There’s a Spanish dub of Metal Gear Solid that is surprisingly high quality for something from that era.
2 Likes
IMHO, the only way to play Blasphemous that feels right is with the full Spanish dub.
12 Likes
Jak 2
2 Likes
I dunno about anyone else but I can only play The Sims in the original Simlish
9 Likes
Oh god yeah this is absolutely it. The way all those old, decrepit guys trill their Rs is incredible.
3 Likes
rip “monster hunter language”
16 Likes
Now that novelty isn’t really a factor in my perception of FF7 as I replay it, the game’s frequently beautiful high-budget set dressing and cutscene direction create an impossible to ignore contrast with the presentation’s super cheap-o qualities. I think that I am particularly sensitive to noticing this kind of crap in big budget games, but here it’s barely disguised. You will walk by dozens of generic NPCs which look as unique as Red Bubble t-shirt models, and many of these will be speaking to each other with faces as animated as cows chewing curd, bobbling their heads in agreement regardless of what’s being said. And then you’ll get into a conversation with your very own party members, and it’s hardly any different. Like, is anybody being fooled here? Maybe Squeenix is betting that no one will really care. And maybe that’s true, save a small percentage of players. But damn the production value of this game is spread over all its assets incredibly unevenly!
And maybe this is sort of fitting. It reminds me of how it looks, now, to play the original FF7 and watch them rotate using the chibi models and the higher quality ones as we move from in-engine cutscenes, pre-rendered bomb drops, and those hero animatics.
6 Likes
The inconsistency of the presentation was my primary gripe as a kid. It bothered me so much it prevented me from enjoying the game. Now I just think its kind of funny. Even the main cast has like 5 different representations. Cut scene, battle, over world, town / dungeon and menu art.
4 Likes
Speaking of, I still can’t get over how unappealing this art is from one of those recent Pixel Remaster games. I think those versions look bad in general and I was never tempted to play them (though I do like some of the music from them) but seeing this was the nail in the coffin for me.
16 Likes
16 Likes
Increase Salt
Increase Ice
Build Death Coaster
Increase Speed
Edit: Only spent time on the MD version but as a formula for success it usually worked out for me
4 Likes
Bubble Ghost (Gameboy)
People were talking about Bubble Ghost in the news thread, which encouraged me to give it a try. I’d never heard of this before. Fun game. Being limited to three continues feels a little punishing, but I don’t know how long it is so maybe it’s fine.
9 Likes
the best game i ever discovered through a “100-in-1” (really 10 and then 90 fake names for the same 10) Gameboy bootleg cart
same cart had Super Mario Land, Tetris, & Breakout! and then like 6 bad licensed games/ports
7 Likes
still trading roguishly, i have absorbed a space elf
i have also done these act 2 plot-planets in the wrong order because these jungle combats are a fucking doddle compared to what i’ve been up to elsewhere
4 Likes
playing gran turismo 7 and by that i mean - downloading an update file that takes 2 hours to patch - navigating menus for 30 minutes - doing one “collection” which is “buy 3 cars” , turning in the raffle prize and, somehow, for the fourth time in a row, getting the lowest prize. and doing a single race to remind myself that it is in fact a racing game
9 Likes
Wanted to play something very different than Torment Numenera so I figured now was as good a time as any to get around to Gravity Rush 2 (well when the online parts still functioned was probably better). Still early on but it still has solid vibes and the odd “choose which direction to fall” gravity abilities were easy enough to re-internalize, does need to pick up a bit as the opening area is small and kinda bland to fly around though.
3 Likes
Just left the Mister running in the middle of Do Re Mi Fantasy. I’m on Stage 4. There’s a GameFAQs post saying “I wish I knew what was happening in this game.” Not much bud! Gotta collect the 5 magic instruments to save your girlfriend. Not sure why the instruments help but it’s something to do.
Reminded I got stuck at 1-4 years ago on the OXbox because I couldn’t figure out you needed to hold attack for a long time to do an upwards attack. Here in the year of the Super Famicom, it’s excellent to play this charming game that has no way to save. There’s a password system to start on any world though. It has been a long time since I’ve left a console on because I couldn’t save.
The ambient soundtrack is real crazy good though. Makes it feel like a PS1 game. Really late SNES games blow my mind comparing to GEN/PCEngine for what they put out. Star Ocean? Tales of Phantasia? Crazy stuff.
9 Likes
It’s that time of year again! I played through all of my ZZT friends’ Oktrollberfest games. (here: https://itch.io/jam/oktrollberfest-2024/entries)
d by jakeout
No relation to Kenji Eno’s capital-D, lowercase-d here is a series of misadventures of this fella from a one-dimensional-ish world fed up with his dead-end fast food job. Despite being a 1D game, the story takes some solid twists and turns over the course of its hour-long runtime, bolstered by a healthy willingness to kill the player.
If nothing else, it makes me want to eat a zeepza IRL.
Red Deviance by Dr. Dos
This is a game all about ZZT’s most inherently trolly enemy type, the centipede (the “deviance” in the game’s title refers to one of their parameters). Centipedes in ZZT have a tendency to perfectly dodge shots if you try shooting them head-on, since they’re the only enemy that turns when they run into a solid wall (and your bullets happen to be solid). Naturally, this is a game all about shooting them (over the course of 9 self-contained levels).
The different colors of centipedes have different rules and interactions tied to them, and keeping them straight in the heat of things is quite the exercise. More absurd than the rules, though, are the scripting shenanigans needed to implement some of them, such as the objects up top that invoke the actor-limit in order to count how many green centipedes you spared at the end of the level. There are also 3 different characters with different scoring mechanics and (sadly never relevant) fursonas.
LA VIE MODERNE DE V-QUEL by snorb
This is the fifth entry in Snorb’s long-running series of parodies of official ZZT worlds. This time the subject of mockery is The Best of ZZT Part 2, which was a collection of user-submitted boards cobbled together with some duct tape. Taken on their own, each of the boards in the original version provides a hefty challenge that would have worked well in a standalone format (likely owing to the submission process), but when taken all together results in something that is just Too Much, All of The Time.
Snorb recognized this, and thus created a game where each board is much more to-the-point, focusing on a particular puzzle or troll or joke. It’s still a mean game, mind you, but being the creation of a single author it is much more aware of how mean it’s being in the context of the whole game, and is thus more pleasant overall. Good times all around.
Anyhow I just wanted to highlight this quiz question that I got right on my first try:
the answer was very obvious to me 
Flypaper by dave2kb
This is browser only. It’s only 10 minutes long. You can play it right now. I highly recommend playing it. (No. It’s not a horror game.)
The Case of the Banged-up Banana Truck, pt. 2: October Song by zeketiel
Back in mid-August somebody calling themselves “Ezektiel Ewell” dropped a ZZT game onto the museum with an erroneous October 1 release date called The Case of the Banged-up Banana Truck. (This somebody was an experienced ZZTer doing some kayfabe as a seeming novice.) Its bizarre personality, sense of humor, and subversion of expectations would have made it a good fit for Oktrollberfest proper.
This sequel, on the other hand, is more of an art piece than a game, and only achieves its intended affect if you’re familiar with part 1.
WELCOME TO YUM YUM TOWN by orteruz
This is a MegaZeux game somebody threw together in like 20 minutes. Here is the eponymous Yum Yum Town:
There are with 4 NPCs, one of whom is named “gma” (short for “gmail.com”). This was an obvious invitation to do some ARG-like thinking. I solved the puzzle and got a long string of random characters that I had no idea what to do with.
The end. No moral.
Magic Quest by Jeremy Kaufmann
The real troll of this game was figuring out what it even was.
Ostensibly this is a brand new MegaZeux game.
MegaZeux doesn’t load it, claiming that the file is invalid.
I inspect the file in a hex-editor and notice that the magic bytes at the beginning of a zip file are a few-dozen bytes into it.
Someone is able to decompress it and get it running, but only 2/3rds of the boards work.
At the very end of the file is a URL to an archive.org upload of an updated version of one of the author’s previous Oktrollberfest games. It contains a suspiciously large file (several hundred megabytes).
I was then reminded that the author had recently posted an updated version of that same game to the Museum of ZZT at the beginning of the month. I download the game, look at it in a hex editor, and find an email address.
I send an email to the address and get a link to a file on Google Drive. The file is straight-up a gigabyte large.
The two files are just parts 1 and 2 of a multi-file zip volume (they exist). I try unzipping them.
Password required.
…
I use the random string I got from Yum Yum Town.
I’m in:
That is, indeed, an update to one of the author’s games from last year.
Bonus: I ran into this visual overlay glitch on stream about a couple minutes in and it never went away
(please ignore my angry face — i hadn’t considered before that WASD controls would conflict with my facial expression hotkeys)
10/10
My Game
Stuart Gipp, a Retronauts contributor and person who went to bat in a gaming publication of note to assert his opinion that Balan Wonderworld is better than Bowser’s Fury, had this to say about my game:
Genuinely proud of this endorsement.
28 Likes
I think I did it in the same direction and had a similar experience. I do plan a second play-through to do the DLC so I may find out if it is meant to be that way or if it is that is just the time when players get the combat enough and the abilities start to spiral out of control if you build right.
1 Like
41 missions left to S rank in Armored Core 6. Easy S rank against Balteus in first version of Attack the Watchpoint. Some others are weirdly hard. Will probably have to watch guides for most of these.
3 Likes