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Exhuminator
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by Exhuminator Thu Aug 02, 2018 10:32 pm

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Nope! I’m talking about:

We all know that '90s video game 'zine ads were batshit insane, but even still that ad is something else. I mean who's even the target demographic there? I'm failing to understand how equating Klonoa to genital herpes was ever remotely a good idea. Somebody actually got paid for that?!

Also, two more Klonoa games the world forgot about:
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(It's an action-RPG that remains Japanese language only.)
That's right Klonoa. Wa-hoo! No one cares about you!
PLAY KING'S FIELD.
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dunpeal2064
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by dunpeal2064 Thu Aug 02, 2018 10:39 pm

noiseredux wrote:Dunp, your posts in this thread are fascinating, keep em up.


Thanks Noise, will do :)

I forgot to mention, I came across what is easily the best bad end so far
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I evolved too far in the Power direction and became a dragon... but a nice dragon that reads stories to sages. :lol:

Also came across the main villain!
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Good ol' Lucifer. Believe it or not, this is the 2nd game I've played within the last week that featured a sexy lady version of Lucifer as the main villain!

Lastly, some cool pixel art dino pics, for any fellow connoisseurs
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laurenhiya21
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by laurenhiya21 Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:10 pm

Wow those E.V.O. screenshots look neat! I never knew it was on PC.
____

It was a bit shorter than I was expecting, but I just beat Dog's Life! You play as a dog trying to rescue another dog that he likes, and to do so he has to collect a lot of bones (which act as a sort of ranking system among dogs in the game I guess). You get bones by doing favours for people, doing various mini-games, and collecting a certain number of different coloured smells in each area. I had a lot more fun with this than I was expecting (normally collecting things isn't super interesting to me), but the game has a lot of funny aspects (some more intentional than others). On the more intentional side, the main character says a lot of little quips in response to humans giving him quests to do. On the (probably) less intentional side, the character voice acting is terrible, but in the "so bad it's good" kind of way.

The only big issue I have with the game is controlling the main character is really wonky. It's fine for just wandering around, fetching things, and looking for smells, but doing any sort of platforming can be a bit of a challenge. Luckily there's very few bones that require much platforming to reach them, but it was still fairly frustrating when I did have to jump around.

Two other things to note... The ending is pretty surprisingly dark. To sum it up...
The villain kidnapped the main character's favourite doggy girl so that they could make tastier canned cat food. At the final level, the main character stops the villain, but the villain accidentally falls into the cat food machine and get's turned into canned cat food herself!


On the last note, the back of the box states "over 40 hours of accessible play". While I did not get all of the bones, I got very close to getting them all and I'm pretty sure that I haven't spent anywhere close to 40 hours playing the game. Not sure where they got 40 hours from but I think that estimation is a little bloated :lol:

Anyway, next game I'll be playing is The Dog Island :)
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noiseredux
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by noiseredux Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:12 pm

Exhuminator wrote:
prfsnl_gmr wrote:Nope! I’m talking about:

We all know that '90s video game 'zine ads were batshit insane, but even still that ad is something else. I mean who's even the target demographic there? I'm failing to understand how equating Klonoa to genital herpes was ever remotely a good idea. Somebody actually got paid for that?!

Also, two more Klonoa games the world forgot about:
Image

Image
(It's an action-RPG that remains Japanese language only.)
That's right Klonoa. Wa-hoo! No one cares about you!



That ad is baffling. It's basically saying "hey play this game... It's an STD." Even as a staunch 90s nostalgic, I still don't get it.
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BoneSnapDeez
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by BoneSnapDeez Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:32 pm

Put about an hour into Donkey Kong Country 2 this evening. Think I'm around the area where I bailed in my last attempt.

I'm not crazy about this one. It's a weird, overzealous game. Every stage seems determined to introduce a new gameplay gimmick, most of which are trite and uninteresting. Progression through the game feels glacial. The collectathon elements are extraneous crap, as are the various shops and pit stops between stages. It's like the developers said "Hey the first game was good, let's add more stuff!" and went way overboard.

I'm still gonna try to finish it -- at least get the "standard" ending or whatever.
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Nemoide
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by Nemoide Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:49 pm

Tonight I started playing Blinx: The Time Sweeper!
First a bit of weirdness I encountered: the game doesn't seem to want to load on my original Xbox. But it plays fine on my Xbox 360. Good enough!

So this game has largely been forgotten by history, seen as an oXbox oddity - an attempt at a mascot that gained no traction, an attempt to make an "edgy 90s anthropomorphic animal" character in the wrong decade. But it does have some pedigree behind it. It was one of the early games put out by the game studio Artoon, which was founded by Blinx's director: Naoto Oshima! In my mind, Oshima doesn't need an introduction, but he probably does. He's the man who did the character designs for Sonic the Hedgehog and Phantasy Star. He worked as director for Sonic CD, NiGHTS into Dreams, and Burning Rangers. Yuji Naka might be the most recognizable member of Sonic Team, but Oshima was definitely a major player in making those games great.

Anyway, I didn't play a lot of Blinx tonight: I made it through the first area, beating the first boss. It's fun, but not really knocking my socks off, and has some awkward elements.
Blinx's time powers are gained by collecting time crystals; but you either need three or four of the same type, which usually requires being more careful in collecting them than I'd like to be. I've gotten way more "bad crystal combinations" than time powers. The attack system is a little awkward because you need to vacuum garbage (you are a time SWEEPER after all, gotta clean stuff) and then spit it out at enemies. I have some "Secret Cat Medals" but I don't know what purpose they serve.
The game is broken up into stages with the goal of defeating all the enemies and getting to the exit in less than 10 minutes. So far, this has been pretty easy; I'm aiming to mostly play this game casually and expect to get through it by the end of the month without trouble. I hope there aren't any tremendous difficulty spikes or problematic bugs as were common in games from that era...
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pierrot
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by pierrot Fri Aug 03, 2018 12:06 am

BoneSnapDeez wrote:I'm still gonna try to finish it -- at least get the "standard" ending or whatever.

That's all I could bring myself to do. I didn't really enjoy it much, either. I really hated the bramble levels. They super suck.


laurenhiya21 wrote:Two other things to note... The ending is pretty surprisingly dark. To sum it up...

They had Dog's Life at AGDQ earlier this year. I saw that ending there, and just watching that speedrun is probably as close as I'd ever want to get to that game. Was it worth playing?


dunpeal2064 wrote:Believe it or not, this is the 2nd game I've played within the last week that featured a sexy lady version of Lucifer as the main villain!

This is a bit unrelated, but it just sort of reminded me of a couple spots in Klonoa 2, where the audio has some little girl laughter mixed into the background, and it kind of made me wonder why little girls laughing is so creepy. (It was put in to add to some foreboding in the stage. It's not just me having an episode or something.) Like, I wonder where the the line is that separates giggling, from laughing, and where the threshold between cute and sinister is.


On that note, I finished Klonoa 2 tonight. I was totally wrong about how many stages I had left. By that point I had actually only finished half of the game. I was pretty impressed by one stage in a sort of Escher-esque museum of art and mirrors. It had nice perspective changing puzzles, and level mechanics. I really enjoyed the whole design of that place. I guess the big new thing with Klonoa 2 is the "snow"-boarding stages. There are four in total, but there's actually only one in the first half of the game, so I didn't realize they would be that big a part of the game. There's two boss fight on the board, as well. Basically, since there are 16 non-boss Visions in the game, it's the same number of stages as the original Klonoa, but with four, almost mini-game, stages added in. So, I feel like those stages could actually effect someone's overall enjoyment of the game. I thought they were a pretty nice change of pace from the standard platforming, but I could see others not particularly caring for them. They take a little bit of adjusting to the controls, as well. In general Klonoa 2 kind of self-plagiarizes a bit. A lot of level constructions are very similar to those found in Klonoa, but there's still a lot of new and interesting ideas, and mechanics interwoven into those familiar gameplay elements. It is a sequel after all.

The graphics are nice, but they didn't initially gel entirely with me. They sort of grew on me over time, though. It also helps that the game reminds me, visually, of a bunch of other 2.5/3D platform, and hybrid platform games from the same period. Also, the music is very pleasant. I don't think I'm likely to listen to the soundtrack on it's own in the future, but it's probably something I might have listened to while sleeping, when that was something I did.

Overall I really enjoyed it, but something makes me hesitant to go and fully compare it directly with the first Klonoa. Maybe it's because I'm a little worried about whether I actually like it more than the first game, or not.
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Exhuminator
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by Exhuminator Fri Aug 03, 2018 12:08 am

BoneSnapDeez wrote:Put about an hour into Donkey Kong Country 2 this evening. I'm not crazy about this one.

Yep, sounds like you are having the same experience I always have with it. With DKC2 it was like Rare were focused on simply making the game harder than the first, plus adding extra gimmicks. In doing all that, they completely lost the magic of the first DKC. I think the biggest factor is Shigeru Miyamoto was the producer of the first DKC. But Gregg Mayles produced the second. Ol' Shiggy's touch was sorely missed.
PLAY KING'S FIELD.
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Xeogred
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by Xeogred Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:31 am

BoneSnapDeez wrote:The story for SNES E.V.O. is legit awesome. One of my favorites in all of gaming.

I remember E.V.O. being the very first game I downloaded when I discovered emulation as a teen. Couldn't find a cartridge back then, not that it's easy to find now!

First result on Amazon - $175. :shock:

Think I paid like $20 for a cart several years back haha, glad I got this one. But yeah I emulated it too way back in the day. Very bizarre and awesome game.
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Ack
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Re: Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

by Ack Fri Aug 03, 2018 8:29 am

Inherit the Earth is installed and ready to go. I look forward to jumping in.
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