Bubble Bobble is still a refreshing arcade platformer loaded with mystery and an interesting difficulty curve that is easy to forgive -for the most part- as the more challenging levels seem to be randomly sprinkled throughout the 100+ total levels
What I appreciate the most is how far they push the concept of bubble jumping as means of traversal that becomes essential as the level design increasingly breaks down into bizarre shapes filled with hostility
Nier Automata plays great on the Switch but I have had two crashes (after playing some animated sequences) and lost 40 min of playtime and that is infuriating
Akumajou Densetsu (Famicom) (aka Castlevania III NES)
Didn’t grab me like Castlevania did; it moves away from Gothic romance and into more generic platforming.
Although the background tile work is gorgeous and that custom chip in the Japanese cart makes the music RIP.
And the owls are neat.
Grimoire is an idle game in the vein of Universal Paperclips and I guess the most interesting wrinkle is that you are encouraged to retire runs, narratively handing down your arcane research to a successor, mechanically giving the next run a large production multiplier.
It feels less flavorful, tbh, but maybe the big payoffs still lie ahead.
Formula Front is arguably THE Armoured Core game. After the shiniest auto HDR textures PPSSPP can render you are thrown face first into a pasture of blue skies, white clouds, green meadows and a pulsing orange sun spreading yellow rays onto light brown cliffs overlooking the successive terrains. After spending half an hour between the options and joy2key making this control as much like a PS2 game as possible the slickness of the menus kick in styled way more after ridge racer and the early gran turismo’s than the tungsten air of the follow ups. The splash screen gives you four main options with three preheadings but it’s the SIXTH of these that actually allows you to play the game along with throwing you towards the top of a class division which is such an inspired decision from Nine Breaker’s linear progression.
You’re invited to customise FIVE AC’s as a respite from the precision of anything in the 3 series and the PSP’s screen is stretched to breaking point, making enemy AC’s the size of dead pixels in the distance and the length of a thumbprint when up close giving the series a welcome sense of levity. The carnival of Battlebots to the kayfabe forge of Robot Wars. I hadn’t commented much of the soundtrack which Hoshino and friends do good enough work but here all the elements are at their most Sega and a relaxed UI and simpler melodies communicate this (a lot of this reminds me of the home ports of Outrun 2 but that might be reaching). This extends to the battles themselves while previous games would drag out endgames as long as possible here as soon as that four figure health bar is wittled away to zero the game cannot WAIT to slap a huge fucking YOU WIN / THEY LOSE texture on the screen before cutting to thirty different damage ratios at once along with FOUR separate charts to cycle through before moving to the next stage.
I’d be lying if I said playing seven of these games in a row didn’t give a sort of fatigue but after going through the first two trilogies I’d like to return to this as I think there’s something special here. This was my first exposure to the franchise decades ago buying this at a garage sale, being confused by it and turning it off an hour later. Now with ten games under my belt I’m willing to call Armoured Core: Formula Front International: Japanese Edition to coveted cerium Game Of The Week.
i went to the seaside for a few hours yesterday. of course, the “arcades” were 99% just crappy gambling machines, but one interesting thing was a vr game called sailor’s quest. it was absurdly expensive to play, considering it’s an unmanned machine (£3 a credit!), but using this tech for an operation-wolf-esque mounted gun game is at least logical. though it had that raw thrills feel to it, wherer it’s pretty clear that the only way not to win is to literally do nothing at all.
maybe the most notewrothy thing about it is the logo that appears before you play: it’s by igs! the knights of valour guys!
i went to the seaside for a few hours yesterday. of course, the “arcades” were 99% just crappy gambling machines
After a few hours touring the Great Yarmouth seafront last weekend I was convinced that they are just needlessly pissing away energy and should be either retired outright or just be retooled to house a bunch of MAME machines
Mega incremental/idle games nerd here
Universal Paperclips is actually an exception, most incremental games actually use this mechanic and end up with infinite+ playtime because of it
Some have multiple layers of retirements, like you’ll retire again and again, for more rewards, faster and faster, until you unlock Retirement+ that resets everything including previous retirement rewards for a much better Mega Retirement reward
There’s a fun game called Prestige Tree Rewritten that’s only about this
Incremental games on phones are often bad, I found Grimoire bland as hell (still spent 10 hours on it)
I would recommend two of them that ate my life for a long while:
every mame machine there would take away a hard working slot machine that hasn’t been cleaned since 1983
you can’t play pac man, but you can play one of about twenty pac man coin pusher machines
do you like idling to rule the gods?
I’ve wanted to try it for a long while but could never grab it because it’s Android + Steam only
These look like cool recommendations, I might try them out! Also appreciate your insight into the genre conventions I was but a naive babe in the incremental woods
Relived my past by going all the way to Saitama to Shin Misato Round One. And paying 2600 yen to play arcade games for an hour.
Turns out it had not had maintence on the stuff from 11 years ago, shit!
Afterbuner Climax: machinegun broken
Fzero: boost broken
Battle gear 3: STEERING WHEEL BROKEN
Castlevania:arcade: doesn’t matter is boring
Pod racer: barely playable screen
GTI Club: steering wheel off center
Thrill Drive 3: burned to hell screen
Battle Gear 4 Tuned: game owns, worked perfectly
Star Wars Battle Pod: projector was burned, but got to credit feed all the parts I hadn’t seen. Playing the second death star run almost reminds you Star Wars Is Good.
So mostly a giant waste of time. Arcade games are fun.
ah shit, prop cycle, someone i know on twitter is trying to piece together a cab one spare part at a time
Luckily there is Prop Cycle in Akiba right now.
me and my friend got the silly idea to do something different in the middle of our weekly avengers session, namely he wanted to try out dragon age inquisition mp because hes been playing that game and let me tell you that shit set me straight real quick. the spongey enemies, the way you move, bending down to do a loot animation every 15 seconds, and worst of all the MMO ass combat…it felt like we were playing a shitty knock off of two worlds 2. I’ll never doubt marvel’s avengers ever again. It really could be so much worse.
The spell of Grimoire is broken and whatever plateau I’d hit sapped my will to continue. I might need to take a break from incremental games for a bit. Need more instant gratification
bioshock-- never played this before, honestly feels like a huge slog of following UI arrow while sounds happen (how are you supposed to concentrate on the audio logs with the constant combat interruptions?) mb ive just come to this too late and ive heard 10000 deconstructions of it i just can’t imagine anything in it surprising me or being accidentally compelling lol.
tunic-- sort of interesting but also trite and cloying assemblage mush. most fun part is it turning into a witness-like near the end, feel like it shouldve gone a bit harder into that territory and skipped over some of the obligatory souls stuff that happens before. don’t care for the framing device that much & the general style is p unappealing in some areas (no more neon hyper light drifter stuff please)
House with tv always on —> bioshock —> subway surfers tiktoks constant state of distraction army reporting in 
