would be the game I say I LOVE more.  And since It’s Steampunk month.. and you the correct setting.. I can write you this letter.

Omen

Dearest Final Fantasy VI, We have met so many times before! That time I rented you as a little kid, back when you were still called Final Fantasy III, that time I emulated you  to be able to finish you for the first time when I had no other means.  Back when you finally came out on GBA and I went through an ordeal to be reunited.. and when that Game Boy with your cartridge got stolen.. I downloaded you again  to complete the story one more time. Then I finally downloaded you on PC as well, hoping I could see some cutscenes to no avail. We have met many times, on many platforms.. but somehow we are star crossed lovers. Each time you get closer I tend to lose you again.. such was the case when my laptop screen cracked.  You are the game I had to restart so many times over.. I played the early areas of the game so often I can almost dream them. Yet I never felt any regret. Every battle we fought… every boss and every dungeon , no matter if I progress or not it is always a delight to be with you.

Having a caster as the game’s main character, was the breath of fresh air we needed in this series.. NAY!  In the genre! Little games mirrored this, always favouring the humble knight. Yet by offering us the amazing Terra Bradford you have offered me my favourite protagonist in an MMO.  Both in Gameplay and Story we can sense her progression in so much more than just damage numbers or her saving the world.  Yet you also introduce us to a concept that no other Final Fantasy ..or other game did AS well as you. You make this a story about the entire cast.. and we can even choose who we think is worthy to accompany us to the end!  Never felt so in control of my choices in a JRpg and few have rivalled you since! Your gameplay has been the most enjoyable in the franchise for me, every character feeling completely unique and I’ll even forgive you for Gau.  Your gameplay is challenging but fair, requiring player interaction that involves more than switching one’s role.. and pressing X in time.

You managed to shape your gameplay around the story you wished to tell.. as a prelude of what is to come. You manage to caption personalities through gameplay.. like making the fist fighter.. feel like a character from a fighting game, making the wise and old samurai patient waiting for the perfect chance to strike and making the thief feel wiley and clever. The fabulous king works best if he has plenty of treasure.. and even…that wild thing gets stronger by spending time in the wild.. but let’s forget about him!  Your narrative driven  combat system, as a sign for what’s to come.. when we learn something about a character because you tell us.. we know this is correct because you tell us through gameplay. We know what characters are like.. because we feel what they are like.

Under Martial Law

My dearest game, one can not talk about you, without talking about the Steampunk esthetics you have, your worldbuilding filled with these wonderful gadgets. Once more brilliantly used to enhance your story.  Where the level of technology offers us interesting abilities in Edgar’s class as a Machinist..  but also where the tech level offers us interesting dungeons and daring escapes.   We follow the Story of Terra who is the last known mage. Magic has died because mankind has tried to encapsulate it within the technology of Magitech.  To give us a feeling of grit and this technology you let us start the game with Terra enslaved by a crown that suppresses her free will.. powering a giant steampunk mech called Magitech armor. Without even playing as the real character yet.. we feel what type of world you are trying to build. The town of Narshe made of pipes and gears show us how this world is tied to the theme we are discussing this month. Enemies using hounds, shotguns and flying machines and these giant mechs do not only offer a great challenge that scales with us as we grow and let Terra join the resistance against the corrupted rulers of this land.

A journey that involves finding the spirits of the Espers.. an ancient race of powerful beings.. from another world close to the one we spend most of our time in begins.  We discover more on how Terra has gotten her amazing magic powers.. at a price..    Yet for all magic, there is a magitech, for all creatures we fight there is a robot or a magitech armor.. a steampunk soldier. For every forest there is a factory and we visit cities where everything is in balance.. but we also visit places that lean more into magic and places that fit more into Steampunk.. there is balance.. but by having a world in balance we can also feel it when the story makes that balance shift.  Our characters experience not a journey of just victories.. no Final Fantasy let’s us experience losses just as much.. maybe even more! In fact this game lets us experience the ultimate loss. This game let’s the bad guy win!  However.. just because the bad guy wins does not mean we have lost! We do not only win, we also lose. So in a single game you manage to pack both ends of the gaming experience.. winning and losing.. but unite them as one!

You truly create an oppressed world.. but also a world we can rebuild… a world where our heroes desire things that have nothing to do with the fate of the world.. accept they do.. Later in the game our heroes have to choose between their personal lives.. and the fate of the world.. and you as a player have to steer their destiny so sometimes both can be an option. And while I wish I could leave Gau out of the story even the character I really dislike.. is someone I care about!  I wish he wasn’t in the game.. I wish I did not have to care about him.. but yet I do!  In a master stroke you even manage to make it arguable who is the main character of the game.. luckily both of the characters are among the top 5 female Jprg characters. So you have done so well in telling their tale and making this insanely balanced world.

Aria De Mezzo Caraterre

Oh My hero, my beloved,
I truly love Celeste her Part
This Love Never goes away, forever it is day
The opera scene stole my heart.

I lived in darkness, you were my starlight
Shining brightly from afar
In my time of despair, thank Arceus you were there
Thank you my evening Star.

My dearest Final Fantasy VI if I loved anything more about you then everything else it is your music. I never cry at music.. but when I heard Aria De Mezzo Caraterre be performed in front of me .. I was really happy I did not wear mascara. Celes Chere is a character that gives me goosebumps every time. We see her turn traitor to Emperor Gestahl when they treat her.. one of their generals as a sacrificial pawn. When Locke saves her.. she is empty..she doesn’t know who she is anymore so you decided.. to give her no musical theme. Every character has a musical theme.. but Celes has non.. and then during the Opera scene, where they are trying to draw the attention of an infamous sky pirate to be able to take the fight to Gestahl.. she has to sing about love.. an emotion she is not familiar with..but then her interactions with Locke.. make her find something in herself. After that is done Aria de Mezzo Caraterre becomes Celes, her theme is briljant Final Fantasy VI. I love you for it!

Yet I would not be AS in love with you if this was your only musical feat. After finding her theme Celes theme stays the same troughout her entire journey.. however everyone else theme changes.  Locke’s theme ..the thief is upbeat and screams, plucky adventurer.. but when he encounters a person from his path who has befallen a grim faith that same theme is being played as a sad ballad. When Terra loses control over her body and turns into a monster for a bit her theme becomes warped… her theme mixed with something else. Every character has music that changes.. because that is their journey.. yet you make Celes an exception.. she starts without a  theme and finds her sound along her journey.. she stays her course.. even if she has sad scenes.. the orginally version is a tragedy.. yet to celes it is also a song of strength.. so the song stays the same.. this is the best sound design I have seen in a video game.. I will admit you do not have my favourite theme of all time.. but you play with it the best. Even the music.. completely reflects the story.  Even if your player does not understand the complex story themes.. you will offer them at least an understanding of  the emotional load of a situation.. music bends to the narrative.. I love you for doing that.

Dancing Mad

The Black Mage, The Machinist, The Bard, The Samurai, the White Mage , The Thief and the Monk.. you would be one of the final games that brings so much class to these classes, while they are great in Final Fantasy Tactics and a realm reborn.. you are the game that gave these iconic classes a face. You to me are the pinnacle of what made the old games so great.. and what makes the story of  the newer games so compelling. The Locke, Celes romance is my favourite in any JRPG it felt so earned and genuine.. you would e xpect the male lead to end up with the female lead such as in basically every other narative Final Fantasy game.. but no.. you offer us a romance.. that fits the games narrative more.  And that is what I love about you so much.. you have interwoven everything in your story. You are not just a bunch of part, everything is at exactly the right place. Edgar would not be as interesting if you could reclass him, Terra’s theme would not be as amazing without it’s many reprises to reflect the story.. it never feels out of place. Nothing does. Not a single boss fight, not a single character that is not Gau.  Well there is Setzer!  But he is kinda cool as a person though.. just not as a character.  Of course I love taking Mog along because I can never have enough cute things, though you might be able to miss him… he is such a good fellow kupo!  

You are my pinnacle of Final Fantasy.. with only VII even coming remotely close.. and trust me.. when I say close.. it’s nowhere near still. I love the character designs.. except.. you know who.. I love your graphics.. even that weird cartoony pc look you also used for Mobile is oddly adorable.. and I love your villain. Kefka is such a great villain to top off a game that is already so amazing. His mania.. his evil.. .it hit so much more than say Sin, Sephiroth and Ultimecia combined.  I felt like a kid watching a puppet show going … ooooh you get away now from that river… when Kefka poisoned the waters of Doma.. when Cyan Garamonde held the corpses of his family I cried. The only other villian that made me cry was Sephiroth.. but that was because I was sad.. I lost the pinkest playable character and girl. Here I cried because the mean and cruel Kefka was … the pain that so many would feel.  His laughing sound….makes my skin crawl.. and not a single 16 bit game ever managed to do that. In fact.. .no game ever did this after…. in such a way.  That is also why I love you probably most of any JRPG , you are not my favourite game.

You are a rollercoaster. Everytime I see the Garamonde  family die I feel horrible, every time I have to get my party back.. I can not leave a single character behind because I love  them all. With Chrono Trigger.. I feel content unlocking whatever end I want.. yet with you.. I need to do it all.. everytime.. I feel obligated.. When I see Celes suffer my heart breaks a little. When Terra is sad I feel sad. Your world is hard and cold, the steel and the factories are unforgiving. The snow, the deserts, the treacherous rapids, you put on an amazing Steampunk world.. but one that like most steampunk it isn’t an easy world to experience. There are moments of laughter, moments of sadness and moments of anger.. you offer the full package.. you feel like a real world.. a world I love.. but for a casual bit of fun.. you are kind of too good! Never will a steampunk game ever take your place.. but who knows.. maybe during Steampunk month you will get some rivals.. I hope you do.. not because I want to see you detroned but I because I love you so.. and I want to experience that feeling once more.

A BIT of Nostalgia: Castlevania IV Review

Hello once again Mortals, we are drawing closer to Halloween and I am nowhere even near done with spooky games…at least for myself. However one big title should not  be missed out on during this month! A classic that I hold close to my heart!  That classic of course is Castlevania..and since most of my old consoles are already packed up.. I started with Castlevania IV on the Mini SNES!  Luckily this is my FAVOURITE Castlevania game! Hooray! Instead of being scared of the monsters this time they can be scared of me!

Belle Monde 

Castlevania IV released on Halloween 1991.. well at least in Japan! A few months later in December in America and the likes and almost a whole year later we got it in Europe!  On the 23rd of November just 6 days after my 6th birthday. It was the 6th game that bore the castlevania title! So 6-6-6!  An unholy trinity of events! Little did I know than how devilishly good this game would be. It scores about an 8.2 out of 10 on average but the only grade I can give it is 1! A number 1!  Soon after this the game would take on a more adventure style approach with Symphony of the Night and while that is oftenly the fan favourite I really prefer that genre with Metroid while I prefer the old style Castlevania. I see them as almost different series in fact so I shall not be comparing them to any of the Alucard or Soma Cruz sames.  They are great as well but this was a whole different kind of beast. 

Belle Monde means pretty world and that certainly can be said about this game. Producer Konami really went all out in giving us neat little details in the background, amazing Mode7 graphics and very recognisable monsters. Translucent ghosts, fragmenting skeletons, a hulking frankenstein.. and a 9 foot tall dracula are all in this game and they are all impressive fights of their own accord. Classics such as the Medusa heads come back to frustrate you now more than ever before.. or is it?! With the new control screen players can whip in any direction and even  wiggle their whip about all limply giving it some stringlike control which can be used to slowly tickle an enemy to death! As a result of this simple change Simon Belmonts techniques have drastically improved. On our 11 stage journey we travel through castles, swamps, caves, spinning stuff and of course clock towers. Every stage has two or three very different looking segments.

 A lot is done with motion in this game’s graphic design. We see Skeleton ornaments following the hero in the background. We see books trying to leap out of their bookcase, and  so much more allowing the background to truly come to live!  This also results in more tension! Will that thing come leap at me or is it just a simple background element? The certainty has been taken away and that is a good thing! Not only do you have to pay attention to your opponents.. you want to keep an eye on the background as well.. the game forces you to appreciate it’s beautiful world! My favourite stages for the background are stage 8 and stage 9.. while i hate stage 8 in every other sense.. the creepy paintings that might grab you, the carpet that can push you into the ceiling that is great! Stage 9 is my favourite! It’s a treasure room where colourful ghosties constantly rise up! What a great night to have a SNES mini!

Belmont

Part IV of the series does not follow up on any of the games. Part 1 was followed by it’s sequel and both dealt with the story of Simon Belmont, while Part 3 was actually a prequel and it told the story of Trevor Belmont and his companions.  Rather than follow up on the story of Trevor and Alucard among others Part IV focuses on Simon again.. but rather retells the story of the original game.. in a new way! This means we will both visit familiar and unfamiliar locations and face a slew of enemies that the oldest castlevania player will immediately recognise.. and so does everyone else for that matter because these monsters are really iconic.  We will once again face off against mummies, frankenstein, death and even the giant bat makes it return albeit in a different spot in the game and it is not really a bat.. yet it is still the good old familiar boss from the first game. The game does a good job off playing into nostalgia with the iconic themes such as vampire hunter and bloody tears being hidden deep inside the game. You will have to work for your shot of nostalgia! The game has some nice tunes but nothing near as iconic as aforementioned themes but hey it’s a konami game you know at worst you will be pretty well off in the sound department. 

Control Wise alternate timeline Simon has no equal. Even Richter from Dracula X  and later Rondo of Blood could not be a master whipper like this Simon! As a result of the tight controls I find this Castlevania relatively easy….among the linear games. The exploratory stuff is way easier.  Still I deem this game fairly “doable” in terms of difficulty. Mind you that this is my favourite Castlevania, I know some patterns by hand and some timing by muscle memory but easily up until the 8th stage I breezed through this game like it was nothing. The eight stage however has one excruciating bit of trap dodging!  I can never really get that pattern down and always end up using luck to make my way through.  Since I so often get stopped there it by far is my least favourite stage in the game. If you are new to the series and want to try a game out I do suggest you start out with this one for it’s supreme control scheme and playing the best Belmont but like Castlevania III there will be a few cheap moments. 

These moments in comparison to the third and most diverse game in the franchise however are few and far between.  You have unlimited continues at your disposal and a password system to clear the hurdles ahead. A game over will send you back to the beginning of a stage however and this includes sub areas. So if you are on stage 9-2 and game over on the boss you get 5 new lives to try again from 9-1. This is how it has always been with Castlevania and with the exception of the last stage that is rather fair you really do become a better player for it. No risking the biscuit you really need to learn and master clearing it all in one big swoop. It felt really rewarding to finally clear a stage after mastering the bosses and minibosses. Given how varied the stages are it doesn’t feel like too much of a punishment either.. except for the aforementioned stage 8 that is littered with Instakill boobytraps in it’s second coeur and with how a bat randomly flying through that trap can ruin a run and send you back over and over again… that stinks! The final stage.. Stage B,  has a four man boss rush that is quite hard and a game over.. sets you all the way back! So be prepared to get good. You really must become a true Belmont but are also very much given the proper tools to do so. 

Cool Whip

What makes this stand out most to me is the gameplay itself though!  While Castlevania III had more diverse characters and ways to traverse through a stage this one is more focussed on giving Simon a new challenge each and every stage. The first stage has you jumping between a foreground and a background stage. The second stage places you inside streams of water that hinder your control, the third stage has vertical/ceiling hazards. The third game may offer you a different set of characters, I really prefer it if you have to overcome new obstacles every time. Except for the instakills in stage 8 this game really does a much better job at that. It really feels you have to master becoming Simon! One can argue for the choose your combat style approach of the later parts but to me it feels much more satisfying to use the tools you have! You HAVE to master Simon’s whip, you HAVE to clear that one boss you can’t seem to hit with it. The game hands you just enough tools to get the job done, but doesn’t make you overly cool and competent and thing that moderen games for me oftenly have. We are handed tools for flavour rather then challenge.

There is the old Castlevania clunk, the annoying knockback, the non momentum based jumping and the occasional unfair enemies, but that in a way is part of the experience. It gives this Castlevania something “scary” Leaping to a platform you can barely see, fearing there might be a bat to knock you off towards your demise has something we don’t really see these days. There are still indie games to that, but it is weird that this lack of polish causes.. a “personality” in the game. Back in the days we would look at our cartridges or at our screens and say “Castlevania IV I am going to beat you today” .. now we usually talk about events within the confines of the game. “Come on Geralt  you got this” “Handsome Jack you are going down” which is fine as well but in the end it is also your character that conquers a game. These old games might not offer the same immersion but they offer this amazing reward of conquering and you actually feel skilled for doing it! Those weird Castlevania quirks that are present help that experience SO much.Climbing a stairs and the floor goes out of sight? Well that means if you get hit on the stair you now plummet into the abyss!  You inch forward.. not in game..but you’re busy with your controller, hitboxes, invincibility frames etcetera. You are fighting a game!

I can not beat Dracula in the capacity of my person and in the end who cares about Simon beating Dracula.. it happens a million times. However me beating Castevania is unique to me. That is my feat! While I also beat Breath of the Wild and fought those two Eldritch like being in Smash Ultimate..those feel more like I played through the game. I experienced the game. I beat the final boss because I had the right tools, I feel like without too much effort I would have done it the next attempt even if I had died there. This old game .. I did not beat because I had the dash move, the big sword, the upgraded bomb or whatever. No I beat it because I learned the Pattern Patterns, I was able to distinguish the spots where my character would be safe.  I discovered a strategy to deal with those pesky  energy balls Dracula shot and I found a way to deal with those fireball enemies in the sky! It is not anything in the game that made me beat this.. it was ME! It wasn’t even that cool magical whip! … No it was me positioning a character in smart spots, me using a extra weapon cleverly! ME! ME! ME!

Vampire Killer Game

I do think that Castlevania I through III have aged a bit, the challenge is rather grueling! Mostly the second game is obnoxious with it’s puzzle element and poor translations, messed up ending screens and weird gameplay choices. I and III are difficult to a point where it isn’t as much a part of the timeset anymore. Castlevania IV does the same thing.. yet it does it perfectly. While sometimes unfair, dying feels like your fault always.. even when it’s not (Except for stage 8)  having to redo a stage feels super frustrating..but the stage has enough variety that it doesn’t feel like intense punishment. It is perfectly beatable in a short time if you are good enough but can get you trapped for hours if you can’t deduce a boss pattern! It is still your fault! It emulates perfectly on the SNES mini… BUT that is because it has a great controller for that. Should you emulate this game on PC and use a PS4 or Xbox One controller, I think you fill find yourself in a lot of trouble. You need D-Pad accuracy here, no Analogue stick can do that, lot of these controllers also have issues with double direction inputs like up and right..when using the D-Pad.. I think this would be so much harder to complete on those.. so play this on an SNES mini or on a virtual console with a proper controller.

Yet once again this also proves a point, this game wants you to use that SNES controller, it wants you to go D-Pad, it wants to be played as it used to be played. Now don’t get me wrong! I think anyone playing a 2d platformer with an analogue stick when they have the option to not use an Analogue stick should have their Gamer Card marked… not totally revoked just marked! Yet this game shows it a lot more than others. I usually prefer momentum based platformer action like Mario or Donkey Kong yet strangely this game shines because of its amount of clunk!  I can drop to my death just because I was a fair amount of pixels of my jump. I can get knocked into a ravine and be forced to start way back at the beginning just because I missed the timing of a single whiplash and there is a slight delay .. plus my hitbox is slightly larger than me so I can’t cheese it in the final moment.  In Mario when I make a mistake I can correct (somewhat)  here if I make a mistake I am dead. Yet that gives this game it’s horrorish vibes. Single mistakes can lead to a painful death, not just for Simon it will be painful for the player as well.

So in a game like Castevania its flaws become its strengths for me? Does that mean its strengths become it’s flaws? No! The stage design is still briljant and plays into that level of non immersion while still being super cool. Dracula’s castle has clear game mechanics that make no sense in the context of the world, but it is not trying. Nowadays characters notice everything so when we suddenly see barriers appear it has to be given a lore explanation through a cutscene, while the makers just wanted to give you some action. Sorcery, creatures carrying sealls or whatever.. it all becomes a challenge for the main character to overcome.  Simon doesn’t say anything about water following two  ways, he doesn’t question the spinning walls in stage 4 because they are not his challenges to overcome. They are YOURS. We are the ones that have bloody tears from frustration while trying to master the game and we are the ones that hopefully will be the vampire killers. For me Castlevania IV is one of those perfect games. Not because it is perfect.. but because it is very much a game and it keeps you feeling important all the way.

This weekend there will not be any blog posts as I am getting the key of my new flat Saturday! Which means the entire weekend and most likely the entire next week I am either without internet or doing stuff! Next week I will have a few posts scheduled ahead of time to wrap up Halloween month with a two day Pokémon post and some blog tags. If I have time I will try to visit your blogs with my phone! Otherwise I will see you all when I get back! Enjoy next weeks post and see you all soon! If you want to help with creating a pc corner for my blog check out my Kofi page!

A BIT of Nostalgia: Pocky and Rocky

Hello again my dear island guests!  As some of you know , I am not very much of a modern gamer, I really tend to stick close to gems of the past and in the past of this blog I have discussed a fair few of these. Recently I replayed one of these classics again. As a kid this game was bundled in a special rental promotion set with Mystical Ninja Goemon in some of my video-stores staff favourite bundles.  That game was called Pocky and Rocky.

The Priest and The Tanuki

Pocky and Rocky is an odd game, manifesting as a scrolling shooter but for once not playing space or a warzone. Instead you move to colourful landscapes and you should down a slew of varying monsters, navigate around certain traps and use tools to defend yourself.
However other than that it does still play like a typical scrolling shooter. You collect power ups to upgrade your weapon in two different ways, you fight bosses and like all space shooters this game is tricky as heck! It is commonly seen as a bit of a niche hit for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System but upon release was popular enough to spawn three sequels. One on the SNES one on the Game Boy Advance and one on the Playstation 2 and Wii.  The game was produced by Natsume and published by them as well. Upon its release it got reviewed pretty well, easily scoring an average score of about 8 out of 10. More often going higher than that then lower. This is a perfectly fine score for this game that is mostly praised for its amazing two player mode. 

I reviewed the game Single Player as I don’t have any friend who wants to come play this with me in person and the person who might play this with me lacks the patience for such a title. It should be noted that both the American version and the Japanese version are much better than the European version of the game. In Europe the Japanese version never got translated  and as a result while there are cutscenes the European version does not feature any text or story! To explain the story I will use a Let’s Play of the American version , thus characters will be titled like their American counterpart. To be fair I had a lot of fun imagining what the story would be in the European version but seeing how far I was off made me chuckle a bit. Some of the terminology used comes from the Pocky and Rocky Wiki and not from the game as even the American version never uses any terminology for weapons or anything except the enemies. 

When you are alone you can take the role of Pocky , who is a little priest girl  who fights by throwing sealing cards, called Ofuda,  at enemies and she can defend by swinging her priestess staff or Gohei. Rocky is a Raccoon Dog and instead of cards he tosses out leafs and he defends by swiping his tail. There seem to be minute differences between the characters, for example I think Pocky is faster but Rocky can dive a bit further and seems to defend more effectively. .but I honestly am not sure if I made that up in my mind or if it is actual reality. The story moves independent of what character you pick as both storywise seem to stick together. Which brings us to a bit of a problem.. this game is very VERY hard if you single player it! I really would have liked it if the lonesome player would have gotten an NPC ally to aid them.. however  because of how some challenges are designed I guess an AI could not cut it! While you can play the game  by yourself.. the easy difficulty will already provide you with a very steep challenge.

Let’s Rocky

The story of the game is wonderfully weird and very mundane at the same time!  A long time ago wicked creatures called the Nopino Goblins spread mischief across the land. Yet they were all subjected by a priest named Pocky. All seemed well until one day Pocky the Tanuki shows up telling her his fellow Nopino Goblins are out of control! The first Nopino Goblins that go out of control are these Umbrellas with a big eye and a scary mouth. As well some weird ass cyclops monks!  They are aided by guys in baskets that should at you and spooky scary skeletons!  The boss of the first level is a guy with a big brown head that shoots seeds at you!  When you defeat him.. he tells he has been mind controlled by a guy in a Black Mantle.. so that is what the villain of the game is called Black Mantle! Pocky and Rocky then venture into the water domain to fight some creatures that look like a cross between a turtle and a duck……wait a minute!  

Tanuki..Kasa Obake, Oi No Bakemono, Hitotsume-kozō and Kappa! Nopino Goblin is the English translation for the word Yokai! That is hilarious! The second stage makes you fight the cutest monkeys before eventually turning into a water stage quickly restricting your movement. Since a game over doesn’t abide by any checkpoints or subareas getting a game over means you go back to the beginning of a stage! You have unlimited continues but..Nopino Goblins can be tough sons of Yokai! The game is hilariously  translated and the dialogue feels SUPER cheesy! Especially after you finish the third stage and things seem more dire!  That stage took me SO Many attempts though! It has two pretty hard minbi bosses, and grueling gauntlets of flying enemies.  After you deal with that you dodge some  traps and shifting walls that can push you off the stage so you have to master the dodge technique here to avoid the deadly twomps like skeletons and shifting stage. It is a very good stage that has some amazing designs though and some funny Nopino Goblins!

It gets even better though , as you advance past the third stage you find out that the evil organisation is the Gorgonzola Goblins, living in the Gorgonzola Fortress and to get there you have to use a cursed airship! This is probably the hardest stage in the game, Narrow spaces, few options to dodge and lots of Yokai Pirates and turres with crazy attack patterns. It is guarded by a bird Yokai which requires you to be pretty good at your shield and dodge techniques.  Of course that pales in comparison to the skill you have to show against the second to last boss fight! Black Mantle of course works together with Dracula!  This fight. quickly turns into a bullet hell! With a twist. Entire sections of the map at time become electrified so standing still and defending will not get you anywhere.. so you will have to zoom across the arena.. while using your defensive tail swipe AND attacking the boss! All tools have to be used at the same time. The final stage is a simple climb facing some tough enemies that fire attacks that cover half the screen. Getting hit by them drains a massive amount of health as well and health power ups are very rare! With a miniboss and the big boss himself.. this one might take a few attempts. The ending is wholesome and cute and after a bit of ending dialogue Pocky and Rocky share some Dango together in the moonlight!

Sweet as a Pocky

Pocky is a sweet japanese candy..well it’s bread  with chocolate on it but the Pocky in this game is just as sweet. The presentation of this game is phenomonal! The cutscenes are super cute, the sprites are fantastic and the game has some pretty nice tunes. It really has a cute anime esthetic that also reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons for very young kids. The way the story is presented also seems very much like one of the cutests tales for kids you have ever seen. The story is very much non-violent but  there are some creepy like bosses and creepy imagery as well it is very balanced out! 

You never get bored!  Every stage feels significantly different from the others even if lots of set pieces are reused across all stages. It really works, you can see what areas lie close to one another but you also feel like you have made progress. Pocky and Rocky both look great themselves. If you play with two players you even get some team moves where one character uses the other to launch themselves forward as if they were a skateboard of sorts.. It looks buttery smooth. The frame-rate can stutter a tiny bit if there are too many enemies on screen but that is almost never an issue.

The gameplay is rather pleasant and while it is difficult as heck, it never feels really unfair.. that said it is one of those , remember the patterns ,  kinda game.. but to be fair that rings true for most of the genre and the genre itself is known for being pretty difficult.  Basically how this game works is, you make progress until you die, you find out why you die or how these enemies work and how to best get around it , you lose less health and the next time you progress further. You die again facing this new enemy  or a bit in the level and you come up with a strategy for that section again. You start the stage over again and combine your knowledge of before to get even further.. and so you get a little bit better every time you die. You really have to remember how these things work because health is fairly rare and there is no regaining life during a stage. Playing alongside a friend will make things a bit more manageable as you can remind each other how to get around an obstacle and the team moves really make you able to dash through things you can’t do alone..but that is actually a nice reward for playing with two. You really can use each other! 

The controls all work pretty nicely as well, pretty much every button is used and if you don’t like a lay out the game allows you to remap them yourself to fit your preference. For example I remapped the dodge  to something that worked a bit better for me. I gradually ended up remapping a few things, just to fit my playstyle and it worked. I really felt myself improving.. but there is a lot to improve for just one sitting.

Nope-Ino

There are a few minor gripes I have with this game and for one is there is no save feature! That is rather common and if you are familiar with the game you can beat this entire game in just under an hour.  To learn all these patterns of thought takes a lot longer. I needed several hours to gradually improve myself enough to beat this. It’s possible.. but as I grew more tired focus began to fade. At stage 4 I had to call it quits the first day. Replaying Stage 1 through 3 was a lot easier the next day but there is no real reward for playing through them well. You can’t take extra lives, at least not above your maximum and continue being unlimited even if you could.. it doesn’t really matter if you don’t start out with max lives you just learn and progress later.  Stage 4 and Stage 5 are WAAAY harder than the previous once so after progressing through stage 4 and most of 5 .. I had to call it quits on the second day! The third day playing through stage 1 till 4 felt a bit .. tedious.. It’s part of the genre but a password after stage 3 might have been nice. Even if it was just the one.

The fact that there are only two upgrades .. plus a shield is also a bit .. thin. Blue orbs improve your cards or leafs so you can throw multiple while orange orbs turn your projectiles into fireballs. While both characters have a unique main weapon the  fireball is the same, which is sad as it does more damage, but it looks way less unique! You are usually better off with the bigger range of your main weapon anyway. I just wish there were more upgrades. Upgrades decrease if you take hits so for example I can see a slower but homing attack being a nice upgrade or  perhaps a less damaging projectile but one that also blocks enemy attacks much like your swipes.  It would give us a bit more variation to play! It doesn’t really affect how fun this game is.. and it is really fun.. I just think.. it could even be more fun if you and your friend could go different weapon upgrade routes and get a bit more creative rather than just skilful!

Of course for the european version the lack of text is a BIG issue. While the dialogue is nothing to write home about, it adds a really innocent charm to the game that isn’t really there in our PAL version. While the cutscenes without dialogue are still pretty cute, the bosses in the American version usually say some fun lines as well .. a threat right before you start, which feels like some extra motivation.. since the european version apparently had to translate from the japanese version and they said nope we are not going to translate it.  Which is a shame.. it isn’t a good text.. but it is really cute!

The final gripe I have with this game is the box art! It really is quite ugly and doesn’t represent the style of the game at all. The Japanese box art looks so much cuter! The art of the game is much more reflective of that Japanese style so why make it in this weird semi-cool box art. I get it in some games where a sprite is open for interpretation but given the high quality presentation in the cutscenes, and of the sprite itself , I don’t think this is something you can pull off successfully!

The Boxart we got!
The Japanese Boxart!

Two can play THIS Game

This title is a super strong and quite overlooked one in the SNES library! Due to it’s arcade like feeling it aged very well and is very fun to play to this day. Buying a cartridge can be a costly affair with prices ranging going well above that of a full priced game, and including a case you can easily buy two full priced console games. So it does hold some collector value. I am sure however people can find a way to enjoy this game none the less. Pocky Rocky and Becky the second sequel for the Game Boy Advance has been released on several virtual consoles. If you manage to get your hands on this game however it will provide a few hours of good fun! While relatively short it takes quite a while to master and the colourful graphics and varying stages make everything a delight to replay. Even by yourself.

The real fun however starts if you play this with a buddy! More strategies unlock, extra moves are handed out and there is just that much more fun to be had with the game. Single player the game is great but you can feel it never completely reaches it’s full potential. Some enemies are extra rough to dodge because you really miss that team up move set. A choice I think is very brave and makes sense A single player has much more reason to master this while a two player game can be more casual fun. It might not be able to escape some of the classic genre tropes and the lack of a password system or a save feature prevents it from getting my highest rating but it got darn close! Pocky and Rocky is one of the better Co-op multiplayer games on the system and Nopino Goblins is an amazing english word for Yokai!

Top 5: Weird Nintendo Peripherals

Hello again island guests, as you might now I can be a bit of a weirdo. I am into weird things like making Luffy and Naruto play Mario Party against each other instead of them having fight a Death Battle.  I prefer old games over new ones (except for maybe animal crossing) and I am very charmed by clunkiness. So what do we get if we combine those all together? Older video game stuff that is totally weird and doesn’t work all that well? Exactly! Luckily there is Nintendo who offer me the weirdest gaming peripherals out there.

Weird Peripheral Number 5: The Inflatable Kart
(WII)

It’s a strange world where someone can make a inflatable Kart that functions as an odd on for a controller and having it barely make the top of weirdest Nintendo gadgets. In fact technically it really is not, but I chosen to exclude items I actually deem as alternate controllers, otherwise the kart wouldn’t even scratch the top 10.  Anyway … since most of you are at least old enough to have played the Switch, I think most of you know that Mario Kart Wii came with a plastic steering wheel. This is about the same thing… but with an inflatable Kart Attached to the steering wheel. 

Now Pinkie lives in a 23 square meter apartment so when it comes to add-ons for or your gaming experience she is a little bit selective , yet even in a game-room of a wealthy person I can’t imagine this working out.  It’s inflatable so prone to get leaky unless you deflate it each time after use! It’s a big kart as well so that is a lot of air you need to put in to inflate it so you are going to need something to provide enough air as well. After that you get a kid sized kart , and I can tell you that sitting in a kart like that is majorly uncomfy. I haven’t sat in this one but in a similar sized one and it killed my long dutch legs!  So without a pump this can causes intense leg cramps, respiratory issues, seasickness (yes I can get seasick from laying down on softly inflate air mattress) and you kind of look stupid sitting in a plastic kart. The Wii wheel  was bad enough.. but all this thing does is make you look sad. 

Weird Peripheral Number 4: R.O.B.
(NES)

SONY DSC

Gyromite and Stack-Up where two NES CO-Op games. Mostly the first one had some mechanics that could make for a fun puzzle game, with one player controlling gateways and the other the character. By working together you guide this little professor guy across the stages. It’s not a bad game… however it wasn’t intended to be played with a friend. Or at least not with a living one. This game was meant to be played next to R.O.B. your robot friend who could read the screen of Gyromite and Stack up and who would help you play the games.  So yes .. this is an actual robot that plays video games with you.. an actual Robot friend made for NES… that’s kinda weird right?! I mean it’s super cool but still weird. “Honey what should we hook up to our NES today?’ How about our robot friend?!

Nowadays R.O.B. I mostly know to be a fighter in smash but back in the NES era he was a true friend! Playing games with you.. however R.O.B.’s gaming skills leave a bit to be desired. First of all setting up R.O.B.  already takes about as long as beating your average NES game (once you know how to do it) so you spend 20 to 30 minutes setting up all the parts, positioning him to a screen, using the C batteries (I think it was four of them)  setting up the gyroids or the stackable blocks and then you also have to activate him. Now ROB is a 90’s robot so he is incredibly slow. Imagine Super Mario Bros world 1-1 with a question mark block this time being a gate ROB needs to open for you .

Now.. Rob doesn’t press buttons he picks up a gyro from a docking station and puts it on a scale this scale will then push A or B on Robs controller, this determines which gate is opened, the Red ones or the blue ones. .. now to switch Rob doesn’t pick up the gyroid from the controller and puts it on the other spot … no.. Rob picks it up , puts in back in the docking station, then makes another capture of the screen sees what is required of him and he moves the gyro from the docking station to the new position. So there is roughly a minute .. if everything goes well between each Mario Question block.. this is the pace that Rob holds.  And it doesn’t always go well.

ROB has butterfingers he constantly drops the gyro.. and if he does you need to make sure the gyro spins again. In Stack up where he builds coloured towers to mimic the screen he is even worse. Yet who cares you have a robot friend to play with. Now I bet GeekGirlJoy could build us another robot that does do its job better than ROB but until then either you have a gaming friend or a fairly low Tier Smash fighter.. either way if you are truly into a fluid gaming experience ROB probably should be avoided. Still a robot gaming friend.. is a pretty zaney idea for a peripheral.

Weird Peripheral Number 3: LifeCycle Exertainment (SNES) 

Nintendo always wanted that we stayed fit. The NES had a mat for running, the gamecube has a very popular DDR mat, the Wii had that Yoga balance board thing to work out with and on the Switch we now have a ring! However… there is one device that easily trumps these devices and makes them seem like child’s play. There is an exercise bike add on, for the SNES or Super Nintendo. That’s right a full fledged fully functional exercise bike. It’s extremely rare to find one these days.. as not a lot of them were sold… but back when it was made the company had full trust in this. They even released two models. One for gyms which had build in monitors and the SNES integrated into the cabinet or a home user model in which you connect the bike to an add on for your SNES that you connect via a phone cable.

It was very weird back then.. but what was actually weirder is that it actually works. The bike supports two games, of which only 1 is a bike game.. the other is a Speed Racer port.. from the same system but adapted to work with the controller. While the Bike itself actually works quite well and even can detect angles in the mode-7 graphics and increase or decrease pedal resistance based on it… the controller part really fumbles. The D-pad is horrible and since the bike’s steering wheel is fixed you need to press left and right to steer in these games…which basically is barely functional. So by playing these things on easier difficulty settings you can skip steering completely and just focus on having enough power to pedal trough. However this means earning less unlock points..and thus forcing you to exercise more.. so now it’s tiring and it’s not fun?!  Sounds like actual fitness to me, and if so this thing is completely overpriced.

Weird Peripheral Number 2: Sewing Machine 
(Gameboy) 

So this one is where things really start to get weird,  this is a sewing machine you can use by hooking it up to your gameboy, and unfortunately this isn’t even the weirdest gameboy invention ever. It’s just the weirdest you can actually play.  There is a cartridge that helps you set up sewing patterns I think which actually sounds incredibly helpful for people like me! I’d love to make cosplays but I barely even know what a sewing pattern even is. I am just not sure how helpful this tool actually is.  Aside from a few cosplayers I haven’t met a lot of people who own a sewing machine and a gameboy. The two demographics don’t overlap that much, so unless this was created for a niche of a niche specifically this one seems like a really weird idea to try out.

The Singer Izek is purchasable, which put it above it’s competition the Pedistate. The pedistate was a medical tool that never got released. It was a tool for hospitals that doctors and nurses could hook up to a gameboy, put onto a kid and …..sedate children… as they play their favorite handheld video games.  Feeling it was less traumatic for kids to be sedated this way they even build it in colours to match the original purple of the game boy colour. Honestly I would have loved to knock myself out with my gameboy! Sleeping doesn’t come easy to me so that tool would have been very useful, though I doubt I would be allowed to use it unsupervised.  Maybe the idea of sewing stuff together with my gameboy is enough to put me a sleep as well. 

Weird Peripheral Number 1: Babies  (Nintendo Wii) 

The fact that I had to write this title in plural instead of singular form amazes me. There are to my knowledge..at east two baby add ons for Nintendo wii. Both come with their own game and their own baby. Baby and me takes a realistic approach and offers you a classic baby doll. To start playing you insert the wiimote…into to baby …………and start playing the game. The game pursues this realistic like style. Unfortunately with the graphic capabilities of the Wii that doesn’t always pan out.  Aside from the fact that the baby wears pink the actual baby toy you get is kinda scary looking This baby has some serious as to it. She dons a weird headband that no other baby would.  You use the nun-chuck.. which … comes out the baby to do stuff powder it’s bum and change it’s diaper all while it’s soulless eyes stare up and scream in agony for allowing it to continue it’s miserable existence. The on screen baby is even scarier. I’d honestly rather snog with Cthulhu than bear that kid’s gaze. The baby sells pretty cheaply on eBay with models going for under 10 euro so at least it’s not hard to get.

I get this was made for little girls…but you technically can do this with regular dolls as well.  These are just baby dolls  but instead of taking care of the one in your hands you take care of the one on screen…that just doesn’t really make sense to me.. nor does seeing a baby as a gaming peripheral shout good parenting to me. The second baby possibly is even weirder. It was made for a game in the cooking Mama series named Babysitting mama  in this game you control a daycare center and insert your wiimote into a plush anime like baby. By doing well in the minigames Mama can collect more babies to play with. Taking care of these babies earns coins and unlockables. Minigames include making the baby move on a seesaw or burping it. These babies all are insanely expressive  and can get super grouchy or super happy which is scary! There even is a minigame where you have to change it’s diaper which involves removing the diaper from the plush baby a putting it on again to change it of virtual baby. This version is a lot more fun to play though and requires the use of the nun chuck a lot less often. Which makes this the de facto game to go to if you want to you an actual baby as a gaming tool, all you need is to remove it’s  diaper.. take a wiimote … and you can imagine the rest…. it will even fix some sensitivity problems this game has for the force of an adult playing this.