They did say Mew was under the truck.
Thereâs full Round 2s in both Pokemon Stadium games 
Oh no 
I just want to say that @meauxdal and @VastleCania were right. I just spent an entire day playing Dysmantle. Itâs quite a magic trick, it does absolutely nothing new but it hits every note just right, and thatâs more than enough.
Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Compared input delay on my set-up between the PS1 version (this is the one in the pictures; itâs in Street Fighter Collection 2) and the version you can play sometimes in Battle Hub in Street Fighter 6 (PC/Steam).
Was tricky to test in SF6, had to plug in a second controller instead of being able to use the keyboard, because while it seems to let you map some keys for 2P, I couldnât find a 2P Start keyboard key. : PP
Also the options in SF6 HF are minimal, you canât even turn off the heavy scanline/blur overlay, or change the difficulty. : P
But, at 3.5 frames of delay, it was just barely behind the PS1 versionâs 3 framesâwhich makes this version in SF6 the most responsive SFII port Capcom has put out on any PS since the PS1, and any modern-ish PC port (starting with 30th Anniversary Collection, the oldest PC port Iâve played). So that was a nice surprise.
Then the copy of Super Street Fighter II X for Matching Service: Grand Master Challenge (Dreamcast) I bought on eBay reached my door just ONE DAY after being picked up by FedEx in Japan. = o Dumped it with DreamShell and a DC SD Adapter V2. When run in Flycast, like the other DC Capcom fighting games Iâm playing in the emulator, it has just ONE FRAME of input delay. : D
Flycast owns.
Iâve been playing through Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time as I am eternally playing one of these games several years after release not because Iâm in love with the series but because it feels like they are the only games like this being made any more.
Anyways after a bit with the game I was wondering why I was getting on with it less so than I generally do with games in this series and I think I figured out why: they tossed in a bunch of other stuff that ended up diluting the parts that usually stand out. Generally I enjoy jumping between several different worlds, seeing the different designs and playing with whatever weapons get thrown my way. I would guess that designing a bunch of worlds is now prohibitive due to AAA production costs so each individual one feels a bit bigger but thereâs now a bunch of other stuff in between them. You have the sort of puzzle platformer bits with Clank that also have their own almost twin stick shooter on a globe minigame that pops up from time to time (and is poor), you have the flying between planets and space shooting with Ratchet in addition to landing on moons for additional challenges which are fine but all looks fairly generic and boring.
I checked online and the game is seemingly considered by many to be one of the stronger entries in the series which genuinely surprised me, itâs not awful by any stretch but it may be my least favorite since the original (original had some inspired design bits but the controls just werenât quite there yet).
itâs too late for me, the discussion here got me to start a Crystal game on the olâ CRT (at 2am, what a time to leave your Mom to meet a strange old man and go on an adventure, all the Poke Nurses like: âWell youâre out late!â)
In the context of the Future trilogy (which it was marketed as at the time) Crack in Time was genuinely a big improvement as the final entry in the trilogy. Tools of Destruction was tonally odd, very stiff and had generally dull planets, activities and weapons. Quest for Booty was a sort of downloadable experiment which was OK but didnât have so much planet-hopping and seemed to stem from somebodyâs intense love of pirate shit which was a bit overbearing for a whole game. Crack in Time by contrast felt very open and had more variety even if it dilutes the core. Customisable weapon skins and radio stations went a long way after two middling entries. Itâs not perfect but it was a lot better than the contemporary Ratchets at the time. This, coupled with the fact that Ratchet is seemingly the only game series of its kind, led people to estimate it higher than it necessarily is as a standalone game.
Chipping away at Pokemon Violet: The Teal Mask. I donât know where Game freak find time to develop stuff like this, but the performance issues are still rocky (theyâre probably worse in this).
The DLC scales everything to whatever level you are in the base game so if you finish the game then everything is basically geared towards helping you fill a Pokédex quickly since you can level everything very rapidly here.
Sadly, filling the new PokĂ©dex is more compelling than the main plot to me. Filling out a PokĂ©dex is still a miserable slog because there is so much baggage accumulated for specific means of evolving PokĂ©mon. They should do away with happiness stats and trade requirements entirely. In every game you can acquire most of the dex through capture or levelling and then thereâs a fussy group of weirdos who must have their pillows fluffed and spreadsheets filled out before they can change and then be put in a box forever. Assuming you know you need to do this; you have to trade somethings like 15 PokĂ©mon to evolve them here. Even with the knowledge of all the wikis itâs just time consuming for no reason. If youâre familiar with all these PokĂ©mon both traders will already know whether they want them or not, itâs just dex fever. Anyway, I think Iâm having fun doing what amounts to a giant practical exam.
There are also random mooks everywhere with teams that could easily beat league champions, but they hang out in caves and isolated rock spires instead.
Thereâs a regional phenomenon which constitutes the regionâs only piece of folklore, and you turn up just as the present-day circumstance reveals the folklore is⊠REAL!? Youâre on a school trip and hang out with a couple of local kids with improbable hair one of whom gets toxically angry about everything, but their anger animation is very good and something I think about a lot.
You spend a lot of the story lying to and excluding another child for no reason other than drama was required.
Still, Violet continues to carry a lot of idle time in a pleasantly effortless way. Peak podcast game. No thoughts head empty.
i like her stupid bangs
they make my nose itch real bad
Super Street Fighter II X for Matching Service: Grand Master Challenge (Dreamcast)
Auto Save (last yes/no toggle in OPTION - GAME; On is the two-character setting) seems to work but is highly disconcerting as it never gives any indication that it is saving. Donât think Iâve ever played another DC game that didnât always tell you on the game screen when it was saving. Ah! I can work around this w/ Flycastâs âVideo - Show VMU In-gameâ option, sweet.
VERSUS doesnât show on the main menu until thereâs a 2nd controller (which in Flycast means having a DC controller type set for that port (ie Device B: ASCII Stick)). (My capture didnât capture Flycastâs menu captions, so you canât really see what Iâm setting in the emulator.)
(1P v 2P challenge matches if for instance 1P presses Start while 2P plays Arcade are 1-off, donât get VS-mode-specific dip settings (COM canât fill in for 2P, etc), & go back to Arcade after (itâs an old way to bypass a tough Arcade fight, although apparently not when âSurvivalâ is enabled in dips).)
VERSUS w/ 2P as COM (in EX OPTION menu: highlight OPTION, hold HP, press START)
varies in difficulty per opponent: Ken whiffs uppercuts & is often easy to beat, but T.Hawk still murdered me.
Finally SF2 VS CPU mode!! (They say SF Collection 2 on PS1 has it but you have to 1cc to unlock. : p)
SECRET OPTION (beat game w/ all chars & Super charsâor DL save from GameFAQs like I didâthen highlight OPTION on main menu, hold MP (maybe for a few seconds 1st), press START) AUTO SETTING:
â1993/10/05 verâ:
SSF2, I think. Still have to use codes to select Super versions of the characters, & set Turbo 1 in the OPTION-GAME menu (Turbo O here is an extra-slow one w/ âall the frames,â apparently)â& CPU always plays as ST/SX.
â1994/02/23 verâ:
Super Turbo / Super X settings, I think.
â1994/05/29 verâ:
Tweak of ST/SX adding charge option to two Chun & Honda specials. Huh.
â2000/12/22 verâ:
Default settings for this Dreamcast versionâlots of probably fix/balance tweaks to specific moves & other tiny fixes.
â???/??/?? verâ:
??? Lots of unknown settings, & swapping specific move HP/MP SFX or Arcade point values. ???
Iâm using the ST/SX preset, then enabling Shin Gouki & Ten Gouki (3-8, 3-9),
& English game text (3-11),
fixing characters freezing if they try a SC in attract mode (4-1), letting you skip the âpause on 4 charsâ part of picking Gouki (4-2), & enabling SX colors for the character display in the 1cc ending Iâll never reach (1-5).
âSurvivalâ Arcade mode (dip 2-15) throws the 4 Kings in randomly w/ the other chars: I got Claw in match 2. No continues.
Slowdown off (dip 2-10) used to interest me but Iâll original speed now.
Difficulty 8/8 feels at least as hard as 4/8 US ST.
I couldnât get CPU to play Ten Gouki in VERSUSâTen Gouki select resulted in CPU Shin Gouki (no super).
There are three playable Goukis in the game.
been playing the Baten Kaitos games via the recent fine but far from great remaster
baten kaitos (1) iâm pretty negative on. the story is bland (evil empire needs 5 artifacts from the 5 continents to revive the evil god. stop them), the script is dry, and the battle system is novel at first but never significantly changes. thereâs a lot about the game which is cute, but i donât think any of it ever transcends cute, and it can be perfectly appreciated via forum post. hereâs a list of things i like in bk1:
- some of the backgrounds are very nice. shoutout in particular to Diadem
- generally cute about player perspective (you control a guardian spirit tied to the ostensible protagonist, not the protagonist himself)
- the english voice acting - absent in the remaster - is fun
- itâs nice to examine a chest of drawers and get a hair dryer or whatever to use in battle
- card aging remained a nice surprise throughout. bananas (healing item) ageing to rotten bananas (damage enemies) is pretty obvious but there were a few points where i was like wait where did i get these fishing rods, oh of course they came from my bamboo shoots > young bamboo > fishing rods. peach aging is also v cute.
i played through the back half at 300% speed instakills on to get to baten kaitos 2/ origins, which is, at abt 10 hours in, broadly improved with a big caveat that while they punched up the dialogue a lot they did so with some very tired sexism
I do remember Baten Kaitos as a slow less cool Chrono Cross. With cards
One last cute thing though is how the way to make cash in this game is taking pictures of enemies with a Camera Card then selling them
I loved that game, I think because it was such a collection of cute ideas.
which then develop over real time! it tutorialises a system whereby you have to use light and dark magic to get the light levels correct but i totally ignored that without issue
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) - this game still utterly rules. a few bits that stick out to me this time
- Kaepora Gaeboraâs âdid you understand my storyâ cursor defaulting to ânoâ - the game is almost explicitly telling you âslow down kiddoâ
- the way Malon actually sings the background music in Lon Lon Ranch and stops when you speak with her
- uniquely-colored dusk in Kakariko Village
- castle town shopkeeper gives you a discount on the hylian shield if youâve spoken to the guard outside death mountain
- Lost Woods music puzzle only fades the instruments; the percussion remains full-volume
- Goron King Darunia starts dancing but stops short if you play him anything other than Sariaâs song
- the way Darunia says you need to âprove youâre a real manâ by tackling Dodongoâs Cavern
this game is still so⊠iâm sorry⊠nostalgic for me. something about the transition of the series, and video games in general, from 2d to 3d that happened during that period. thereâs a palpable sense of loss and melancholy. itâs kind of like the idea of growing up, and that you canât return back to childhood. some things get lost in the process. games lost their innocence, and (maybe only in an implicit way) i feel like that game really grapples with the feeling. as an adult a lot of things in the world become stranger, and youâre much more aware of its problems. your horizons and responsibilities also become bigger, and you feel much more of a sense that you need to do something in the world. your relationship with people also changes, and things become more real and you see a lot of unmanifested things in those people suddenly manifest themselves. both for good and bad.
anyway i feel like itâs more potent than the âlight world/dark worldâ metaphor of Link to the Past, even though i like that game almost as much (and you could look at that as an interesting metaphor of the sort of parallel world of a society descending into fascism and collapse). but Ocarina feels like it really is about a loss of childhood innocence more than the other games.
I like how the endless skeleton monsters at night just stop showing up once you become adult Link. I always took that to mean that the skeletons were more a childhood fear about the outside world beyond the forest, and once youâre an adult it no longer affects you
i just think its one of those fairytale monsters that specifically targets children who are out at night but the allegory is good too