Take it from an expert, it's not as easy as it looks to eat an entire fire hydrant.
Screeching to a halt outside your house and screaming "Get in the car, loser!" this week is Lil Guardsman, which is a point and clicky talk-em-up style adventure game, inspired by the likes of Papers Please, just... substantially more whimsical and less emotionally crushing. You're filling in for your dad at the kingdoms border crossing and interrogating Fantasy Peeps on whether or not to let them in. And your character looks enough like the guy from the Ninja Sex Party videos that it's giving me some real cognitive dissonance as the game looks much less rowdy than those..
And speaking of adventure games about people with absurd hair who are interrogating people with lives on the line, we have Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, a collection of Apollo Justice, Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies and Phoenix Wright: Spirit of Justice. Plus the DLC for the latter two games! They're Ace Attorney games, so you know the deal; you're the most over-delivering Criminal Defense Attorney in the business, learning that literally every single people ever served a court summons is just constantly perjuring themselves and figuring out who the actual murderers are so you can accuse them instead, but being careful not to waste the judges time with tangents more than 5 times or else your client is killed on the spot.
You know, the legal system, as intended.
And what the heck, let's stick with adventure games, since there's a lot this week and most of them look or sound neat; and that means next is Grotto. This one is more walking and puzzle-y based. You're some kind of star-readin' zodiac-y knowing peep in a creepy cave full of animal peeps all of whom say "Hey... skys kinda weird. Could you take a whack at figuring that out? Maybe talk to some ghosts or w/e? You know; however you do what you do".
I would describe the art design as "real neat", and I would mean it!
And we'll close out the Adventure Game genre with Dead Tomb, the latest from 8 Bit Legit, a publisher whose entire catalogue is made up of homebrewed NES games. In this case, it's a point and clicky adventure game much in the Maniac Mansion or Shadowgate mold. You're a time traveler what accidentally got stranded back in MUMMY TIMES and you've got a murder-trap puzzle pyramids worth of exploring to do to get your time machine back up and running.
And while that's the last adventure game, it's HARDLY the last "Game intended for 8 Bit Hardware", so next is another Egg Console release; Yokai Tantei! Straight from the PC-88 to Your Switch! In this one you're an eyeball with l'il arms and legs and it looks to be a maze chase game, like Pac-Man, except its one where the objective is to kill the monsters instead of flee them. Also, apparently your eyeball guy is a detective, according to the eShop description; but that doesn't reflect as much in the video game unless exploding monsters with reflective tear-drop grenades was a common practice when investigating murders in 19th century Japan.
Look, I wasn't there, you can't expect me to know whether or not that was the case!
And speaking of games inspired by tremendously popular video games in Japan in the early 1980s, Sokobon was one of them. But that wound up being pretty severely outmoded by Adventures of Lolo and what was the PC equivalent of Lolo in the early 90s? Why nothing less than Chips Challenge, of course! Which I am realizing was not ported that often despite how ubiquitous it was. Sometimes life throws us all curveballs.
But few balls were as curvy as those thrown to poor young Chip who got Tronned into a series of COMPUTERIZED MURDER PUZZLES by Melinda the Mental Marvel all because he wanted to join her computer club.
I feel like this is a very stringent on-boarding process, Melinda! Nobody likes gatekeeping!
Anyway, there's 140 Lolo-style puzzles to navigate in a game that I already know I loved, which is great, but it not-at-all is formatted to make due for the fact that the game was traditionally ported from where it was intended for a screen maybe an inch and a half in diameter.
Another port from the early 90s, you say? Well, how about the shmup, Steel Empire? Not fancy enough for you, well then let's bring on a remaster of it; Legend of the Steel Empire! It's been ported to a lot of stuff since the Genesis originally released it, and now its the Switches turn!
It's got "HD graphics and improved controls" now!
And we'll wrap up talking about ports of older games with the most recent Game by... several console generations at the very least; Hitman Blood Money. I didn't play any of the Hitmens before, so I can't approach this from a position of knowledge, but my understanding is "Sneaky Style Murder-em-up" where you've got free reign over a large area and it was low-key silly the whole time.
And that's a recipe for a good time if you ask this ol' sassafrass.
And we'll end things with no fewer than two anime-em-ups about inflicting violence; Neptunia Sisters is the most recent Neptunia game, where the anthopomorphic representations of video game consoles get into General RPG Nonsense. This time it's an action RPG and, if my experience with the other Neptunia games are to be trusted, it's just a little south of Too Clunky to Be Fun. Conversely, if you want more violence and less yammering, there's Under Night In Birth 2 Sys:Celes, which is a fighting game about which I know nothing save that I'm about 60% sure it's a spinoff of the FATE series.
AND THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT!
Screeching to a halt outside your house and screaming "Get in the car, loser!" this week is Lil Guardsman, which is a point and clicky talk-em-up style adventure game, inspired by the likes of Papers Please, just... substantially more whimsical and less emotionally crushing. You're filling in for your dad at the kingdoms border crossing and interrogating Fantasy Peeps on whether or not to let them in. And your character looks enough like the guy from the Ninja Sex Party videos that it's giving me some real cognitive dissonance as the game looks much less rowdy than those..
And speaking of adventure games about people with absurd hair who are interrogating people with lives on the line, we have Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, a collection of Apollo Justice, Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies and Phoenix Wright: Spirit of Justice. Plus the DLC for the latter two games! They're Ace Attorney games, so you know the deal; you're the most over-delivering Criminal Defense Attorney in the business, learning that literally every single people ever served a court summons is just constantly perjuring themselves and figuring out who the actual murderers are so you can accuse them instead, but being careful not to waste the judges time with tangents more than 5 times or else your client is killed on the spot.
You know, the legal system, as intended.
And what the heck, let's stick with adventure games, since there's a lot this week and most of them look or sound neat; and that means next is Grotto. This one is more walking and puzzle-y based. You're some kind of star-readin' zodiac-y knowing peep in a creepy cave full of animal peeps all of whom say "Hey... skys kinda weird. Could you take a whack at figuring that out? Maybe talk to some ghosts or w/e? You know; however you do what you do".
I would describe the art design as "real neat", and I would mean it!
And we'll close out the Adventure Game genre with Dead Tomb, the latest from 8 Bit Legit, a publisher whose entire catalogue is made up of homebrewed NES games. In this case, it's a point and clicky adventure game much in the Maniac Mansion or Shadowgate mold. You're a time traveler what accidentally got stranded back in MUMMY TIMES and you've got a murder-trap puzzle pyramids worth of exploring to do to get your time machine back up and running.
And while that's the last adventure game, it's HARDLY the last "Game intended for 8 Bit Hardware", so next is another Egg Console release; Yokai Tantei! Straight from the PC-88 to Your Switch! In this one you're an eyeball with l'il arms and legs and it looks to be a maze chase game, like Pac-Man, except its one where the objective is to kill the monsters instead of flee them. Also, apparently your eyeball guy is a detective, according to the eShop description; but that doesn't reflect as much in the video game unless exploding monsters with reflective tear-drop grenades was a common practice when investigating murders in 19th century Japan.
Look, I wasn't there, you can't expect me to know whether or not that was the case!
And speaking of games inspired by tremendously popular video games in Japan in the early 1980s, Sokobon was one of them. But that wound up being pretty severely outmoded by Adventures of Lolo and what was the PC equivalent of Lolo in the early 90s? Why nothing less than Chips Challenge, of course! Which I am realizing was not ported that often despite how ubiquitous it was. Sometimes life throws us all curveballs.
But few balls were as curvy as those thrown to poor young Chip who got Tronned into a series of COMPUTERIZED MURDER PUZZLES by Melinda the Mental Marvel all because he wanted to join her computer club.
I feel like this is a very stringent on-boarding process, Melinda! Nobody likes gatekeeping!
Anyway, there's 140 Lolo-style puzzles to navigate in a game that I already know I loved, which is great, but it not-at-all is formatted to make due for the fact that the game was traditionally ported from where it was intended for a screen maybe an inch and a half in diameter.
Another port from the early 90s, you say? Well, how about the shmup, Steel Empire? Not fancy enough for you, well then let's bring on a remaster of it; Legend of the Steel Empire! It's been ported to a lot of stuff since the Genesis originally released it, and now its the Switches turn!
It's got "HD graphics and improved controls" now!
And we'll wrap up talking about ports of older games with the most recent Game by... several console generations at the very least; Hitman Blood Money. I didn't play any of the Hitmens before, so I can't approach this from a position of knowledge, but my understanding is "Sneaky Style Murder-em-up" where you've got free reign over a large area and it was low-key silly the whole time.
And that's a recipe for a good time if you ask this ol' sassafrass.
And we'll end things with no fewer than two anime-em-ups about inflicting violence; Neptunia Sisters is the most recent Neptunia game, where the anthopomorphic representations of video game consoles get into General RPG Nonsense. This time it's an action RPG and, if my experience with the other Neptunia games are to be trusted, it's just a little south of Too Clunky to Be Fun. Conversely, if you want more violence and less yammering, there's Under Night In Birth 2 Sys:Celes, which is a fighting game about which I know nothing save that I'm about 60% sure it's a spinoff of the FATE series.
AND THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT!
🏝
