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Digital Down-Low for 06/14/2024: Cinema Veritas

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
As a personal challenge, I’m tapping this weeks thread out on my phone. So any grammatical or spelling errors are Tim Cooks fault, not mine. You hear me, Tim? I’m calling you out!!

So I didn’t make a thread last week, on account of it being a week o’nuffin, so we’re going to play catch up by starting with a game I’m only mentioning because the Simpsons gif is really easy to pic; Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Thats right, the cult classic B horror movie of the late 80s that reused the monster effects for Ernest Scared Stupid. But now it’s back in Video Game form! And, naturally, it’s going for the asymmetrical horror co-op game style, like Dead by Daylight. And several other games that have long since been discontinued because DbD is the only game like that that’s ever really made a lasting impact. And most of those other ones had the benefit of being based on much more popular franchises than Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

So… umm… enjoy, but maybe don’t seek out too much paid DLC; I’m assuming that investment would not be a wise one.

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Speaking of movie themed games built on a template of other, very popular games, we have Star Wars: Hunters. Which is a hero-based Arena Shooter, like your Overwatches or your Apex Legendses or what have you. But this one is based on those incredible stars of space; the Star Warriors; like General Grievous or Salacious Crumm. Or… some other guy that people have positive affection for in so far as Star Warfare goes. Well, technically they’re all original characters but they’re also all plainly based on other guys so… y’know… still counts.

Scamper around the far flung future and explode other peeps into little chunks. Or don’t. Whichever, just do or don’t do it without trying.

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Speaking of games based on movies, which we still are, thank you, we’ve got Willys Wonderland. Based on the movie of the same name and which I was really disappointed with, and was carried entirely by a Nic Cage who was firmly in the “whatever I need money badly” phase of his career and given cart Blanche to just Do Whatever.

The game is a beat-em-up starring Nic Cages character if he didn’t look a blessed thing like Nic Cage robbing the film of the one thing it had going for it.

Anyway, it’s Five Nights at Freddie’s if the victim and villain roles were reversed and the gameplay was more active than watching TV.

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Speaking of TV, how about SMTV? Shin Megami Tensei V:engeance, that is! This here is the gussied up Oodles of More Content release of SMTV. Much more extensive than a Pokemon Yellow kind of situation as this one has a whole new alternate storyline on top of all kinds of new demons to recruit. And I really liked SMTV, even if I didn’t finish it, so this would be an easy recommendation. It’d be nice if there was just an upgrade for the base game rather than a full MSRP release of what is fifty percent a game I already own, but, well, that’s what sales are for.

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Speaking of monster raising games I’ve played a lot of in the past and really liked; Monster Hunter Stories is next! The first one; what came out on the 3DS! Now, yes, the sequel has been out for a few years and is one of those Drastically Improved kind of sequels that outmoded the first one six ways from Sunday; but that doesn’t mean this ain’t worth your time.

Visit scenic That Place With Monsters to Hunt and decide “Well what if this was a How To Train Your Dragon kind of deal instead?” And, as it turns out; not a fundamentally different experience. Just with a lot more rock paper scissors.

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And it turns out the rest of the games this week are also ports of old games, albeit less gussied up; starting with Garage: Bad Dream Adventure; a game where you wake up in The Garage, a living factory what Frankensteined you into a nasty cyborg freak and decide “oh this sucks actually” and have to Myst your way out of the factory and try to figure out if you can go back to being all fleshy and squishy or not.

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Speaking of animal machine hybrids, we’ve got what is one of the games im
Most jazzed for this month; Rocket Knight Adventures: Resparked; a rerelease of three quarters of the Rocket Knight games! Rocket Knight Adventures and Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 on the Genesis, and Sparkster on the SNES. We’ve also got the usual suite of rerelease features like Savestates and rewind (helpful as RKA, in particular, is pretty brutal) and also a boss rush mode.

Enjoy a Sonic the Hedgehog if you had a sword instead of a somersault, and a jet pack instead of being mired to the ground like a common trash mammal.

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Less action packed, but just as… full of guys with swords and armor, we have Egg Console: Sorcerian. The fifth game in the Dragon Slayer series, after Legacy of the Wizard. As with other Egg Console games the game is mostly in Japanese and from the description it sounds a lot more Gameplay System Intense than the previous games in the series so that might be an impediment.

Create a lasting lineage of Monster Hunting Peeps as your guys age and die and give their abilities to their kids all in the effort to get to the bottom of a dungeon and smush up whatever Big Monster is at the bottom of it.

Ya *gotta* smush a Big Monster in this family.

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And finally, the NSO got a big update for its Gameboy selection as it got Mega Man: Dr. Wilys Revenge, Mega Man II, Mega Man III, Mega Man IV and Mega Man V! Remixes of the NES Mega Man’s that also have a pretty clear escalation of quality; ranging from “almost unplayable difficult” to “Entirely too toothless” to “Very Good except a couple of Brutal, Brutal levels” to “a genuinely Very Good” to “Among the Best in Series”.

It’s MEGAMAS in June!

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Thats all you’re getting out of me!
 

WildcatJF

Beyond (Art @dice9633)
(he / his / him)
Squid Alpha's here we have two Arcade Archives to discuss today we don't have no time for intros?!?

Last week brought us Nichibutsu's 1982 Pac-Man-like Rug Rats, also known as Wiping. You're a sentient vacuum and all the rooms are so freaking filthy, so you suck up the grime and spit out soap at germs to give them a good blow. Wow. Everything sounds so dirty.

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For this week, Hamster returns to the VS. System with a second Namco Famicom port to Nintendo's arcade system, VS. Star Luster. A very early space shooter with the player sitting in the cockpit, you switch between map mode and shooty shooty mode to counteract an alien plan to recreate the "Big Bang". Wow, this also reads dirty.

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Well. I'm gonna go take a shower after all this. Til next time!
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Star Luster is weirdly good and a really impressive release for a 1985 Famicom release. Kind of feels like a middle point between Star Raiders on the 2600 and Star Fox 2. I think this is the first time it was ever localized, but there’s little enough text in the game and all of it was in English anyway so playing it was never difficult
 

WildcatJF

Beyond (Art @dice9633)
(he / his / him)
To my knowledge, Star Luster never was localized befire this (Namco wasn't on board for the NES until like 1992 or 93, lol).
 
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