the proper way to react to receiving a bad game from a loved one as a gift is to cherish it
as an insane person who has put forth the effort to beat Batman Forever, I
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on the opposite side of the scale nothing can quite capture the exquisite sadism of weirdly patronizing and aggressively vague gamefaqs walkthroughs for somewhat niche psx jrpgs written by teenagers in the late 90s six months after their release
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I tried Wild Guns Reloaded for a bit today and it was a bit of a humbling “sorry, you are too old to play certain games” experience. Gave it a few shots and couldn’t even manage to get past the first stage even when playing on easy or using the “easy” beginner character. It’s odd as I can still manage most precision platformers and various Souls games, I think there is something about bullets from multiple directions I no longer have the processing power/twitch reaction time to deal with.
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it’s just a game with a very steep initial learning curve. stick to it (and believe in your power)
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I already uninstalled it 
Someone else seconded the difficulty curve being rather front loaded; they also said they didn’t really get it the first few times they tried it (on the SNES) so perhaps some day down the road I’ll give it another shot and it’ll go better.
Also not for nothing but googling to check something about the game out and it apparently has a stage select, a way to toss back dynamite and other things, maybe what it needs more than a faithful modern reproduction is an actual manual more than a two page digital one that just gives a vague idea what each button does, never did figure out how to get the lasso to work with any consistency…
EDIT: Also when I didn’t play that I ended up stumbling upon a rather pleasant itch puzzle platformer named Growmi that is a basically a cross between Snakebird and BoxBoy, so overall things worked out pretty okay!
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WWF No Mercy N64
Tried Exhibition and Edit modes in WWF No Mercy, dumped with a Sanni Cart Reader V5 and played in the N64 emulator Mupen64Plus, at the default Easy difficulty. Also a bit of AKI’s N64 “WCW/nWo Revenge” from two years earlier for comparison.
Used the command line parameter “–cheats 2” for No Mercy and “–cheats 1” for Revenge to unlock everything.
SBurk’s Create-A-Wrestler FAQ on GameFAQs was the basis of my Hulk Hogan CAW’s move list: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/914112-wwf-no-mercy/faqs/9824
No Mercy was notorious among N64 users for slowdown in 4-character matches, and intermittent wipes of save data, but the slowdown thing doesn’t seem to happen when playing it in an emulator, and MAYBE emulators have solved the data wipe, too?
Don’t know many wrestlers but I may like the Revenge roster better than No Mercy’s, although I’m feeling strange urges to flesh out No Mercy’s with weirdos like Superman and uh I dunno others through the edit mode. (OH and I can edit the McMahons & awkward female models to diff names & models–not moves though–HEY.) (Haha but they keep their exaggerated “female” poses. ; D) No Mercy’s music is definitely better and I think I prefer its more modulated arena lighting, but I go back and forth on the character model styles between the two–the brighter, blockier Revenge characters or the darker, sleeker No Mercy models. I definitely prefer NOT having “Drag opponent” as Button A Long Press like it is in Revenge, where I keep doing it accidentally; in No Mercy, it’s on C Up. (C-stick always confuses me but that’s more of a personal problem maybe. : P) And No Mercy’s name tags on Spirit meters!
Oh, also thanks to Critical! wrestling game history podcast episode 2 for pointing out that the Real American track comes assigned to unlockable wrestler Jim Ross costume swaps Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco; edited it out of them as well as my CAW Hogan so hopefully no more crude video edits will be needed to avoid YouTube copyright tags.
Speaking of edits, I found sunglasses–they’re under the Masks section; slapping some gold sunglasses over the CAW Hulkster’s not-Hogan face helps. ^ _^ There’s a bandanna in Masks/Accessories that goes under the hair, like Hogan wore his sometimes, but it’s only available in black; could work with the black shorts look I used for one of his costumes, but he didn’t have a bandanna on in the photo I found of that.
I should stop worrying about Hogan & make Superman/Batman/Spider-Man etc. : D This editor is much less intimidating than Fire Pro’s, esp since there’s no AI editing…which I guess means you can’t give it funky personality exactly but ferinstance my Hogan as a CPU just goes to town with the moves assigned, so it works all right. (Swapped out the eye-poke counter he used on me–too 3 Stooges.)
Now I’ve tried all the wrestling games I think I’ll have for a while. No Mercy, Revenge, Fire Pro Wrestling World, and Wrestling Empire are in the mix. Which ones will I end up sticking with? So far I like the AKI games for 4-character action, Fire Pro for 2 and 8-character action, and Wrestling Empire for career weirdness.
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I played this tonight. It’s a pretty simple beatemup but very well done on the “pirate” cart scale.
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now fightcade is good i’m getting back into super turbo after many years off
still got it apparently (ok i main boxer)
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I broke the economy in Ishin! by gaming the chicken race gambling with a bug and am now drowing in platinum plates and ryo. It’s made me feel like I’ve been completely sucked in to a detrimental level by all the side stuff but literally no other game can tear me away. Knowing how grindy the weapon smithing is might get me back to the surface to inhale some other games.
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FWIW No Mercy wasn’t bad with slowdown when it was just a normal 4 person match, it was when doing that many people in one of the big gimmick matches (most noticeably the ladder match) that it started to lag a good deal.
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Visited my brother in chicago. Just got back from the galloping ghost, which might as well be the largest arcade in the world even if its not. Played sega sonic, saw a busted half life 2 arcade, looked for outfoxies but its apparently not on the play floor right now. Played like 1 credit of like 50 games that did work. Its like 80 degrees in there from all the machines and just slightly too loud to be comfortable. Wow, videogames. Im so tired.
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Oh interesting! I hadn’t heard anyone talking about the No Mercy four-character slowdown mention that detail. I haven’t found myself tempted to try stuff like table or ladder matches in any wrestling game so far so maybe I’ll never know. ^ _^
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Labyrinth of Galleria:
New NIS dungeon crawler. I am 100% predisposed towards liking dungeon crawlers and 0% towards NIS games.
Never before have so many dev hours spent on Excel lead to so little. There’s a million different mechanics but all you do is Auto battle and Optimize Equipment. The game actually punishes you for micro-managing party members, it’s incredible.
Dungeons are real good though. The ability to just smash the Wizardry dungeon walls from the start is awesome and I keep getting other new life changing field abilities.
Surprisingly great enemy designs too considering it’s NIS
Is this giant dog head a Drakkhen reference??
I started mashing A to skip dialogue during the first cutscene then straight up skipped every cutscene from then on. A new record I think. Dialogue isn’t particularly awful, just unnecessary overlong and tepid, plus weirdly disconnected from the rest of the game anyway.
None of the characters talking in cutscenes are in the battle party, which is currently made of 11 puppet soldiers that keep shouting « This is the fruits of my labor!? »
Game would rule if you could extract the NIS from it
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Wrestling Empire PC/Steam
0:00 - start
0:29 - overdoing training
3:36 - 6-Man Elimination (tired)
12:43 - overdoing more training 
13:53 - Singles - Mojo Snatch (so tired)
16:19 - oh training takes health??
17:10 - Singles - Bud Harley (still so tired)
19:30 - Roaming around is terrifying =o
22:05 - 20-Man Countdown Battle Royal (thrown out ‘p’)
26:23 - wait…maybe sleeping??
28:28 - Dick’s hot dog
29:43 - Singles - Cabal
33:52 - Reddit says you eat with Taunt (right stick)???
34:40 - EATING THE HOT DOG
37:05 - saved by pool cue
40:55 - WHY ONLY SLEPT 5 HOURS GAHH
43:30 - gym wall climb actually killing me!!
45:20 - Charity match - Lucy Lakes
51:44 - 8-Man Tag Team (Brad White had like no health ; D)
54:08 - have to train on boss’ orders ;_;
56:10 - Singles - Ripper Ace (guess who was tired again… ; P)
1:00:02 - boss makes me wear some other costume?!?
1:00:54 - 6-Man Countdown Elimination
1:09:01 - me vs Hairy Harris, Helix, Cam drags onnnn
1:33:45 - finally ends in self-DQ w/ banned weapon ‘p’
1:36:32 - Cam moves my bed but FINALLY FULL SLEEP
1:37:31 - Exhibition - Ripper Ace
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Super Kiwi 64 is delightful.
Demon Turf has too many memes and the button combinations for movement feel like Mavis Beacon Teaches The Buttons on an Xbox Controller. Long jump is A and…Left Trigger…and then A again?
But in Super Kiwi 64 you’re just a little kiwi and you gotta find some cogs and it is the N64.
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The story (and the dungeons) go some weird as heck places that I really enjoy. It is a bit NIS in ways, but the micromanaging being frowned on makes sense when you end up able to have 15 active party members and up to 30 support people.
I’ve been enjoying how New Game Plus is…whelp, a separate story. I am wondering what it is going to do about the original story though.
I will say it’s distinctly lacking in NIS jokes most of the time.
Also, of the party talking on combat bugs you, you can turn it down or off in a really granular way.
The only thing I miss from the first game is the wild environment changes. The second layer of the first game made you a dang old giant fighting tiny little armies as you stomped through their city and that shit ruled. So far, halfway through NG+, this one has yet to do something silly like that, but the story has involved parallel dimensions and a lot of witches, which is pretty OK.
The “Moon Society” in the full title doesn’t even get mentioned till NG+, ha.
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exciting animal land is a video whack a mole game that uses six buttons in two rows of three. very convenient when you’re playing it in mame using a saturn controller!
what’s interesting about it, though, is that it has maybe the most aggressive difficulty ranking i’ve ever seen in a game. i let the game run while i remapped the controls (for some reason, they were mapped to the keyboard by default), and that credit lasted a pretty long time, with moles popping up slowly. after this ended, i started a new credit. when i was actively playing from the start, the moles started popping up a lot more rapidly, and the timer also ran out a lot more quickly.
i scored 36 on the first credit and 47 on the second. i think the absolute maximum you could possibly score is probably in the mid-high fifties.
now i’m left thinking about the design possibilities for a longer, more involed whack a mole videogame.
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one of my favorite, most violent arcade games is whack a mole style
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Returnal was worth my time, I guess. The thirpsing is Controlesque but not quite as good. It’s tough but not as brutal as I’ve heard - I wonder how much mouse aiming has to do with that. It’s definitely hardest at the beginning, with random spikes here and there, but overall there’s very much a snowballing effect. I do NOT like roguelites but I get that like the whole point of the game is narratively justifying and exploring the roguelite format.
There’s a halfway twist that’s extremely good, and the game maintains a very tasteful ambiguity that I really appreciated in this age of youtube Lore Explainers, but the overall idea of it just… isn’t that interesting. To me, anyway. In the end another less than the sum of its parts experience. I’ve been running into those a lot lately. Games that get a lot of bits right but just don’t quite come together. Reflective of how fragmented development is across people, I guess? Busted lecture incoming.
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