twiztor

if this gets a physical release i will probably scoop it up. looks like a frustratingly difficult good time.

22 hours ago, Hammerfestus said:

I’m just going by numbers though if it’s on the fence I’ll take some influence from the description.

same here. i think the literary description lines up pretty well with the numbers in general. i start with the numerical and adjust based on secription if need be. like @ZeldaFreaki also think in terms of .5s and it does help with the rounding.

ah! another Iowan! feel free to hit me up if you roll through Dubuque.

welcome. your collection and setup are incredible. nice work!! 

Super Princess Peach (Nintendo DS)

i'd heard surprisingly little about this Mario spinoff title, but it caught my attention for being the only game to star Ms. Toadstool (until the upcoming Switch game releases).

i enjoyed this game, but it's pretty shallow as far as platforming games go.  interesting if underutilized emotion mechanics. level design that wasn't as intuitive as i expected (you have to "rescue" all 3 Toads in each stage, but it's generally unclear if a warp pipe/door is the actual path forward or a side path to find said Toad. i had to do a decent amount of backtracking). difficulty is nonexistent (akin to the mainline Kirby games).

post-game opens up new stages. haven't given them a play, but i'm vaguely interested. i mainly played this during my downtime at work, knocking out 1 world per day. a decent time killer, but significantly less addicting than the Mario vs DK series.

wow, there's a lot of high scores being posted here. i watched it when it was fairly new, so ~20 years ago (!?!) but i found it quite boring. won't give it a rating since i don't remember anything about it really. Maybe i was just in the wrong mindset? I definitely remember being very disappointed and bored.

100% boneless. definitely not trying to put in more work than i have to.

i am having a hard time imagining a soup that has meat with bones in it. sounds awful.

my record player is made by Crosley. i picked it up at Target ~10 years ago because it had the look of a vintage radio, and i really liked the aesthetic. it puts out surprisingly good sound for its price point, so i've been exceedingly happy with it. has gotten tons of use over the years.

my record collection sits right about the 500 mark. the top tier stuff resides on the record player shelf. this can be either high dollar stuff or just personal favorites. i constructed the shelf a number of years ago. i found plans online and built it out of a single sheet (8'x4') of plywood. that shelf is solid and obviously is doing its job of supporting all that weight.

my sweet spot for vinyl records is classic rock, so that is the huge bulk of my collection. anything from the 60s to the 80s is fair game, although i think a few 90s releases have snuck in. i never buy nee records, only pick up used- i'm less concerned about crystal clear sound (i always have digital for that!) than i am an aythentic experience. obviously condition matters too, but i'm not overly picky.

a point of pride is that i inherited all of my mom's records, and all those from both of her siblings. it helps that they all have a good taste in music, but it just adds that sentimental value. i recently picked up a part time job at the local record store specifically to fill in some of the gaps inbetween. i pick up a new record each week. it has been awesome so far.

57 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

it seems like most of my favorite music isn't available in the format.

what kind/era of music do you generally listen to? vinyl has seen an enormous resurgence in the last ~10 years and i would struggle to identify any genre that is sufficiently lacking in availability.

@TDIRunner cool pic with all of the cds. i only have a single drawer of them (mostly my collection of stuff i bought in my teenage years that i can't part with yet). Also, is that a box of 45s on the bottom shelf? i like the look of that box.

i have about 500 records, almost exclusively '70s and '80s classic rock. will post pics sooner or later. 

11 hours ago, Estil said:

Does music on records really sound distinctively "warmer" than on CDs?  That's what I often hear.

my father in law, a big music fan, would constantly try to knock my preference of digital music. He swore, time and time again, that vinyl records produced a "warmer" sound, and that if you looked at the wavelengths, vinyl records would output a broader range. to that effect, he shared an article he found online that PROVED his point. The article started out saying how nostalgic that vinyl records were for the writer, and that he preferred them and wanted to find evidence to back up his opinions. i read the whole thing. it was well-researched and well-written. The writer's final conclusion is that digital music put out a FAR wider range of wavelengths and depths than anything that could be produced by scratching a needle over a slab of vinyl. so much so that there's a huge chunk that can't even be registered by the human ear.  obviously my FIL didn't read the entire thing.

On 1/3/2024 at 11:17 AM, wongojack said:

Oh boy, here's one that has been pending for a LONG time.  Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  I had never played this game as a young adult.  I played the original but was never really impressed.  I think as a 10 or 11-year-old, the controls were a bit too complicated and the vulnerability on things like angular stairs combined with a timer (they have a timer right?) and a need to memorize in some sections caused me to drop out entirely.  So, when SOTN came around, it had no impact on me.  I was fully bought into 3d gaming at the time and the thought of revisiting a 2d series that I didn't enjoy in the first place just did not motivate me.

Fast forward to 2023 and "metroidvania" is now everyone's favorite indie genre - including me.  I love them, AND I've also discovered in the last 25+ years that I love Super Metroid and am very interested in exploring a game that was directly inspired by it.  So, off I went.

I did not look at hints or a walkthrough before exploring about 95% of the castle.  I had no knowledge of the end of the game, and I wanted to experience it first without outside influence.  My journey from 0% exploration to 95% was definitely a great experience.  It was filled with typical if not excellent "metroidvania" moments of exploration and puzzle solving to access new areas and gain new abilities and equipment.  However, something started to flip at this point where the difficulty of the game really dropped.  Playing as me in 2023 with all of my experience in these types of games, I was very methodical about exploring and finding the various hidden items.  At some point, I decided to save money to buy the best armor available, and I think that's where the difficulty really started to drop for me.  Suddenly almost every fight just could be resolved as a slugfest.  Duck and hit, duck and hit.  The extra "health" items started to pile up unused, and as I found more and more equipment (mostly useless) my advantages tipped waaay over and the game became an exercise in simply filling in the map. 

So that brings me to the reality that SOTN is really 2.5 games or 2.75 if you play the Saturn version.  The inverted castle . . .  I didn't figure out how to unlock this by myself.  I knew I hadn't explored EVERY area before facing Richter, but I decided to push forward anyway.  After a little more explanation, I found the required items, but lost patience and looked online on how to advance.  [It was at this point that I read about the mechanics of the Sheild Rod which has impact later on the difficulty of the game.]

The inverted castle seemed like a great idea, but my excitement quickly waned.  The difficulty was still very low.  I don't think I died because of a boss fight for hours and hours.  I can't even remember a difficult boss fight in the inverted castle even without the powers granted by the before-mentioned Sheild Rod.  By the end, I couldn't believe the game wasn't over.  I labored to fill out 200.6% of the map and got through the final boss fight multiple times with multiple different strategies without dying.

---Evaluation

I think this is a lesson that newer games have learned, but SOTN could have been excellent if it didn't give the player so many ways to play it.  Finishing it makes me wish I could play a version of the game that restricts equipment to increase the challenge.  It is also REALLY hurt by the fact that all the puzzle-solving and discovery is completely gone when exploring the inverted castle.  With nothing to discover and almost no challenge, the game just dies.  If I hadn't set out specifically to finish it, I wouldn't have pushed through to the best ending.

In the end, I can see the quality of this game, but it just can't get out of its way to deliver a consistently fun experience.  I would rate SOTN a disappointing 4 out of 5 and could be convinced to give it a 3.

good writeup, and very similar to my experience a few years ago. I knew that the castle flipped at one point. Played through the game, ended up looking up what i needed to do to get the "true ending" or whatever. And i fully agree. Once you invert the castle, it's pretty straightforward and you can just blitz basically everything.

i had this realization a bit sooner. I was playing the game with my wife (she's not really a gamer but this game hooked her) so progress was exceedingly slow. One weekend, she was out of town, and i booted the game up. Beat the majority of the whole thing. She was pissed (rightfully so), so i started a new save file to get us back to where we had been. With all the puzzles and secrets fresh in my mind, i breezed to that point. it's not a hard game whatsoever. even without doing all the upgrades (i basically never buy weapons/armor from shops and just wait for equipment to drop).

this song's catchy. i suppose it's fun to dance to (if you're into that sort of thing..... i'm not). i like it enough but it's not nearly one of my favorite from MJ. i'll go with 6.5 and round up to 7.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong 4: Mini-Land Mayhem.

i felt like there wasn't much to this. i'd have to look back over what i wrote for the other entries in this series, but it felt like a game whose entire existence can be summed up by just saying "more of...". no new concepts, just new levels in the same vein as what came before.

that's not to say it's bad. i had a lot of fun and found it addictive. but stick with Donkey Kong '94, and then the first Mario vs Donkey Kong. #2 was pretty good as well. #3 and #4 were both decent if unspectacular, #5 was inconsistent. 

cross Mighty No. 9 off my list.

i was not a KickStarter backer and bought this on the cheap knowing full well its reputation. and i can honestly say that most of it is earned.

the graphics are 2000s made-for-tv cgi ugly. the voice acting is pretty decent, but it's played over what amounts to static images in the cutscenes. just awful. the story is clunky and obvious.

it plays like the Mega Man knockoff that it is (yeah, yeah, i know it's the brainchild of Mega Man's creator. doesn't make it any less of a bad copy). most enemy weapons are 100% useless.

the level design is just all kinds of bland. they find a way to go from very sparse areas to overcrowded screens that cause slowdown in the same areas. certain stages are just LITTERED with one hit deathtraps. made for a playthrough that was frustrating and annoying, but never gives you that sense of accomplishment to balance the scales.

it did have a Mighty No. 9 themed rap song in the credits, so that was at least neat.

anyway, just play any of the actual MM games. this just doesn't measure up.

7 minutes ago, RH said:

Then I saw this.  The Turtles association explains it all.

funny story. Like 10 years ago, this commercial came out:

i thought it was amazing and showed it to my wife. She thought it was good, but was confused why they were gearing ads with 90s nostalgia to people like us. She said "shouldn't they aim that more at like parents?" then it hit her.

for me the answer is Mario is Missing for SNES. i bought it WAY back in the day and was excited to play a game where Luigi was the main character. Had no idea it was an 'edutainment' game. and use that -tainment suffix extremely generously here. I hated that game. i know the whole game is only like 2 hours long, but i was fuming the whole time. But i forced myself to finish it so that i would never be tempted to try it again. To double down, I WROTE THE FINAL LEVEL PASSWORD ON THE CART WITH A MARKER. Just total contempt for it. 

17 hours ago, fcgamer said:

I was really surprised by those Ninja Turtles snacks. My Japanese friend was curious so we busted them out during Netflix night. The pizza ones were our favorite of the two, but the green apple marshmallow ones were pretty good too. Very unique, never had these before.

 

i am very interested in these TMNT snacks. what are they? are they something only released in one part of the world? i don't see anything like them on Amazon or eBay.  @Masterofzelda

2 hours ago, The Count said:

Yeah, he sampled Queen/Bowie and should have just admitted it at the time.

whoa, whoa, whoa. it's totally different. Here's the word from the Ice Man himself:

this song is awesome. easy 10/10. i love it unironically. it is my go-to karaoke song. Have seen V-Ice live a few times and they were all good performances. Met him one time when he was high as a goddamn kite and i got his autograph. It is a giant scribble.

7/10. Zeppelin took me a long time to appreciate, as the high pitched vocals always sat wrong with me. But you can't help but appreciate the guitar work. It has been played to death, but it's still a solid song to listen to in a vacuum. 

as for best versions, this is my favorite:

Final Fantasy 7. 

it is the only game where i've played a vast majority of the game and didn't want it to end. So i make it to Disc 3, unlock everything and do a bunch of grinding and powering up, and then decide not to play through the Crater. 

haven't seen any of these in years. coincidentally just bought a box set a month or two back. Haven't rewatched yet, but i remember enjoying them. from memory, i'd probably give the first film a 7.

the last one i saw (3? 4?) had Jack Sparrow losing his mind, and there being a whole island full of Jack Sparrows? something like that. i didn't really get that part of the film, and it kinda turned me off from revisiting. I fully expect i would like it quite a bit more on a revisit. definitely haven't watched #5.

rented this as a kid since i'm a big superhero fan. found it to be bad. the only thing i really remember was flying through the rings, but found it boring and frustrating. 

i'll be generous and give it a 2 since i have no memory of non-ring stages or missions.

On 12/24/2023 at 10:33 AM, Reed Rothchild said:

I doubt many of us can conquer our list in a single year.  But we can knock chunks of it out.

i mean, counting digital and compilations, i probably have close to 1000 games. I've beaten 150, maybe 200 of them? I'd like to have the opportunity to play/beat them all. So my total backlog of ALREADY PURCHASED games is like 800+. You start adding new games, or new-to-me buys, and the list is unending.

That's actually what i really like about these threads. it gives us a reason to focus on specific titles, or in my case, a certain series or set of games. it has done wonders for getting and keeping me invested for more than a day. i also enjoy seeing how everyone else makes their list. certain sets? random challenges? sheer volume? i love the variety presented by everyone.

On 12/25/2023 at 5:02 PM, ZeldaFreak said:

I was your secret santa, glad you enjoyed everything!

I do have one question though; what's your damn shirt size?! Because you said you were a big fan of the Zelda franchise, and you also liked hawaiian shirts, so I was originally going to get you a Zelda-themed hawaiian shirt as well, but you didn't specify in your list what size to get, and I didn't want to anonymously ask what your size was since that'd kinda ruin the surprise, haha. Still glad you liked everything though!

ah, ZeldaFreak! i believe you were my Santa a couple years ago too. You're great and i appreciate what you've put together both times for me. Thanks again.

haha, i only even mentioned the Hawaiian shirts to give an example of quirky things i like, had no idea that somebody would even consider buying one! (IMO you're always safe to run bigger on Hawaiian shirts since they can flow loosely. But, for the record, generally XL)