Or they just picked the names off a list of instrument words and didn’t even realize it’s the same one! My Japanese dictionary lists both the Italian and English words as valid ways to refer to it:
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Maybe one is Italian coded and one is English coded? Maybe they are brothers? Maybe they are both contenders for the throne of Woodwindia, and their adopted names reflect different ethnic factional claims and histories? In the absence of information I am capable of many exciting thoughts, please do not ruin them with information.
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Is this scanned from an actual VHS fanslation
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Finished Crow Country. Its great! A throwback-survival horror with its own flavor and mood. I may in fact replay for a higher rank. That’s as high praise as a game can get.
The plot even surprised me a few times! Not a lot to say outside of being very good. Edit: there’s a demo you can Find Out.
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Fun fact: I wrote the most popular Steam Guide for this game 
Useful if you’re gunning for an S-rank!
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I think a lot about how at their core bioware games are about selling conservative fantasy to their ostensibly liberal audience so it’s very funny to me replaying dragon age origins for the first time in over a decade (I tried in 2023 but listen you try making it past the city elf origin where you’re told you’re going to be in an arranged heterosexual marriage and then the local rape gang kills half the people you know in a game with 2000s bioware writing) that the game is incessantly obsessed with gender roles, having everyone remind you that you’re a woman all the time and telling you about how they’re surprised that you’re fighting. your character always responds to this like she’s from the modern world instead of the game world, like when Sten comes up to you and starts talking about how qunari society is so strict that people don’t even really think of being the other gender you start going on about how you’re a freaking girl boss because you wear armor and how what he’s saying makes no sense. you don’t even get a dialogue option to like ask him about his culture more you can only get offended. I think Sten would tersely decline to answer but come on.
I like the idea of trying to simulate “realistic” medieval misogyny but refusing to allow the female player character to act like she’s ever had to deal with this before despite the fact you can be the daughter of a noble who has been explicitly eschewing prescribed gender roles your entire life. It’s like someone told them reactivity in an RPG is best described as people reminding you of the choices you made in the character creator.
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My strategy in Dragon Warrior VII has been to see how well I’m doing against enemies in a given area before tackling the boss. Usually I’m a little under leveled but I can pull it off.
Fought the boss of the mech soldier island and just barely scraped by, and then the game played a cruel trick on me.
Guess I’m gonna teleport out of there and grind for a while…
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Damn this is a great way to describe this trend across rpg design. It infects ttrpgs too with the idea of complex character backstories and having “arcs” in mind right from the start. The most interesting things to happen to your character shouldn’t all have happened before you started playing the game.
Again the classic crpgs show their wisdom, making the PC a cipher with as little history as possible to give the player the greatest possible expressive space during play.
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The thing that gets me is that this shit doesn’t belong in high fantasy games. There’s nothing realistic about these games but oh they wanna do commentary on gender roles? Such shit. The world building sucks in dragon age games, there’s zero thought put into anything. It’s just shit happening because someone thought it would be a cool setpiece with no connective tissue.
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to be rude, this is 100% a neo-trad “I learned how to play RPGs from watching Critical Role” bullshit
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i was thinking a lot about this in my last session actually. they repeatedly establish that mages are dangerous and regulation of them is taken extremely seriously, then you go to the mage’s tower and right outside at the docks there’s a guy who just openly tells you he’s from the secret underground mage’s collective and they have representatives in every major town who can be identified by the sacks of letters from fugitive mages they stand next to, and that the templars dont care because the mages collective swears on their honor they dont do bad magic. then you go into the mages tower which everyone likens to prison and half the residents were engaging in Evil Magic anyway despite being under such harsh conditions. nothing they tell you ever makes any sense if you think about it at all.
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I definitely think Critical Role is the #1 reason for this style of play’s huge recent expansion in popularity, but surely the thread of it has existed in the hobby nearly since its infancy. There are always some number of people who want to play this way. It’s what White Wolf is for, no?
Funnily enough I think the Critical Role cast are themselves heavily influenced by the Bioware et al games of the 00’s and 10’s. They are, after all, videogame voice actors.
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Capcom Generation 2 (PS1). Apparently the time in my life (2 yrs ago) when I had the patience for these is gone; got to that point near the end of Makaimura and realized I’d forgotten you need a certain (religious, in the J version) weapon or it says you used the wrong one and restarts the stage. Moved on to Dai Makaimura and ran out of room at the end of a long moving wall sequence. = P
Maybe Ninja Gaiden is the last adventure platform game I can play. Well, one other try–Castlevania Chronicles. ; ) (Update: nahhh. ; )
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ok but, (just hear me out) couldn’t the same be said of all religions?
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sounds moot based on your post, but FYI the PS1 version of that collection has totally botched colors/brightness. shocking oversight, honestly.
strongly not-recommended way to play
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I played through them last time in Capcom Arcade Stadium; I noticed they were darker in the PS1 collection. I was using DuckStation so I fixed it for Makaimura with the “simple-brightness” shader. I left it on the same setting for Dai Makaimura but it looks like that game needs it turned up a bit more.
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Played through Videonauts, a short puzzle-focused adventure game by the ever prolific Resnijars. It’s tough as it definitely feels like a minor work, generally getting by on the charm of its pixels and the typically strong soundtrack and it definitely grew on me more and more I it went along… and then the ending bit (that is seemingly at least 75-80% responsible for what ending you get) is timed, RNG heavy, often a bit harsh and simply put the least fun part of the game. I eventually learned how to minimize the most punitive bits but it’s always a shame when a game sorta faceplants right at the finish line.
Still not a bad game or anything, but I had hoped for just a bit more from it.
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okay I clicked through the Next Fest page and downloaded too many demos and now I must talk about them before my brain explodes
Barkour: a stealth platformer with wall running but the joke/conceit is you’re a dog. you don’t actually have to stealth but you get rewarded for by making things easier, I guess. it’s cute?
Spot Zero: phone game, I guess the fight mechanics for the not-Vergil character are cool
Ecrazeus Castle: okay what if a European made an extremely early aughts doujincore game that was trying to be an arcade game where you play single-player City Trial to build your witch before going in to a dungeon to fight your way to a boss and it’s got a vague Propcycle vibe to it. seems neat as shit
Gal vs. Village: a DLSite-ass 2.5D-lookin’ FPS where you have a gun and a cleaver and a dash and you run around murdering cultists fast. like if you tore down what you need in a shooter to the bare essentials and it just becomes flow. the story mode seems there to justify giving the guy 1980y and it seems like the arena mode is what the real meat of the game is, where’s it’s a caravan mode and you have 3 minutes to make big score and there’s a chain system. good ass game
Starship Troopers Ultimate Bug War!: so the game itself seems pretty fine, playing like a Build game with the weird choice that the bugs are 3D where humans are 2D and the mission design has a open mission design kinda thing going on where you have multiple objectives and you can tackle them in any order but it all ultimately converges on a final, stage-ending setpiece. I guess my issues lie with the tone; Verhoven ST is satire but the fact that you’re playing a MI grunt means you’re lost in the sauce so it has that problem where, yeah, it understands the assignment but you’re still doing the fascism. the taunt button in particular seems a little tone deaf. or maybe that’s the point! who knows. I don’t I’m stupid.
Clockwork Ambrosia: okay I downloaded this because I saw the screenshot and went “that looks like Gunners Heaven (Rapid Fire)!” and then I booted it and it’s a search action game I have never felt so betrayed in my life. I suppose it’s a good one of those. has an extremely good feeling wall jump
Rollin’ Rascal: okay how much do you like Sonic 06
now what if we gave it all the interesting speed tech that only Sonic sickos could think of
it fuckin feels real good to move fast in this video game
Scott Pilgrim EX (hi @Persona): the game is good? it’s good? although the demo is short, it presents like a RCR-like with a flowing quest structure and the combat has got some juice to it (it seems largely based on the same kind of kit design that characters had in Marvel Cosmic Invasion except because you have to pick one character, movesets aren’t randomly held back because you have a tag partner on tap at all times, no I didn’t like the Cosmic Invasion demo, just make complete characters). so really it’s going to come down to how interesting the final game makes the map, encounters and objectives, but they’re presenting a pretty good foundation in the demo
Guns and Nuns: Storming Hell: basic and to the point score-based arena shooter about a nun and demons. the demo stage does a gravity thing. good ass game.
(actual motion sickness warning)
somehow there are still more demos I must suffer after all of this
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