They're called "Sharpies" but the end is actually pretty blunt! What is the deal with that?!?!
Didn't make a thread last week, on account of there not being anything worth making a thread about, BUT THEN they snuck some stuff in, and the headliner of that was another NSO update! All for the NES and also... all over the place. We've got two of Rares best NES offerings with Cobra Triangle (an absurdly difficult speedboat themed shooter) and Solar Jetman (an incredibly, incredibly, ambitious and technically impressive exploration based Asteroids-em-up) and three Black Box games; Mach Rider (third person Mad Max-em-up motorcycle game, like Roadblasters, except I like it a lot more), Golf (kind of outmoded since its much better sequel is already on there, and also it was built into the Switch on a hardware level), Donkey Kong Jr. Math (giving you the opportunity to learn the times tables as only an adolescent gorilla can teach), Urban Champion (the finest video game adaptation of that one fight from They Live) and the infamous kusoge, Legend of Atlantis (a game to surpass Super Mario Brothers... in terms of length and quantity of levels)
Next up we have one of the few Actually New Games this week; Trails Through Daybreak, which is a new entry in the Legend of Heroes series, and which I know mainly through reputation as being firmly in the "Would you like some game in your video" side of how much yammering there is between playing a game, but the trailer was entirely dungeon crawling and bashing monsters, so maybe they made this one with me in mind.
In any case, its the fabulous world of RPGs, you're a guy whose job is "RPG Protagonist" and that means, yeah, you're going to bash some monsters until you've got yourself a world thats been saved.
Speaking of games where I would reasonably expect there to be a heck of lot of chattering, we've got a two pack of visual novels, which are also available individually; Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternative. One is a High School Romance story where a guy suddenly finds himself engaged to the heiress of a multinational major corporation, and one is a harrowing story of war-time survival as mankind is plunged into an apocalyptic battle with an alien force.
You know, two equally relatable situations that operate on the same level of emotions.
Anyway, smooch some ladies and/or try to find meaning in a world destroyed by otherworldly aggressors.
Next up is something special for... umm... all the fans of French Comedy Role Playing Podcasts, I guess; Naheulbeuks Dungeon Master. A prequel to the French audio comedy of the same name. It seems to be a Dungeon Keeper-em-up, but based on a franchise I did not know existed and which I don't know if was ever translated.
Anyway, you've got a dungeon to build and maintain, and an evil wizard to not antagonize as you do so. And I'm sure a bunch of injokes I would have no context for.
Speaking of things that are being localized for the first time, but which presumably has a smaller barrier for entry we have Shockman Zero, which is the fourth and... ummm... first (?) Shockman game. Once again, we've got a sidescrolling robot-puncher, but it looks a lot more fun and fast paced than the previous Shockman games.
Explore scenic "The Future" as a guy with boxing gloves, and punch the HELL out of everyone who looks to be at least Robot adjacent.
Speaking of old TG16-I-think games that have been pretty underserved in terms of ports, we have Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble 3, which is a bold and misleading title because, buddy, you are HARD PRESSED to find any bubbles or bobbles in this. Instead you're the human forms of the Bubble Dinosaurs, and instead of blowing up enemies with a fusillade of saliva, you're whacking them with umbrellas like Oswald Cobblepot himself.
It is by all accounts as fantastic game, and one that has rarely been seen on consoles let alone in English AND YET, they had the temerity to replace DInosaurs with Umbrella Children and think I would deem that an acceptable tradeoff.
Speaking of games that have had tragically limited exposure outside of Japan, we've also got a new Egg Console release, and one that I was initially very excited for until I remembered I can't read Japanese and the amount of English text in it is fairly low; Egg Console: Popful Mail! We DID get the Sega CD version of the game back in the day, but Popful Mail is one of those deals where every single port was basically a completely different game and there isn't even a fan translation available for the other ones.
This here is a light-hearted and goofy ARPG, much in the WOnderboy vein, where you're the bounty hunting elf girl Mail, who decides to track down and beat up a known jerk-ass of a wizard. And this being an RPG from the late 80s, I'm sure this process involves a LOT of grinding, but, y'know... it's charming enough that you wouldn't mind so much.
Now do you want to raise a child without all that fuss and bother, and also put them to work in a tavern or gladiatorial death arena? Of course you do; it's what every parent dreams of. And it's a good thing you do want that because Princess Maker 2: Regeneration is out to make your child-labour dreams come true! Or watching your preciously little sugar-dumplin' get attacked by giant crows. Or teaching them to dance so you can marry them off. You know; depending on how things are going; Childhood experiences are not universal.
And finally, not technically a retro-release, but it's been, like, 5 years since it came out on other platforms, we have Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown finally getting a Switch port. And I've played it on PS4 so I can confirm this is "A Good Time In the Sky". Enjoy flying over scenic "The skys over a European fictional country" riiiight up to the point where a Vaguely Eastern European army decides to roll out some bonkers-ass sci-fi super weapons because they're sick of getting hit by so many meteors.
Shortly after this, things go downhill for you in some other, comparatively unexpected directions.
Ace Combat is not a series that knows which lane to stay in narratively.
I guess that's everything.
Didn't make a thread last week, on account of there not being anything worth making a thread about, BUT THEN they snuck some stuff in, and the headliner of that was another NSO update! All for the NES and also... all over the place. We've got two of Rares best NES offerings with Cobra Triangle (an absurdly difficult speedboat themed shooter) and Solar Jetman (an incredibly, incredibly, ambitious and technically impressive exploration based Asteroids-em-up) and three Black Box games; Mach Rider (third person Mad Max-em-up motorcycle game, like Roadblasters, except I like it a lot more), Golf (kind of outmoded since its much better sequel is already on there, and also it was built into the Switch on a hardware level), Donkey Kong Jr. Math (giving you the opportunity to learn the times tables as only an adolescent gorilla can teach), Urban Champion (the finest video game adaptation of that one fight from They Live) and the infamous kusoge, Legend of Atlantis (a game to surpass Super Mario Brothers... in terms of length and quantity of levels)
Next up we have one of the few Actually New Games this week; Trails Through Daybreak, which is a new entry in the Legend of Heroes series, and which I know mainly through reputation as being firmly in the "Would you like some game in your video" side of how much yammering there is between playing a game, but the trailer was entirely dungeon crawling and bashing monsters, so maybe they made this one with me in mind.
In any case, its the fabulous world of RPGs, you're a guy whose job is "RPG Protagonist" and that means, yeah, you're going to bash some monsters until you've got yourself a world thats been saved.
Speaking of games where I would reasonably expect there to be a heck of lot of chattering, we've got a two pack of visual novels, which are also available individually; Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternative. One is a High School Romance story where a guy suddenly finds himself engaged to the heiress of a multinational major corporation, and one is a harrowing story of war-time survival as mankind is plunged into an apocalyptic battle with an alien force.
You know, two equally relatable situations that operate on the same level of emotions.
Anyway, smooch some ladies and/or try to find meaning in a world destroyed by otherworldly aggressors.
Next up is something special for... umm... all the fans of French Comedy Role Playing Podcasts, I guess; Naheulbeuks Dungeon Master. A prequel to the French audio comedy of the same name. It seems to be a Dungeon Keeper-em-up, but based on a franchise I did not know existed and which I don't know if was ever translated.
Anyway, you've got a dungeon to build and maintain, and an evil wizard to not antagonize as you do so. And I'm sure a bunch of injokes I would have no context for.
Speaking of things that are being localized for the first time, but which presumably has a smaller barrier for entry we have Shockman Zero, which is the fourth and... ummm... first (?) Shockman game. Once again, we've got a sidescrolling robot-puncher, but it looks a lot more fun and fast paced than the previous Shockman games.
Explore scenic "The Future" as a guy with boxing gloves, and punch the HELL out of everyone who looks to be at least Robot adjacent.
Speaking of old TG16-I-think games that have been pretty underserved in terms of ports, we have Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble 3, which is a bold and misleading title because, buddy, you are HARD PRESSED to find any bubbles or bobbles in this. Instead you're the human forms of the Bubble Dinosaurs, and instead of blowing up enemies with a fusillade of saliva, you're whacking them with umbrellas like Oswald Cobblepot himself.
It is by all accounts as fantastic game, and one that has rarely been seen on consoles let alone in English AND YET, they had the temerity to replace DInosaurs with Umbrella Children and think I would deem that an acceptable tradeoff.
Speaking of games that have had tragically limited exposure outside of Japan, we've also got a new Egg Console release, and one that I was initially very excited for until I remembered I can't read Japanese and the amount of English text in it is fairly low; Egg Console: Popful Mail! We DID get the Sega CD version of the game back in the day, but Popful Mail is one of those deals where every single port was basically a completely different game and there isn't even a fan translation available for the other ones.
This here is a light-hearted and goofy ARPG, much in the WOnderboy vein, where you're the bounty hunting elf girl Mail, who decides to track down and beat up a known jerk-ass of a wizard. And this being an RPG from the late 80s, I'm sure this process involves a LOT of grinding, but, y'know... it's charming enough that you wouldn't mind so much.
Now do you want to raise a child without all that fuss and bother, and also put them to work in a tavern or gladiatorial death arena? Of course you do; it's what every parent dreams of. And it's a good thing you do want that because Princess Maker 2: Regeneration is out to make your child-labour dreams come true! Or watching your preciously little sugar-dumplin' get attacked by giant crows. Or teaching them to dance so you can marry them off. You know; depending on how things are going; Childhood experiences are not universal.
And finally, not technically a retro-release, but it's been, like, 5 years since it came out on other platforms, we have Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown finally getting a Switch port. And I've played it on PS4 so I can confirm this is "A Good Time In the Sky". Enjoy flying over scenic "The skys over a European fictional country" riiiight up to the point where a Vaguely Eastern European army decides to roll out some bonkers-ass sci-fi super weapons because they're sick of getting hit by so many meteors.
Shortly after this, things go downhill for you in some other, comparatively unexpected directions.
Ace Combat is not a series that knows which lane to stay in narratively.
I guess that's everything.
