What games are you playing?

[KobaBeach]

TalesWeaver - Me: haha i am having fun grinding in this game. i will talk to sailor man!
Sailor: "hey dude can you get me 10 glues???? you need 25 jelly creams, 1 scorpion tail and 5 poison jellies to make a single household-grade one"
Me: oh

So yeah, this is kind of my first 20 Bear Asses sidequest ever, I may be forgetting something in some shitty JRPG, but, yeah. It's not too bad, I'm giving myself a goal to just do one glue at a time per day, and it helps me gain levels so eh. It's a Korean MMO and it's from 2002-2003, so it comes with the territory. So yeah, to appease Gikel (the sailor) I'll have to get 250 Jellies, 10 Scorps and 50 Poisons in total, so far I've gotten 50 J, 2 S, 10 P.

Jelly Creams are a near constant drop, you get them nearly all the time from Jellypi which are essentially the Slimes (or Porings, this is an MMO) of the game. Scorpion Tails are a semi-rare drop from Scorpinos, but give it sometime and one will drop eventually, I've had far worse RNG in offline games. And Poison Jellies are semi-common from Poison Jellypi, which are marginally stronger (granted they are Lv14, but my Issac is a bit too strong).

These three enemies can be found in the Kraiden Plains near Narvik, so it's not too much of a pain, I'll have to keep in mind about my inventory slots as they've gotten full earlier, so I had to sell a bunch of shit at Loche's, which fyi is one of(?) the places where Money Money Money from JUMP plays in, I actually almost used it in AAT for a Christmas themed stage, the song gives me those warm, late 2000s holiday winter evening where I just got up from my chair after playing custom SRB2 1.09.4 levels all day vibes I'm very nostalgic for, but I was not very confident in my work.

Got around 18,000 seeds (Kurse all SeeDs, swarming like lokusts across etc etc) out of that, especially since Issac can't equip that much. If I had a swordsman character I'd be mostly fine, but Issac is primarily a monk-type, so light armor and fist weapons like claws and karlas (blades that attach to the side of your fists, like how you grasp and attack with tonfas, most likely Not Real) and such. I have a ninja headband just for extra defense, though it's not very aesthetic and that's usually what matters with MMO armor.

No Naruto bullshit sadly, though I have seen a Haruhi NPC and I'm not sure if that's just Ketuhole and crew making a custom NPC, they are Japanese and I imagine they're huge dorks. The TalesWeaver JP Wiki does mention a Fairy Tail crossover event so...

defs recommend savestates though because Wow this sure was a game boy game without battery backups

I know you mean lives but this just makes me think about the Dragon Slayer 1 port Epoch made for the Game Boy that made its way to several multicarts, but also is impossible to beat in an actual cart because I don't think Epoch ever coded in a Save feature, even the semi-jank "save to floppy" spell you learn like halfway through a level (I guess you could call them dungeons?) in DraSlay1. People have tried with a charger, but there have been accounts of like the Game Boy eating shit and dying or the cart overheating so I Have No Idea.

If it makes anything better I think the Saturn version in Falcom Classics is probably the best one for automatically starting you with diagonal movement and whatnot, maybe actual saves all the time? It has a translation patch though I don't know if it was always in English like the other versions as well as Xanadu's several versions, even on PC88. Could just be for the Ys port included in that collection (eat shit Romancia, we miss u so much Xanadu Scen. II).

ping

Sorry for shitting on ASMT the other day btw, I feel like I was very disrespectful

[Ashan]

After finishing TTYD I was tossing around the idea of heading straight into Super Paper Mario, but didn't know if it was worth the hassle of pulling out the equipment to play it. I looked up the game on HowLongToBeat, and it's estimated 18.5 hours compared to TTYD's 30.5 hours. I finished TTYD in about 2 weeks, so I don't think SPM should cut into the possibility of not being done before Tears of the Kingdom comes out.

So I dug out the old Wii U that's been boxed up since like 2017, 2018. Found a Wii remote that seemed to be working. And after a quick dusting/wipe-down with a wet cloth, booted the thing up for the first time in years. I played through the first chapter (or whatever you call it in this game, world?) and... I don't know, we'll see. I remember liking this game when I played it back in like 2007, but I was also 10 and just liked that I didn't need to understand RPG strategies to play it, unlike TTYD. But now that I'm older I quite enjoyed the first couple turn-based games, but I think the idea of an RPG platformer is cool. Everything's been pretty basic so far. You get to a room, there's nothing there, you flip into 3D and then you can see something to progress. Or sometimes you use Tippy.

One thing I didn't realize was how clear it is that this game was cut from the same cloth of TTYD. Like, clearly they just modified the engine to make it into a platformer. Some stuff didn't even change, like the save menu prompt that comes up seems to be exactly the same. Probably a smart cost-saving measure, especially considering the Wii was basically the same hardware as the Gamecube. And I like that they made menus feel snappier. I hated using any menus in TTYD cause they always felt so slow to navigate around, plus there was that weird stutter when you'd launch into them sometimes, especially the partner swapping one. I guess that was loading sprites into memory or something, but Dolphin seemed to perfectly replicate how I remembered it on real hardware.

I'm not sure how I feel about the art direction for all the new stuff in this game. Like, they're in a different dimension and I get it. But it also kinda feels like they were cutting corners to make the art easier to pump out. Characters are mostly straight lines and solid colors, and don't even really look like paper. Elevators are literally just a white rectangle with a black border and line through the center. It makes everything feel a bit samey. I even thought it was suspicious that we see a brainwashed Koopa being represented with sunglasses. Even though there were Koopas with sunglasses in previous games, it just meant they're higher-ranked? They used the exact same sprite to mean they're brainwashed by Count Bleck now and I find that weird. Maybe I'm reading into it too much. But I wonder if Intelligent Systems was on something of a time crunch with this game.

[Bean]

Finally started Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp today since it's a quiet enough day. Started with AW1 campaign, and it's definitely the GBA game I remember just with a new coat of paint and some extra bells and whistles here and there. Started on classic since I think the enemy units all keep their original durability here. Two S-Ranks to start which is pretty simple since they're handed to you on a silver platter unless you take too many turns to get the job done.

[KobaBeach]

No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! - Trying to learn Shop 'Till You Drop. Super fun game, but the isometric perspective messes with me, especially when it's heavily slanted. Managed to get a full combo on Phat Tony's Casino, though. Two dominoes left behind, however. It has very potent NiGHTS energy, especially with being so short.

Downloading some stuff from Internet Archive to keep me occupied. Some are RPGs, but I won't put them in the main priority pile just yet.

Googootrops - PSX | Battle Monsters, B. Garegga, Albert Odyssey - SAT | Black/Matrix AD - DC

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[thatguyif]

So I went ahead and finished the rest of the rooms in Bioshock Infinite: Clash in the Clouds. They're definitely interesting ideas in terms of creating arena combat. I feel like the problem is, though, that they run into the same issues that playing Bioshock Infinite had: Two-weapon limit, Vigors being inconsistent (though I have somewhat a greater appreciation of Return to Sender and Bucking Bronco), most of the late game/Vox weapons just not being good at all. So a lot of fights become tedium. On top of that, Blue Ribbon Challenges are lost completely if you forfeit rank. It gives me no incentive to actually try to get them more than once because otherwise I have to reset. Buying the 1-Up only gives you one free retry, so you can't really practice a wave. Once you lose that, you have to reset if you want to try again. That's really annoying. As a consequence, I'm probably not going to complete the Blue Ribbon Challenges.

The Columbia Archaeological Society was interesting, at least. The models themselves were eh, but the artwork was cool, as well as some of the behind-the-scenes stuff. The music was particularly cool for the most part: Really liked what they did with "Shiny Happy People," and "Tainted Love" sounded like it actually came from the era it represented (which makes sense...the original's style wasn't that far detached from early-century jazz or ragtime). Only one I didn't like was "Fortunate Son," for the choice of making it a cabaret-style song (along with having a woman sing it to account for John Fogerty's contralto voice) just didn't click at all. What I liked most was the bonus area of the Luteces' space, adding a bunch of Voxophones that added much more context to what was going on with them, like how Rosalind was able to determine what was going on with the nosebleeds. Also liked the mention of Soviet Columbia, that was amusing (more for what Columbia was than what it would become). It also lent credence to the whole idea that Rosalind's motivation in finding her "brother" was selfcest, given there was only one bed in that apartment.

Still...how it all ended was a dry fart. Not even a wet one, at least those have some sound to them, a dry one. The ending is meant to hint that the next DLC at the time would return us to Rapture. Except this is how it goes down: You clear the last room, and suddenly Elizabeth just runs off to the museum section. There's no dialogue, no people running from the museum (who had been in there before), no hints of what was to come. She just wanders off. You could just quit right then and not know something was going on. Then when you actually go over there, museum is empty except for Elizabeth and a new tear. But again, there's no dialogue from her saying "hey, what's this?" She just kind of stands there, expecting you to do something. And the tear is just this standard environmental hazard, and labeled as such. The only indication that something's up is that a reprise of "Welcome to Rapture" is playing when you get close to it. So you open the tear, and a single Thuggish Splicer appears. Just one. At this point you've probably upgraded your weapons to full power, and considering Thuggish Splicers are the first splicers you meet in Rapture in the original game, you're not going to spend more than a second putting it down, even with melee. And you're given maybe a second to register what just happened before the game cuts to black and then shows the title card with the ripping apart flag. There's practically zero drama, zero tension in the moment. It's like "oh hey here's a Splicer, oh you killed it, THEENNNND, see ya in Raptureeeeee!" They could've injecting a lot more intrigue by even just recycling some of Booker's and Elizabeth's lines from the original game to add some tension, or putting in more than one Splicer (or even just get a Big Daddy or something).

In any event, it's done. Burial at Sea Part 1 is supposed to be really short, taking no more than a few hours to complete. I don't know if I'll start it tonight, but I'll definitely try to start it this weekend and finish it next week. After that...not sure. Grand Theft Auto IV The Lost and Damned is in the immediate future, but I'm not sure if I want to start it next month or the month after. I do want to look at some of my games and figure out what to do next.

Otherwise...played a bit of Star Wars: Republic Commando during the NSO Game Trial. I can see why people love it: It's a very unique take on FPSes in that time period, adding this tactical command element to it. At the same time, I can't imagine playing this on Switch, for this is an Xbox-style FPS...and I'd rather just do that stuff on K+M. The next Game Trial is apparently Cadence of Hyrule. I'll probably try it but I doubt I'll enjoy it. Rhythm games have always been a weird thing for me.

[KobaBeach]

Goemon 2 SNES - Super fun game, but holy shit the blind jumps. Went from Area 3 to Area 5, unlocking the missed secret stages. I don't know if I'll be able to beat the secret post-game boss, but eh, I'll give it a shot. I'm mostly using Ebisumaru for now.

ActRaiser 2 - Oh I'm rusty... Did Industen and I'm trying to get back into the habit in Benefic River. Fun game, but I don't recommend it to normal people or most ActRaiser 1 fans (Act1 is the better game btw).

[thatguyif]

Okay, that was fast. Bioshock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode 1 started and finished. Makes me think I'll have some time to clean my bathroom after all. Maybe.

The DLC actually addresses some of the issues I had with the original game. Example: Hey, you can have more than two weapons in your inventory now! Weapons feel a little better! But they also threw in drawbacks: They kept the two-weapon setup, with extra weapons in your inventory that are annoying to switch out in the heat of combat. On top of that, you're only allowed to equip two full clips of ammo, and if your reserve clip is full, you can't pick any up. Granted, I feel like this the consequence of it being a short game, but still, it feels awful. Vigors (now referred to as plasmids) still feel off.

DLC has only three areas, two with active combat: Downtown Rapture, and Fontaine's Department Store in two areas. They're very interesting areas, especially the first area, since we see Rapture mere hours before Atlas' raid triggered the Rapture Civil War, and we also see how far of a reach Fontaine had before he got taken out. Some things I noted:

• Rapture looks kind of cool pre-fall.
• One of the first things you see leaving your detective agency is a rich-looking black dude getting a shoeshine from some white kid. That seems a smidge anachronistic (this was early Civil Rights Era, and while Objectivists of the time were never explicitly racist toward black people, they still had some racist overtones), and may have been Levine trying to pedal back the whole "did you know early 20th century America was incredibly racist? Let me show you!" angle he pulled in the original game, which included that shoeshine scene but with race swaps.
• We actually get to see the pneumos put to use. That was cool.
• We get to see an early Sander Cohen, as well as evidence that everybody in Rapture hates him because he's a goddamn hack (and ugly motherfucker) that only got as far as he did by virtue of being Ryan's buddy (and even that went to shit when he tried doing something about the orphans, which everyone thought were moochers Parasites). Rapture Records doesn't bother stocking his then-new album, and you get your plot device by stealing it from the artist gallery owned by some curator with a shitty bowl cut who prolly is on Cohen's take.
• I dunno if this is an accidental anachronism or not, but the episode has radio announcements related to Atlas, and as far as Bioshock indicated, Atlas didn't really make his public debut until the New Year's Eve raid and bombing. While you could argue the radio announcements stopped being made after that raid, that's not true, since late in that game, you heard radio announcements related to Apollo Square turning into a prison, so there were definitely some made during the Civil War.
• The dialogue you hear, both from normal people and splicers, gives a much more holistic view of Rapture and its people.

The game's plot...while I was partly spoiled on both the original game and Burial at Sea Episode 2, I knew nothing of Episode 1. So it was cool and interesting to have Booker and Elizabeth together but in Rapture, not knowing what was going on. Elizabeth with long hair and a very cynical attitude was kind of a hot look for her. Her emphasis on "debt collection," while a blatant callback to the original game, also made me think of Von Trier's Nymphomaniac Part 2, with Elizabeth having the same level of viciousness as Joe from that film. The conclusion was genuinely kind of impressive: We learn that Booker is in fact Comstock, but of a universe where while trying to get Anna/Elizabeth, proved just weak enough from Booker's grip that he accidentally decapitated her...so he got himself sent to Rapture and went back to being Booker. Clever use of the tears affecting memories thing again. And Elizabeth knew this all along, and baited him with a girl she certainly knew to be a Little Sister, so as to trap him with a Big Daddy (whose fight was HELL...I expended all my ammo AND had to summon a Patriot to defeat him) and finish him off once the time was right. (I'd be willing to bet Elizabeth even sent this girl over to "Booker" to imprint on him.) And then, upon this revelation, Elizabeth and the Luteces show up to own him for being, at the end of the day, still Comstock (who was always Booker...his irresponsibility being deferred), while letting him get impaled by a Big Daddy drill. Intense stuff.

Regardless, it's done. I think I'll play Exo One next. Not sure though.

[KobaBeach]

Farland Story: Tooi Kuni no Monogatari - oh hey turns out i was at stage 4 of 14. I tried to clear out the fourth map of enemies to get my party properly levelled. No real savescumming used outside of making sure Alicia wouldn't eat shit. Took me like three hours. Stage 5 took less time, I beat it while watching my friend stream the Street Fighter 6 demo (no practice mode? smh), but figuring out how to progress beyond the invincible Skeleton blockade was a problem, it felt a bit unclear to me so I had to look it up on YouTube.

Turns out you just, lead Iwan to the three tile mountain construct that's separate from the two massive mountain ridges to the north and to the south.

<-- answer

I guess I should have put two and two together, but recruiting Iwan doesn't really hint at it. I got the Holy Staff in Stage 4, and the Giga Axe in Stage 5, both from hidden treasure chests, the latter of which I thought was a weapon for Godaar (somehow not Docatti for some reason), but no it's straight up a class upgrade from Dwarf to Spartan. This is literally Langrisser meets Fire Emblem jesus chrsit.

The game is not too hard but it can be easy to let Arc get boned (game over) or Alicia to be knocked out (no heal at least for the early chapters), no permadeath but there is a level loss whenever you die but It's Fine. Enjoyable game.

oh yeah and what was with that vanishing tree in stage 5???? hold on let me looks this up. (brings up a jp walkthrough site) oh it just... raises all your stats by +1, depending on who touches it. Go The Fuck Off

I forgot how cute Docatti is design-wise, half naked, roided, masked (masks and helmets are optional but they always add to the charm!) berserkers with scraggly beards are super cute and i cannot get enough of his chibi sprite during battle animations, though Godaar is very precious too. I love dwarfs. I also enjoy the disparity between Randia's bishounen vibes in his dialogue portrait and his dopey as fuck sprites. Iwan's big dopey smile is also The Best. Everyone is HERE! lovely!

Final Fantasy Tactics - So trying to master everything legitimately was pissing me off (I mean yeah there's enemy level scaling), so I restarted from scratch so I could do the JP scroll bug on everything lol. You can't do it in a decent amount of Job ability lists sadly, I need to figure out how to do it properly in the Black Mage/Wizard list. Heading into Sweegy Woods, but I'm trying to level up Ramza and my three randos' Jobs first for like chapter 1.

• Squire is at 6 or 5
• Chemist is around 4
• Knight is around 3
• Archer is around 3
• and I'm aiming to get Wizard and Priest to lv 3-4 too.

I'm just following Caves of Narshe's walkthrough to see what is best to focus on for the time being and since Archers and Wizards are good for Sweegy, why not. I'll have to level up Monk soon, and since I'm doing that I'll level up Thief as well. Lancer and Geomancer should be next in the physical attack jobs, followed by Ninja and Samurai, then Dancer. For magic, Oracle and Time Mage, then Mediator and Summoner, then Calculator, then Bard. And if I put in the hours, Mime.

Super fun game but pholtos doesn't like it at all, I think it's the weird rules with floor height and inconvenient stuff put in place to give Jobs a purpose like item tossing. Honestly I understand, I kind of wish this game had more of a player/enemy binary phase sort of thing like Summon Night where you can just pick a character you want to control.

Or have the Turn Order be more quickly brought onto the screen rather than bringing up the triangle menu and selecting AT, make it a part of the heads up display like Hoshigami or FFX.

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I might do a low level run of Shining Force soon concurrently with my normal replay, I'll have to use savestates on Kega Fusion to tone down iteration times. I might do an unofficial Four Job Fiesta for Final Fantasy V GBA too alongside my normal completionist run. I also want to practice Breakers Revenge or some other fighting game, just for funsies.

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what do you mean by that

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[raekuul]

I got my PS2 set up and got PCSX2 set up as well (had to re-dump my PS2 firmware) so now I've got double the PS2. But first...

BNLC MMBN1: Bombman bombed. I was going to keep doing deep web shenanigans but since I need to beat the V1s of the story navis before their V2s are available it's kind of better for me to just push the story right now. At least I don't have to deal with the Clockman scenario this time around.

AW:Re: Blue Moon arc done, time to punch Eagle in the face again.

Rom hacking stuff: AW2 and AWDS both were relatively simple to get their Fog Of War Campaign hacks up and running, since they're very thoroughly documented (and AWDS also has a map header editing tool so I really only needed to unpack/repack the dump correctly, it turns out). Next is... probably AWDoR? Since that's surprisingly well documented as well. Then it's (ugh) AW1 which both is poorly-documented and has forced moves. I would love to hack in an AI for AW1/AW2 that actually has to follow Fog of War rules but it honestly might just be better to hack AW:Re instead.

[Bean]

"What do you mean by that?".png

Going to guess that's supposed to be old man instead of grown-up. Ha-ha.

Anyway, still on Advance Wars for the Switch. About to face off against Grit for the first time. So that's four missions in with an S and then that first War Room map with an S as well, obviously using Max since his CO Power is just broken in that first game.

[KobaBeach]

Going to guess that's supposed to be old man instead of grown-up. Ha-ha.

For context, Arc is telling the others to follow him as an army, the intended thing is that Docatti (beard boy) is amazed at how mature of a king-to-be he's acting, but it kind of comes off as creeping on him with this translation patch's weird messy wording, I say being perfectly okay if I was in that position as the younger one.

[Zerio]

I've been getting way back into the Mega Man games again lately. So far in this revisit I've played the entire classic series up to MM10, the side games including Mega Man & Bass and up to IV on Gameboy so far, and am also on Battle Network 2 on the side.

Really good series, honestly. It's always been one of my favorites and it's just really cool seeing the different weapons, levels, and bosses each game has to offer. My favorites so far have to be 3, 4, and 9.

[KobaBeach]

I've been getting way back into the Mega Man games again lately. So far in this revisit I've played the entire classic series up to MM10, the side games including Mega Man & Bass and up to IV on Gameboy so far, and am also on Battle Network 2 on the side.

Really good series, honestly. It's always been one of my favorites and it's just really cool seeing the different weapons, levels, and bosses each game has to offer. My favorites so far have to be 3, 4, and 9.

Did you have fun with & Bass? It's one of my faves along with 7 (and 4) but it's very much an acquired taste. It's kind of the Hyper Mari World of Mega Man, just not as badly designed. I guess you could call it kind of Kaizo-y but I'm not sure if that's an accurate comparison.

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Shining Force (low-level) - Made it past the first two battles, took me a few tries. Gong fucking died in the second one but I don't feel like doing a "pretend permadeath"-style run for now. So far it's not too bad but I can imagine the vanilla game's focus on being as approachable as possible can come to bite me in the ass later by doing this challenge run.

The Legend of Heroes V: Cagesong of the Ocean - Translating text for myself using some footage I recorded, along with Google Lens and DeepL (and the 10ten Firefox plugin), and a bit of my brain + Denshi Jisho to reword things to have proper flow. At 26m24s out of 2h27m07s in my recording, basically when you enter the Bayside Lighthouse as Forte to meet up with McBain and ask if he's heading out to depart from Racos Palma and travel around Weltluna.

Valkyrie Profile - Doing Nethov Swamp, just gathering chests rn before fighting the Dragon Zombie.

[raekuul]

BNLC: It'd be really neat if I could inject a randomized version of the games into BNLC, but since I'm playing on Switch that's more effort than is really worth.
MMBN: Life Virus defeated. this is where the real game begins dot gif. Hooray for BusterMAX just kind of removing all possible difficulty from the combat.
MMBN2: In the middle of the BLicense exam. It's actually been long enough since the last time I did this that I don't remember what I actually need to do (and last time was a virus shuffler/chip drop randomizer so what I remember isn't going to be exactly correct anyway). I might still use BusterMAX for 2? Since styles don't have a gigantic effect on the main game's difficulty like they do in 3 (and thanks to the patch cards I might end up with a Team style for a change, FooGspl counts as a Navi chip)
MMBN4: Time for TopMan, after which I'm done with the first Tournament.

Debating whether or not I want to try streaming Persona 3 again or if I want to try streaming Persona 4? 3 would be emulated FES because screw Portable (actually not, Portable would have been perfect for me if I didn't already own a physical copy of FES and I will be getting P3P on Switch at some point) but 4 would be the steam port of Golden because native code.

[KobaBeach]

Sorry for spamming the thread

Debating whether or not I want to try streaming Persona 3 again or if I want to try streaming Persona 4? 3 would be emulated FES because screw Portable (actually not, Portable would have been perfect for me if I didn't already own a physical copy of FES and I will be getting P3P on Switch at some point) but 4 would be the steam port of Golden because native code.

I'd actually do a Male run of FES and a Fem run of Portable myself, at least that's how I'm planning it, probably not one after the other. 4G I'm a bit undecided on whether I play on my Vita (and be a slave to like 6-ish hour battery life) or with the Steam port, pirated for now, but I'll probably purchase it eventually after making a nest egg with my welfare. You have to be "responsible" with money, after all.

5R I actually own the PS4 port physically for about a year or so, and it'd be a shame to not use my copy, it's why I'm doing the PS4 and Switch versions of Cyber Sleuth HM, I own both due to Bamco delisting the first game's PS4 version entirely (Switch is digital though). I wanted SMTV too but Atlus is scum when it comes to Europe, so I'll have to purchase it digitally eventually; can't emulate Switch at full speed just yet.

Either that or Worten and Fnac over here is just Garbage In General, they had to dig in the back for KH1.5's PS3 ver. back in 2014 due to it being old-ish, and I had to order Digimon Survive's NS version through Worten's online storefront to pick it up at the store a few towns over, because I wasn't sure if they'd have it in the shelves because lmao at being able to find Digimon Survive at all in a bumfuck country like Portugal (me and one of my Portie furry besties have it though, we're good out of our friend group).

I'll do 1's Snow Queen path on PSP (I'll finish the US PSX version eventually, not a big priority), and 2 IS and EP on PSX first though. I also need to start SMT2 and as you're aware, continue LB1's Game Gear release (also continue my way early SMT1 replay). Again, huge thanks for your cheat sheet spreadsheet for LB1 (now that's a tongue twister).

If..., NES DDS:MT1&2, Majin Tensei 1&2&Ronde, Jack Bros, the rest of Last Bible, Maken X/Shao, Giten (undecided on Win9x through PCem or PC98 through Neko Project 21/W tbh lol) and the first two Devil Summoners (Saturn or PSP for DS1, 3DS for SH1 tbh) are also an eventual thing out of the pre-PS2 ones, Ronde mostly for the lols. SMT If is gonna be a huge fucking pain.

I'll do Devil Children eventually, Black/Red's translation patch is pretty abysmal according to my friend (thankfully the vanilla game is likely in kana since DC is for children and the Black/Red Book duo and their White Book sequel are both on the Game Boy) and the games seem a bit formulaic and average like Last Bible, but the latter could just be me, I do like a bit of Pokémon from time to time. Fenrir though...

sorry for infodump :c

[raekuul]

I still need to finish what I started that LB1 cheat sheet spreadsheet for in the first place (the "modern spell names" and "better monster names" mods). Also I might look into PS1 text hacking to fix the spell names for Revelations: Persona so that I can play that without getting more confused as well (it's already confusing enough without having to go back and relearn the spells - the presuffix system might use uncomfortable syllables but the rules were consistent so you at least know what to expect from a spell named Mafreila)

[KobaBeach]

I still need to finish what I started that LB1 cheat sheet spreadsheet for in the first place (the "modern spell names" and "better monster names" mods). Also I might look into PS1 text hacking to fix the spell names for Revelations: Persona so that I can play that without getting more confused as well (it's already confusing enough without having to go back and relearn the spells - the presuffix system might use uncomfortable syllables but the rules were consistent so you at least know what to expect from a spell named Mafreila)

If you want I can try to help wrt PS1 MIPS ASM, I don't know anything yet, but if I give myself some months or more to learn I might be able to do Something. I did want to get more Oni games translated for a while now (so I'll have to learn Z80 ASM), despite not even playing the first translated one yet, I just think the SNES ones look super cool. And I kind of want to try translating other SNES games too, like Granhistoria and Little Master 3, the latter of which gives me an incentive to try and translate Little Master 2 on GB (DMG). Also maybe do Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 scripts that's slightly different than the Steam version (I don't want to compete with Square's releases, it feels wrong despite me not liking AAA corps).

Maybe figure out Falcom compression for the sake of translating some more of their console, PC98 games and older Windows games (at least ones Geofront aren't currently super busy with, I don't want to step on their toes). I might have to write my own Mega CD debugger and whatnot if I try to make script edits to Lunar or translate Daihoushinden or 3x3 Eyes (I'd have to pay freelance VAs too since adding subtitles wouldn't be very doable due to limited VRAM, so that'd take a little while to be finished), that's something I should try to mess around with later, because WOW fuck gens kmod, I cannot even load Lunar 1 on it (the ones for libretro cores like Picodrive and GPGX should be Okay though but they're MD only).

The big issue is that I'll have to write my own emulator for debugging purposes and That's A Whole Ass Ordeal, learning 68k is the least of my worries, hopefully there's an open source one I can use as reference, I have no idea where to find 32x documentation beyond the dev manual, same with the MCD though, Kega is closed source and I'm not sure if Picodrive's good at 32x emulation. I could reverse engineer Kega, but I worry about making emu devs mad despite Fusion not being worked on for over a decade. Faux pas, y'know, different situation from FuSoYa being a whore like the old Fire Emblem 7 editor guy (DONATE!!!!!!!!!!).

Sorry for infodump again

[raekuul]

MegaCD Debugger

Have you tried BizHawk? It should have the toolkit you need

[KobaBeach]

MegaCD Debugger

Have you tried BizHawk? It should have the toolkit you need

From what I can tell it doesn't, but this Gens branch by Lab313 seems to work with MCD stuff, I'll test out Lunar and some other MD/MCD games I have lying around on this Gens and with their IDA MD plugin (I might have to pirate Pro, shush), just in case.

I'm just gonna mess around with Lunar 1 or 2, maybe other MD games just to get my bearings, make some basic Sonic hacking too maybe, as I follow a 68k tutorial and MD/MCD documentation, maybe Markey's 68k tutorial might still be good along with official Motorola docs? No idea lmoa

time 2 add to my shitty github private repos folder. oh yeah i was playing valkyrie profile oops forgot abt that

[Zerio]

Did you have fun with & Bass? It's one of my faves along with 7 (and 4) but it's very much an acquired taste. It's kind of the Hyper Mari World of Mega Man, just not as badly designed. I guess you could call it kind of Kaizo-y but I'm not sure if that's an accurate comparison.

Actually yes, for the most part! I don't think I'd say it's one of my favorites currently, but it's way overhated by Mega Man fans. It's inherently a different type of game than most others in the series; where most are totally doable with just the buster, I feel &Bass was designed specifically in a way that you have to use every weapon you get to actually make the levels and fights doable. In fact I feel that's why its stage select progression is structured the way it is, to ensure players have certain utilities for certain levels.

My only real complaints are that like three of the CDs were damn near impossible even when I resorted to slowdown and savestates, the bosses took waaaay too long to damage with Bass's buster, and I think the music could've been better, but still a pretty fun and unique game that I can't help but love, as someone who already tries to use the weapons as much as I can in this series anyway.

It's kinda similar to Megaman X6 for me, a game that's vastly hated by the community for its unfair difficulty, but is one I can't help but have a massive soft spot for. (Though I feel &Bass is objectively better designed, admittedly)

[KobaBeach]

Sorry for taking a while to reply, I started typing this but got distracted by trying to find a Mega CD debugger and turns out the emulators packaged with the SMD IDA Tools don't really work with anything beyond the standard MegaDrive games, oh well. At least I might be able to use them if I need to edit a MegaDrive game eventually, never say never.

I'm messing around with Lunar 1's JP version on Gens-rr r57shell mod (henceforth referred to as "Lab313's Gens Mod" to myself, in my brain), since its MegaDrive debugger can sort of dual task on Mega CD games as they also mostly use the Motorola 68k. But damn, my black tea got cold

I'll get back to making my own semi-experimental SMW ASM hack I promise (read: im ripping off my friend's latest smbx lua shitpost effortpost episode and, ofc, brutal mario. again, I am myself)

I always have the time to work on the talkhaus collab by technicality, though, so don't worry about that for the rest of the audience, I just have trouble managing my energy/"spoons".

My only real complaints are that like three of the CDs were damn near impossible even when I resorted to slowdown and savestates, the bosses took waaaay too long to damage with Bass's buster, and I think the music could've been better, but still a pretty fun and unique game that I can't help but love, as someone who already tries to use the weapons as much as I can in this series anyway.

Big same @ the shitty CDs and Bass' terrible buster, never go for CDs. I'm glad you had fun.

It's kinda similar to Megaman X6 for me, a game that's vastly hated by the community for its unfair difficulty, but is one I can't help but have a massive soft spot for. (Though I feel &Bass is objectively better designed, admittedly)

I need to try X6 again, I feel like I like it much less and it's entirely due to its worse design (they really shouldn't have had armorless X), but I also last played it in like 2014? 100% run though! I also need to finish X7 and start X8, I'm absolutely using savestates on PCSX2 between stages in the Red Alert base like what the fuck,,,,,, The music in X6 is goddamn fire, though, banger after banger for the most part.

I don't know how I'll manage the buggy(?) Korean Windows port of X7 if I ever do that one in a Korean WinXP VM along with the other MMX pre-LC Win ports, for the shits, I don't think and don't expect QEMU to have savestates. I haven't played exe-create's Frane 1 in a while, so I haven't booted up QEMU either. The one on Steam is a remaster(?) of 3 just so we're clear, but I don't know if either of the translations for 3 are good, Kemco "quality".

But, I don't think in general, brain empty.

Sorry for braindump

[Zerio]

I'll get back to making my own semi-experimental SMW ASM hack I promise (read: im ripping off my friend's latest smbx lua shitpost effortpost episode and, ofc, brutal mario. again, I am myself)

Ehe nice, I've actually been sorta aiming to get back into SMW hacking myself, after spending so much time working on my own 3D game. Admittedly seeing raocow playing the CLDC 2020 levels made me excited about my hack again and made me decide I want to eventually complete it on some level.

Big same @ the shitty CDs and Bass' terrible buster, never go for CDs. I'm glad you had fun.

Sadly I already got every CD! Most were fine and I think it's such a cool collectible type that it's mostly worth it. It was a lot of fun looking at all the art and info for the various characters in the world. With Bass's buster I really think it'd work better if enemies had less i-frames after being hit, so you'd need to keep pressure on bosses to keep damaging them. That could've worked well imo, and have been a nice contrast to Mega Man's strategy of charging his buster.

I need to try X6 again, I feel like I like it much less and it's entirely due to its worse design (they really shouldn't have had armorless X), but I also last played it in like 2014? 100% run though! I also need to finish X7 and start X8, I'm absolutely using savestates on PCSX2 between stages in the Red Alert base like what the fuck,,,,,, The music in X6 is goddamn fire, though, banger after banger for the most part.

Yeah, the aesthetics of X6 are kinda a big reason why I love it despite its flaws. That, and nostalgia. I do see some appeal in overcoming its ridiculous challenges (the Gate and Infinity Mijinion fights were extremely fun to me), so I think my biggest issues with its design are when it just feels lazy. Like a lot of the levels just kind of... having terrain Placed in such a boring way, or when bosses have way too little health to be much of a challenge or even see their full patterns. I always have a lot of ideas on potential remakes of games like this, so maybe I'll put those ideas to use and make something inspired by it or something.

I can't say I know much about the various ports and versions of X7, but that game's almost unplayable to me in general lmao. As a result I've still yet to play X8 at all since I'm someone who tries to play series in order when I can. I'll probably give it another try eventually... after I replay the other X games again. And after I complete the rest of the classic games. Mega Man 10 just doesn't really click with me as much as most others in the classic series, so it's a bit of a roadblock for me in terms of motivation to keep playing. Maybe it'll click with me more eventually though, who knows.

[Ashan]

Still playing Super Paper Mario. Just finished chapter 5 which wasn't my favorite chapter but had a few fun puzzles. Actually some that I found shocking that they put in the game with not the most obvious hints. This game is really weird with its difficulty, cause general platforming and enemy fighting is dead-simple to the point where I play reckless and still never find I'm at risk of dying. But there's some puzzles that I bet stumped a lot of kids. Also not much in terms of hints, cause you don't even have a Goombario/Goombella to give you hints on the room you're in. You have Tippy for essentially tattling, but it's kinda pointless in this game cause an enemy with "lots" of health just needs to be jumped on 2 or 3 times instead of once.

I also thought it was kinda funny they brought back the "stylish" moves in the form of shaking the controller in mid-air after a bounce to get some extra points. But the extra points you get are like nothing, and the move itself throws off the flow of trying to do a jump combo on the enemy to the point that it just seems not worth it. Plus I don't really want to be waggling the controller every couple seconds.

So far chapter 2 has been my favorite, Mario being made a slave toiling away in a factory is so bizarre and funny that it stuck in my memory more than anything else in this game so far. Also the boss at the end was legitimately creepy for a kids game. Chapter 4 was my least favorite, the space shooter sections just didn't feel that good to play and the little dude guiding you around was kind of just annoying and unfunny. And everywhere looked pretty samey. Chapter 5 was better, though I hated the NPC race because I could never tell what they're saying with their dumb word substitution gimmick. Oh, and whatever raocow felt towards Kolorado I incidentally felt towards this game's explorer character. He sucks.

[EllenHouraisan]

Been playing that there Omega Strikers game lately. It's such a weird game. Like a MOBA, but instead of killing everyone, you're playing hockey and you gotta score at your opponent's goal. You can still kill everyone to get them out of the way, though, but only by means of ring out (if you empty their HP, they get extra knockback from your attacks). It feels extremely unwieldy at times, and it can be a massive pain in the ass to break through enemy defense, since the play field is quite small. Some maps are also way more annoying than others. Still, matches are generally pretty fast (in quick play, at least), which is usually the most important thing for me in MOBAs. Character design is a mixed bag, the females ones are generally nice, but the guys are almost universally "edgy dude in black", which I'm not a big fan of (Atlas is the only one that breaks the mold and is by far the best looking, and the lizard fella at least gets by with being a cool lizard fella). I do like how every character has their own theme that plays if they get MVP, always love that kind of thing.

As for gameplay, it has some neat things. Every match generates these different "awakenings", which are basically modifiers that make every match unique. Some people might be turned off by the RNG, but I think it's great. Gotta learn to adapt, can't just do one thing and be consistent every time. Character abilities are almost exclusively skillshots, and a lot of them have a bit of a delay which makes them pretty hard to use, especially for short range skills. My favorite character to play so far is Luna because she can deal a lot of damage and her dash can make for some nice plays (why do the little girl characters always have the most fun kits? I used to be an Annie main in LoL and an Ayla main in Awesomenauts, too... Not that I'm complaining, always like to look cute while wreaking havoc~). I've also been playing Juno, who's kinda OP, since most of the time her slimes just score goals for free. I got all 5 goals in a match with her and felt very little of it had to do with my personal skill...

On a different note, the biggest problem I've encountered is that most of the time when I'm asigned goalie, the rest of the team decides to also be goalies for some reason? So we have 3 goalies and absolutely no pressure on the enemy. It baffles me why people do that, especially since the goalie gets special gear that makes them more effective at their side of the court and less so at the other. It's very frustrating when that happens. Still, the frustration doesn't linger for too long when the matches are so fast. Been having some fun with it, let's see how long it lasts.
Also, it doesn't have an in-game chat for people to yell at each other, so that also helps a lot!

[KobaBeach]

Wild Arms - Okay so I did the Photosphere and it was Pretty Gay, the stealth segment with the spotlights was actually super fun and I enjoyed it.

Lolithia

was also a bit harder than

Mom

, which honestly, I'm fine with, I think

Lolithia

or getting caught in the stealth segment owned me and I had to redo a lot after a game over. I placed a savestate afterwards.

I also maxed out my Rocket Lawnchair with the excess amount of money I just amassed from the small grind I did for Agaless + general battling, as the running away from battles feature is Ass. The Dragon Shrine was pretty alright. I was way too strong for

Harken

and like wise for

Boom and Luce

in the Dead Sanctuary. I should draw

Boomerang

, I kind of meme'd an artist I watch on FA into drawing his PS2 design on Twitter and I feel bad I didn't pay for it.

The Dead Sanctuary was fun but I had to use a guide to figure out the statue puzzle because otherwise I'd have to backtrack to re-read the tablets, and the game's encounter rate is Complete Ass even with the low encounter rate spell (I didn't even bother equipping it to my Magic Crest). Turns out I had it right one of the times, but I didn't realize I had to blow up one of the statues, I remembered that aspect of the tablet but it didn't register as something I had to do.

Went through the Demon Lab, and I gotta say the tileset artstyle looks superb in an isometric angle (the elevators). Destroyed

Harken and revealed her old self

, then got yeeted into the Gate Generator. Zed was super fun during the whole dungeon, totally the highlight of it.

Zeikfried

was a fucking pain and I had to use a savestate to reload my position before the battle because lmao at backtracking in this game. Got him the second time.

Anyway, Rudy just

cut off his arm

so he wouldn't get yeeted into the Shadow Realm along with

Zeik

and it turns out he's a

homunculus- er, Holmcross

. We're literally in the Forest Prison in the Elw Dimension to get him

fixed___

and I'm just trying to clear out the dungeon of loot for now.

We also found the Ocarina by accident. I really fucking need to unlock Jack's Fast Draws because I've been using up Meteor Dive for the most part. I also have all of Rudy's ARMs up to the Bazooka, but I'm not gonna fully focus on upgrading them all asap.

EDIT: De Re Metallica """"De La Metalica"""" complete. Saved Rudy (the Rudy's dream sequence destroyed me emotionally,

Elizabeth was piss easy tho

), and got the Protowing. Jack's Fast Draws all unlocked, went back to the Dead Sanctuary for one I missed, and I'm gonna do Gemini's Corpse later. I'm trying to plot out how to do Marduk and Kadingir (or Malduke and Ka Dingel).

I'm gonna do everything up to getting the Guitar in Marduk, and then do the sidequests and each arena round at least once, but keep a separate save to do the final bosses at a lower level, since I kind of want to grind a bit in preparation for the super bosses,

Angolmois (Angol Moa) and Ragu O Ragula (Ragu Ragla)

and if it isn't too tedious maybe max out the levels on my party for fun and kill the MP requirements on the Fast Draws with Secret Signs.

I'll keep an extra save for

Monster Zed

too, to see both ends of that scenario. The canonical one will be me

not killing him

tho.