The Return Of The "Not Worth Its Own Thread" Thread

[Beowulf]

Yeah they ain’t gonna break your knees or nothing, they’re just kind of… acceptable.

They’ve built their entire corporate identity out of games on the same tier as the original Lufia or Paladins Quest

Oh, I'd argue that most of them are better than Paladin's Quest! I've been replaying a bunch of early PS1 jrpgs, and I'd argue that your average KEMCO game can compete with the first Wild ARMs game pretty heartily, and is significantly more playable than Beyond the Beyond. The fact that they're made for a modern audience with casual play in mind means they generally end up better than the shovelware jrpgs that (eventually) got fan-translated for the SNES. And they vary the systems a lot more than RPGMaker steam games generally do.

I can dig out the reviews I wrote for all the ones I played, if people are interested. It could be an entire thread.

 

[Becksworth]

I've always wondered if there was a legitimate banger amongst the Kemco RPGs just due to law of averages, but I'm not digging through all that to find one on my own.

 

[Bongo]

I would be pouncing on this if not for the fact that I'm navel deep in outstanding A-tier RPGs this year. I've been that hungry and I might be again.

 

[gogglebob]

I will note that this was released today, and appears to be the exact kind of thing that would see a 50% off sale in the near future.

 

[Kirin]

I’m amused that the entire image gallery for the collection is age-locked if you're not logged in to Microsoft, making me briefly think that they were much skeevier than they apparently are.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I can dig out the reviews I wrote for all the ones I played, if people are interested. It could be an entire thread.

I would, for one

 

[Beowulf]

I would, for one

Welp, that's good enough for me!

 

[Violentvixen]

I would, for one

Agreed, this sounds fun!

 

[Ghost from Spelunker]

Sly(?) Raccooper II: The Revenge of Bentley ask:
Is there ever a way to revisit previous chapters?
Maybe beating the game unlocks it? Something added to the PS3 rerelease?
I was thimking of revisiting it (I have the PS2 version), but taking out a feature seen in so many games is really making me consider a way with more...save states.

 

[WildcatJF]

Sly(?) Raccooper II: The Revenge of Bentley ask:
Is there ever a way to revisit previous chapters?
Maybe beating the game unlocks it? Something added to the PS3 rerelease?
I was thimking of revisiting it (I have the PS2 version), but taking out a feature seen in so many games is really making me consider a way with more...save states.

You can, but I don't remember when that opens up.

 

[Becksworth]

Author of The Tetris Effect sues Apple and The Tetris Company over Tetris film.

Is The Tetris Effect also pseudo biographical with fictional embellishments? Otherwise I'm not sure what case he would have against The Tetris Company on the historical facts of its still alive founders.

 

[Patrick]

Castle of Illusion Gen/MD is a lovely little game but the Master System game of the same name is unquestionably the superior experience.

Oh, I didn't realize they were different. It looks like I played a bit of the Genesis version and then quit after a couple of stages. I just looked up the Master System game, and it looks similar to Land of Illusion. I had no idea that existed, I'll add it to my list.

I got around to trying SMS Castle of Illusion. Wow, that is very similar to Land of Illusion. It's a shorter game, and the levels are a bit more abstract. Plus, there's less to the story/setting. Overall I prefer Land, because it's longer, has a map screen, and the permanent items that you pick up add a lot. Though I have to admit, it stole a lot of the best parts from Castle. Neither game is very long, so you may as well play both if you're interested in checking them out.

 

[Becksworth]

Seeing 3 or 4 Hollow Knight inspired metroidvanias amongst the Gamescom trailers and man did Hollow Knight just ruin indie metroidvanias as a sub genre didn't it? Before Hollow Knight most devs making metroidvanias were too afraid to make anything to close to Metroid or Iga-vanias out of not wanting the negative comparison, resulting in games that did unique things in the genre. Now there is a new king in town, but one indie devs think they stand a chance at usurping, so everyone is chasing the same platonic ideal of 2D Souls-light with moody atmosphere. Telling that my favorite metroidvania since Dread is Pseudoregalia, one focused on 3D platforming through N64 esque environments, speedrunning over being impossibly labyrinthine, and only pays the most token of lip service to the Souls genre.

I don't know if I even want Silksong at this point...

 

[Issun]

devs making metroidvanias were too afraid to make anything to close to Metroid

I'll hold up Axiom Verge as a counterpoint for shits and giggles, but otherwise I'd say you're correct.

 

[ShakeWell]

Also: the game that brought indie Metroidvania to the mainstream, Shadow Complex, was basically 2.5D Super Metroid.

 

[Bongo]

Shadow Complex was an outlier in many ways, the most significant of which was that it was not part of a trend of Metroid imitators.

 

[Beta Metroid]

Meanwhile, I'm very content with Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

I shared this in the Mega Man Legends thread the other day, but figured it was worth sharing here, too, since it still makes a good point.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1695055429217464681

Incidentally, I wish I could find this art at close to this scale and quality, but without the watermark. I keep turning up much smaller, grainier, or... well, this.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

screaming crying throwing up, retro game challenge/game center cx 1+2 is coming to switch (in japan), featuring a new Kunio-style game

 

[ShakeWell]

screaming crying throwing up, retro game challenge/game center cx 1+2 is coming to switch (in japan), featuring a new Kunio-style game

100% worth its own thread.

 

[FelixSH]

Finally bought Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Download will take 2.5 days.

Normally, my slow internet isn't much of a problem, but downloading these giant games is kinda annoying. Normally, my internet isn't that slow, at least three times the speed, so maybe it will get better tomorrow. It's fine, there is no stress. Looking forward to playing it.

 

[John]

Finally bought Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Download will take 2.5 days.

Normally, my slow internet isn't much of a problem, but downloading these giant games is kinda annoying. Normally, my internet isn't that slow, at least three times the speed, so maybe it will get better tomorrow. It's fine, there is no stress. Looking forward to playing it.

That reminds me of downloading 50MB postage stamp size rips of South Park episodes in 1997 over a 19.2kbps modem connection. I would set it to download before heading off to school, and then hopefully it would be done when I got home. Most times it didn’t, and I had to retry, usually restarting the whole file because it was early, and partial download apps (especially on Mac) barely worked.

Hope your internet is just slow, and not also data capped!

 

[FelixSH]

Having no data cap is my priority. I can deal with slow internet (up to a point, it should be faster than 1 mb/sec, so I can stream stuff without problems), but having to worry about downloading too much sounds awful.

And yeah, it's at least a stable connection, and due to being on Steam, I can take a break. So it's all fine.

 

[ShakeWell]

That reminds me of downloading 50MB postage stamp size rips of South Park episodes in 1997 over a 19.2kbps modem connection. I would set it to download before heading off to school, and then hopefully it would be done when I got home. Most times it didn’t, and I had to retry, usually restarting the whole file because it was early, and partial download apps (especially on Mac) barely worked.

Hope your internet is just slow, and not also data capped!

The kids today will never know the pain of downloading pornographic pictures one-at-a-time, with each taking 30 seconds to a minute to complete.

 

[MetManMas]

The kids today will never know the pain of downloading pornographic pictures one-at-a-time, with each taking 30 seconds to a minute to complete.

Or browsing random links in Japanese not knowing where they'll take you on the hunt for good anime style porn art instead of having the convenience of Pixiv and various Booru-type image hoarding sites.

 

[John]

The kids today will never know the pain of downloading pornographic pictures one-at-a-time, with each taking 30 seconds to a minute to complete.

Computers were both expensive and shared, so we had one for the family, in the living room so everyone could “enjoy it”. When I felt the need to see pictures like that loading one stripe at a time, it was the rare times I was home alone, and I would still hover the mouse over the minimize or close buttons on Netscape Navigator, just in case.

 

[Patrick]

I remember being at a friend’s house, and he wanted to show me a picture that someone had emailed him. So we waited for what felt like forever while the computer rendered a picture of a topless woman one line at a time. And I was completely amazed that a computer could do something like that.

 

[Violentvixen]

Computers were both expensive and shared, so we had one for the family, in the living room so everyone could “enjoy it”. When I felt the need to see pictures like that loading one stripe at a time, it was the rare times I was home alone, and I would still hover the mouse over the minimize or close buttons on Netscape Navigator, just in case.

Yeah, the idea of being able to look at porn at home is wild to me. Seeing a lot more parents putting their computers in the living room than I remember when growing up, not sure if it's a Covid/remote school thing or just so they can help the kids learn internet safety.

Also funny and relevant story from a friend this weekend: her kid (3rd grader) needed to do a report on jungle animals so she asked to use the computer. My friend sat with her, watched her search for animals, noticed her kid focusing on birds and getting lists of jungle bird names. All is going well until she realizes her kid has noticed all the species of birds that are the species "tit" and has now entered "pictures of tits" into the search bar. My friend swears she did a slow motion "nooooooo" then managed to convince her kid to enter "birds" before pressing enter.

This is the same kid who did a report on "unpopular cats" because she thought that was the same as "rare cats" so I think some lessons about really understanding the meaning of words are in her future but for now it's just hilarious.

 

[gogglebob]

I remember being at a friend’s house, and he wanted to show me a picture that someone had emailed him. So we waited for what felt like forever while the computer rendered a picture of a topless woman one line at a time. And I was completely amazed that a computer could do something like that.

I was once a horny preteen/teen (shocking, I know), and the closest I ever came to downloading a virus was basically an email that appeared to be loading a naked lady super slowly, but "click here if the full image does not load" was an immediately available link (which, obviously, was the virus). I came so close to executing that EXE!

Or browsing random links in Japanese not knowing where they'll take you on the hunt for good anime style porn art instead of having the convenience of Pixiv and various Booru-type image hoarding sites.

Or finding out you like, like, all the porn on some random site where you literally could not translate the title, and then later learning that it translated to "a site all about this specific fetish" and having the revelation "oh! I guess that's what I'm into!"

...

What were we talking about?

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

What were we talking about?

Getting Mass Effect Legendary Edition with a slow internet.