Sumez

I'm pretty sure that statement only applies to Canada

Always wanted to make poutine, but is there any way to procure those squeaky cheese curds without making them yourself?

True, but at the same time.. If you get a party all to level 99 nothing in the game can touch you

I don't know if you noticed, but which Esper you have equipped also affects which stats improve more when that character levels up, så espers really help shape your party. Personally I like this system much more than Materia because its tied to the characters! I always found the Materia system pretty silly because it ultimately didn't matter at all who I had in my party, I could just equip someone else with the exact same Materia.

You get both Tower of Doom and Baldurs Gate 3. Clever.

Elemental Master

The girls can do it too, yall! James brown? James brown!

It's hard for me to separate Genius of Love from both the massive stain it is on Stop Making Sense, but also the people behind it who are kind of douches (even though I absolutely love Talking Heads). It's a decent enough song, but I just really don't like it. Blondie always rocks! Can't hate that.

Contra 3?

Sea of Stars - Beaten 25/2 Sea of Stars is a "Canadian JRPG" that clearly models itself primarily after Chrono Trigger, though while that game had me from the start, Sea of Stars took a while to really get going. The setting is appealing enough that you want to keep playing just to see where it goes next, but it's not until roughly the second half of the game, that I started being increasingly blown away by just how much charm and detail the developers were able to squeeze into what you probably thought was just a cute little indie pixelart JRPG love-letter. The amount of work that must have gone into just animating every single massive screen-filling boss fight is completely unfathomable! Let alone all the colorful NPCs, and events and character portraits that you only ever just see once. But I'm getting ahead of myself. As much as I ended up loving Sea of Stars, it's far from a perfect game. The first thing that really stands out is how awkward the dialogue often comes off, with a level of writing that at times just feels amateurish or childish even. I was a bit worried coming from the dev's previous game, The Messenger, since the dialogue in that game was extremely tone-deaf and plagued by really poor attempts at humor. But Sea of Stars at least manages to mostly avoid that, in fact it's actually genuinely funny at times. But despite my criticism, the dialogue ultimately still works well, so I have to commend them for that - this is a game that managed to make me cry, and to a much bigger degree than anything I remember playing in years, and that's gotta count for something. If you've played the game you probably know where The story is a little odd, but it's one where the events, vistas and strange internal mythology works by being fun and colorful, moreso than being internally consistent (which is just one of many thing this game shares with Chrono Trigger). You're playing as a pair of fated "Solstice Warriors" setting out to fulfill their purpose as protectors of the world, as they are joined by their friend, Garl, who's just a regular guy that wants to come along. While at first, Garl seems like a really odd third wheel in an RPG party of legendary warriors, but it doesn't take long before you'd probably start arguing that this guy is the actual main character. Garl emits an infectious overflow of pure positivity like I've rarely seen in any fictional character - which I think manages to reach beyond just the confines of the story, and affect the whole experience of playing Sea of Stars. It's not a game that feels too driven and dragged down by its story however. You still get to spend most of your time exploring dungeons and fighting stuff. And actually, I think one of the biggest appeals is how nice traversal feels. Most of the dungeons are really linear, but it never feels like you're just walking down a corridor, due to the element of elevation that allows you to climb up or jump down from ledges as you make your way around. It's not quite as dynamic as something like Mario RPG, but it does just enough to give every area its own distinct identity, sprinkled by some (very) light zelda-like puzzle solving, typically required to progress. Honestly, I think that design approach should be the baseline in games of this sort, rather than the exception, because it always works well. The combat has a lot of fun ideas, which at least on the surface are kind of fun, and at least allows for some cool gimmicks in the boss fights. At the same time, however, the system is so strict that you have barely and freedom to make real tactical decisions, and are instead governed by a cycle of using or regaining magic points, as well as the enemies requiring specific attacks to counter, pretty much locking you into your decisions for you. This is one of the core aspects of the combat, when an enemy is preparing special attacks it goes into a defensive stance which can be broken by using attacks with specific properties on them. These are picked somewhat at random, so often it's simply not even possible to meet those requirements even if you focus completely on just that enemy. How often it happens also seems to be random, and the same goes for the number of wind-up turns. So based entirely on chance, you might drop right into a battle against three enemies which all start preparing extra dangerous special attacks for the next turn, and no way to stop even one of them. Funny enough, this isn't really an issue on bosses, since those have been specifically balanced around giving you a chance to deal with their moves, and never overwhelm the player, meaning the game's difficulty spikes exclusively comes from regular small encounters. I generally do prefer turn based systems to rely on some sort of borderline-unfair randomness in order to keep the player on their toes and think their way out of shitty situations - but in this case, it's not like you can do much to handle it anyway. The same fight can be over in seconds, or just randomly deal you a massively crappy hand, but the way you deal with it is exactly the same, the only difference is how much of a punishment you end up taking. There's a nice feel to the combat, as there is to most of the game, and it does seem like it could maybe have been more interesting if you had more ways to switch up your approach to a situation - but as it is, it's just not very good. But Sea of Stars is like a good album where all the cool and surprising songs are at the back half, leaving you with a great taste in your mouth, and fond memories overall. For all the things it does that are sub-par, it's also just so charming and well produced that it mostly drowns out any potential issues. It's the kind of story-driven RPG that I've longed for, which feels both fresh and traditional in a sea of cliche-ridden derivatives!

It's up for preorder on roughly half the webshops I've checked, there's no real information anywhere outside of that

Has anyone figured out if there's any difference between the LRG versions of Contra Operation Galuga going on preorder soon and the upcoming retail release? It seems the retail switch version is a "code in a box", but I can't find any similar information about the other ones. I'd hate to preorder it for PS5 only to find out it ends up being a code, or lacking in some other way compared to going with the vastly more expensive LRG release.

Nightdive have a good track record for these sorts of ports, and LRG has worked with both them and the star wars brand multiple times in the past. I think its pretty much a given that this will show up as a part of their library

Not sure what the ending you got was, but after getting one ending, I got the other one by just If you already has that, the other ending is "just" going around getting all the secrets. There's a bunch of extra-obscure secrets that aren't necessary for the ending, but essentially getting the "best" ending is enterily centered around So if you already did that, the remaining secrets aren't ending-related.

Help voting for my next backlog game. https://strawpoll.com/Q0ZpRAd2GnM Previous poll had 18 games in them, and I've played the two winners now. These are the eight games that had the next most votes.

Didn't Majyuou already have another cart re-release a few years as go? I think they marketed that as King of Demon's too.

Nothing was changed in the game, it was just put in an emulator. Honestly I think especially a game like Felix the Cat is a really good example of the missed opportunity such a re-release offers. It's a fantastic game that's super fun to just play, but it's so extremely easy there's not much to come back for after you've played through it once (which won't take long). A more challenging mode that plays on the game's existing strengths would have been fantastic.

Nah but a game that feels like it responds to your inputs and doesn't become harder to play due to the framerate still seems like a fair baseline

No-brainer!

Reportedly LRG actually approached Konami about Felix The Cat, and Konami had no idea what that game even was when they asked them. I don't know how to dig up the twitter post, but this was stated by a LRG executive.

It's a N64 game, it runs at a low framerate even for the already low N64 standard. I don't know what I'd research outside of this. It's how the game is - when did you last try playing it?

Nothing about it looks like a cash grab. Clearly a lot of work went into it. Too bad they didn't put more frames into it also :3

Well, the demo is out, and I'm pleased! The game is way better than I had dared to hope. Had a run through hard mode, with 1-hit kills, here: There's a bunch of modifiers you can switch on to make the game easier, including perks which straight up allow you to heal. But opting out of the perks definitely feels like the more pure way to play. 1-hit kill mode might be classic Contra, but I think playing through the full game with that might end up being extremely tough, I had a hard time even making it through the first stage without taking a hit. The game feels fair though, except for just a few places with some shenanigans. And Hard Mode is extremely exhillerating! Instead of giving you beefy enemies, they'll just throw a ton of popcorn enemies at you, with turrets and grenade lobbers to keep you on your toes. It's great. Oh, the game runs like shit though. It's not even consistent on PS5, but at least it's playable. Don't get the Switch version - I repeat, DO NOT get the Switch version! It's not just that it runs poorly, it barely runs at all, a complete mess. I'm not sure charging money for software in that stage is even legal.

Uh. Isn't that an emulatore though?

How did you measure that? The game doesn't feel close to 20 to me, but even then 15 is pretty damn unacceptable for a racing game Look, I really tried, I was really looking forward to finally playing this game, and wanted to love it. But the game just didn't want me to play it. I think it's crazy trying to make excuses for how this game performs