The real VIDEO GAME CHALLENGE this week is seeing if I can finish this thread before I have to pick up my dog from the groomer. You'll have to stay on the edge of your seats until then!
The two themes that bridge most of this weeks releases are "paper-craft art style" and "re-releases of old video games" so it would really be prudent to bring up both at once. And, by SHEER COINCIDENCE, that also is the biggest name release of the week; Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door! It's a gussied up re-release of what is arguably the best of the Mario RPGs! I, personally, wouldn't make that argument (I hang my hat on Mario RPG), but I would certainly put it right up near the top.
It's up to the brave mustache'd hero Gonzalez and his friends, Mrs. Mowz and several others who are not Mrs. Mowz out on a world spanning quest to keep a ding-dang door shut. This time they included some additional transphobia, which sounds bad out of context, but it's good actually!
Now the other big name release this week is, of course, also a remake of an older RPG, by which I mean one of the oldest RPGs, and the bricklayer for most of what we recognize from the genre; Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, a tremendously gussied up remake of the original Wizardry that comes to us from Digital Eclipse! But it's not so gussied up that it can't forget its origins, since the OG Apple ][ Wizardry is also running in a little corner of the screen. But there's also a lot of modern concessions because HOO NELLY is OG Wizardry kind of hard to go back to nowadays.
Prove yourself to a mad overlord by taking a bunch of soon-to-be deceased adventurin' types into a monster-hole and track down and smack-around the dark lord Werdna. Personally, I don't think I'd care what a guy who calls himself "The Mad Overlord" thinks about me; seems like his opinions are a bit coloured already.
Moving back to paper-looking games, we have Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, which has a kinda Paper Mario-y art style and, as suggested by the title is a detective game, about a duck. Which I presume is where the title came from. That's me doing my own independent investigation into the matter. The eShop describes it as a combination of Obra Dinn and Aggretsuko and... buddy... you got my attention right then and there.
The eShop also has a lot of bird-themed puns in the description but never describes the crime as being "fowl" so what are we even doing here?
Speaking of cozy looking games about weird l'il guys, there's Pinehearts, which DEMANDS OF YOU, to camper around a park and find stuff what lets you fill up your little notebook of Stuff To See.
BE COZY AND LOOK AT WEIRDOS, DAMMIT! WE'RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU!
If your interest was less in Cozy Weirdos and more in Unravelling a strange deadly mystery and also direct references to Obra Dinn, then instead how about Eternal Threads, which sounds... a hell of a lot like Obra Dinn, just without the Gameboy Camera-esque visual style. Maybe Ghost Trick, without the rotoscoping. Or maybe The Butterfly Effect, without Ashton Kutcher. You've got a time machine and a hankering to prevent six people from dying in a house fire but also you've got to figure out how to rewind time to save them *just right* so that avoiding a multiple death house fire isn't the worst outcome to their day.
Okay *now* I have to go get my dog. Whoever had "forty minutes" in the betting pool go to the front counter to collect your winnings
So next is Hauntii, which ALSO looks like Ghost Trick, but with more existential dread and spookiness as you're a l;il casper of a friendly ghost trying to figure out why the population of GHOSTVILLE USA is slowly but steadily decreasing, and trying to work out what, precisely, happens to people when they leave.
Based on context clues in the description "nothing *cool*".
Next we have not but TWO iterations on the Decbuilder RPG! One More Gate is based on Wakfu, and my knowledge of that franchise begins and ends with "has fighting scenes that go *way harder* than you'd ever reasonably expect", and turn based deckbuilding Spire Slaying gameplay isn't necessarily the opposite, but it really doesn't feel like it'd be in the same ballpark. Conversely, C.A.R.D.SRPG has an absolutely terrible title, but it appears to be more akin to something like Devil Survivor, except the combat was StS instead of A Megaten Game. This one has a demo and I'm curious enough to at least give it a try!
And finally, bringing up the rear are the Old Video Games; starting with the latest Egg Console release: Golvellius, which I am vaguely aware as being one of the better Not Quite Zeldas available on the SMS, and this is the MSX2 port of the game. I didn't know there *was* an MSX2 port of Golvellius, but, as noted, I also barely know anything about Golvellius, so I'm simply playing to my established personal characteristics. I don't know how the "almost no english" thing affects this compared to some other Egg Console releases, but being an MSX2 release, it sure as heck looks nicer than most of them.
And bringing up the rear are the three surprise Gameboy games plonked into NSO last week, and they're three games I was *really* surprised to learn weren't already in there; we've got Alleyway if you want a slightly modified Arkanoid with far fewer colours, we've got Baseball if NES Baseball was slightly too rudimentary, but anything more complicated is too much, and we've got Super Mario Land which... honestly... upper tier of Launch Window Gameboy games.
Well that's all you're getting out of me. GO TO BED!
The two themes that bridge most of this weeks releases are "paper-craft art style" and "re-releases of old video games" so it would really be prudent to bring up both at once. And, by SHEER COINCIDENCE, that also is the biggest name release of the week; Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door! It's a gussied up re-release of what is arguably the best of the Mario RPGs! I, personally, wouldn't make that argument (I hang my hat on Mario RPG), but I would certainly put it right up near the top.
It's up to the brave mustache'd hero Gonzalez and his friends, Mrs. Mowz and several others who are not Mrs. Mowz out on a world spanning quest to keep a ding-dang door shut. This time they included some additional transphobia, which sounds bad out of context, but it's good actually!
Now the other big name release this week is, of course, also a remake of an older RPG, by which I mean one of the oldest RPGs, and the bricklayer for most of what we recognize from the genre; Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, a tremendously gussied up remake of the original Wizardry that comes to us from Digital Eclipse! But it's not so gussied up that it can't forget its origins, since the OG Apple ][ Wizardry is also running in a little corner of the screen. But there's also a lot of modern concessions because HOO NELLY is OG Wizardry kind of hard to go back to nowadays.
Prove yourself to a mad overlord by taking a bunch of soon-to-be deceased adventurin' types into a monster-hole and track down and smack-around the dark lord Werdna. Personally, I don't think I'd care what a guy who calls himself "The Mad Overlord" thinks about me; seems like his opinions are a bit coloured already.
Moving back to paper-looking games, we have Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, which has a kinda Paper Mario-y art style and, as suggested by the title is a detective game, about a duck. Which I presume is where the title came from. That's me doing my own independent investigation into the matter. The eShop describes it as a combination of Obra Dinn and Aggretsuko and... buddy... you got my attention right then and there.
The eShop also has a lot of bird-themed puns in the description but never describes the crime as being "fowl" so what are we even doing here?
Speaking of cozy looking games about weird l'il guys, there's Pinehearts, which DEMANDS OF YOU, to camper around a park and find stuff what lets you fill up your little notebook of Stuff To See.
BE COZY AND LOOK AT WEIRDOS, DAMMIT! WE'RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU!
If your interest was less in Cozy Weirdos and more in Unravelling a strange deadly mystery and also direct references to Obra Dinn, then instead how about Eternal Threads, which sounds... a hell of a lot like Obra Dinn, just without the Gameboy Camera-esque visual style. Maybe Ghost Trick, without the rotoscoping. Or maybe The Butterfly Effect, without Ashton Kutcher. You've got a time machine and a hankering to prevent six people from dying in a house fire but also you've got to figure out how to rewind time to save them *just right* so that avoiding a multiple death house fire isn't the worst outcome to their day.
Okay *now* I have to go get my dog. Whoever had "forty minutes" in the betting pool go to the front counter to collect your winnings
So next is Hauntii, which ALSO looks like Ghost Trick, but with more existential dread and spookiness as you're a l;il casper of a friendly ghost trying to figure out why the population of GHOSTVILLE USA is slowly but steadily decreasing, and trying to work out what, precisely, happens to people when they leave.
Based on context clues in the description "nothing *cool*".
Next we have not but TWO iterations on the Decbuilder RPG! One More Gate is based on Wakfu, and my knowledge of that franchise begins and ends with "has fighting scenes that go *way harder* than you'd ever reasonably expect", and turn based deckbuilding Spire Slaying gameplay isn't necessarily the opposite, but it really doesn't feel like it'd be in the same ballpark. Conversely, C.A.R.D.SRPG has an absolutely terrible title, but it appears to be more akin to something like Devil Survivor, except the combat was StS instead of A Megaten Game. This one has a demo and I'm curious enough to at least give it a try!
And finally, bringing up the rear are the Old Video Games; starting with the latest Egg Console release: Golvellius, which I am vaguely aware as being one of the better Not Quite Zeldas available on the SMS, and this is the MSX2 port of the game. I didn't know there *was* an MSX2 port of Golvellius, but, as noted, I also barely know anything about Golvellius, so I'm simply playing to my established personal characteristics. I don't know how the "almost no english" thing affects this compared to some other Egg Console releases, but being an MSX2 release, it sure as heck looks nicer than most of them.
And bringing up the rear are the three surprise Gameboy games plonked into NSO last week, and they're three games I was *really* surprised to learn weren't already in there; we've got Alleyway if you want a slightly modified Arkanoid with far fewer colours, we've got Baseball if NES Baseball was slightly too rudimentary, but anything more complicated is too much, and we've got Super Mario Land which... honestly... upper tier of Launch Window Gameboy games.
Well that's all you're getting out of me. GO TO BED!
