Someone really watched a Sean Connery prestige film and was like "Do you know what the boomers watching this truly need? An arcadey Nintendo shmup that takes advantage of the latest toy gimmick gun!"

And, make no mistake, it's a very fun and unique game, but I can't help but feel its audience may have been... kneecapped a bit by the movie being adapted into something where you fight a giant cartoon squid in a sexy mode 7 level https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1048770623805079633/1116608022110797824/Hunt_for_Red_October_The_USA_-_Snes9x_1.60_2023-06-09_01-46-33.mp4

The graphics are pretty alright on SNES. It does the usual technique of making the water backgrounds very wavy and disorienting, much like say Super Bomberman 3. The enemy sprites aren't the most memorable but I suppose it fits. The sprite scaling in the lightgun segments is pretty nice as well, reminded me that this is one of the only 10 or so games to take advantage of the Super Scope and even now I wonder what potential the device could have fulfilled if more people were interested in it.

Red October isn't your typical shmup, AT ALL. There's a massive health bar, which already makes it more fun than at least 90% of arcade shmups by default. While most "space shmups" and the like are very fast-paced, Red October is slow and meticulous, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. It emulates the feel of a slow deep dive into the ocean and being assaulted by unknowns. Thankfully, the player has a huge arsenal to work with. There is a weapon for each face button, and they hit just about every pattern imaginable. The player can either strafe with their shots or make hard turns, and if the player is moving up or down the bullets carry momentum which is super helpful for the penultimate boss.

Also I have to give mentions to the special weapons. The EMP disables all enemy projectiles for a while, which I suppose is realistic but utterly breaks most of the boss fights lol. I prefer the camo personally; Red October features stealth gimmicks that are actually pretty integral to surviving the experience, as some enemies are nigh-undodgable otherwise. Stealth elements in non-stealth games tend to be very tacked on, so I was pleasantly surprised by this to say the least.

And I have to give special mention to the soundtrack. It's all classical shit you've heard a million times, but it still never gets old hearing Ode to Joy in 16-bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8t45dOIFx0

Main flaws with the game? It's not the most fitting adaptation, it's very easy to 1cc to the point it should take ~2 hours max, and the cutscenes are uninteresting. But frankly, this sort of unique experience is the kind of shit I live for. Again, it's a meticulous underwater shmup with 5 different weapons, stealth mechanics that are fleshed out, and chiptune classical music for the OST. There's nothing quite like it and I would rec at least one playthrough for any hardcore shmup fans.

I haven't done every route yet
but this might be the funniest fucking VN ever made https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847812378628116/1218758562726281307/Untitled.png?ex=6608d45c&is=65f65f5c&hm=eefd55b36d8340c6e66f51f9c172437c2c24cf45b29fdd72418a83bd79614bb5&

All jokes aside, it's a cool and very important piece of history. Can really see how many VNs were inspired by it like its immediate successors including Kamaitachi No Yoru or Tegami, let alone later VNs. If nothing else, Otogirisou is an important history lesson to experience for any VN fan imo, and it's extremely easy to get the first good ending in ~2 hours without a guide.

Even in a silly group reading setting, I was scared several times by some of the pixel art and noises. The credits music in particular is rather beautiful.

I might type more when I read the other routes but anyways enjoy the fan translation title screen for now
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847812378628116/1218734760340226190/image.png?ex=6608be31&is=65f64931&hm=678cd0abdcbf0adbe13ca61b6a38b6aade5180cf40ecaa1cdbdae8afb7f108a2&

This is a total ROM conversion for the original Mega Man X which can be downloaded here: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/8167/

I have been working off and on with this project for a couple years now. It's no secret my favourite character has always been Zero from the Mega Man series. The way he has always been eager to lend a helping hand to X and his comrades. How he would continuously save the world against overwhelming odds. That his life followed such a complicated trajectory across multiple sub-series' but he consistently tried to be a force for good despite his background, being made by the evil Wily for world domination. As a young child, he was an inspiration to me. So naturally my mind was blown the instant I discovered he was playable in X3. Doubly so when I discovered the Zero Project for X3.

The original Mega Man X is my most played game ever. For a while it seemed like every revisit, I learned something new about the game; be it the stages changing depending on the boss order tackled, or the enemies losing their body parts when hit with certain weapons.

This is why I wished for a world where this game could feel fresh to me again. After being wowed by the X3 Zero Project, I felt a rush of excitement to try my hand fully incorporating Zero into the world of X1, so I got to work. Over 2 years or so, I was faced with numerous self-doubts.

"I'll never be smart enough to edit the text."
"These files are in bin format? I can't open these with PowerISO, what can I do then?!"
"I'll never figure out how to change the music!"
"I wish I could change the 1up icon...."

I'm here to tell you that if you want to achieve something hard enough, you CAN get it done. Your biggest enemy is yourself, and everybody is their own worst critic. Creating this hack was a long journey and I learned so much about so many things that go into game creation, particularly the retro classics.

Assembly language coding. Music sheets. Which objects are transparent VS opaque. Pallet swapping. Health and ammunition variables. Scripting and font colours. It simply goes on and on.

To all those who love Mega Man as I do, I hope this hack is something universally enjoyable. I much prefer to spread my love for things I am passionate about than to focus on the negativity, which is why I went above and beyond to put this together. That the levels, stages, cutscenes, music, physics, graphics, and so forth can have so many significant changes to make the world truly feel like a what-if alternate universe where Zero was the main character, rather than some mere character swap. The overall aim was to have a game that was somewhat harder than the original Mega Man X, but still make Zero feel powerful and different enough that his campaign wasn't just X's campaign but harder.

And of course, I have to give a huge shoutout to everybody over the years who helped this project come into fruition. Xeeynamo for creating a level editor. xstuff for helping me with graphical and music edits. denim for compression and decompression programs. GoldS and Power Panda for disassembly files that gave me a great headstart. Falchion 22 and Peru for initial hacking elements I mixed and matched. cerberus-rack, brongaa12, Kensuyjin33, and fallensoldier420 for graphical work relevant to Zero’s canon design. Umiliphus for graphical work relevant to Dr. Wily’s sprite. Maël Hörz for HxD, the greatest hex editor I have ever used. And of course, Vis for the amazing cover art I submitted to IGDB. https://twitter.com/PD_CGT_games/status/1718036539622531354?s=20

I truly believe working with so many people to learn romhacking skills in the past couple years and gaining so many new perspectives around the hobby has not only made me a better coder, but also a better person. I thank everyone who helped push my dream of a fully integrated Zero in MMX1's world to reality.

"Sigma, you should have studied the blueprints closer! There is only one Zero!"

There's really no way I can sum up the amount of love that was poured into this little modification of a classic that I rented way too much when I was little. Words couldn't possibly describe it, and a visual representation couldn't possibly depict it.

I will say that kid me and probably many others were thinking "wow, I sure wish I could play as that cool girl, she looks totally badass!"

Now I can, at least in this game. You rule CF.

When I first heard of this game I immediately thought of the Ted Nugent song which if you hadn't listened to the song before is a guitar-driven track with a real "I'm gonna kick some ass" feel to it which strangely enough fits this game. I am a big fan of the action movie genre and a HUGE fan of John Woo's work with "Hard Boiled" being one of my favorite movies ever so I was very eager to play this game because it was a sequel to that film. In the gameplay aspect, it fires on all cylinders it's such a balls-to-wall kind of game that I wish we got from a Max Payne game (Max Payne 3 is kind of close) the movement is so slick and satisfying and I love all the things you can do in a stage with my favorite being able to ride on those carts also the tequila bombs are cool. Story-wise though it doesn't strike me in any way which is strange because it's John Woo but whatever you don't play stranglehold for the plot. I wanna give a shoutout to this game for having one of my favorite levels in a video game which is that part where you fight these guys while a jazz band is forced to still play and you have to protect them it's so cool. Though the game is extremely jank and that fov is so ugly.

Let's talk about strategy guides. It's no secret some games have very obtuse elements about them. Often times, they're not meant to be used in a first playthrough at all and are the kind of thing one would find out from Nintendo Power ages later. One example would be the Hadouken and Shoryuken in the Mega Man X games. Then there are secrets like the Lightsaber in Ico which nobody would ever find without a strategy guide, but the player probably wants to get on their first playthrough even if they don't necessarily need it.

And then you have games that can feel completely overwhelming or even unplayable without a strategy guide. I cannot even begin to name all the point-and-clicks and JRPGs filled to the brim with labyrinthine structures, permanently missable content, bugs or intended conditions that cause the player's save file to essentially become bricked, sidequests so hidden it took decades to find them, etc etc etc.

Knytt manages to be all of this. Knytt is nearly a brilliant game. When I started playing Knytt, I picked up all but 3 items blind in under an hour. At first, I thought it was a very soothing experience with an incredible atmosphere. The ambient music is shockingly amazing, and perfectly compliments the dark yet colourful world.

Unfortunately, as I neared the end of the game, I started growing increasingly frustrated. Too many platforms were lined up in such a way the player was only 1 pixel out of reach to entering a new path. It became hard to distinguish background characters from actual enemies. And then the worst part happened; I accidentally jumped into an invisible tile in the middle of nowhere that turned out to be an important warp zone.

Within minutes, my opinion of the game lowered from perhaps a 9/10 to a 7/10 at best. I'm not even certain if the last few powerups can be found without all the other warp zones I discovered in a speedrunning video, because there are no guides online. There is no communication to the player they are near an invisible tile, and the game's world is so massive it takes about 5 minutes to run across it in a straightish line. I did find some codes for the game on GameFAQs but I don't think the game itself communicates them anywhere either https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/937276-knytt/cheats

So what are we left with? A passionate and unique game that is ultimately too messy and unnecessarily obtuse for its own good. What could have been an all time classic PC metroidvania is bogged down by adhering to the "we need to sell strategy guides" school of thought despite it being a freeware indie game.

If the game looks up your alley, my suggestion is to look for how ever many items you can naturally find in about an hour with the searchlight feature, and then watch this speedrun to find the rest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmg_maTOSrs

Also worth noting, it is a 2006 PC game. It ran without any significant issues on my Windows 11 rig, but I did have to use Joy2Key for controller support and the fullscreen was a bit fucked in that it forced everything to my second monitor. It's nothing too inconvenient given how short the game is however.