Saturday August 3rd, 2024

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In today's long post, I want to write about some of the recent game pick ups I got and my thoughts on them. This won't be like an in depth review or anything like that, moreso just my general thoughts when playing through them.

First game: Puyo Pop Fever on Nintendo Gamecube

This is my first real experience with a Puyo Puyo game outside of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, and even then I never got very far in that due to how hard of a game it was. I guess there's also the Chemical Plant boss in Sonic Mania, but that was so easy it practically defeats itself.

The main reason I wanted to pick this game up was because I was starting to get into the Gamecube's library after kinda brushing it off for so long, and wanted to also pick up a new game to play on the console. I saw this in a list of games and thought it looked interesting, so I purchased it.

This game was apparently made by Sonic Team after Sega acquired the rights to make the Puyo Puyo games after Compile went bankrupt. I really like the style this game has, illustrated by the talented Yuji Uekawa. With the simple shading and unique character designs, it really stands out from the prior games. Not to mention that from what I can tell this is a complete reboot of the world and characters, which I guess makes it a good first game to choose.

The Puyo Puyo series is a puzzle game franchise where you typically fight one on one against another player or CPU, where the goal is to stack as many chains of Puyos (the colorful blobs) as possible to gain a high score and drop garbage on the opposing side's board. This game is really no exception, and I found it quite addicting and satisfying. The main gameplay gimmick of this title was the "fever" mode, where it drops available combos of Puyos onto your board and it's up to you to use that to your advantage and gain a high chain score. I really enjoyed this gimmick, and made the rounds not only feel more chaotic but also a lot more fun and engaging.

As this was my first time really diving into the game, I got aquainted with the controls in the RunRun course before jumping into the story mode, the WakuWaku course. The story follows this magic student named Amitie, who is looking for her teacher Professor Accord's flying cane. Accord will reward whoever finds it first, and Amitie (and her classmates) seem keen on finding it and cashing out. Of course, this means fighting (or rather puzzle dueling) whoever comes into your path to retrieve the cane. I really enjoy the story and found the dialogue and character interactions rather charming, as well as voice acting that I feel fits these characters fairly well. My story playthrough got cut short when I made it to the frog however, as it was pretty difficult for me. I'll definitely be trying it again soon because I really enjoy this game and what it has going for it. I recommend giving this a shot if you have an interest in the Puyo series or just puzzle games in general. My only real gripe is the forgettable soundtrack.

Second game: Super Meat Boy on Xbox 360

This week the Xbox 360 marketplace shut down, and a sale was going on right before it closed, so I decided to pick up this indie classic as I've never had the chance to play it before and it was super cheap.

This game follows the titular Meat Boy on his quest to save Bandage Girl from Dr. Fetus. (That's as ridiculous as it sounds.) It's styled after a classic 2D platformer, with quick movement, wall jumps, and a lot of deaths. Luckily there's no lives system, so you can die as many times as it's necessary to learn the level and beat it. Meat Boy drops trails of blood (I assume it's blood because he's a meat cube) to show the path you've taken. I really enjoy the quick movement and floaty jumps of this game, it felt really satisying to blaze through levels at breakneck speeds dodging buzzsaws and wall jumping all over the place. I also spotted some cameo appearances from familiar indie game series which was really cool to see. There's not much to write about, but it was quite a fun time and I also got a kick out of the crude humor. I recommend this game to any platformer fan, though I'm sure most of you have already played the game at least once before.

Third game: Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection on Xbox 360

I always had the demo to this game but didn't pick up the full version until a few days ago. This game is a compilation of many different Sega Genesis titles from over the years, developed by Backbone Entertainment. It has around 49 games including unlockables, which makes it a huge bargain and a really convenient way to play all these games on my 360.

It's not without it's issues, however. I noticed the sound emulation can be spotty, with crackling or distorted sound effects. Also the games look rather blurry even with the smoothing filter off, which for a collection claiming to be HD is kind of disappointing, even for the time it released. To me though, the biggest problem is the lack of Sonic and Knuckles lock-on support, meaning the games are only available separately, missing out on aspects such as playing as Knuckles in Sonic 2 or 3 and playing as Tails or being able to save in Sonic and Knuckles, which really bummed me out.

Aside from those gripes however, the game selection is really good with all the Sonic games, every Streets of Rage, every Phantasy Star, Ristar, Beyond Oasis, Dynamite Headdy, Comix Zone and more. I also like the fact each game has it's own border artwork that isn't too distracting (aside from the Comix Zone border, that one was too much) and compliments the game. It adds a bit of personality to the collection that I feel is lacking in the current collection on last gen consoles and Steam with it's small selection of generic game borders to use. I know some people prefer to have no border at all, and this collection lacks the ability to turn that off, but for me I thought it was fun.

The coolest aspect to me was the challenges you have to beat to unlock games and achievements. While some are rather pointless, I found most of them quite enjoyable to complete and was a nice bonus to having all these games in one package while still providing a unique gameplay experience. It adds incentive to play some more of the games included and to play the games unlockable, which I really appreciate. There's also some neat developer interviews that give some insight into the minds of the people who made these beloved games. Overall, I really enjoyed having this despite the flaws, with it's strong library of games and ease of access. While most people would probably just want to emulate these games, I like being able to play these on my TV while relaxing and not stressing my back out sitting in my computer chair all day.

So those are my thoughts. Maybe my ramblings inspire you to try these games out yourself. Have a good day and thank you for reading!

Friday May 24th, 2024

Welcome to the first blog post on my website.

Today I'm gonna talk about an experience I had with some buddies of mine. When we usually meet up, we like to travel to random places across Ohio to find random things to buy or just look around. Today's topic happened in November last year, and we've found a few cool things and done some cool things that I want to mention.

On this first road trip, we decided to keep things local to my area. My buddy, who I'll be calling Yagace for this, wanted to go early Christmas shopping and I just decided to tag along, though I ended up actually getting some of my own things.

The first place we went to was the local mall, where we went to an FYE. Yagace wanted to get a Roxanne Wolf soft drink. We made a deal where if he bought it he would also have to buy this My Little Pony DVD that I wanted to get and buy both using his mountain of quarters he was carrying around because the ATM wasn't working. To my surprise, he actually fucking did it. When I look at the My Little Pony DVD I have, I constantly think of this interaction. It was so funny to see him just count the quarters with the uncomfortable glance of the cashier looming over us. Definitely a highlight of the day.

After this, we went to the Books A Million store, where we checked out some of the goods they had. Yagace was mostly interested in the video game themed cook books. He has a collection of these things. He ended up getting a FNAF one. I didn't get anything here, but I did have my eyes on some of the IDW Sonic graphic novels.

It was here where Yagace decided to text my other friend, who I'll call Carly, so she could tag along. She did end up coming along with us later.

The next place we went to was a retro game store just to see what they had. We didn't end up buying anything, but we did check out the arcade it had. Yagace decided to just pour quarters into the coin pusher machine. He was there for twelve minutes. He won nothing. He also rode the bootleg Yoshi ride clearly inteded for kids a fraction of his age.

After our game store visit, we went to pick up Carly and continue our hunt for random things. We headed to a local market that carried a variety of different outdoors-y and farm tending things. Yagace wanted to get some gifts for his family, but Carly and I didn't really have much to do here other than kinda tag along. I did stumble across this weirdly creepy Izzy Moonbow bucket, shown to the right.

Right after this, we went to our last stop of the day; a Mega Replay store. We were interested in the idea of having a movie night, so we had our sights set on getting some DVDs. Yagace wanted to look for things for us so watch on his own, so Carly and I looked for things to get together. The store had a sale on DVDs where it was buy 3 get 3 free, so we definitely took advantage of that sale. I picked up Spider-Man 2002, Monster House, Godzilla 1998, Snakes on a Plane, The Time Machine, and Space Jam. Yagace got a set of the Godzilla cartoon series made for the 1998 movie.

As it was getting pretty late, we decided to head out to Yagace's place to play some card games. He had this game about llamas and alpacas or whatever, and it was actually pretty fun. I liked the strategy in holding some cards to either use to boost yourself up or to handicap other players. I ended up winning a round, too. After that we did this really complex Marvel themed game that no one could understand except Yagace. We had fun with it regardless. We got some pizza as well.

To end off the night, we all went back to my house to start movie night. Seeing as it was getting really late by this point, we only started a few of the movies we got. First up was Godzilla 1998, which was already off to a bad start as the DVD was scratched and couldn't play past the opening credits. We had to watch it on Tubi instead with the shitload of ad breaks that annoyed all of us. The movie itself was extremely boring as well. I tuned out pretty much everything that was happening like halfway through the film. Carly seemed to enjoy the Godzilla design quite a bit, though. I can tell Yagace did not give a shit about this movie at all as he was just on his phone the whole time and I really don't blame him. After Godzilla I booted up the My Little Pony DVD and watched both parts of Friendship is Magic, the beginning of season one.

This was all we had time for, as it was nearing 2 AM already and they really needed to head home. Overall, that was a really fun night full of events, and we haven't had one as packed since then.