KokiriChild

Spots are officially halfway filled! Get 'em while they're hot!

The theme of this season:

I'm taking this as you are in, let me know if it's just a joke

We won't make everyone play something if it isn't easily emulatable or otherwise accessible in some way.

Please note there are going to be very few traditional high score challenges for that very reason. Jeevan and I are working to drastically change the challenge structure to more creative challenges like the annual art challenge to make the time commitment significantly less.

Tagging everyone in the Survivor club in case any of you want to play, feel free to ignore! ... @0xDEAFC0DE @Avgn Gamer @B.A. @behemos @Bettington Bear @Darth Vader @Deadeye @DefaultGen @doner24 @FireHazard51 @G-type @Generic @Gloves @Hammerfestus @Jmbarnes101 @Krunch @MagusSmurf @Makar @mideast @Murray @Nesfanatic @NESfiend @North @OptOut @Reed Rothchild @RH @Scrobins @spacepup @Splain @Sumez @Tulpa @ZeldaFan042 @ZeldaFreak

Hello, everyone, and WELCOME to the third season of SURVIVOR on VGS - OASIS OF THE ORACLES! After a year-long hiatus the beloved game of cutthroat strategy, betrayal, and gaming is back for 2023! Your strategy is up to you, yourself, and your (optional) alliance! Lie, cheat, steal, and vote out the competition. Plus, this year, there will be extra twists and turns which will push you to the absolute limit of both your social abilities and gameplay skills. Who will become the SOLE SURVIVOR and claim the GRAND PRIZE? This year, I will be joined once again by my co-host, the one and only @Jeevan SOLE SURVIVOR and WINNER of the first season! THE PRIZES: THE SOLE SURVIVOR will win $100 cash (PayPal, or equivalent) along with a one-of-a-kind art poster designed by @CasualCart. This design has been the prize for the previous two seasons, with each poster slightly edited for the new season. This poster will be the only official copy in the world making it a one-of-a-kind prize! We're also keeping the design a secret Who will join @ZeldaFreak and @Jeevan in this elite secret poster-having club? SECOND PLACE (1st Runner Up) will win $50 cash (PayPal, or equivalent) THIRD PLACE (2nd Runner Up) will win $25 cash (PayPal, or equivilant) Note that this sign-up thread is simply to determine interest, the game is still a month or two out, and will start in early May. FAQs How many players can play? We are limiting the number of players to 18. If there seems to be a lot of demand, it will be on a strictly a first-come, first-serve basis. If you have any interest in playing, I suggest signing up early. If we are already full, or you are unsure if you will be able to commit, you are more than welcome to sign-up as a back-up player if someone needs to drop out. Again, the entry of back-ups into the cast of players is first-come, first-served. How do you play online Survivor? All of the rules will be posted in the main game threads when the game begins - don't worry! The game will follow all of the traditional rules and layout of the game as seen on the popular TV show... complete with alliances, camp life, challenges, hidden immunity idols, and, of course, the dreaded Tribal Council! Where on the forum will the game be played? All majorly relevant threads will be posted in a club specifically used for Survivor. You will need to join it in order to play. Do I need to know about the Survivor TV show to play? The short answer is no, but being familiar will definitely help you. If you have never seen the show, or it has been a very long time, and you want to try it out, two modern seasons that I always recommend to newcomers are Season 28 - Survivor: Cagayan, and Season 37 - Survivor: David v. Goliath How long will the game last? The start date for the season is TBD, but will likely be the start of May! The game takes just under a month and a half to play. That means the game will continue until early-to-mid-June. Please keep this in mind when signing up. About the challenges... Yes, the challenges for Reward and Immunity will consist of a variety of video games, puzzles, riddles, and a whole secret surprise mixed bag o' fun! And yes, as long as save states/cheats are not used, emulators are allowed (we will pretty much be following the same rules as the "Can VGS Beat..." and Weekly Contest threads.) Note that if you have played in past seasons, we are focusing heavily on lowering the necessary time commitment by doing less high score challenges and adding more variety! Is there actually a prize for winning? YES! It's not quite a million dollars but there will be a grand prize for the winner, as well as prizes for the 2nd and 3rd place finalists. Sign-Ups 1. Gloves 2. Brickman 3. AVGN Gamer 4. Murray 5. G-Type 6. BlackVega 7. OptOut 8. RH 9. MagusSmurf 10. WalterWhiteJr 11. Jmbarnes101 12. FireHazard51 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. Back-Ups 1. PuppyWaffles 2. 3. 4. 5.

Well, apparently the battery in my Everdrive died and I lost all my saves, including Mission Impossible. So until I replace it I am limited to games that save via Controller Pak. In that vein, I am over halfway through Shadowgate 64. I am a huge fan of point-and-click adventures games with lots of puzzles, so I am thoroughly enjoying it so far, even if it is a bit bare-bones.

Not going to start on Castlevania quite yet. Currently making my way through Mission Impossible, a game that went through development hell, is flawed and therefore compared to GoldenEye. But this game is an awesome stealth mission game and I love it.

I'm going to try my hand at Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers. It looks quite interesting!

Quest 64 is finished! What a ride! I've never felt such a rollercoaster of opinions on a game as I played it before. This game is far from perfect, but I found the unique movement, combat and the leveling system - all of which get a ton of hate - quite fun! The game is weird. In some ways good but in many ways not so good. It doesn't have currency and you can't buy items. The game falls into the same routine of Town -> Inn -> Bad Guy in Woods -> Tunnel to Bad Guy -> Boss Fight four times in a row, one for each element with only the occasional miniboss thrown in for variety. Also, this game reeks of being rushed out the door. So many empty rooms, long, LONG hallways and tunnels that can go on for literal minutes with nothing to interact with, and some don't even have random encounters. Speaking of which, there are way, way too many of those. I have to commend how seamlessly the battles start and how the battlefield looks identical to where you were in the overworld, but every time you do so it gets frustratingly easy to forget which direction you were going. Especially in those minutes-long tunnel parts. I backtracked accidentally countless times and had to watch my compass like a hawk. By the end of the game, the tunnels and desert portions especially, the combat and long tracking was very, very tiresome. Finding those spirits towards the end of the game was brutal. Additionally, however, the game quickly becomes stupidly easy about halfway through. Magic Barrier makes you basically take 0 Damage for the rest of the game. The last 5 bosses in the game were child's play compared to the few that came before I got that spell. At least it made not being able to buy items not a problem. I had so many healing items by the end of the game I probably could have fought Mammon 5 more times. All that being said, the game I think was still fun and worth playing. It's mid for sure, but removed from the let down of the late 90s console wars, I found it to be quite enjoyable. The beginning is definitely were the game shines, and the graphics and music are very, very good. I also found the story to not be half bad, even if it does completely rip off the first Final Fantasy. Overall, I would play this again and wouldn't hate it. It's pretty short for an RPG, too.

Just stopped my Quest 64 run for the night. Finished the Dries Desert and I'm about to tackle the cave with the fourth and final elemental boss who holds the Fire Ruby. Then I just got one town left with the castle that shall begin the sequence leading up to the three final bosses and the end of the game. The repetitive nature of the battle system had gotten much worse in this last quarter of the game, and it's officially sliding back down to a mid game for me. Training HP is such a chore, the staff sucks this late in the game. Still having fun though, and I should be able to do one last push and finish it tomorrow.

Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt is finally, finally done. I swear beating 3 computers on each of these levels took more patience than I knew I had. Imagine three of the shittiest Mario Party boards you could create, make them have almost zero autonomy for the players, very few options to choose from other than which direction to move, and also it has no minigames, it's just the boards. They shoot themselves in their own foot any time they try and implement something skill-based or interesting. For example, there is no way to look at the board, which spaces are where, and where each player is located. It's like playing Mario Party through a microscope. On the Reptar candy level, they include "Items" that the player can run into that do things such as banana peels that make a player slide and skip 4 spaces ahead instead of rolling. Only problem is, you can't see the board, so unless you have it memorized there is exactly zero ways to tell which opponent it is optimal to use the item on. What you're left with is a massive RNG cluster- with some of the absolute worst graphics on the console. This game might as well be called Rugrats Candyland. The only three things it has going for it, is that it technically functions correctly with few bugs, has the amazing Rugrats sound font on its OST, and the brutal and unfair nature of the game makes for an excellent drunk party game with friends when you want to change it up. As a single player experience, though, this is an easy 1.5/10 for me. Absolute trash. Finally, I can just finish Quest 64. The funniest part is, I LOVED this game as a kid and rented it from Blockbuster probably 10+ times. I honestly think that had to be because I loved the Rugrats TV show so much.

I swear to God if I have to replay this Reptar candy mode in Rugrats one more time I'm going to throw my N64 out my window.

Also, no currency in the game I think is actually a really fun limitation which makes it feel very unlike most RPGs.

Oh, absolutely. This game can't come close to anything JRPG related on PlayStation, but my own childhood memories are completely opposite of how I'm feeling now playing the game for the first time in 15+ years, which is a strange sensation. The strange mechanics I hated as a kid, which the public sentiment has only agreed in its supposed crappy-ness, I find very fresh and fun on this playthrough as an adult. I am having a ton of fun with the mix of turn-based and action combat. I find the octagon movement really interesting as a battle and escape mechanic. There's way too many random encounters but overall I'm enjoying it quite a lot.

Officially over halfway through Quest 64. Towards the end of the game the combat gets a little repetitive, but overall I retract my previous statements - I'm enjoying this way more than I remember it as a kid. I don't get why this game gets so much hate? In between Quest sessions I've also been playing some Rugrats Scavenger Hunt. I've beaten two of the three levels but I swear the AI on this game cheats. Hopefully I'll have the third done soon, because this game is the definition of shit. It does make for a phenomenal drunk party game with friends though!

Spider-Man is finished. This one is also hard to rate. I have massive nostalgia for this game, and it has so many great aspects to it. Legitimately fun boss fights, nice graphics, awesome voice acting, and a nice variety of levels. The combat, falls a little flat for me. Fighting game controls, i.e. button combos, simply do not work with platforming. I felt like this game couldn't really decide if it wanted to be a beat 'em up or a platformer and there were some extremely frustrating and difficult levels towards the end of the game. Spider-Man is slippery as all getout, with the only control of the camera being to snap with Z, making for some aspects of the game frustratingly aged. And the game was challenging towards the end. The enemies actually do a lot of damage. Yet, after all of that, the final two boss fights are laughably easy with a million health packs everywhere. I ended the game with full webs and full health. Though I have to give credit, that final boss chase was incredibly fun and a great way to end the game. I have to assume the other ports of this game are better though, as the lack of FMVs in true N64 fashion really hurts this one I think. The comic book style they went for was well done, though, I have to say. Overall, it was worse and more frustrating than I remembered from playing it as a kid, but I did have fun and have to consider it on the good game, worth playing list Also, it was all worth it if not only to see this fanfiction of an ending with all the characters playing go fish at a house party.

I am still going to soft-claim Castlevania but I did decide to start on Quest 64 and just beat the first boss in the forest. All that being said also did none of the things and started playing Spider-Man, and just beat Mysterio, so hopefully that one should be done by today or tomorrow. Also about halfway through Charlie Blasts. With any luck in the next week or two I should have Spider-Man, Charlie Blast, and Quest all completed and will be working on Castlevania.

Feel better my man!

Actually before I do Quest 64 I am going to try Castlevania Legacy of Darkness. Bought it a while ago and still have yet to play it. I think it's time!

I am also still casually making my way through Charlie Blast's Territory. Thankfully it has a super nice password system that makes it easy to pick up and down.

No, please go ahead. As punishment for this, I shall take on Quest 64 instead. I actually have a ton of nostalgia for Quest and have never been able to beat it, so I am excited to take it on again for the first time in over a decade.

A Bug's Life is finished. I still can't determine how I feel about it. Was the camera, unfair enemy respawn rate and ridiculous geometry annoying? Yes. But, did I have fun? Yeah, I did. I didn't need to force myself to play it, a lot of the puzzles were legitimately well designed, and I even 100%'d it, getting all 45 medals. Honestly, I could play this again. That puts it safely in the "decent" category for me.

If Splain gives up I will do Aidyn after ai finish Bugs Life.