Games Beaten 2016

[Exhuminator]

Congratulations on beating the real deal Phantasy Star. Does this mean you've finished the entire original series now?

[Sarge]

Congratulations on beating the real deal Phantasy Star. Does this mean you've finished the entire original series now?

Sadly, no. I went about halfway into Phantasy Star III and abandoned it for whatever reason. I've beaten all the others, though. At least the mainline games, I don't count PSO. (Sorry to those that love it.)

Oh, right, now I remember. I think that I have that save on cart, but I may have lost it because the battery is kaput. Might be a good reason to crack out the Genny this evening.

[Exhuminator]

I think PS3 is a bit underrated personally. I really thought the generational creation aspect was cool.

[Sarge]

I think I ended up with the green-haired dude.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Mieu is my waifu.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Fire Emblem: Awakening

I really plowed through this one, compared to other Fire Emblem games I've beaten, but I really enjoyed the hell out of this one. I went through on Hard, Hardcore mode (the permadeath one, I only remember it's the non-casual mode), and went through the usual malarkey of getting through FE with no one dying. The pair up system really adds A LOT to the game, but it really feels like they expect you to use it the way I sorta went with.

Like, I imagine if you're on casual mode or normal difficulty, there might be more incentive to pair up characters whose personalities you think fit best together, in a sort of Sims-esque way, but it just came down to damn practicality for me. Finding male-female pairs of big attacking guys to pair with fliers to get a combo of very mobile DPS-tanks took up a big majority of my micromanagement, but damn if it didn't pay off. Chrom & Cynthia, and Lon'qu & Cordelia were my pairs of MVP's in the late game. Just dodging every attack that came their way with all of the crazy speed, and being like invulnerable to attacks they do get hit with with the crazy paired up resistance and defense. I was basically just using that 4-man team near the end and bum-rushing bosses.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun, since it seemed like you really had a lot of agency over which characters lived or died with the pairing system, where in previous games it seemed like you were completely at the mercy of their level-up qualities on whether or not a character would just be totally useless. A strong recommendation to even people who didn't like FE previously, just because of how forgiving the casual mode is, and how well implemented the pairing up system is.

Next up on mah list is Shadow Dragon, methinks, and it'll be weird going back to when rescuing wasn't even a thing Xp

[MrPopo]

So a note for Shadow Dragon; a lot of the extra chapters require you to have suffered losses in your army. The game checks to see how large your army is; for example, Chapter 6x requires you to have 15 or less units in your army when you finish chapter 6. And these extra chapters include a new unit to recruit, so if you want to recruit everyone you need to sacrifice units you don't like.

[PartridgeSenpai]

So a note for Shadow Dragon; a lot of the extra chapters require you to have suffered losses in your army. The game checks to see how large your army is; for example, Chapter 6x requires you to have 15 or less units in your army when you finish chapter 6. And these extra chapters include a new unit to recruit, so if you want to recruit everyone you need to sacrifice units you don't like.

That is EVIL :I
I might just have to live without those chapters then. I just can't bare to see the little dastards die :/

Also, using dastard as opposed to bastard, REALLY annoying :I

[Key-Glyph]

I loved PSIII. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it a tradition to replay it every summer. Is that chart a little spoilery, though? I bet nobody minds, but I probably would have been a little sad if I'd seen that before I'd beaten the game and looked it up on my own.

P.S. Nial (dark brown hair) is the hotness.

01. MagMax (NES)
02. World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (GEN) [2-player]
03. Sonic Spinball (GEN)*
04. Sonic Spinball (GEN)* [complete]
05. Comix Zone (GEN)*
06. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)

07. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Project (NES)

Instead of eating pizza to celebrate my TMNT conquest yesterday (thanks for the virtual high-fives, guys), I decided to celebrate with... another TMNT game.

We didn't own TMNT III growing up; this is another game I bought from FuncoLand in my teenage years when I started consciously going back and picking up classic games I'd missed. I remember hearing from classmates that TMNT III was their favorite in the NES trilogy, which intrigued me. I'd loved TMNT II: The Arcade Game to death, and people were saying this was supposedly better? Woah.

Well, truth be told, I was underwhelmed at the time. I found the art style to be sorta goofy somehow, movement felt so sloooow, and the game was unexpectedly long. I remember I got up to Shredder, rescued April, and then... things kept going. Instead of feeling like this was the gift that kept on giving, I felt like everything post Shredder 1.0 was there just to wear me down and delay my inevitable victory out of spite. Teenage [Mutant Ninja] Key got up to Krang, Game Overed, and threw in the towel when she saw the respawn point was not at the beginning of the Krang battle. She was just too worn out and uncharacteristically apathetic to continue.

The music kicked some serious shell, though.

So, how was my experience this time? Well, I still think the art style is a little odd. I can't really explain it. But I definitely enjoyed and appreciated playing the game a lot, lot more. Something I especially like is that the bosses demand patience. You can't just hack away and expect it to work out for you -- you have to do a lot of dodging and staying on top of things until a short window of opportunity presents itself, allowing you to get in maybe four or five strikes before having to back off and regroup. Even Krang, the biggest beat-em-up bastard ever (okay, maybe not ever, but I LOATHE his appearances with the burning fury of a thousand suns) had a discernible pattern this time. I lost a life there before I got the rhythm down, but once I did, I was able to take him out with minimal damage. Same thing with Shredder. I lost a life on him and was on my last when I got into the groove and whittled him down.

Krang gets even less hate from me in this version too, actually, because watching his legs prance around by themselves is really funny.

I was also interested to really listen to the soundtrack and realize how many tunes from TMNT III were reused in Hyperstone Heist and Turtles in Time. There are also some riffs that are deliberate callbacks to the earlier NES games, which I also find pretty awesome. I like that kind of self-awareness in my franchises.

In conclusion, I think I'll have to try this game with a partner sometime. I bet it's even more fun with a friend. In the meantime, I feel pretty satisfied having the NES TMNT trilogy in the bag. It's something I always vaguely hoped to accomplish someday.

* = replay

[Sarge]

TMNT III is good stuff. I thought it was far better than TMNT II, a game that's good but still disappoints me to this day.

Also, in Phantasy Star III-related news: I dug out one of my Genesis consoles (yeah, I've got like five or six, don't judge), and booted it up. Lo and behold, I still have that save game on there! On top of that, it looks like it was a near-endgame save! So... I'm thinking I might make a push to finish it. Not sure if that's going to set some sort of record for me in going back to beat an old saved game. I came close with the nearly ten-year gap for Seiken Densetsu 3, but this one will be closer to 16 years. (I actually got my Genesis right before the Dreamcast came out, in '99, and PSIII not too long after.)