The Retro games thread of please I'm begging you (yes, you!) to post about Retro games in this thread (10 years old+)

[Kazin]

If you want more after playing the NES games, be sure to seek out the Famicom versions of Adventures of Lolo 2 (1 over there) and 3 (2) as well! They have different (and often harder) stages than the international ones.

I probably will check out the Eggerland games, though after the third game, I might take a break for a bit haha. That's a lot of Lolo!

Totally, when writing my post, my thoughts did wander to Baba Is You. If nothing else, that you have these single-room challenges, that you can solve in your head without moving at all (at least in theory) feels very reminiscent of Lolo. But as you said, it's its own thing very much.

Also, congrats. It's not super-duper hard, but Lolo 2 (and that series in general) can get quite tough. Please report back how you like the third game. Basically more of the same again, just more. I think it's a bit harder (similar to how the second seems a bit harder to me than the first game) - but I haven't played these games in years.

I remember playing Kickle Cubicle once. Granted, it's years since then, but I remember it as being rather easy. Not necessarily bad, but it fills another part of the enjoyment center in my brain than Lolo or Baba. Maybe also check out Fire and Ice for the NES, which is a neat, surprisingly hard puzzle game for the NES. And for the Gameboy, there is also Catrap, which as the nice feature of letting you undo as many steps as you want. Didn't beat either, they get pretty hard, but definitely fun puzzle games. And yet, none of them feel as good as Lolo (again, still fun).

Will do! I'm looking forward to it. I booted it up on my Steam Deck real quick to make sure it's not... crappy, and it seems really cool and upgraded compared to the first two games. You can play as Lala, finally!

There's also a Game Boy Lolo game, where Lolo and Lala have a baby Lolo and take him to a carnival, where he immediately gets kidnapped. Because of course he does.

I could have sworn I saw an indie game out there somewhere (perhaps for the Genesis, as that's been so popular to develop for lately) that takes a lot of its cues from Lolo. Until that gets released, I guess you'll just have to settle for Lolo and Lala getting beaten up by Kirby...

Kirby might be the reason I never gave these games a chance, maybe - based on their boss fight, I guess I thought they were just Boxxle clones or something lol. Boxxle is fine, but it doesn't set my world on fire, so I've not really seeked these out! Glad to be wrong, though ahaha

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Okay, okay. NINTENDO POWER told you your review of a Nintendo game was too generous. That magazine was propaganda for Nintendo! There was never a terrible NES game whose quality they couldn't minimize. NP must have REALLY changed after Future took the reins.

I was as shocked as anyone.

And more than a bit disappointed, too, if I'm being honest.

 

[Ghost from Spelunker]

Objection!

Nintendo Power traditionally gave games overall lower scores than other game magazines of its day! Earning money from every cart, first party game or not, gave them financial incentive to honestly assess games!

I never thought of that before.
But I still don't understand why Nintendo Power was so nuts about the Clay Fighter series. (I remember they had an article where the Mortal Kombat guys were interviewing the Clayfighter 63 guys, it was as cringe as you can imagine) Was a contract signed?

 

[Purple]

OK I have two personal theories on this, both of which are pretty far-fetched.

1- Nintendo really wanted to push anything going with claymation visuals for the same reason they went all in on the prerended Donkey Kong Country look. Everything looks "super realistic and 3D" and that was really really in at the time.

2- There might be, or have been at the time, an actual honest to goodness audience for the Clay Fighter series. They chased every trend in the genre, they had whimsical character designs, and... yeah let's not dance around it, the N64 game especially really pandered to a then-very-underserved horrible bigot market. Like I remember seeing a kickstarter video for an all drag-queen fighting game that spent half the run-time waxing nostalgic for the opera singer. Tastes vary.

 

[Kazin]

I've been hanging out in the wrong video game circles, apparently, because nobody ever told me about Kabuki Quantum Fighter! I played the first level on a whim on my Steam Deck a few days ago, thought "hey this is cool," and saw a copy for $18 at my local shop, so I picked it up, sat down, and beat the thing today. Had an absolute blast doing it, too. There's these cool jumping and swinging mechanics you have to get good at to get through the levels, and you have some special weapons that have limited ammo, Mega Man style. You have a health bar, and two continues - I used both, mainly because I burned a bunch of lives on the final form of the final boss, who you can cheese with the homing weapon if you have enough ammo (I didn't the first time I got to it). The levels are challenging but absolutely fair - there are very few cheap deaths, and while some enemies get some cheap hits in, it's not a huge deal because it's not a one hit kill situation. I suppose it's a bit on the easy side (I did beat it in one go), but it's something I'm sure I'll come back to and enjoy fairly often. It's breezy fun with cool mechanics, good art, and decent music.

The aesthetics are cool as hell, too - you're this, well, quantum fighter, who apparently shrinks into stuff and, uh, fights while dressed as a kabuki. It's kind of a weird premise, but they lean into it with between level story cinematics, all of which look cool. I don't know why the main character is named Scott, though lol.

HAL knows what's up. Been playing a lot of HAL stuff lately for some reason.

I wish, Scott. Your game was cool.

 

[Issun]

2- There might be, or have been at the time, an actual honest to goodness audience for the Clay Fighter series. They chased every trend in the genre, they had whimsical character designs, and... yeah let's not dance around it, the N64 game especially really pandered to a then-very-underserved horrible bigot market. Like I remember seeing a kickstarter video for an all drag-queen fighting game that spent half the run-time waxing nostalgic for the opera singer. Tastes vary.

I remember quite enjoying the goofy aesthetic of the OG Clay Fighter back in the day, thought if you dangled a million dollars in my face I still couldn't tell you from memory whether the gameplay was any good.

 

[ShakeWell]

I've been hanging out in the wrong video game circles, apparently, because nobody ever told me about Kabuki Quantum Fighter! I played the first level on a whim on my Steam Deck a few days ago, thought "hey this is cool," and saw a copy for $18 at my local shop, so I picked it up, sat down, and beat the thing today. Had an absolute blast doing it, too. There's these cool jumping and swinging mechanics you have to get good at to get through the levels, and you have some special weapons that have limited ammo, Mega Man style. You have a health bar, and two continues - I used both, mainly because I burned a bunch of lives on the final form of the final boss, who you can cheese with the homing weapon if you have enough ammo (I didn't the first time I got to it). The levels are challenging but absolutely fair - there are very few cheap deaths, and while some enemies get some cheap hits in, it's not a huge deal because it's not a one hit kill situation. I suppose it's a bit on the easy side (I did beat it in one go), but it's something I'm sure I'll come back to and enjoy fairly often. It's breezy fun with cool mechanics, good art, and decent music.

The aesthetics are cool as hell, too - you're this, well, quantum fighter, who apparently shrinks into stuff and, uh, fights while dressed as a kabuki. It's kind of a weird premise, but they lean into it with between level story cinematics, all of which look cool. I don't know why the main character is named Scott, though lol.

HAL knows what's up. Been playing a lot of HAL stuff lately for some reason.

I wish, Scott. Your game was cool.

I can tell Kazin doesn't watch my videos (I'm wounded, Kazin), because I've done videos about both Kabuki Quantum Fighter AND Resident Evil: Director's Cut in the last year and a half.

 

[Kazin]

See? Wrong video game circles lol

 

[ShakeWell]

Time to get in the right one!

 

[Kazin]

There aren't a lot of memories I have of being absolutely jealous of someone owning a Sega CD when I was a kid - but this is absolutely one of them:

A friend of mine's older brother had a Sega CD, and I watched him play the first dungeon of Lunar eons ago. This stuck out in my mind - not only for the voice acting which I'd not heard before in a video game (and in retrospect is pretty cheesy), but mainly for the shit joke Working Designs put here. That blew my mind. Ever since then, I've wanted to play through the Lunar games, specifically the ones I coveted when I was a child - the Sega CD ones. I know the PSX versions are probably better, but I want to play this one. Helps that I got a Mega Everdrive Pro today, which also works on my Nomad! Time to settle in and enjoy the cream of the Mega Drive/Genesis crop, baybee.

(photos taken offscreen from an s-video modded model 1 Genesis. Looks much better in person, especially considering my crap photography skills, though I can't blame my camera like I used to, since that was recently upgraded too)