Video Games? Do these look like Video Games to you?!?!
So we're starting off with one of the rare instances of me covering something that isn't also on the Switch, as the remake of Silent Hill 2 is finally out, and, by all account, *really good*. Presumably either Bloober Team was on a pretty tight leash for how to handle this one, or they've settled their roots since their last game and now have the knowhow to do it right. The former option implies that Konami still cares about their video game catalog so I'm not sure if I'd credit that as being plausible. Anyhoo, SH2 is considered to be one of the absolute high points of the Spooky Scary Video Game genre, but the entire series is one I've never played, so I have no basis upon which to judge it. But I know the gist of it;
Y'see there's this person-man. He's a person, man. Lives his life in a garbage can, hit on the head with a frying pan. You know, Person-man. He's a mess, he's depressed and he feels totally worthless. A degraded man, that person-man.
BUT, then there's a Triangle Man. And the Triangle man hates Person Man. So they have a fight, and Triangle wins.
Speaking of reimaginings of beloved video games from the early aughts, we have Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire, which joins the illustrious company of games like that are *basically* beloved classics that ain't nobody made a proper sequel to in a while. In this case, it's a game that only ever even got ported the one time, since this is pretty much Skies of Arcadia. Just with characters that are about 40% less Rieko Kodama-y. Also, the trailer didn't show any on-foot combat, just air-ship combat, so the odds of me hearing someone scream LAMBDA BURST every battle are lower than I'd like. Either way, it's in my top three Games I'm Most Jazzed For (October 2024 Edition)
Anyway, fill the skies with the black banner of the Jolly Roger raised high and pillage, plunder and loot every boat in the sky.
Speaking of video games with a strong anime influence, there's two based on an anime; Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream is one, which isn't surprising since it's based on a series that really lends itself to video game adaptations. Sword Guy and Red Haired girl are, YET STILL playing online video games together even though they can't even play Tetris without it coming to life and trying to IRL murder them. I... I don't think it's a bad idea to pursue a different, safer hobby. And on the opposite side of the wheel of history for anime adaptions, there's also UFO Robot Grendizer: Feast of the Wolves, which goes for a Battletoads-esque "Screw It, We're Doing Every Genre" approach; combining beat-em-up, shmup, Star Fox and Walk Around Talking to People gameplay as you embody... like... the tenth or twentieth most famous Giant Mecha superhero
And heck, what's another Game For Something Besides the Switch that is getting a lot of buzz; Metaphor Refantazio, which exists for everyone who likes Persona but doesn't give a rootin' toot about Teenage Highschool Crime Fighters. Since the primary difference here is that it takes place in a Fantasy Kingdom instead of in the parts of Tokyo with a tremendous percentage of the Sad/Crimey population.
Now, do you love Hyperlight Drifter? I'll answer on your behalf, of course you do. But do you wish it had more dialogue and fewer colours, and with fairly detailed samurai instead of weird pixelly animal peeps? Well, you friggin' well better because we've got Bloodless. Which... uh... which looks like that thing I said. Everythings got a kind of NGPC-y character design look to them which looks real cool and I really liked HLD so... this went right on to my wishlist as soon as I watched the trailer.
Now it is, of course, Early October, *the witching hour*, and that mean we're primed for more SPOOKY video games. But more speicifically, we've got some spooky video games that look for all the world like very old video games. And so; we have Faith: The Unholy Trinity a walky-scares-em-up with Atari 5200 graphics THE SPOOKIEST OPERATING SYSTEM OF ALL, and if you want something several console generations more advanced than that there's My Big Sister: Remastered (which goes down the The Ring/Grudge/Dark Water root of Scary Japanese Horror Franchise route) and Camp Sunshine (which elects for the 80s American Slasher style of things) which both look more 16-bitty and more like a Spooky Zeld-em-up.
Next up, and openly antagonistic to any kind of coherent summary is Miss Rosens: WOWTASTIC Marching Band, which is a follow-up to About An Elf. That's all I'm capable of safely saying. It's the video game equivalent of an episode of Xavier Renegade Angel, I guess?
Now what if you don't want to play a video game? None of these FOOLS can do the job good enough for you! How could they! You're an auteur! A genius! Perhaps the greatest artistic mind this world has ever seen! In fact, I can confirm that! And what better way to prove it to the less credulous than through the medium of RPGs? NO WAY, THAT'S HOW! So, to that end, here's RPG Maker With. "With What?" you ask? Why... with Other People! Because this version of the game lets you collaborate with other people! Which is great because while you're exceptional at making RPGs, like... there could be someone else who has an edge over you for making sprites or chiptunes or whatever.
As for *actual* Much Older games, we got a few, and two thirds of them are not localized in the slightest, and that's a bigger issue with the first of them; Egg Console Asteca 2, a text adventure game based on exploring the Mesoamerican ruins of Chichen Itza and... erm... robbing them blind of cultural artifacts. The NES port WAS localized as Tombs and Treasures, which I loved, and at least justified all the tomb raiding since it was in service of preventing an invasion from the Aztec equivalent of hell.
Finally we have an NSO update, all on the GBA! And I hope you like going fast because, buddy, that's what every game in this update is ALL about! F-Zero GP Legend is technically a tie-in to the F-Zero anime but... just in the broad sense that some plot points from that show showed up in the story mode here. It's also by far the easiest F-Zero game since the AI is kind of broke and I think it's literally incapable of letting you lose unless you're on the higher difficulties. F-Zero Climax, however, was never localized and is considered to be one of the best of the entire series, and (until 99) the last in the series and it has a course editor built into it as well. That's all I got on this one.
OKAY THAT'S ALL I GOT, GO TO BED
So we're starting off with one of the rare instances of me covering something that isn't also on the Switch, as the remake of Silent Hill 2 is finally out, and, by all account, *really good*. Presumably either Bloober Team was on a pretty tight leash for how to handle this one, or they've settled their roots since their last game and now have the knowhow to do it right. The former option implies that Konami still cares about their video game catalog so I'm not sure if I'd credit that as being plausible. Anyhoo, SH2 is considered to be one of the absolute high points of the Spooky Scary Video Game genre, but the entire series is one I've never played, so I have no basis upon which to judge it. But I know the gist of it;
Y'see there's this person-man. He's a person, man. Lives his life in a garbage can, hit on the head with a frying pan. You know, Person-man. He's a mess, he's depressed and he feels totally worthless. A degraded man, that person-man.
BUT, then there's a Triangle Man. And the Triangle man hates Person Man. So they have a fight, and Triangle wins.
Speaking of reimaginings of beloved video games from the early aughts, we have Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire, which joins the illustrious company of games like that are *basically* beloved classics that ain't nobody made a proper sequel to in a while. In this case, it's a game that only ever even got ported the one time, since this is pretty much Skies of Arcadia. Just with characters that are about 40% less Rieko Kodama-y. Also, the trailer didn't show any on-foot combat, just air-ship combat, so the odds of me hearing someone scream LAMBDA BURST every battle are lower than I'd like. Either way, it's in my top three Games I'm Most Jazzed For (October 2024 Edition)
Anyway, fill the skies with the black banner of the Jolly Roger raised high and pillage, plunder and loot every boat in the sky.
Speaking of video games with a strong anime influence, there's two based on an anime; Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream is one, which isn't surprising since it's based on a series that really lends itself to video game adaptations. Sword Guy and Red Haired girl are, YET STILL playing online video games together even though they can't even play Tetris without it coming to life and trying to IRL murder them. I... I don't think it's a bad idea to pursue a different, safer hobby. And on the opposite side of the wheel of history for anime adaptions, there's also UFO Robot Grendizer: Feast of the Wolves, which goes for a Battletoads-esque "Screw It, We're Doing Every Genre" approach; combining beat-em-up, shmup, Star Fox and Walk Around Talking to People gameplay as you embody... like... the tenth or twentieth most famous Giant Mecha superhero
And heck, what's another Game For Something Besides the Switch that is getting a lot of buzz; Metaphor Refantazio, which exists for everyone who likes Persona but doesn't give a rootin' toot about Teenage Highschool Crime Fighters. Since the primary difference here is that it takes place in a Fantasy Kingdom instead of in the parts of Tokyo with a tremendous percentage of the Sad/Crimey population.
Now, do you love Hyperlight Drifter? I'll answer on your behalf, of course you do. But do you wish it had more dialogue and fewer colours, and with fairly detailed samurai instead of weird pixelly animal peeps? Well, you friggin' well better because we've got Bloodless. Which... uh... which looks like that thing I said. Everythings got a kind of NGPC-y character design look to them which looks real cool and I really liked HLD so... this went right on to my wishlist as soon as I watched the trailer.
Now it is, of course, Early October, *the witching hour*, and that mean we're primed for more SPOOKY video games. But more speicifically, we've got some spooky video games that look for all the world like very old video games. And so; we have Faith: The Unholy Trinity a walky-scares-em-up with Atari 5200 graphics THE SPOOKIEST OPERATING SYSTEM OF ALL, and if you want something several console generations more advanced than that there's My Big Sister: Remastered (which goes down the The Ring/Grudge/Dark Water root of Scary Japanese Horror Franchise route) and Camp Sunshine (which elects for the 80s American Slasher style of things) which both look more 16-bitty and more like a Spooky Zeld-em-up.
Next up, and openly antagonistic to any kind of coherent summary is Miss Rosens: WOWTASTIC Marching Band, which is a follow-up to About An Elf. That's all I'm capable of safely saying. It's the video game equivalent of an episode of Xavier Renegade Angel, I guess?
Now what if you don't want to play a video game? None of these FOOLS can do the job good enough for you! How could they! You're an auteur! A genius! Perhaps the greatest artistic mind this world has ever seen! In fact, I can confirm that! And what better way to prove it to the less credulous than through the medium of RPGs? NO WAY, THAT'S HOW! So, to that end, here's RPG Maker With. "With What?" you ask? Why... with Other People! Because this version of the game lets you collaborate with other people! Which is great because while you're exceptional at making RPGs, like... there could be someone else who has an edge over you for making sprites or chiptunes or whatever.
As for *actual* Much Older games, we got a few, and two thirds of them are not localized in the slightest, and that's a bigger issue with the first of them; Egg Console Asteca 2, a text adventure game based on exploring the Mesoamerican ruins of Chichen Itza and... erm... robbing them blind of cultural artifacts. The NES port WAS localized as Tombs and Treasures, which I loved, and at least justified all the tomb raiding since it was in service of preventing an invasion from the Aztec equivalent of hell.
Finally we have an NSO update, all on the GBA! And I hope you like going fast because, buddy, that's what every game in this update is ALL about! F-Zero GP Legend is technically a tie-in to the F-Zero anime but... just in the broad sense that some plot points from that show showed up in the story mode here. It's also by far the easiest F-Zero game since the AI is kind of broke and I think it's literally incapable of letting you lose unless you're on the higher difficulties. F-Zero Climax, however, was never localized and is considered to be one of the best of the entire series, and (until 99) the last in the series and it has a course editor built into it as well. That's all I got on this one.
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