Not really a lot to this one, but for 1984 it's pretty cool. Selection A is pretty boring, but Selection B is a bit more fun, which was interesting to me. Usually I grow to prefer time trial over grand prix or vs mode in racing games, and here it's kinda the opposite. The real star of the show is the level editor. I always love level editors, and while this one is really basic it's still lots of fun to play around with. Giggling to myself imagining some kid in the 80s tricking their friend into playing the most shittily designed courses imaginable.

Originally designed for the Sharp X68000 as somewhat of a Ys clone, the SNES port of Lagoon ditches the bump combat in favor of just mapping each swing to one button press. The game isn't rebalanced in any capacity to accomodate for this, and the sword you carry hardly extends out of your own hitbox at all, and so this change fucks up the entire rhythm and balance of everything going on to a completely absurd degree. It becomes insanely difficult and excruciating in this "fake" kind of way where it shouldn't be as bad as it is. The entire game is only about 5-6 hours long, but you will not get used to your wet noodle (according to Terri) of a sword even as it draws to a close. It is fucking inconsolable. It's too mediocre in its other suits to make up for the gameplay failures.

I would replay it before replaying Drakkhen, though. Somehow, it's not the worst of the console's launch year RPGs. No idea why you'd play either over Final Fantasy IV, though.

My expectations were set pretty high from things I had heard about this one, and honestly I was pretty rarely let down. I'm not too partial to the art style, nor the 4-way firing in comparison to the Contra series' 8, but other than minor nitpicks I had a really nice time with this. Not quite as cinematic or charming as Contra III or Hard Corps imo, which is usually what keeps bringing me back to those two, but it definitely catches up in terms of how enjoyable it is to play (very likely actually surpassing III in this regard). I should definitely look into a few more from this series sooner or later.

Going back to the mention of 4-way firing, actually - you can kinda fire in diagonals with the machine gun, but you have to alternate between firing up and forward to create a "spray" of sorts. It's not always worth the trouble though, especially considering you can't just hold the button down for some reason. That's pretty established with machine guns in video games.

played as Guy
featuring leandroooo as Mike Haggar

Today was weird. For a palette cleanser I joined a vc and did the arcade version of Final Fight with a friend, after completing the SNES version eight months ago. This was way, way better solely due to the existence of co-op, which turns the game into a total blast. Not sure about on an actual arcade machine, but if you and a friend both have Fightcade I would absolutely recommend giving this a whirl together.

It's just decent on your own, though. It makes the main setbacks a lot more apparent, namely that the stages are too long and the bosses are really ridiculous without another person. On a note unrelated to gameplay, there's Poison. As a trans girl in a video game from 1989 she is predictably portrayed...poorly, with the whole thing that is like "oh it's okay to hit THIS girl because she's actually a MAN..." No she isn't. I'd hope future appearances are better about that but I am no expert on Final Fight lore.

The Amiga version, so I'm told, adds these completely ridiculous stories about what happened after the game's events, such as Haggar resigning after a cocaine scandal and Cody falling down a sewer and dying at age 29. I wonder if those are canon.

addendum: the amiga nonsense is anti-piracy stuff apparently. still very silly

doubel dragon 3 review

ookay so think of like. fucjking, the worst beatemup you can think of. if your anwser was double dragon 3 (or clfifhanger ) you' re probably right on t arget becaus;e i dont know fuck how this was put in arcade cabniets and then on store shelv,es. the arcade game uses like microtransations and shit to get ex;tra lives and better abilities and more health and all that kidn of stuff and its like ok i think these should be by default already it's alkready piss hard and hit detection almost feels random and everyone takes a biollion years to kill. its completely ridiculus and actually just feels like dog ashit all around its only 5 levels olong but it feels like it was designed by aliens i dont fuckig get it its like unacceptabel arcade games are already quarter muncher bullhshit but this is extortion thi sis like obscene dude gheyre not even trying to hide it

i played the genesuis version so i didnt have to deal with the microntransactions but all the other problems are still present its just a completely terible experience and it p[sises me off immensely .dougle dragon 3 is a complete waste of time and air and i played it bc i thought it wuold be funny and it wasn;t particularly at all i was just kind of wowed by how bad it is you should not try it im going to go to asleep now

4:27 speedrun instructions
level 1: hold left
level 2: hold left
level 3: hold right
level 4: hold left

Man, I don't know. Over-designed, maybe? Too complex? For a shmup, at least? I don't know. I felt really out of my element the whole time, not only due to the brutal difficulty but also juggling around things like money management and a level system and a bunch of stuff that doesn't seem so necessary. Is that there in the arcade version? I'm not sure. I didn't like this version much, and I'm not too inclined to check out the others. Kind of disappointing because I did go in with high expectations. Rarely do I see console shmups from this era with averages above 3.5.

Had a conversation somewhere about "video games about diseases" and downloaded three SNES games of this caliber, all published by Raya Systems. Figured the group chat would get some laughs out of the sheer absurdity of it all, so I let RNG choose which one to play and fired it up tonight.

This game is really fucking bad! But I believe it does a good enough job on the educational aspect. Learned a lot of things I didn't know about diabetes and insulin and such, though on the other hand I feel like these are things a diabetic should learn of through more direct means, like from their doctor. It's obviously well intentioned, and I can't really knock it for that, but man...

I used to have some trouble differentiating this and Ghouls n' Ghosts because last year I played them about two months apart, so this time around I decided on playing them back to back.

What I took away from it this time is that Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is a lot harder, and a lot slower. Not just due to SNES slowdown, the levels are generally just a lot slower paced, especially with the autoscrollers. It's easily noticeable even without playing the two games; if you look around for speedruns you'll notice Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is twice as long. I personally think the shorter, snappier levels of GnG fit the playstyle of the series a lot better.

Weapons also aren't too great this time around. GnG has a more well-rounded selection that will occasionally have better weapons for better situations, but in Super it's best to just stick to the knife whenever you can. Even with the upgraded armor and the upgraded weapons that come with it, the knife is far more useful than the others. A lot like Goblins in that regard except this game doesn't suck ass lmao.

The fucking princess' three sizes are listed during the curtain call before the credits for some reason. I don't know what that was all about but me and the friends I was calling were joking around about it when we eventually discovered it's the same measurements that Chun Li has. Wacky stuff.

Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts are both very solid, but I think the former sets a bar that Super doesn't quite reach when you compare the two. I'd probably recommend both, but if you wanted just one I'd probably never tell you to play Super first.

Here's what Spider-Man would look like running on a Game Boy Color!
Now we wish we had a handheld version of Spider-Man...

"I was the lead programmer on this game. Man, those fucking birds. I am very sorry."
-Matthew Conte