Earth, who wore it better?
left: E. V. O. (SNES) right: Civilization (SNES)
Finished Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. This was a co-operative gameplay I finished with a couple friends as a follow up to our completion of Donkey Kong Country 1.
Completion time: about a year, since we played in small increments once in a while.
Game is longer and a lot spicier than 1. Some levels gave us a very hard time. Yeah I am a big fan of the minecart autoscroller.
Time and time again I am really impressed by how much graphics can be fit on a SNES cart. The levels are all full of lush, irregularly-shaped (non-tiled-looking) elements without a lot of repetition; sprites are big with lots of animations, lots of frames in each one; backgrounds have a lot of variety. At the same time, it also doesn't appear they got too fancy with storage of graphics. I looked at the ROM and could spot at least some 4bpp graphics data stored plain, uncompressed. They just used a big cartridge-- 32mb, big for this console.
The technical high points for this game are offline rather than online of course. These are pre-rendered 3D models rendered with Silicon Graphics software, likely on CPU, baked into a bunch of 2D sprites. Everyone likes this. I can't think of a single fourth-console-generation game which does this and looks bad. More games would have surely done it if it wasn't so expensive back then, in terms of money.
Only criticism is I was disappointed with the final boss fight. The fight from DKC1 established a pretty high bar, to be fair- it had that cool "fake credits then surprise there's more". Not saying DKC2 had to replicate that, but maybe the final boss could have had something else cool. Nope. You fight King K Rool on a pirate ship. He throws projectiles. Pretty standard stuff. Maybe they thought no one would get far enough to see that, due to Windy H̶e̶l̶l̶ Well.
Total play time = 2 years, 156 days, 20 hours, 36 minutes, 39 seconds
Couple friends and I started playing back in April 2017. The progress isn't deliberately slow, it's just that we playing a half-hour or an hour here and there, once in a while and it's a proper full-length RPG. Furthermore we made a best effort to play it spoiler-free with as minimal outside help as possible.
I never beat this game before. SoM is in the category of "played as a child by repeated rental, wanted to own, couldn't get a copy".
It is hard nowadays imagining "not being able to purchase something" but was the situation here. If no video or toy store in our city had it then out of luck. There were also toy catalogs where you can phone or mail in an order, but they weren't a whole lot better in terms of the video game selection. The one place I could find that had Secret of Mana had it for rent. So I rented it repeatedly. I still had to take it back at certain intervals and some jerkface wiped my save. After that I became demoralized and moved on to playing something else (Uncharted Waters 2)
Fast-forward to today and I have every game in the world. This one has a lot of critical acclaim, and still has some love today (it got a remake last year), it deserves playthough to the end.
Originally I thought I'd move onto the remake after finishing this, but after reading some reviews, maybe not 🙁 It's just as well, initially I was kind of turned off by the graphics. When early gameplay came out I recall telling people it looked Bad. Like some free-to-play MMO from ~2006. It reminded me of Audition Online. I don't know what's up with the art direction. Apparently there are problems with the soundtrack and gameplay also... How did they mess this up? I may someday play it anyway but give it a while.
This game had a lot of positive qualities, it deserves to be on all those top-10 lists.
- The soundtrack is very strong
- Large sprites with nice animations
- Many cool concepts for bosses, large enemy artworks
- Willingness to make a three-player SNES game represents a lot of technical initiative
The one thing that was almost a problem- it is borderline on the "turn based games disguised as action games" genre.
You know. Practically very MMORPG does this. The combat works like: you and the enemy can both be freely positioned in the world, and can attach each other, but the attacks always land regardless of how you are positioned. Why have the positioning mechanic at all, then? Why not just have a menu? If they shoot an arrow or something it's not like you can move out of the way. I know why they do it in MMOs, but I'm less on board in any locally-played action game.
I suppose this bothers me because it encourages you to waste brain cells in combat trying to move around the map when you might as well just stand there.
Fortunately, this game doesn't 100% do that, it's only for certain attacks. Some experimenting helped figure this out. For other ones, you can move out of the way, sometimes outside of a hitbox that seems rather big.
On a whole I loved playing this game, and getting the chance to play it co-operatively even though it's long after the fact.
Finished J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (SNES)
This is an action-RPG based on the book series, pre-Peter Jackson movie IP.
This game has some cool moments and good atmosphere and potential to be good. Still, it was held back by many technical problems. This game ended up being a rabbit hole into something else.
A couple weeks ago, I cleared the last boss, the Balrog using the full party (minus Gandalf, since having him in your party prevents you from beating the boss; also Boromir is E_NOTIMPL) and finished the game but didn't get such a good ending because Merry and Pippin died in the boss fight. They die really easily.
So last Saturday, I booted up the game with the intention to resume at the boss fight, attempt it again and keep them alive.
However the password I had written down was rejected by the game. I swear to goodness I wrote it down correctly. I went upstairs to my computer, reproduced the situation with an emulator. It turns out, the game will indeed give you invalid passwords and that's what happened here. So I went about trying to figure out how to "fix" my password.
The password system itself involves encoding a bunch of the game state in a certain way with a checksum. This game is a bit unusual in that there are no saves to the cartridge, it hashes together literally all the state into a 48-character-long password. It took a bit of effort, but I figured out how to derive the password. From there, how to un-glitch my password and preserve the progress I had (items, character stats, door open+close state) while letting it be accepted by the game. With this, I was able to re-attempt the boss fight and get the good ending!
After trying many different passwords looking for patterns, I cracked the password algorithm. It was not too much more work to put it into a program in case other people run into the same issues.
I posted the program to Github https://github.com/clandrew/lotrpwcheck/ .
As for the ending itself it was pretty cool, there is a scene where you meet Galadriel and she shows you the mirror. Although they never released a Vol II for SNES, I can see the next one picking up where this one left off.
Finished Brain Lord (SNES)
This is a SNES RPG, a top-down action RPG with some puzzle elements.
Like every great? RPG there are two towns. As this is a medieval-themed game, they would end up settling on town names that were something fantasy- and mystical-sounding. So of course, the first one is called "Arcs" and the second one is called "Toronto".
I don't think the phrase "Brain Lord" is ever mentioned in any part of the game.
The game incorporates some puzzle elements which were actually pretty cool. For example, a room where some text on the wall says:
"12 - 52 - Although greater in size, its equivalent is the same in time."
the answer is a three digit number. Maybe too easy?
Unique qualities:
- Levelless system
- AI pokemon fairy things that follow you and are a game mechanic
- Fast travel
- No love interest
Some people are quick with the comparisons to Zelda. Zelda doesn't have a monopoly on the puzzle-ARPG does it? It definitely is a puzzle-ARPG though.
One track of the music from Primal Rage sounds a LOT like Secret of Evermore
SoE "Boss theme 2": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwyXdGPYOWw
Primal Rage "Stalagtite Cave" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPwTDlgR0x0
They have different composers so maybe a coincidence.
Finished Gundam Wing: Endless Duel (SNES)
Story Mode with Vayeate
This is a Gundam-inspired fighting game released in Japan only. You can play as several of the Gundams from the show. Gosh this game has so much graphical polish and the soundtrack is A++++. For this I played through the story mode and recorded it on my capture card.
I got this replica cart to play it
From playthrough (recorded with my awesome new capture card)--
Deathscythe and Epyon if unlocked are very over-powered in this game. In general the mechs are not very balanced. Still, my regular tends to be Vayeate because it is my favorite from the show. Life would be boring if everyone playing Street Fighter was Zangief, right?? Vayeate has a couple good features- this huge space rifle-like thing that can be used as a bludgeoning weapon, plus a few attacks that go diagonally.
If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Don't use tool-assisted gameplay as a sole reference for good non-tool-assisted strategies.
Look online to find a good assortment of Super Ghouls N Ghosts videos and gameplay footage. Great! Find one. Looks good. All levels. They take no damage. A very skilled player, for sure. As I looked more closely, something was off.
1) The player had a very inconsistent level of skill.
They could always handle dense 'bullet hell' situations, but took many tries to jump onto a ledge. Ledge is simple and flat and not hazardous.
2) The player was unfazed with many serious 'close calls'.
Close calls' are a part of this genre of game, as well as some understanding of hitboxes, but these are extreme cases. In most circumstances, a typical human player* will react to 'close calls' by slowing down, leaving more space and using more caution.
3) The player performs normally-very-dangerous maneuvers, with some knowledge from the future that those maneuvers are safe.
For example, jumping straight into collision with a boss while attacking it. Normally that would be lethal. But if you know that your attack will be the finishing blow to kill the boss, and death disables its hitboxes, then it's fine.
Since this game has no health bars, a human player cannot exploit the last-hit-to-kill-the-boss without keeping a mental count of hits. A boss fight is a stressful situation. It's hard for a human to keep a mental count during it. And think of cost versus benefit. If the player is skilled enough to last the whole fight landing attacks safely, what's one more? Is the opportunity of that suicide jump worth the mental tax that it takes? Not really.
After digging through Youtube comments a little, I found out that the run was indeed tool assisted. I've been burned by this before. They don't put 'tool assisted' in the title or description or anywhere obvious before posting it, so you don't know. Don't be tricked! I would play better too, if I could rewind and replay parts...
Finished Wonder Project J (SNES)
What it is- Pinocchio: the anime game
The scientist Geppetto has constructed a robot named Pino, part of a special family of robots called Gijin. In a tragic and sudden surprise, Geppetto was captured by the evil rulers of the kingdom before he was able to finish Pino's programming. You play as Tinker, a magical fairy who guides Pino toward being able to rescue the kingdom and his creator Geppetto.
You don't control Pino directly, but Tinker. Tinker can direct Pino left or right, or tell him to stop; signal to him "right!" or "wrong!" She can tell him to interact with an object, she can pick up and move objects.
Interactions with Tinker comprise the building blocks with which Pino learns language, combat, good manners, sports, musical instruments. And how not to eat the cat. (In my 1st playthrough he hoisted the cat up into the air and into his mouth and it disappeared. I think it's a glitch, but he gained a bunch of health from it, so... I dunno...)
Another game never released in the west. It turns out there is not much of a market for these sorts of simulators. It was tantalizing reading about this in Nintendo Power magazine but there was no typical way to play it.
Playing it in the late 90s / early 2000s was difficult because it was only available in Japanese and there didn't yet exist any English-language guides. Fortunately the gameplay is very all-ages friendly and visually explanatory, so it worked well as a learning tool for some words and vocabulary at that time.
Graphically it was all about really layered, complicated backgrounds and big smoothly-animated characters. Oh, and voice acting. In an SNES game. When Pino learns something, he actually says "Wakatte wa!" (Got it! / I understand it). There's a poignant moment where he says "Arigatou... minna". There were maybe 5 or 6 voice clips like that. Voice acting in SNES games exists but it's very rare. I really want to know what percent of the cartridge was dedicated to storing wave file sound.
Today there is a 100% complete fan translation. A really good one at that. I'm glad to be playing it now!
