Keep your grades up and stay hydrated when you read this weeks thread and you can have one video game for dessert.
Leading things off with a sneak release from last week, we’ve got the most recent N64 release for Switch Online; Pokémon Puzzle League! Which, y’know, is Panel de Pon, but with characters from the Pokémon anime instead of original characters and/or Yoshis Island characters. Or no characters whatsoever. Anyway; it’s a match-em-up puzzle game where you’ve got to connect different coloured tiles to make them disappear, but this time, Team Rocket is jeering you on.
If you saw that a Pokémon game was in this weeks thread and got excited, then were disappointed to realize it wasn’t actually a Pokémon game at all, maybe I could interest you in Coromon! Which, as the title suggests, is ALSO very much in the Pokémon vein! Litigiously so! It specifically looks to be heartening to the Gen-3 era of those wonderful monsters who fit in your pocket, and, aesthetically at least, that was my favorite era of the series! The last time I got very excited for a game that was *clearly* heartening to the Gameboy era of Pokémon, it wound up being a real disappointment (Monster Crown, it was janky past the point of fun), but this looks to not be re-inventing the wheel and I love me an RPG where you make the monsters do the heavy lifting for you w/r/t random battles, so I’m completely into this.
Fallen Angel looks a fair bit like Hyperlight Drifter, only instead of being set in a post apocalyptic world swarming with bird guys, it’s set in a pre-Genesis world run by… well… still bird guys, but angels instead of guys with beaks. Play as the original bad boy of religion, ol’ Scratch himself, as you go through the nascent planet Earth and beat the ever-loving crap out of every single Angel that thinks they’re better than you.
And speaking of games set on the far side of either creation or destruction, we have Endling: Extinction is Forever, a emotion-y game where you’re the last fox on Earth trying to find a safe place to raise your cubs, far from the degradations of humanity, which has ruined the planet.
SOUNDS LIKE A FUN LARK!
Speaking of doom and gloom we also have Gloom and Doom! A visual novel about a spooky scary murder-ghost assigned to kill demons, but can’t bring himself to kill the moody girl who everyone is pretty sure is the antichrist. But it’s set in the 90s and has “A 90s comic book aesthetic”, whatever that means.
I mean, I’ve read a lot of comics from the 90s, and they didn’t look like this.
Bunny Must Die! Chelsea and the 7 Devils is a torrid-em-up where you’re a little rabbit what got turned into a people with cat-ears and was then tossed into a Castlevania. While I have heard people speak of this game before, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, I can’t remember if it was positive or negative. Visually, it’s not that impressive, and it’s also surprisingly non-horny for a game with a Bunny/Cat Girl as the main character. So… if anyone knows if it’s a hidden gem or just… extant, let me know before it stops being on sale!
A subject I’m VASTLY more equipped to talk about is Capcom Arcade Stadium 2, a collection of no fewer than 30 of Capcoms arcade hits! Granted, a sizeable percentage of them were released on other Capcom arcade bundles previously (including in the Capcom Fighting Collection released *last month*), but that’s just a lesson that you should always procrastinate on buying video games. But there’s also a fair few that have barely seen the light of day since their heyday, like Mega Man Power Fighters, Saturday Night Slam Masters, Eco Fighters and whatever the heck Pnickies is.
As in the first collection, there are some games that are only available in either English or Japanese and I do not know why that is the case!
Bright Memory Infinite is a First Person Shooter where you’re a lady with a cyber-fist and a techno sword and some guns what has to travel to… umm… some… forests in order to beat up some oni and futuristic techno-soldiers I guess. I don’t have a lot to go on, except that the game sounds like Crysis but set in a different country and with a sword.
And speaking of absolutely pulverizing everyone in a Pan-Asian country in history times, we have River City: Three Kingdoms, which is inexplicably the first River City game set in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era. I mean… surely there had to have been another one, right? Anyway, it’s a River City game, so that means that the only “romance” in these three kingdoms is going to be coming from popping people in the kisser.
Severed Steel Is our second FPS this week starring a techno-lady that looks to be inspired by other critically acclaimed games. Difference being that this one made me go “Oh cool!” And then add the game to my Wishlist. This here looks to be a bit of The Most Innovative Shooter I’ve Ever Played (Superhot) and recent indie darlin’ Neon White. Maybe a bit of Bulletstorm too, why not. You’ve got a bunch of halls full of Bad Guys to shoot, you got time dilation powers, and you’ve got a real hankerin’ to get the frig out of dodge right pronto-like.
And finally, we have the big-ticket item of the week, and probably the re-release I was least expecting (in a week that includes re-releases of Saturday Night Slam Masters and Pnickies), Live A Live, not just re-released but given a real shiny new coat of HD 2D paint, like Octopath and Triangle Strategy. I’m not terribly familiar with the original game, but I gather it’s not unlike SaGa Frontier mixed with Cloud Atlas (I’ve also never seen Cloud Atlas, so I kind of assume this part); a whole whack of bespoke mini-RPGs that don’t really connect together and also take place in different times and worlds and then figure out how they actually do all connect.
Okay, that’s everything for new releases, but I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t mention that Into the Breach is also getting a pretty hefty free update DLC today that adds a heck of a lot of New Stuff to one of my favourite games in the SRPGs genre, so… umm… get on that.
Leading things off with a sneak release from last week, we’ve got the most recent N64 release for Switch Online; Pokémon Puzzle League! Which, y’know, is Panel de Pon, but with characters from the Pokémon anime instead of original characters and/or Yoshis Island characters. Or no characters whatsoever. Anyway; it’s a match-em-up puzzle game where you’ve got to connect different coloured tiles to make them disappear, but this time, Team Rocket is jeering you on.
If you saw that a Pokémon game was in this weeks thread and got excited, then were disappointed to realize it wasn’t actually a Pokémon game at all, maybe I could interest you in Coromon! Which, as the title suggests, is ALSO very much in the Pokémon vein! Litigiously so! It specifically looks to be heartening to the Gen-3 era of those wonderful monsters who fit in your pocket, and, aesthetically at least, that was my favorite era of the series! The last time I got very excited for a game that was *clearly* heartening to the Gameboy era of Pokémon, it wound up being a real disappointment (Monster Crown, it was janky past the point of fun), but this looks to not be re-inventing the wheel and I love me an RPG where you make the monsters do the heavy lifting for you w/r/t random battles, so I’m completely into this.
Fallen Angel looks a fair bit like Hyperlight Drifter, only instead of being set in a post apocalyptic world swarming with bird guys, it’s set in a pre-Genesis world run by… well… still bird guys, but angels instead of guys with beaks. Play as the original bad boy of religion, ol’ Scratch himself, as you go through the nascent planet Earth and beat the ever-loving crap out of every single Angel that thinks they’re better than you.
And speaking of games set on the far side of either creation or destruction, we have Endling: Extinction is Forever, a emotion-y game where you’re the last fox on Earth trying to find a safe place to raise your cubs, far from the degradations of humanity, which has ruined the planet.
SOUNDS LIKE A FUN LARK!
Speaking of doom and gloom we also have Gloom and Doom! A visual novel about a spooky scary murder-ghost assigned to kill demons, but can’t bring himself to kill the moody girl who everyone is pretty sure is the antichrist. But it’s set in the 90s and has “A 90s comic book aesthetic”, whatever that means.
I mean, I’ve read a lot of comics from the 90s, and they didn’t look like this.
Bunny Must Die! Chelsea and the 7 Devils is a torrid-em-up where you’re a little rabbit what got turned into a people with cat-ears and was then tossed into a Castlevania. While I have heard people speak of this game before, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, I can’t remember if it was positive or negative. Visually, it’s not that impressive, and it’s also surprisingly non-horny for a game with a Bunny/Cat Girl as the main character. So… if anyone knows if it’s a hidden gem or just… extant, let me know before it stops being on sale!
A subject I’m VASTLY more equipped to talk about is Capcom Arcade Stadium 2, a collection of no fewer than 30 of Capcoms arcade hits! Granted, a sizeable percentage of them were released on other Capcom arcade bundles previously (including in the Capcom Fighting Collection released *last month*), but that’s just a lesson that you should always procrastinate on buying video games. But there’s also a fair few that have barely seen the light of day since their heyday, like Mega Man Power Fighters, Saturday Night Slam Masters, Eco Fighters and whatever the heck Pnickies is.
As in the first collection, there are some games that are only available in either English or Japanese and I do not know why that is the case!
Bright Memory Infinite is a First Person Shooter where you’re a lady with a cyber-fist and a techno sword and some guns what has to travel to… umm… some… forests in order to beat up some oni and futuristic techno-soldiers I guess. I don’t have a lot to go on, except that the game sounds like Crysis but set in a different country and with a sword.
And speaking of absolutely pulverizing everyone in a Pan-Asian country in history times, we have River City: Three Kingdoms, which is inexplicably the first River City game set in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era. I mean… surely there had to have been another one, right? Anyway, it’s a River City game, so that means that the only “romance” in these three kingdoms is going to be coming from popping people in the kisser.
Severed Steel Is our second FPS this week starring a techno-lady that looks to be inspired by other critically acclaimed games. Difference being that this one made me go “Oh cool!” And then add the game to my Wishlist. This here looks to be a bit of The Most Innovative Shooter I’ve Ever Played (Superhot) and recent indie darlin’ Neon White. Maybe a bit of Bulletstorm too, why not. You’ve got a bunch of halls full of Bad Guys to shoot, you got time dilation powers, and you’ve got a real hankerin’ to get the frig out of dodge right pronto-like.
And finally, we have the big-ticket item of the week, and probably the re-release I was least expecting (in a week that includes re-releases of Saturday Night Slam Masters and Pnickies), Live A Live, not just re-released but given a real shiny new coat of HD 2D paint, like Octopath and Triangle Strategy. I’m not terribly familiar with the original game, but I gather it’s not unlike SaGa Frontier mixed with Cloud Atlas (I’ve also never seen Cloud Atlas, so I kind of assume this part); a whole whack of bespoke mini-RPGs that don’t really connect together and also take place in different times and worlds and then figure out how they actually do all connect.
Okay, that’s everything for new releases, but I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t mention that Into the Breach is also getting a pretty hefty free update DLC today that adds a heck of a lot of New Stuff to one of my favourite games in the SRPGs genre, so… umm… get on that.
