![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroCastelvania: Order of Ecclesia (DS, Replayed on Retroid Pocket 3) – I played this more than ten years ago and remembered that it was unfairly difficult, so I went in with the infinite health cheat right off the bat. (The bosses have So. Much. Health. and you can only take a handful of hits while trying to whittle it down.) What I hadn’t remembered was quite how much filler was in it, even compared to other Castlevania games of the era. The first half of the game (before the bad ending) is split up into a series of locations on the map, but a number of them are just straight lines with nothing to find, and others have the exact same room designs repeated several times. The gameplay is padded out with quests from the villagers (who you need to rescue all of to get the second half of the game, Dracula’s Castle), which I think I had more patience for on my first time through the game. And the MP-for-all-attacks system isn’t as impressive now that I’ve seen Timespinner do it better.
Super Mario World (SNES, Replayed on Trimui Smart Pro) - I don’t actually remember the last time I did a real “attempt to play every stage” play-through of this, after countless ones throughout my childhood that the muscle memory still remains from. I had forgotten how incredibly cute the little scenes of Mario destroying the castles are, and how cruel some of the Special World stages are. I got 84/96 exits without touching a guide, which I think is reasonably acquitting myself.
Virtual Boy Wario Land (Virtual Boy, Replayed on R36S) - Easily the best game on the Virtual Boy and certainly the longest and most detailed, this follows the model of Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land for the Game Boy, as a stage-based game where you’re trying to collect both the special treasures and the most coins in each level. Wario has an assortment of power-up helmets (that upgrade each other), but a single hit knocks you all the way down to being small Wario, and you often need the power-ups to get the hidden treasures, so you really need to play perfectly (or have save states). There are 14 levels, though only 10 of them are real stages and the rest are boss battles. The stages each take 10-20 minutes to find everything in, which is ideal on a system that wants you to pause and stop playing every 20 minutes. They also make a pretty good use of the 3D effects, with most stages featuring “close” and “far” layered areas and many obstacles moving in and out of the background. (There are also apparently 6 endings, depending on how many coins you get, if you find all the treasures, and how long you take to beat the game.) I admit, I’m surprised that this stayed locked away with the rest of the Virtual Boy titles and was never remade for the 3DS—while most everything else was either a simple arcade-style game or a glorified tech demo, this was a really solid action platformer that stands up well against the rest of the series.
I also replayed The World is You Weapon on Steam, because I was inspired by a Youtube video and it’s fast, but such ridiculous fun. Literally every object in the game can be wielded as a weapon or sold at your shop, and virtually all of them have special abilities to boot. It’s absurd and totally recommended.
Super Mario World (SNES, Replayed on Trimui Smart Pro) - I don’t actually remember the last time I did a real “attempt to play every stage” play-through of this, after countless ones throughout my childhood that the muscle memory still remains from. I had forgotten how incredibly cute the little scenes of Mario destroying the castles are, and how cruel some of the Special World stages are. I got 84/96 exits without touching a guide, which I think is reasonably acquitting myself.
Virtual Boy Wario Land (Virtual Boy, Replayed on R36S) - Easily the best game on the Virtual Boy and certainly the longest and most detailed, this follows the model of Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land for the Game Boy, as a stage-based game where you’re trying to collect both the special treasures and the most coins in each level. Wario has an assortment of power-up helmets (that upgrade each other), but a single hit knocks you all the way down to being small Wario, and you often need the power-ups to get the hidden treasures, so you really need to play perfectly (or have save states). There are 14 levels, though only 10 of them are real stages and the rest are boss battles. The stages each take 10-20 minutes to find everything in, which is ideal on a system that wants you to pause and stop playing every 20 minutes. They also make a pretty good use of the 3D effects, with most stages featuring “close” and “far” layered areas and many obstacles moving in and out of the background. (There are also apparently 6 endings, depending on how many coins you get, if you find all the treasures, and how long you take to beat the game.) I admit, I’m surprised that this stayed locked away with the rest of the Virtual Boy titles and was never remade for the 3DS—while most everything else was either a simple arcade-style game or a glorified tech demo, this was a really solid action platformer that stands up well against the rest of the series.
I also replayed The World is You Weapon on Steam, because I was inspired by a Youtube video and it’s fast, but such ridiculous fun. Literally every object in the game can be wielded as a weapon or sold at your shop, and virtually all of them have special abilities to boot. It’s absurd and totally recommended.
