I finally drank the Switch kool aid about a month ago. I got the OLED model and the Hori Split Pad Compact (in a nice shade of chartreuse) because I mostly play handheld. I’m not sure why I had a bad impression about the Switch user interface but I kinda like it. I like the wet fart sound when you flip through all your games on the main menu. Anyway here is what I’ve been playing:
Sega Ages Herzog Zwei I beat the computer at a game of herzog zwei! Motherfucker!! On type A difficulty but whatever! Gamer goal achieved! It only took going through the entire tutorial and maybe even having to go back to redo some sections a couple of times. Cool game! I will not be playing again!!
I want to say one little thing about the moe tutorial girl. In case you’re not familiar with M2’s “Emotional Motion Technology” used in this game’s tutorial…well, I’m not sure i am familar with what it is either. It seems to be a tool to animate character portraits in a way that is both sophisticated and kinda crude. There are lot of jokes in the tutorial but the funniest part was when moe commander gets really excited she does this very jerky “excited” reaction, but in one extreme case they play it over and over again rapidly, and because this is M2 Sega Ages release they use a very megadrivey sound effect, so she looks and sounds exactly like a Gunstar Heroes boss spazzing out.
Sega Ages Phantasy Star Hell of a game! Surely this beats Dragon Quest 2 for RPG of the year 1987. I know some people prefer the PSG music but I looove the FM music. I could not have finished it without the easy mode, the fast forward and the dungeon mapping. I didn’t even need a guide except towards the end when I needed to know town names. I guess this game came with a paper map that would have made it easier. Anyway thanks to all the enhancements it was so much easier to experiment with dead ends, wandering around and backtracking so I could figure stuff out myself. Best of all, unlike an emulator the music and sound effects don’t speed up when you fast forward. Using the Hori handles with the back buttons meant I could map one to fast forward and one to rapid A. It felt very luxurious.
Sega Ages Virtua Racing This should really be marketed as an HD version! It’s in a whole different league than the other Sega Ages games. It’s 1080p and 60fps! You’re not going to get that on any emulator. Unless it’s yuzu lol
Arcade Archives Tetris: The Absolute: The Grand Master 2 Plus I wanted a version of this to take on the go, and it’s more likely I might play doubles with somebody if it’s on a console connected to my TV rather than on my computer. But this is a disappointing port! the music kind of stutters! unacceptable! Also in handheld mode, my eye muscles started hurting and twitching! too small!
Moon I am amazed how similar this is to Chulip but also less cruel, prettier and more cohesive. Monsters in this game = underground citizens in Chulip, getting info about items by holding them up to people, the sound design…I feel ready to go back to try Chulip again, this feels like training for that game. Anyway I really loved this game and went ahead and double dipped on a used copy of the japanese deluxe release, but I didn’t actually finish the game. I managed to reach level 27 without a guide. when I finally caved and googled to learn about the requirements to get to the final fishing spot (which is also needed to finish the game), i felt utterly defeated bc I never would have figured that out on my own, and even with the answer in front of me I still felt like it was a lot of work. so the plan is to wait many years before going back and finishing the game so it’ll be like I just barely remember what to do & maybe I’ll be able to figure it out on my own then.
Death Come True I am always in the mood to play more live-action games after 428 but there’s a big difference between a game that uses nothing but photos (428 can pull this off well) and an actual FMV game that has like acting and cinematography and stuff (Death Come True cannot pull this off well)! but I got kind of used to the badness and the cringiness and it gets slowly better as it turns into kind of a metal gear solid 2 vibe. in the end I finished the game (I think it is less than 2 hours long) and I want companies to make more games like this, but I don’t recommend this one.