(Retro) What have you been playing this week? Vol.2

[Leon Retro]

Just started Xbox Munch's Oddysee. Have to say I just could not get on with the Oddworld games on the PS, they looked great but that high level 2D gameplay just never grabbed me. But Munch's Oddysee, which was originally bundled with the Xbox, I'm finding quite good fun as far as I've played it.

I was playing it few weeks ago and couldn't put the controller down, as it's such a fun, uplifting experience. The developer delivered something top quality in areas. I can only guess some of the negative reaction was down to it being 3D after the 2D games. I might buy the remaster on Steam.

[noobish hat]

The 2D Oddworld games were a bit hard going. Isn't Stranger's Wrath coming out on Switch?

[Leon Retro]

The 2D Oddworld games were a bit hard going. Isn't Stranger's Wrath coming out on Switch?

Yes, it is. Should look great seeing the original is such a nice looking game. I remember it really impressing me back in 2005 but I didn't complete it. I have a bad habit of not committing myself to games that take ages to complete.

[Ghost]

Been playing Super Metroid mostly over the past week. Since modding my gba I’ve been playing Metroid Zero Mission, Advance Wars, Mario Kart Super Circuit, F-Zero Maximum Velocity and Castlevania Circle of the Moon. The GBA was such a great little system and Im surprised how well a lot of the games hold up today.

[Ghost]

I recently got a new stick for my N64 controller, so Super Mario 64 was the first port of call. Ended up getting all 120 stars over a few evenings last week, it's just so much fun choosing which stars to tackle, and coming up with new or different ways of getting them.

Hows the new stick? Is it as good as the Nintendo original?

[noobish hat]

Been playing Super Metroid mostly over the past week. Since modding my gba I’ve been playing Metroid Zero Mission, Advance Wars, Mario Kart Super Circuit, F-Zero Maximum Velocity and Castlevania Circle of the Moon. The GBA was such a great little system and Im surprised how well a lot of the games hold up today.

Circle of the Moon is still my favourite Castlevania. So glad I got it with my launch GBA. I wish Nathan Graves was in Smash so we could get an amiibo! There doesn't seem to have ever been any merch for CotM.

[Tetsuo]

Hows the new stick? Is it as good as the Nintendo original?

It's one of those fancy Steel Sticks 64, something I'd been on the waiting list for since 2016. It's dreamy. I'd say it's even better than the original because it's like using a factory-fresh stick all the time, and the rubber grips on them are a really nice touch.

[Ghost]

Its only taken me 12 years but I have finally finished Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I bought the game the day it was released but just couldnt get into it enough to finish it. Started again from the beginning about 2 weeks ago and just seen the credits. The touch only controls take some getting used to and rolling is infuriatingly hit and miss but I really enjoyed playing the game this time. Now to track down a copy of Spirit Tracks.

[importaku]

Finally got to try a very weird & rather obscure ps1 pocketstation game called PaQa it's about a little alien that crashes to earth and the only thing he can find nearby to survive in is a pocketstation. Think of it as an abusive tamagotchi lol, on the tv is the room where he lives you can watch him wander about and do stuff or you can have him travel to the pocketstation that's plugged into your console, the game won't work without one. You can choose from a list of apps to download into your pocketstation or you can go full out & choose for your little alien buddy to go out from his house and pop into your pocketstation thats plugged in but the character module takes up a full memory card so you can't have the little apps as well. When he leaves his room he picks a pocketstation shaped suit from the wardrobe & slips it on, so far already i have had the little bugger grill me about my height & weight, found out if you hold down any of the directions it will start to squash his face which majorly pisses him off It's a rarity among pocketstation games as it actually has speech samples along with the speaker bleeps not many games used voice samples.


Don't be fooled, he's a git lol.


Loving the connectivity, makes me want to pick up a lot more pocketstation compatible games to make the most of it. I already have a handful that work with it but i'd love to have a large selection.

[importaku]

So many games i have discovered this week, my bank balance is dropping rapidly. These 2 are pretty amazing, totally discovered by accident as i continue to browse deeply through the ps1's vast library of games both bought literally minutes after trying them on the ps classic.

Planet dob gives me a a very strange feeling i can't quite put my finger on like nostalgia for something that i have never played before. It has a very unique artstyle along with the soundtrack it reminds me a lot of both space channel 5 & giftpia. A adventure game where you have to hack into an aliens brain but along the way the technology to tunnel in breaks and the cpu core shatters so you have to try and recover all of the bits to get back out. You play around in the city thats in the aliens mind disguised as him, lots if stange characters & locations to explore as you work out where all the cpu bits are hidden. Various puzzle solving & items needed but the way is presented is fantastic it's won me over instantly.


Segare Ijiri is pretty much madness on a disk, it's probably the most bizzare game i have ever played and considering the games i have played thats quite a claim. You never know quite whats going to happen next it's weird & wonderful & pretty funny. You play in a weird maze of rooms you have an arrow as your head and your mum is a disembodied giraffe head that you have to make grow longer with love. Each time you come across a character in one of the rooms you have several chances to make funny scenes. The gameplay involves making phrases that are plays on words or wordplay jokes, you piece several words together then it plays an animation of what you have created some are truly surreal & bizarre witha lot of poop jokes in there. If it's a successful phrase then another character will appear in one of the rooms of the maze you have only a few tries to guess the correct phrases. Each time you talk to a new character you make appear your mums neck will grow by one point you keep finding these characters and playing the word game till you have enough points to complete a level then you visit your mum for a very weird cutscene. As you get more and more love, more of the doors in the maze will unlock allowing you to go further in and talk to the new characters you unlocked, if you run out of correct guesses and there's nobody left to talk to you can go back to your mum and play a quiz game where she gives you a clue to which unlocked character to talk to you then have one chance to try and guess the correct phrase so even if you run out you are never truly stuck as you can keep trying. So far i have gotten to the 3rd neck growth stage & i'm loving every second theres also a sequel for ps2.

[DeathAdder]

I love the look of those. The gameplay is a bit too quirky for me, although I really like the arrow-head character - might snap sagare ijiri up just for the character if I find it cheap.

[QualityChimp]

I'm not playing this, but this opening animation is astonishing:

https://twitter.com/Cacophanus/status/1093156193617379328

"The animation sequences in the Saturn game Quo Vadis 2 are somewhat legendary. Directed by Ichiro Itano with mecha designs by Kazumi Fujita, I only found out recently that the animation budget was around 1 million yen per second. Pretty crazy! Apologies for the low res clip.

They are quite technical RTS games, the company went bankrupt after the second game was released (no doubt due to the insane animation costs)"

If those missile trails look familiar, it's because Itano used them in his other work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichir%C5%8D_Itano

"Itano is best known among anime fans for a style of action scene that he developed, usually nicknamed "Itano Circus" (板野サーカス Itano sākasu) or "Macross missile massacre" by fans; it refers to a highly stylized and acrobatic method of depicting aerial combat and dogfights in many anime, particularly the Macross series. The animated action sequence technique became famous when Itano used it for the "dogfights" depicted in The Super Dimension Fortress Macross anime TV series from 1982. The Itano Circus is characterized by detailed, fluid shading of the mecha, the close-range acrobatic moves the dueling fighters make in combat, as well as twisting contrails left by fighters and missiles.[2] It is also commonly used in specific reference to an attack where a mecha or spaceship launches a large swarm of guided missiles with meticulously animated spiraling smoke trails and erratic trajectories and its target is repeatedly dodging those missiles at a high speed."

So I've learned today that those Macross missile trails are called "Itano Circus"!

[Ghost]

Been playing Fire Emblem Path of Radiance for the past week, doing a chapter a day. I used to have the game when it was first released but couldnt really get into it back then but so far Im really enjoying the game and its nice to play a fire emblem on the big screen as my previous experience with the series has mainly been on handhelds. Graphically it hasn't aged well, especially compared to the 3DS games, but the gameplay is still really good, the music is great and the story is interesting. Would love to see nintendo remake the game for switch with updated graphics, full voice work and an orchestral soundtrack.

[fallenangle]

Played Fire Emblem Path Of Radiance on the GC many moons ago. A rare and consequently expensive game even when bought used in the UK (£40+).

One of my favourite introductions to a game genre completely new to me. Working out a strategy for getting your whole team through a level intact gave you a great sense of achievement. But the main thing I remember about it was the brilliantly conceived interface/design where you can access the extremely helpful tutorials even mid-game if required. New to the whole concept of a tactical RPG that help was invaluable.

[importaku]

Who would have thought that the absolutely mental baito hell 2000 on psp would actually have a predecessor called groove jikoku V, i sure as hell didn't know till this morning. It instantly won me over at the title intro sequence lol it's so funny & dark, plays a lot like the psp version where you play very surreal crappy minigames to win cash to then blow in the gashapon machines to buy trinkets & tat seems like the same minigames as the psp appear in the ps1 version you can bet your sweet ass i have just been on ebay & found a physical copy, how the hell did i not know this existed.