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

[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.

[Aussie2B]

Since my last post, I tried more of the batch of imports I mentioned and then bought and received a few more yet. On Nintendo 64, I played a bit of the sample games in Dezaemon 3D. On Super Famicom, I played Chrono Trigger and Front Mission: Gun Hazard. I've had the SNES version of Chrono Trigger since shortly after it released, but it's fun to have a Japanese copy too. Also, there were a couple files already on the cart, and one had some funny names. Here's what the person changed the names to:

Crono -> Nuts
Marle -> Panna (presumably either a reference to panna cotta or "pan", the Japanese word for bread)
Lucca -> Milk
Frog -> Kerokon ("kero" is a Japanese SFX representing the sound frogs make, akin to "ribbit" or "croak". I'm not sure what is intended by the "kon". Maybe "complex", as in "lolicon", "siscon", "brocon", etc.?)
Robo -> Robokon (same deal as with Frog)
Ayla -> Chibi (basically means "small", but it's like calling Ayla a runt or a pipsqueak, so I guess it's supposed to be ironic, like how you might call a huge, tough guy "Tiny")
Magus -> Signal (your guess is as good as mine as to why "Signal" was chosen, haha)

Anyway, I also bought a couple other Japan-exclusive N64 games, but my husband was the one to test those. And I bought a couple PC-FX games, but I don't feel like pulling out the system just yet.

I did finally start up something to actually get invested in. Two games, actually, which wasn't my plan, but I got a jury summons and figured I should pick out a handheld game to start. I don't know what jury duty is like elsewhere in the country, but here, there's usually a ton of sitting around doing nothing while you wait to see if you're even going to be selected. A previous time I had jury duty I played through all of Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge on a Game Boy Pocket. I decided I'd take my Vita, and I started Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack and got up to the third area. It should be enough for my jury duty (and I have digital games on my Vita too if I'm desperate for something else) but hopefully won't be too long and take me away from the longer game I started, which is Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, aka Star Ocean 5, for PS4.

I bought the collector's edition of Star Ocean, which was exclusive to the Square-Enix web store, way back when the game was new eight years ago, and despite it being another entry in my favorite series, I hadn't even opened it until recently. I didn't have a PS4 when I bought it, but if I recall correctly, I had one within a year or two. But I continued to put it off, then got pregnant and for a long time figured an involved RPG just wasn't doable for me. But now I'm at a point where I sleep relatively okay (never enough, but it's not like nursing repeatedly through the night like before), and I pretty reliably have a little time to myself each night. The game doesn't do auto saves or temp saves or anything, just old school save points, but if I'm smart about when I start and quit, I should be able to fully shut down the PS4 each night.

Even though I now have dozens of PS4 games (even after purging a ton of Limited Run Games stuff), this is the first one I'm playing on the system. I've just been using my PS4 for DVDs and Blu-rays all these years, though my husband has played some games on it (but prefers to get stuff for PC over PS4 when possible). I guess I've just been holding out for Star Ocean when it felt like the time was right.

I am aware that the game has a terrible reputation, but I've remained optimistic, as I've loved every Star Ocean I've played thus far, which includes Star Ocean 4, another one that gets a ton of hate. But I do have to say that Star Ocean 5 made an awful first impression on me, which I've never experienced with a Star Ocean game previously. The NPC interaction is frankly just horrible, all the text is hard to read, and all the attempts to make the game "seamless" just work against it. Things feel awkwardly abrupt, like I'm missing something or the game itself is missing something, as if the game wasn't fully finished. It's been giving me Infinite Undiscovery vibes, which is my least liked tri-Ace game, and even kind of reminds me of my experience playing Quest 64 in some ways. But once I got out of the opening town, I started enjoying it more, and I'm currently at the second town. I'm hoping the game will grow on me more and more, and I'm hoping Star Ocean 6, which I haven't played, doesn't repeat some of these mistakes. Sometimes it feels like game developers need to keep "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" in mind, but I also realize I'm a dinosaur stuck in the past and some things change just because that's the direction modern gaming demands. But I'd sure as heck rather simply press a button to initiate and advance dialogue than have a ton of junk pop up all over the screen and disappear before I can even finish reading. This game kinda makes me all the more want to stick with retro games and new releases of retro games or games that stick to older styles of design.

[Tron 2.0]

PS5
Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster Night Diver Studios does it again

[Aussie2B]

I'm getting into somewhat of a groove with Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PS4 now. I got Victor and Fiore, and I think I had an encounter with a couple other characters who will join later. Then I got to the castle, so Vic and Fiore took off. Now I'm back to just Fidel and Miki and have to head back to the initial town. I know this game was advertised as seamless and streamlined, and true enough, everything feels rather stripped down. Battles feel like they have less depth than in prior Star Ocean games, so I haven't even bothered to use anyone but Fidel yet. I basically just mash on X and O alternatively with an occasional skill if the enemies seem a bit tougher. I guess it's fitting in a way. The whole opening feels very derivative of the first Star Ocean, with the starting characters being a group of fighters who are tasked with defending a rural town. Fidel and Miki are basically Ratix and Milly. ("Miki" could even be a portmanteau of "Milly Kiliet", which is the official romanization of the name in Japan. Never mind the nonsense changes made in First Departure's localization.) Miki also has a nickname for Fidel, just like Milly does for Ratix. And I guess Ted would be Dorn, since he doesn't join the party (though Dorn does very briefly). Anyway, where I'm going with this is that, in the first Star Ocean, Ratix sits and does nothing if you switch to controlling another character, so it makes sense to control Ratix the vast majority of the time. In SO5, Fidel is the only character you can control outside of battle, and given the similarities to the first Star Ocean, it's fitting that I'm controlling him in battle too. But I'm sure I'll use others eventually.

I've learned some roles, specialties, and Item Creation abilities, but there's not a ton to do with those either. But now I can harvest and such like in SO4. I've completed a number of quests, but there's only been one so far where I didn't already have the required items when accepting the quest. By simply buying stuff in shops when it says I have zero of an item and fighting most enemies I see, it's been easy to amass whatever I need. I guess I'll see if quests turn into grindy busywork later. I've also heard there's a lot of backtracking, so I guess heading back to Sthal is my first taste of that. But there's a shortcut to take, so it sounds like I don't have to retread the same ground.

Overall, I'm enjoying the game now and have mostly adjusted to its annoyances, though it's definitely on track for being my least favorite Star Ocean so far. But like I said, I've loved every other one I've played, so being in last place isn't necessarily much of a slight. And even if past Star Ocean games didn't leave a bad first impression on me like this one did, I do have to admit that the series isn't the greatest about its opening sequences. I mean, the sheer amount of dialogue in SO2's opening, especially if you pick Claude, can be a real slog to get through. With SO5, they did themselves a disservice by abruptly throwing you into a battle tutorial, then making you deal with the terrible NPC interaction, and then having your first real battle take place at night while townspeople are "fighting" all over the place too. You can barely see or follow what's going on in that attack on the town. Once you get to regular battles, it's so much better.