Summer Games Challenge 2023 - STARTS NOW!

[Key-Glyph]

1. Out of This World (GEN)
2. Journeyman Project: Turbo! (PC)
3. Theme Park (GEN)
4. Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town (GBA)
5. NHL Hockey '95 (GEN)
6. Lethal Enforcers (GEN)
7. Prince of Persia (Apple II)

Okay, I really loved this experience. There are so many little details about Out of the This World that give it extraordinary emotional and worldbuilding depth, despite the fact that you have almost zero time to linger on any of it. For example, in one of the very beginning scenes there are a bunch of workers toiling in the background; in other games they would just be looping set pieces, but in this game they abruptly stop they're doing when something dramatic in the middleground happens and just stare. The feeling of their shocked disbelief (and possibly hope? There's a lot of room to read into everything in this game) is amplified by the fact that the regular sounds of their pickaxes also stop, and the silence just settles upon you. So cool.

This isn't the only time that things clearly unfold in the far distance or very close foreground while our protagonist(s) muddle through the middle, either. It's so immersive. You feel the energy and/or chaos of the scenes around you, and often your smallness/insignificance in comparison. You frequently get foreshadowing of what might be happening in upcoming moments as someone peels off in the distance or crosses directly in front of the camera. Those moments are so exciting. You're always looking forward to how things might unfold next.

By the end I really began to believe that there was a full culture here, an alien society with rules and a history that I would never get a chance to understand. I like that this puts us firmly in the headspace of the human protagonist, who is a complete fish out of water with no hope of integrating. From the first moment it's all about survival, even if you don't comprehend what you're doing or why things are happening. Why were you caged? Why were others? Just run, run, run, watch all the history and connections and explanations you could be absorbing just blow on by.

And of course, you may know that there is a buddy element to this game. There is another character who accompanies you, but "accompanies" is a bit strong, as you have no quiet moments to bond aside from maybe a minute or two in an early area. You are constantly in flight, getting separated, hoping for the best... and having your heart leap in your chest when you cross paths again. (Or at least mine did, haha.)

I have to imagine that the original version on computer ran better than this Genesis port, which was super laggy on certain screens (yet snappy on others). The lag was a huge problem sometimes, as you have to time certain things and my sense of rhythm would get thrown off by the slowdown. The game also has segments that are frustrating slogs until you swallow your pride, roll up your sleeves, and commit to getting really good at precise wonky jumps. (I am now VERY GOOD at precise wonky jumps, YEESH. ) I was starting to get really irritated after a couple of hours working on a particular path when I decided to explore a different one, and was only heartened when the anticlimactic result of my choice generated a password change. "I got a different password!! I must have made progress!!" Really gave me a second wind, haha.

But the exact thing that makes the game frustrating -- its deliberate non-videogameyness -- is what makes it so neat. Other than an object or two, there's no standard way that anything works, really. This isn't a game that's going to tip you off that you can punch through a specific wall or repeat some kind of pattern in multiple areas to tackle puzzles. The things that carry over are very big-picture-type stuff, not repeatable minutia like "find keys to open doors, eat turkey legs to regain health." Even enemy types you've encountered before will react differently to you in different areas, just as you'd expect different people or creatures to. There is no user-interface. You will die many, many times before you figure out what you're capable of. But you will also cackle with glee when something unexpectedly awesome happens, or you catch on to a creatively designed element and understand precisely what to do with it.

And I have to say, I loved the ending. I won't spoil it here, but I was anticipating to be left off on a certain kind of final note, and that did not happen. It was great.

Highly recommended, but you do have to be somewhat of a motivated masochist to push through it at times.

[BoneSnapDeez]

prfsnl_gmr’s 2023 Summer Games Challenge List

Blazing Lazers
Karate Champ
Legendary Axe
Mappy
MERCS
Metal Slug 3
Shock Troopers
Trojan
Twinkle Star Sprites
Windjammers

This is a really cool list. Basically everything here is on my backlog (not that I keep a formal one) with the except of MERCS, Shock Troopers, and Metal Slug 3, which I have finished.

MERCS I want to revisit someday, as I recall (or don't recall) just mindlessly credit-feeding my way through it when I played it on a Capcom compilation ages ago. Commando, on the other hand, I have played many times, many variants.

Metal Slug 3 is an interesting one. Really fun, but the final level is INSANE -- I don't wanna spoil anything so I'll say no more. Make sure you start with a variant that gives you unlimited continues (so, MVS or some emulated version like ACA NeoGeo), it's tough!!!

Shock Troopers is just fantastic. You'll like it.

[bmoc]

Asura's Wrath (PS3)
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
Snatcher (Sega CD)
Rondo of Blood (PCECD)
Bonk's Adventure (TGCD)
Clock Tower - The First Fear (PS1-J)
Gaia Seed (PS1-J)
Metroid Zero Mission (WiiU)
Armored Core (PS1)
Rain (PS3)

I finished Asura's Wrath today. I have mixed feelings about this one. Asura's Wrath is more or less an interactive anime. The game is broken up into 20ish minute episodes complete with a "next time on Dragonball Z montage" at the end of each episode. The are also pseudo commercial breaks mid-episode (no actual commercials, just a cutaway to a title card). Each episode plays out in typical shounen anime fashion with over-the-top action and lots powerup yelling. There was most certainly a lot of inspiration from Dragonball and Naruto. If you squint really hard, maybe some Ghost in the Shell and Evangelion as well. The last four "secret" episodes are locked behind getting S rank on five or more normal episodes.

I really enjoyed the world building. The setting is an asian fantasy themed world with a heavy dose of sci-fi. There are lots of references to eastern religions and a few biblical ones as well. You mostly play as the titular character Asura - a demigod on a quest for revenge and to save his imprisoned daughter. I'm not going to go too in depth here for fear of spoilers.

The gameplay is the real weak point of Asura's Wrath. I went in knowing that there would be a lot of quicktime events. I don't hate quicktime events and I think Asura's Wrath does them fairly well. It is very cinematic game and it needs something to keep you engaged besides the action. Unfortunately, I found the game's combat to be dull and repetitive. You have the same attacks throughout the entire game - regular, heavy, and ranged. There is a meter that gets filled up the more you beat up enemies and that allows you to Burst. Burst is usually a short to moderate length cinematic that enables progression in the story through various means. Sometimes it is a beatdown for your opponent and sometimes you break down a barrier. There are no character upgrades or weapons to be found. There is a slight combat variation in the form of an on-rails shooter where heavy attack is traded out for a lock-on range attack. There are some other nuisances to combat but that is a good high level summary.

In short, I like several aspects of Asura's Wrath: world building, over-the-top action, voice acting, visuals, and music. As for the music, I particularly enjoyed Yasha's theme with its spaghetti western vibes. It is a shame that that the combat lessened the overall experience. I was ready for it to be over by the end of episode 18 (there are 22 episodes total with some DLC episodes that I did not purchase). I doubt that I'll play this one again. 6/10

[Note]

Yesterday, I was able to finish Klonoa on the PS1! To summarize, I think the game is pretty great and lives up to the praise it's received. The game eases you in but the challenge really ramps up in the last few levels. However, Klonoa has three hearts, and most damage received only takes away half a heart, so this gives the player some leeway. There's room for mistakes here and there as opposed to just insta-deaths in most instances. The developers did a nice job designing the 2.5D levels, as the majority of the gameplay is side-scrolling, but there's elements to interact with in the foreground and background from time to time.

I think the controls are pretty spot on, but I did have an issue with them, but it's due to my own habits when playing platformers. I tend to hold the up direction after jumping for whatever reason, does anyone else do this? Lol. In this game, pressing up while jumping will make Klonoa face the background after a jump, so if you want to grab an enemy after jumping, you'll be facing the wrong direction and will miss! I got used to not doing this after a while, but I had to retrain myself, I guess you could say.

Also, I appreciate that the game gives you save points after each level and also multiple save slots per file, so you can save at various points in your adventure. I tried to play conservatively, collecting as many lives as possible and restarting if I felt like I lost too many lives on a stage. I had read that you could potentially get to a point in the game and not have enough lives to get through a level, and could potentially need to restart from the beginning, which I was trying to avoid. This approach ended up working out for me, as I had about 14 lives left when I reached the last area of the game. However, I needed them all, as I had some issues with getting through a few sections! Also, it took me a few lives to figure out the final boss patterns.

The game has a total of 72 prisoners that can be rescued throughout the game, which breaks down to 6 per stage. On my initial playthrough, I missed two prisoners at the beginning of the game, but after clearing the final boss, I went back to find the two I missed. When I got them all, this unlocked a secret level, simply labled "Extra" on the map. However, I found this stage to be extremely tough! This stage consists of various situations where precise platforming skills are needed. I got through a portion of it, but it ended up being a bit too tough for me to finish. However, I'd like to give it another go at some point.

The other big question, which was mentioned by bmoc earlier in the thread, is whether this game is worthy of the high going price the US version demands nowadays. I do think this is one of the best platformers I've played from the 32-bit era, and is another great release from Namco, but it's tough to justify spending that much on a title, when there is other ways to play it nowadays. I think anyone that is a fan of platformers should check this game out, but I would suggest doing it on the cheap, unless you're a diehard PS1 collector. But either way, give it a go!

[bmoc]

Waiting on the 6th for diablo 4 myself. Hell if you play diablo 3 look for me xbox stickem25. I left off at 2500 paragon, might do a few runs this weekend. Love that game. Carry on summer gamer challengers lol.

I haven't played Diablo 3 much since necromancers came out. Unfortunately, I'm going to be busy next week and won't get to play Diablo 4 until the following week. My BNet battletag is Gakamor#1310 is anyone wants to hit me up later.

Yesterday, I was able to finish Klonoa on the PS1! To summarize, I think the game is pretty great and lives up to the praise it's received.

Good to hear! I may have to bump it up on my priority list. I also took a peek at its value over the past few years. Like a lot of uncommon to rare retro titles, it peaked during the pandemic (at $660). Its value has been in steady decline since 2021 and it worth about half that now. I'll probably never own a copy but it is nice to see those absurd numbers falling.

[alienjesus]

Nice work everyone!

I love me some Klonoa so glad to hear you enjoyed it too Note. On the other hand I just can't get on with the cinematic platformer type games like Another World, so very impressed you pushed through it Key!

I've made more progress in Dark Cloud, clearing up the 4th area, a desert town heavily themed on Africa and with some rather uncomfortable character names for the townspeople - Cheif Bunga for example, or my new party member, the warrior Ungaga.

The game is quite repetitive but it's kinda relaxing now as I just blaze through dungeons without needing to overthink things. It's a chill kinda time. I think there's another 2 (maybe 3?) areas to go yet, but I'm at least making some good progress - It'll be another week or 2 to finish at my current pace, but that'll be by far the longest game on my summer list taken down.

[Key-Glyph]

A lot of you folks are starting off with games I've often heard about by title but know nothing about in terms of gameplay or content. I'm enjoying getting a closer look!

I think the controls are pretty spot on, but I did have an issue with them, but it's due to my own habits when playing platformers. I tend to hold the up direction after jumping for whatever reason, does anyone else do this? Lol.

Oh man, I don't know if I do this specifically, but I know I had related trouble while playing through Earthworm Jim some years ago and I empathize heavily. In my case I could not get the grappling hook mechanism to work reliably, which became necessary to to execute with finesse in the last stage. It had something to do with my pushing the d-pad while grappling. I think I was pushing towards the outcroppings I needed to whip towards as if I were aiming at them, and doing that messed up Jim's shot for some reason. I was so frustrated. And it was so hard to untrain that impulse! I had to verbally coach myself out of pressing a direction at all. I think I'm pretty much always pushing "forward" when my characters are moving, even if I don't need to. So I totally understand what you went through.

1. Out of This World (GEN)
2. Journeyman Project: Turbo! (PC)
3. Theme Park (GEN)
4. Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town (GBA)
5. NHL Hockey '95 (GEN)
6. Lethal Enforcers (GEN)
7. Prince of Persia (Apple II)

I totally just said that NHL 95 was going to be a palette cleanser after something long, but I was wrong. I had such a great time sitting down with my Genesis for Out of This World that I wanted to go right into another Genny title. My office had not been conducive to playing my retro systems until I rearranged it recently, and I'm so over the moon that the new setup feels good that I can't tear myself away from it yet. This might turn into a full-on Genesis roll, as I can feel Lethal Enforcers calling my name.

So, NHL 95! This is a game that my best friend Jeremy had growing up, and we used to love playing it together at his house every now and again. There's something about sports games that lends them to being really funny, at least for me. Jeremy and I got endless enjoyment out of body checking each other's players, for example, or shooting slap shots after the whistle for no reason, or even just watching each other take on the CPU and cause mayhem. We also used to love the hype music on the stadium organ and celebrated each time the Hava Nagila came up.

It was really fun to have these and other long-distant memories return as I was playing. I remembered suddenly, for example, that each time the whistle blew for a face-off after the opponent's goalie hung onto the puck for too long, he and I would rush said goalie and body check them as many times as possible. I also had vague imprints of some of my own thoughts from back then which I'd forgotten the context for, such as feeling like I'd decided long ago that skating around behind the opponent's goal was necessary for scoring. Mysterious knowledge like this suddenly clicked and made sense again after I'd been at the game for a few hours.

I initially started a full season -- I wanted to go through this like I did Bases Loaded II many summers ago -- but this game requires battery saves for that, which are no longer working. So instead I moved onto Playoffs mode, where you go through the elimination brackets until you make it to the Stanley Cup Final. What's fun is that the game shows you the actual brackets for the other teams, so you get the immersion of feeling like other games were going on elsewhere -- and maybe there's some mystery to whom you'll be playing at the end.

What I found particularly interesting was the full season mode, though. This works by presenting you with a date on a calendar (e.g. October 5th), showing you "the games scheduled that day," and allowing you to pick which of those games you'd like to play through yourself. To be clear, you can play any number of them -- all three, just some, and none. If you don't play a particular match, the computer determines who won and by how much. What's fascinating about this is that it seems to introduce a season-management level of metaplay. You're not just picking one team and playing exclusively as them; you pick which matches you want, and can therefore influence who moves on and who doesn't by either playing well or poorly, potentially setting up your dream playoffs. It would also, I think, make you feel less invested in each individual game, making them not so much about winning or losing as an exercise in just enjoying the process and seeing how it all turns out.

I may have this wrong, though, because once in the playoffs, I did have to be on the winning team to progress -- it didn't just let me move to the next bracket and play as a new team. But that said, you can also do a "best-of-seven" determination between two teams, which allows you to decide which team you're going to play as before every single match. So hypothetically maybe if I played on team A and lost 3 games, I could switch to Team B for the 4th game, clinching the win and moving on? I can't quite get a good sense of what matters and what doesn't in terms of how well I personally do at the game. I can't tell how much NHL 95 wants me to be invested in my playthrough, and how much of it is just, "eh, have fun playing hockey!"

I did learn a few things by finally have a manual to read, though. Did you know you don't have to slam into people to get control of the puck? I didn't. I've spent my whole life charging into the opposition for everything, lol. I also discovered that you can check someone into the penalty box, which made me cackle with glee.

Oh, and about penalties -- from what I can tell, aside from off-sides and icing, having "penalties" turned on just means the game will randomly call out violations over the course of a match. I think this is purely for immersion, because it would always happen to NPCs or players I wasn't controlling, and were for things like hooking that I don't believe I have the ability to do as a player. Again, this seems to just be for the immersion of it all -- which leans the dial back towards "eh, just have fun playing hockey!" It's kind of like a horse-betting game, but with a bit more agency?

I won the Cup and should move on soon, but I'll probably keep plugging away at random matches over the course of the summer, because honestly, it's a really fun way to spend twenty minutes.

[Note]

Good to hear! I may have to bump it up on my priority list. I also took a peek at its value over the past few years. Like a lot of uncommon to rare retro titles, it peaked during the pandemic (at $660). Its value has been in steady decline since 2021 and it worth about half that now. I'll probably never own a copy but it is nice to see those absurd numbers falling.

Definitely give it a shot when you get a chance! It has some fun and unique mechanics, cool level design and boss fights, and a good challenge. Also, glad to see some of the prices falling for older games. Hope that trend continues!

Nice work everyone!

I love me some Klonoa so glad to hear you enjoyed it too Note. On the other hand I just can't get on with the cinematic platformer type games like Another World, so very impressed you pushed through it Key!

I've made more progress in Dark Cloud, clearing up the 4th area, a desert town heavily themed on Africa and with some rather uncomfortable character names for the townspeople - Cheif Bunga for example, or my new party member, the warrior Ungaga.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it as well, AJ! I'll have to play the sequel too. Maybe later this summer, as I heard some of the gameplay mechanics have been improved. Regarding cinematic platformers, I like the atmosphere they provide, especially with Out of This World, Flashback, and Blackthorne, but admittedly, I'm not very good at the genre.

Oh man, I don't know if I do this specifically, but I know I had related trouble while playing through Earthworm Jim some years ago and I empathize heavily. In my case I could not get the grappling hook mechanism to work reliably, which became necessary to to execute with finesse in the last stage. It had something to do with my pushing the d-pad while grappling. I think I was pushing towards the outcroppings I needed to whip towards as if I were aiming at them, and doing that messed up Jim's shot for some reason. I was so frustrated. And it was so hard to untrain that impulse! I had to verbally coach myself out of pressing a direction at all. I think I'm pretty much always pushing "forward" when my characters are moving, even if I don't need to. So I totally understand what you went through.

Glad I'm not alone dealing with a similar issue! Lol. I really didn't think anything of that habit until playing Klonoa. The controls in Klonoa made me realize I probably press buttons that are unnecessary while playing other platformers and action games strictly out of habit, as opposed to actually needing to input it. Just curious, were you able to overcome that issue in Earthworm Jim and finish the game?

[Note]

Also, I was able to finish Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on the Genesis yesterday!

While playing through it again, I realized that when I originally owned the game around the time of release, I did get through most of it. I for sure got at least to the Ice Cap Zone, as I remember really enjoying the brief snowboard sequence and the theme song to that stage, which is the fifth area out of only six. However, it was cool to finally beat Robotnik in the final battle of the game. While the game is quite short (without the S&K add-on), I do feel like it warrants a playthrough to see how it was initially released, and I think Sega made enough improvements that it's still a great showing on the system.

The graphics are more detailed, the levels are larger, you have the ability to play through the game as only Tails, which adds a different play style, and the different shields each add additional moves and abilities. There are also two types of bonus levels, one that gives you additional items and shields, and one which you can potentially gain an emerald. Also, the music that was released on the original Genesis cartridge was great IMO, with some catchy tunes. As mentioned earlier, my favorite track in the game is from the Ice Cap Zone, which I recently found out is an edited version an unreleased song from Brad Buxer's former band, The Jetzons, with the song title being Hard Times. It's my understanding that the recent re-releases of the game on various collections does not contain the music which Michael Jackson's production team worked on and a version of the prototype music from Sega's team has been inserted. Overall, a great platformer that I think is one of the better games in the genre from this era! I think later in the year I'll try to tackle the longer version, Sonic 3 + Sonic & Knuckles.

I was aiming to collect all seven emeralds in my playthrough, but I missed more than a few giant ring areas, and I also just wasn't able to get through some of the later ones when I did manage to find them. In total, I got four of the emeralds. However, with a "cleared" file on the game, I'm able to play through again with a level select, so I might try to get the emeralds I'm missing at some point.

[marurun]

And according to Wikipedia Brad Buxer is now a professional airline pilot. I can't double-check the reference because it's a scanned magazine article in French.