In this house, we don't trust or respect the oxford comma or most analog clocks.
So we're going to kick off with some sneaky secret releases from last week, because a Direct happened and naturally that meant my list was made to be a damn liar; and that means we're kicking off with a FANCY PANTS remake of everyones favorite Apple ][ edutainment title The Oregon Trail. I mean, I preferred Carmen Sandiego, but that's not the one that just got a fancy-pants remake, and Oregon Trail is the one with more immediately appealing gameplay. Take a group of settlers out to explore beautiful scenic Oregon (where the sun never sets) and completely depopulate it of buffalo before spoiling all the rivers with your dysentery riddled corpses, with the only monument left being a Pepperoni and Cheese pizza.
Speaking of how nature abhors you and wishes you to be miserable; we have A Little to the Left a gentle puzz-em-up about trying to organize things while a friggin' cat comes by to mess you up. It's exactly the kind of video game that makes me look aorund the room I'm in and think "Oh... yeah... I should probably do this for real, huh?"
The much greater surprise, and certainly the video game that doesn't make me realize I'm neglecting household chores in favor of pretend household chores, is Rogue Legacy 2, sequel to the rather excellent Rogue Legacy! This one has a 2 in its title, and that's about all I know about how the two games compare, and that's all I want to know, because I loved me some dang ol' Rogue Legacy and wish for Additional Rogue Legacy.
Take control of the latest in a long (long, long, dazzlingly long) lineage of jumpin' sword guys and ladies out for a fine night of Castlevaning in a Castlevania that never stays the same shape more than once. Then die and try it again with someone with slightly different genetic traits!
The final Suprise release of last week was Neo-Geo Pocket Collection Volume 2; a collection of no fewer than 10 NGPC games! Only four of which were released piecemeal in the eShop previously. All together we've got Cardfighter Clash, Big Bang Pro Wrestling, Biomotor Unitron, Mega Man Battle Fighter, Puzzlink 2, Ganbare no Poke-Kun, King of Fighters: Battle of Paradise, Baseball Stars Color, Pocket Tennis Color and Neogeo Cup 98 Plus Color. Several of those are among the finest games to grace that console, and the vast bulk are games I've never heard of, but trust to be exceptional as the NGPC had maybe the highest hit rate of any console ever.
On to stuff from this week, we're kicking off with RWBY: Arrowfell! A troid-em-up based on the anime that was produced by the same peeps as what made Red vs. Blue. You won't see Griff or Sarge in this though; only Karate Magical Girls who want to pound the ever-cussin' bajeezus out of animals made of shadows. I've only recently started watching the show, and can safely say it's... hideous to behold whenever anyone isn't in a ludicrously over-dramatic fight scene, but the show realizes that and so slaps in as many over-dramatic fight scenes as possible and just barely strings them together with a narrative.
And this is a video game so I kind of expect that kind of narrative presentation anyway!
Next up is one of the first names to come to mind when you say the word "Roguelike". Well... besides Rogue. And Nethack. And I guess Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. And DND (that might just have been me though); it's ADOM. And ADOM finally got itself a proper sequel in Ultimate ADOM: Caverns of Chaos! It's a Roguelike, so... you know... explore a big cave full of monsters wanting to kill you in a stupid way. But now 25 years of graphical advancement means the game is made of graphics instead of letters.
Normally, a picture is worth a thousand words, but ADOM presents a world where a picture is only worth a single letter.
Speaking of Old Video Games presented for a new audience, this weeks arcade release is Metal Black, which at first I'd assumed to be a mere shmup-em-up in the vein of R-Type... then I skipped ahead in a preview video and said "Holy crap! What even IS this?!?" multiple times.
It's... got some artistic choices, this one.
Speaking instead of New Versions of Old Timey Video Games and also impressive looking shmups, Pixel Maker is back on their high-horse this week and is presenting a new one of those as well; in this case we have Verzeus, which, as per damn-near their entire output, is an existing Gameboy game that is graphically changed just enough to avoid litigation. In this case, it's Nemesis; the Gameboy version of Gradius.
And that was a solid early GB game; so I can only assume that this is a solid knock-off of a solid knock-off.
We've got another "Huh... didn't know that was even announced" game this week courtesy of Oddworld: Soulstorm. As per most Oddworld games, it's definitely about how capitalism is bad (especially for delicious people), but beyond that the eShop description has me a little perplexed; I'm inferring it's a bit more Pikmin-y but with more character progression, so... maybe it's like Overlord?
Remember Overlord? I do!
Anyway, teach a delicious fish-man to hate capitalism, and fart your way to revolution.
And finally we've got Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Those are two new Pokemon games. One is named red, but it has no relation to the existing Pokemon Red, DON'T BE DECEIVED! This is NOT the Pokemon Red you have at home.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Megamas to commence
So we're going to kick off with some sneaky secret releases from last week, because a Direct happened and naturally that meant my list was made to be a damn liar; and that means we're kicking off with a FANCY PANTS remake of everyones favorite Apple ][ edutainment title The Oregon Trail. I mean, I preferred Carmen Sandiego, but that's not the one that just got a fancy-pants remake, and Oregon Trail is the one with more immediately appealing gameplay. Take a group of settlers out to explore beautiful scenic Oregon (where the sun never sets) and completely depopulate it of buffalo before spoiling all the rivers with your dysentery riddled corpses, with the only monument left being a Pepperoni and Cheese pizza.
Speaking of how nature abhors you and wishes you to be miserable; we have A Little to the Left a gentle puzz-em-up about trying to organize things while a friggin' cat comes by to mess you up. It's exactly the kind of video game that makes me look aorund the room I'm in and think "Oh... yeah... I should probably do this for real, huh?"
The much greater surprise, and certainly the video game that doesn't make me realize I'm neglecting household chores in favor of pretend household chores, is Rogue Legacy 2, sequel to the rather excellent Rogue Legacy! This one has a 2 in its title, and that's about all I know about how the two games compare, and that's all I want to know, because I loved me some dang ol' Rogue Legacy and wish for Additional Rogue Legacy.
Take control of the latest in a long (long, long, dazzlingly long) lineage of jumpin' sword guys and ladies out for a fine night of Castlevaning in a Castlevania that never stays the same shape more than once. Then die and try it again with someone with slightly different genetic traits!
The final Suprise release of last week was Neo-Geo Pocket Collection Volume 2; a collection of no fewer than 10 NGPC games! Only four of which were released piecemeal in the eShop previously. All together we've got Cardfighter Clash, Big Bang Pro Wrestling, Biomotor Unitron, Mega Man Battle Fighter, Puzzlink 2, Ganbare no Poke-Kun, King of Fighters: Battle of Paradise, Baseball Stars Color, Pocket Tennis Color and Neogeo Cup 98 Plus Color. Several of those are among the finest games to grace that console, and the vast bulk are games I've never heard of, but trust to be exceptional as the NGPC had maybe the highest hit rate of any console ever.
On to stuff from this week, we're kicking off with RWBY: Arrowfell! A troid-em-up based on the anime that was produced by the same peeps as what made Red vs. Blue. You won't see Griff or Sarge in this though; only Karate Magical Girls who want to pound the ever-cussin' bajeezus out of animals made of shadows. I've only recently started watching the show, and can safely say it's... hideous to behold whenever anyone isn't in a ludicrously over-dramatic fight scene, but the show realizes that and so slaps in as many over-dramatic fight scenes as possible and just barely strings them together with a narrative.
And this is a video game so I kind of expect that kind of narrative presentation anyway!
Next up is one of the first names to come to mind when you say the word "Roguelike". Well... besides Rogue. And Nethack. And I guess Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. And DND (that might just have been me though); it's ADOM. And ADOM finally got itself a proper sequel in Ultimate ADOM: Caverns of Chaos! It's a Roguelike, so... you know... explore a big cave full of monsters wanting to kill you in a stupid way. But now 25 years of graphical advancement means the game is made of graphics instead of letters.
Normally, a picture is worth a thousand words, but ADOM presents a world where a picture is only worth a single letter.
Speaking of Old Video Games presented for a new audience, this weeks arcade release is Metal Black, which at first I'd assumed to be a mere shmup-em-up in the vein of R-Type... then I skipped ahead in a preview video and said "Holy crap! What even IS this?!?" multiple times.
It's... got some artistic choices, this one.
Speaking instead of New Versions of Old Timey Video Games and also impressive looking shmups, Pixel Maker is back on their high-horse this week and is presenting a new one of those as well; in this case we have Verzeus, which, as per damn-near their entire output, is an existing Gameboy game that is graphically changed just enough to avoid litigation. In this case, it's Nemesis; the Gameboy version of Gradius.
And that was a solid early GB game; so I can only assume that this is a solid knock-off of a solid knock-off.
We've got another "Huh... didn't know that was even announced" game this week courtesy of Oddworld: Soulstorm. As per most Oddworld games, it's definitely about how capitalism is bad (especially for delicious people), but beyond that the eShop description has me a little perplexed; I'm inferring it's a bit more Pikmin-y but with more character progression, so... maybe it's like Overlord?
Remember Overlord? I do!
Anyway, teach a delicious fish-man to hate capitalism, and fart your way to revolution.
And finally we've got Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Those are two new Pokemon games. One is named red, but it has no relation to the existing Pokemon Red, DON'T BE DECEIVED! This is NOT the Pokemon Red you have at home.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Megamas to commence
