What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[celerystalker]

I didn't mind that it wasn't more robust, since I was seeking out short games to begin with, but I do have Axiom Verge for Vita too and should see how that compares someday when I'm up for a lengthier Metroid-style game. I've never bought Hollow Knight myself, but my husband got that for his Mac a while back and, coincidentally, just started playing recently. Maybe Exile's End inspired him to play another Metroid-style game.

As for my Super Hydorah playing on Vita, I cleared the remaining optional stages and only have the last two stages now. I was surprised at how little practice Path of Scylla took me, considering the in-game "description" (or whatever you wanna call it) is a warning saying "Better not to enter", and a walkthrough I came across talks about the stage being a total nightmare that would take hours of practice. Go figure. Once I had good weapons, it was nothing compared to the struggle I had with Galactic Inferno or even some of the other stages. With all but the last two stages cleared, I now have every weapon at my disposal. The second-to-last stage is a boss rush, which is a design concept I've never been fond of in general, and this one is extra annoying because all six of these bosses you have to beat in a row to clear the stage are brand-new. So you have to learn a boss, probably lose when you get to the next, repeat the ones you've cleared until you learn the next, rinse and repeat. That said, I've already made it to the sixth and final boss of the stage, so hopefully I just need a little more practice before I can move on to the final stage of the game.

I had a lot of fun with both Axiom Verge games. The second one is more streamlined in its mechanics and is more exploration-focused, while the first had an atmosphere I liked better, more and better bosses, but a whole lot of useless weapons. Hollow Knight I love to pieces. I just started a third playthrough of it. My oldest boy got strep throat, and asked me to play for him to watch while he rests on the couch. The only real flaw, if you'd call it that, is in the Godhome section, where the difficulty to complete the pantheons is ratcheted up to the point of being inaccessible for a lot of folks, with the best ending stuck behind one of the most absurd boss gauntlets ever created.

[fpbrush]

Pubg mobile rn

[Aussie2B]

Yep, holding R1 to run in Lucifer Ring for PlayStation makes a huge difference in how fluid the game feels, though platforming still doesn't feel great and is better done without running. The running strong attack just slices and dices through practically anything. I set the difficulty to Easy and blew through the whole game again, without even using any continues, I believe. In fact, I think you have to do the whole game in one sitting because it seems like the only time the game saves is after beating it. Though, after beating it a second time, you unlock the level select, which not only lets you pick the level but even which section of the level you want to start on, and after clearing a stage, you return to the level select. With that, I saw I missed two optional routes (one in the first stage and one in the third), so I started sections before those to find them, then jumped straight to the final boss to beat the game again and save the fact I've explored every section. The part I missed in the third stage was especially notable in that in contains the stage's mid boss (a basilisk). So now there's nothing left I could do in the game besides try the two harder difficulties, but I hear they don't change much (I assume it just takes more hits to kill everything). I'm satisfied leaving it there, so I'll have to pick something else to start now.

Other than that, my daughter has switched from wanting to watch me play Super Mario World to Super Mario Kart, which I've been playing via our flash cart. I've gotten gold on all the 50cc and 100cc cups, and I was apparently wrong in thinking you have to clear 150cc to get the credits. I imagine I'll tackle those cups soon.

[YoshiM]

It's been a dry spell. With work being busy, I haven't been able to take a proper break or much of a lunch, so the Switch has been dormant. With what time I've had at home to myself, I've been loading my 2DS's and 3DS with CFW along with bigger memory cards. Right now I'm formatting a 64 GB for my New 3DS, which is taking forever. I did get to play some "Kid Icarus: Uprising", which has been a thorn in my side due to its funky land movement controls. But I'm trying to wrap my brain around the controls as in the past I just pushed it aside in disgust.

[Aussie2B]

I've been coming to the realization that I probably should've put more thought into the diversity of the games I brought with me for my stay with family. In the grand scheme of things, I have more options than I know what to do with, since we've got loaded up flash carts for use on the AV Famicom and SNES we keep here, and we also brought a back-light modded original GBA with its own flash cart. But I've always used flash carts more for toying around, while the games I get seriously invested in are the ones I've bought officially. So I've got my Vita with five physical games and an assortment of PS1, PSP, and Vita games I've gotten digitally (mostly stuff that's digital-only). Subtracting out the games I've already beaten and ones I don't especially want to play during this trip (because I don't have great headphones with me or because there are other games in the series I want to play first), that leaves me with over a dozen to pick from. But around a third of the games I've got with me for my Vita are shmups and a couple are twin-stick shooters, and having recently beaten Gaia Seed and Rock Boshers DX, I wasn't super eager to start something similar to those just yet. But I wasn't feeling the other stuff right now, so I did end up starting another 2D horizontal shmup: Super Hydorah for Vita.

I've beaten a few stages so far, but the difficulty does seem to ramp up fast. I like that it saves so you don't have to always start from the beginning, though I wish I could revisit stages to search for secrets. I found one on the second stage but haven't seen anything else yet.

[fpbrush]

On the road again getting new badges on the Mario Wonder. Pretty fun, still.

[Aussie2B]

Going off the in-game map, I assume I'm about halfway through Super Hydorah for Vita, but the stage I'm up to, Galactic Inferno, is like a brick wall. It's a real gauntlet, with so many sections and boss fights, and it's been royally kicking my butt. And with its length, it's tiresome to try over and over, not to mention you lose some weapon strength with each death, so you're put at more and more of a disadvantage, since you can't repeat prior stages to power up. I could restart from the very beginning, but ehhhhh.

[Aussie2B]

After a LOT of practice, I finally managed to clear that brutal Galactic Inferno stage in Super Hydorah on Vita and then quickly blew through a couple short stages following that. It's definitely not a linear difficulty curve. But I'm a little worried if there are going to be stages just as hard or harder than Galactic Inferno. If there are, I hope they're at least a good bit shorter. Each attempt at Galactic Inferno was taking me around 10 minutes, so needless to say, that gets tiresome after many attempts. To add insult to injury, there's a cutscene at the start of Galactic Inferno that can't be skipped. It's a small scene, but it's still aggravating after you've seen it tons of times.

[Osirus]

[Aussie2B]

I've got access to three different stages in Super Hydorah on my Vita right now, but they're all a pain in the ass. Mostly I'm trying to clear Underground Base, and it doesn't seem like it'll be hugely difficult to do so, but I feel like Galactic Inferno kinda sapped a lot of my patience for the game. My next game definitely needs to be something that's not quite so challenging for me to make progress in.

Still playing Super Mario Kart via our flash cart on SNES for my daughter too. I got gold in the Mushroom Cup and Star Cup on 150cc. The former was no sweat, but the latter took a number of failed attempts. But my daughter likes the Star Cup anyway, since she seems to be fond of the beach and snow tracks.

[fpbrush]

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all.

Enjoying Mario Wonder, still. I managed to get 2 badges and there are 3-4 more to go. All the standees. Just gonna max it all out someday I imagine. Picked Metroid Dread backup. Had to guide through a rough spot, but smooth sailing for now. It says: “Items: 61%” so good progress?

Off to the side I started playing PGA TOUR Golf Shootout. A fun little diversion from surfing the internet black hole, haha. It’s supposed to have real courses and looked arcade-y fun.

[Aussie2B]

It took some practice and the help of the better weapons I recently gained, but I cleared Charybdis in Super Hydorah on my Vita. It's one of the short stages, but I really struggle with parts that make you wait out being in extremely tight quarters with swarms of enemies. So hard to dodge without slamming into something. Moa-Urdz after that wasn't too tough, so now I'm down to two optional stages and two required.

[fpbrush]

Played with my Nintendo DS Lite version today

[Aussie2B]

Still haven't gotten particularly invested in anything, but I have been cleaning and testing a bunch of stuff these last few weeks. A few years ago, during a walk, my husband and I came across some clear bags put out on the curb for recycling and saw they were loaded full of Atari, Intellivision, and Coleco stuff. We brought everything home, and the first thing I tried was the boxed Atari 7800, which we found with ten 2600 carts and seven 7800 carts (plus some manuals). At the time, we discovered the 7800 could play the 2600 games just fine, but no matter what we did, the 7800 games wouldn't work. Disappointed with that, I cleaned up all the Colecovision carts we found. I think there was somewhere in the ballpark of 15 carts, plus some overlays for the Super Action games. I already had a Colecovision and small collection of carts, so I figured I'd test the carts on the system I already had and worry about cleaning up the found Colecovision and all the controllers (two regular and two Super Action) later. That's when I learned my Colecovision had stopped working at some point since the last time I had used it. We tried a bunch of stuff but couldn't resolve that problem either. So then the wind was really taken out of my sails, and I packed everything else away.

All these years later, I finally got the urge to mess with the stuff again. I cleaned the Intellivision II we found, plus the one whole controller (found another that was strangely pried open and missing pieces) and 30-some carts. Also found a big stack of overlays and some manuals. Fortunately, the Intellivision works just fine, as do all the carts, though the controller is only partially working. Luckily, I have an Intellivision Flashback I received as a gift a long time ago and barely touched, and I learned people make adapters for using Flashback controllers on real Intellivision systems. So I got a pair of those and can now use perfect, mint condition controllers on my Intellivision II. I also had a collection of nearly 20 Intellivision carts kicking around, despite never owning an Intellivision before this literal find, so I tested those out too. Here's the list of all I played:

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Astrosmash
Atlantis
B-17 Bomber
Bomb Squad
Bowling
Boxing
Demon Attack
Frog Bog
Horse Racing
Ice Trek
Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack
Lock 'N' Chase
Loco-Motion
Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man
Math Fun
Mind Strike
Mission X
Motocross
NBA Basketball
NFL Football
NHL Hockey
Night Stalker
Safecracker
Sea Battle
Space Armada
Space Battle
Space Spartans
Stampede
Star Strike
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Sub Hunt
Swords & Serpents
Triple Action
Tron: Solar Sailer
Utopia
Vectron

I've got over ten duplicates, so that's why the numbers don't quite add up. Anyway, it's been fun exploring this library that I had practically no knowledge of or experience with. So far, I think I like Loco-Motion best, as I was already a fan of the Game Boy version under the title Guttang Gottong on the European Konami GB Collection Vol. 3. But some other notable ones to me were Astrosmash, Frog Bog, Space Armada, and Stampede. I guess I'm grativating toward the ones that are easy to quickly grasp. Some of the others will take some time to figure out.

We also have an Intellivoice we found, but it ended up buried away elsewhere, so I'll dig that out, clean it up, and test it another time.

If all this wasn't rad enough already, my husband managed to fix the 7800 too. His skill at tinkering with electronics has gotten even better than when we last messed with it, so this time he noticed oxidation on one of the sockets, put in a jump wire, and voila, a 100% working 7800. All the 7800 games we found worked fine, and I played a bit of Centipede, Choplifter, Food Fight, and Joust. Then I popped in Asteroids and Pitfall for 2600 just to make sure the system still plays 2600 games too.

I think I'll leave it at that for now. The Colecovision we found was in the roughest shape of everything, so I have no faith that it'll work any better than the Colecovision I've had longer. I do want to have a working Colecovision again someday, but I need a break from cleaning and troubleshooting.

[Aussie2B]

I received a few imports in the mail yesterday, and the first I cleaned and tried out was Sailor Moon R for Game Boy. I cleared the first stage via the main game mode, where you get all the different types of gameplay. Pretty middle-of-the-road, not particularly good nor bad. But I'm a Sailor Moon fan, and I thought it would be fun to get some more Sailor Moon games, even if they, overall, aren't that highly regarded. Already have a copy of Another Story, which seems the highest praised of the bunch.