Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

[PartridgeSenpai]

Didn't really expect to finish it QUITE so soon, but I beat Captain Rainbow this evening~. I ended up enjoying it a fair bit more than I thought I would. It's certainly still the inferior to Chibi-Robo or even something 10 years older than it like moon, but it's still an alright game.

I honestly can't really guess exactly why it sold quite so poorly as it did (being one of the worst-selling first-party Nintendo games ever), other than perhaps it was the marketing? It's an adventure game on the Wii, and while it's not exactly mechanical brilliance, it's well put together and well written enough that it's not like it's a bad time in any really explicit way to play. The front of the box has a big cool Captain Rainbow picture and next to it in big letters (in Japanese) it says "Wait! This is actually not a cool super hero action game. Please look at the back cover for more details!", so I imagine that might've hurt its sales just a little ^^;

[Nemoide]

So I've been playing Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa and am having a lot of trouble getting into it. I can clear the first world like it's nothing (it basically is) but then right off the bat have difficulty in the second world. There are these tomato platforms that fall as soon as you land on them and it feels like half the time I jump on them, when I try to jump off Upa just does a pathetic micro-hop and I die. I get passed one group and then I run into more and soon enough I'm restarting the world! I hate it!

I'm going to try again but I might just not be in the right headspace for an 8-bit platformer.

[Note]

I'm a bit late to start my game this month, but I'm playing Blast Corps (thanks for mentioning it in the Slack chat, Popo!) -- which I originally purchased around release and played a bunch of back then, but I didn't think of it when brainstorming on the topic. I haven't played the game much since around the time of release so it's fun going back to revisit it.

I booted up my cart tonight and don't want to delete my original save file, (unfortunately this game only has one save slot), but there's a bunch of levels I didn't get 100% completion on, so I started out by going through the earlier and easier levels to get a hang of the controls again (which can be a bit tough in this game, it feels like you're sliding around a lot of the time), and try to finish levels to full completion.

After playing a few levels and getting a hang of it, I decided to tackle Argent Towers, as I had left a few buildings behind. I had to go through a bit of a puzzle to figure out how to get to the J-Bomb robot (pictured on the game's cover) to destroy the last large two buildings left, but it was awesome to use that robot. It's really satisfying to fly around with it and stomp out buildings. Lol.

Unfortunately I heard a random loud sound and my game glitched out and froze right before I was able to complete the level, the joys of playing on original hardware. I'll have to give it another shot tomorrow night.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Heck, I keep totally forgetting about Blast Corps that I have to play as well

I'm having a little trouble starting Okage, so perhaps I'll jump onto that instead...
Granted I'm having trouble starting any game these past few days, so maybe it's a little bit of a different problem than that Xb

@Nemoide

I guess maybe things like that are why it was a one hit(?) wonder ^^;
Here's hoping you can crack it!

[Lurkei]

There are these tomato platforms that fall as soon as you land on them and it feels like half the time I jump on them, when I try to jump off Upa just does a pathetic micro-hop and I die. I get passed one group and then I run into more and soon enough I'm restarting the world! I hate it!

Are you accidentally overshooting your jump and falling off the side of the platform? Hold → as you jump, and then as you fall, quickly input ← → to center yourself a bit.
Don't forget that you can also wait for the blue flying creatures to spawn in if you're not feeling confident.

[alienjesus]

I started up Soleil this evening, better known by it's US name Crusader of Centy.

First impressions were pretty good - first of all, this game has a surprisingly good translation for it's time - it's better than many Playstation RPGs translations are (such as Final Fantasy VII, or Wild Arms) with a well written script and a pretty engaging (if light) story.

I also noted that it's a rare game that recieved a UK English localisation from the era - this is relatively rare even now, so to see a Mega Drive game that uses 'Mum' instead of 'Mom' for example is surprising.

The game itself is pretty good - it's level based but takes a lot from the likes of Zelda. The levels are more linear but at the same time the environments are sometimes a bit too open for my liking making it easy to feel you're missing something in another direction. The sword has some slightly odd hit detection when cutting grass, but it seems fine for hitting enemies so it's not the end of the world.

The plot of the game so far seems to be that monster are coming back, and you head out in the world only to meet a fortune teller who grants you the ability to talk to animals and flowers. Unfortunately, this gift removes your ability to talk to humans, so interacting with the animals is how to progress currently.

You get animal helpers to help you on your way - you can equip 2 at once, and some offer passive abilities (the cheetah increases run speed for example, and the penguin makes your sword throw do ice damage) whilst some offer active ones (the dog holds enemies if you press C). A few animals are one time use and must be 'hired' from shops - the cat revives you like a fairy in Zelda, the bat grants invincibility. It's a fun little system, even if so far I only really make regular use of one of my 9 animal companions (the penguin's ice spell is excellent).

Other than that, I'm having a good time. I wish the controls could be customised as they're set up wrong for my personal Mega Drive preferences, but unfortunately it's not an option here unlike most games on the system. The game defaults A to sword, B to jump and C to animal abilities, but I prefer C being jump and B attack on the 3 button layout. Oh well, no big deal.

I think I'm a good chunk in now, maybe a third based on a quick glance at a walkthrough. Should only take a few more evenings to get through, I'm looking forward to it.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I've been playing Blast Corps (or as it's known in Japanese "Blast Dozer"), and I've had really mixed feelings about it. It's a game that's fun at first but gets really inconsistent with its difficulty in a way that's just driving me crazy Xp

I'm on the last of the normal stages now. I'm not enjoying it enough to wanna do all the mini-games, but I'm close enough that I'd like to see it through to the credits at least. I stopped enjoying my time with it quite some time ago and at this point I just wanna conquer this thing Xp

[Nemoide]

Okay, my day has been completely free so I decided that TODAY IS THE DAY I BEAT BOKUTTE UPA!

I started up the game as usual, got to world 2, got a bit farther than usual but still died multiple times by falling from a platform I was trying to jump off, and turned off the game.

The older I get, the less patience I have for difficult oldschool platforming, so I decided to load a ROM of the game onto my NES flash cart. If nothing else, I could use save states to re-attempt levels and if I got desperate could even re-attempt specific jumps that caused me problems. The ROM was of the Famicom cartridge version while the Virtual Console release is the Famicom Disk System version and to my surprise, it seemed to play quite a bit better! I breezed through those jumps that were causing me problems like they were nothing and ended up beating the whole game in one sitting!
The cartridge version also adds an "easy" mode, which might be nice for kids who want to play the game, but I thought it was pretty doable on normal. I guess they also ironed out a few bugs.

Despite my initial frustration, the game is pretty cute and fun! It's definitely a nice little Konami platformer and its candy-filled/cute aesthetic reminds me of Little Nemo, though they're definitely VERY different games. It's not a game that feels like it needs a sequel, which makes it kind of nice that Konami never made one.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I have FDS Upa. Beat it last year. It's okay. Definitely not one of Konami's best, but serviceable enough. The babby is cute.

Hold → as you jump, and then as you fall, quickly input ← → to center yourself a bit.

Haha, this is how I play every platformer and it feels unnatural to not do this. Wonder how common it is...?

[alienjesus]

I played through some more Soleil the other day. I finally recoved my ability to speak to humans, and now time travel shenanigans are afoot. It seems like I might have seen a lot of the game now, as the time travel mechanic has me revisiting earlier segments.

I have 12 of the 15 animal companions now, and some of the new ones are actually worth using - Leviathan's double attack speed is definitely handy.