Don’t forget the Gadget Trips/Mindscapes laserdisc/dvd movie
the artbook that gives context to the events of the game
and the album Resonances of Gadget, Quasisymphonic Movements and Noise Montages
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playing the taito game metal black amazing graphics amazing vibes wow. huge recommendation for fans of the darius series, pre-bullet hell shmups in general, and parallax scrolling
this does not capture how good this actually looks in motion with the cloud layers scrolling
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Metal Black is a pure aesthetic all-timer. I think it and Einhander are the only shooters I’ve ever loved
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confession: i always get Metal Black mixed up with Bio Metal in my head, so i’m always confused at how everybody regards the shmup with the 2 Unlimited soundtrack as an aesthetic masterstroke
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The high regard for BioMetal isn’t hard to understand if you’ve heard the sound effect that plays when you defeat a boss.
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You gotta read this, it’s really interesting
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oh wow, there’s some really great stuff in here!
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havent been back long enough to temp check people’s feelings on Death Stranding around here. played about 15 hours when it first showed up on PC in 2020 and was not a fan.
now it’s one of my favorite games. i was so dialed in the entire 60+ hours the first time i got a B delivery ranking (about the 40 hr mark) i wanted to KMS.
not sure if my taste in games has gotten more refined, more stupid, or both in the intervening 4 years.
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Getting more into episode 1 racer and finding subtleties I never noticed before.
One thing: if you hit a wall too hard your pod-racer goes into a kind of “slow” mode where you don’t reach top-speed for a while and the engines seem to make a whining noise, but then it recovers and makes a kind of charging sound effect and goes back to normal.
Another thing I never noticed: the upgrade parts all have health bars, and if you take a lot of damage during a race they wear out a ton, and this greatly affects the stats of your pod-racer, so you have to rebuy old parts to get back those stats. Some parts in the junkyard have great stats but low quality. Quality degradation also affects their trade in value so you end up dumping a lot of money on stuff.
Some of the later races are a lot harder, including the invitational races which you only get access to after completing a series. One race it’s possible to fall off and into another track, which goes around a longer route, it was really challenging!
Some of these tracks also make me feel like a podracer, the tight successive turns at speed is really fun to race, and then memorizing landmarks so you know where to boost. Despite being super long the tracks have very distinct sections so they’re easier to remember.
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did you figure out that you can also change how much you wager on each race beforehand and if you actually want to fully upgrade your pod you have to bump that up (and then actually hit the rank you wagered for). pretty sure a majority of people who played this game didn’t know it was a thing. at least, i didn’t. it’s pretty not-obvious that you can even do this unless you read the manual imo
the item HP stuff is a bit silly at times (though still cool and novel) because you can actually buy worn down stuff and then repair it during races themselves (this is what the pit droids do) to sell it for more value and then buy better parts when they show up in the junkyard for cheap
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i didn’t know about the repair tip. I did know about the wager stuff, I’ve been setting it to “winner take all” for most of the time lmao.
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it’s remarkably deep for a racing game! lots of interesting ideas and systems
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I kinda like it, but if you don’t the Japanese version doesn’t have it.
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not my video but it’s what I found for Astro Aqua Kitty. If you’ve played the original or DX version of Aqua Kitty, you know it as a submarine based Defender/Fantasy Zone sort of game that has really lush graphics. The sequel is an exploration based game with unlockable abilities. It does have an arcade mode though, which is good. Still, it’s big maps with lots of checkpoints and mission objectives and huge spreads of bullets that owe more to Eugene Jarvis than they do to Zun. Fun but don’t hope for more of the first since it’s in CAVES now.
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we had a pretty active thread on it for a bit!
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love this interview. love metal black. its the only shooter ive beaten multiple times. my favorite narrative shooter seconded by layer section
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have you tried eschatos?
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WHOA I HAVENT im gonna play the shit out of this
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just checked and it’s on switch. nice
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yakuza update: i finished 3 (better than i was expecting tbh) and decided to skip 4 and 5, but i will say watching videos of 5 with taxi driving and pop idol rhythm games does make me want to come back to it at some point
i will start 6 but ive hit a snag because i just figured out how to get the saturn emulator on my steam deck working just right so i gotta Tryrush that dang Deppy
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