ah, you might be right
this looks incredible
6 Likes
i let my older brother borrow my chipped ps2 to play FFXII, maybe 7 years ago, and after never seeing or hearing of it again, assumed he had sold it for money, etc, but while talking a couple weeks ago he mentioned recently finding it and a similar-story model 2 genesis, in one of the shipping containers on my parent’s rural compound.
i had been considering getting another one recently, for lightgun stuff, but now I’m sitting here pie in the sky wondering if this truck game has force feedback + wheel support…
5 Likes
Oni was the first PS2 game I played, when my friend and I rented one (a PS2) from Blockbuster when they were still impossible to find at stores. we had no memory card so left the game on all night. the game is shit but we sure didn’t care!
3 Likes
I just got Standalone Complex and played it… turns out it’s the game my friend and I were pretending Oni was back in the Year 2000.
i can’t beat the second level with 20 snipers
8 Likes
Wait a couple of years when I begin my Around the World in Xbox Days series
1 Like
The Adventure of Cookie and Cream
When I first started this game with my wife, I thought this will be fun! look how cute they are! One hour later, the game generated so much anxious energy that our power cut out. My wife has never been able to pick up the game since.
You see, underneath its cartoon exterior, this is still a FromSoftware creation. Kota Hoshino even worked on the soundtrack! Man, that guy had a pretty big year in 2000. When the title music came on, my wife said “this is too aggressive. Why do I get the sense that the game wants to hurt me?” Soon, she would have her answer.
We jumped in the first stage and started talking to chickens and crows. They said some really obvious stuff like “Press X to jump” or whatever so we stopped talking to them. This was a mistake, but we didn’t know it yet. When we finished the first stage, we were given a D grade. “That’s bullshit. We did way better than that.” “Well, now that we know the controls, we’ll get a better score in the next one.” For the second stage, we got an E. I don’t know what that means because I live in America but I assume it’s worse. We felt personally attacked.
Flying objects kept harassing us and eating up our time. Jumps across streams of water kept missing by just this much. Our bunnies struggled to grab the levers when we told them to. It started to become Too Much. However, we triumphed over the first boss. Then we entered Music World.
It’s here that we snapped. We banged the drums, tooted the horns, and dodged the bells, but always found ourselves running out of time. We couldn’t keep doing this. Then the power went out and we really couldn’t keep doing this. I consider the power outage to be divine intervention. If it hadn’t happened, who knows what levels of depravity we would have sunken into.
But it’s important to work through anxiety sometimes and that’s why I tried to play by myself, holding the reins of Cookie and Cream. It is much, much harder to do things alone. That’s a life lesson. You can carry that with you for the rest of your life.
18 Likes
And with that, I have now played through ~10% of PS2 releases in an entire year. Before I post the poll for Spring 2001, I want to take a look back.
Several publishers had multiple games elected. The top publishers for 2000 are Namco and FromSoftware each with three games elected.
We also saw games from three different countries though Japan had the most representation. 85% of the games came from Japan, 10% came from the UK, and 5% came from America. Who knows what 2001 will bring?
In terms of genre, vehicle simulations were the most represented with brawlers close behind.
And finally, my favorite games so far, restricted to just 1% of what has been released are…
Sky Odyssey and Technictix! 
They’re really good!
7 Likes
Spring 2001 (Part 1)
- Air Ranger: Rescue Helicopter
- Extermination
- Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil
- Polaroid Pete
- Super Galdelic Hour
- Tokyo Bus Guide
0 voters
1 Like
gratified knowing that i am not the only long-suffering wife who has been made to know the exquisite torture of the adventures of cookie & cream for the playstation 2
16 Likes
That game led to one of the few bigger arguments between me and my buddy-for-life. Mostly because I am a big baby when someone tries to tell me what to do and he is way more game literate than I am. And we were drunk.
5 Likes
Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil
One weekend when I was a kid, my brother was away and I got to pick a game to rent from Blockbuster. Having a certain affinity for cartoon rodents, I chose Klonoa 2. I hadn’t played the first game, but I liked this rabbit dog’s hat. I didn’t have a memory card so I left the console on the whole weekend. Luckily, I was able to beat the game before my brother returned. Mostly, all I remember from that experience was this intense feeling of melancholy that came as the credits rolled.
Well, that and snowboarding.
Picking it up again some twenty years later, I’m wondering if I’ll feel that bittersweetness again. So far, however, nothing about the plot is endearing. It’s a shame because it should be interesting based on the premise. Klonoa is a dream traveler. He is able to enter different worlds and affect their dreams, or maybe the worlds themselves are dreams. I’m not entirely sure.
The voices speak in a made up babbling language. I usually love made-up tongues like these and this one sounds pretty good sometimes but the voice acting can be really grating. Worse, you cannot speed up the dialogue. Fortunately, the music is often great.
I’m about halfway through the game and I’m having a breezy time. The level design of the first several stages is really simple and a little boring. You grab enemies and toss them. You can chuck them below you to jump higher. There’s not much more to it than that. It has one of my platformer pet peeves: there is no inertia or method of speeding up your movement. There are some situational methods of getting fast, but most of the time, you move at a jaunty stroll. I felt myself becoming impatient as the levels tend to be quite long. There are unlockable secrets if you collect every small gem in a level and there is no way that I can commit to that. Life is too precious.
What makes the game enjoyable is the set dressing and the way your path crisscrosses through the dioramas. I actually feel a sense of excitement before I begin a level just because I like how they look. I think I will see the game to the end after all. If nothing else, I want to see how my old memories stand up.
14 Likes
Klonoa 2 Part 2
Feel free to listen to this track while reading my thoughts on Klonoa 2.
I beat the game. The story did not evoke the feeling of melancholy that I thought. It was just too overt. It’s basically Inside Out where each kingdom represents different emotions. Turns out, the kingdom of sadness was disconnected from the rest of the world and its king is upset. One of the characters refers to him as a “pure lump of sadness.” After that, you grab your snowboard to stop him.
Yet, I did feel something when playing the final level, the level that contains the song I linked. It’s a long level and there are many stretches where you have no solid ground to rely on. It’s just a gauntlet of different tests that you have to work through. It felt oddly powerful, like I was helping Klonoa overcome something. Is this what Celeste feels like?
Super Galdelic Hour
“Are you going to post these on your forum?”
“Yeah”
“Maybe you shouldn’t. You don’t want to…encourage anyone.”
“This is what the people want. It’s what they asked for.”
You are a contestant in a extraplanetary game show being broadcast from a pirate satellite. You are a stuffed animal transformed into a girl wearing an animal costume. This is the meaning of Super Galdelic.
There is a war in my head. There is so much about this aesthetic that I love, but I don’t want to tell anybody that I have played this game. The colors and retro psychedelic design are incredibly creative. One backdrop is a giant watermelon slice with audience members looking through the bite marks. I even like how the characters’ faces are animated and the poses that they make.
On the other hand, the animation for Kuma, the bear costume wearing contestant, is atrocious to the point of being offensive. She is the only plus-sized contestant and a total klutz. A brass fanfare discordantly announces her entry. It’s so mean-spirited.
The mini-games are mostly bad except for hip-sumo. I think that one is actually good. It’s a game of chicken to see who will stick their butt out and risk getting smacked into the water. I hate it and I love it.
As you play through the single player campaign, you gradually rack up more sponsors. These sponsors are for things like bubble gum and exercise gear. Their ads will start to appear on loading screens and give you more money for buying costumes. Buying costumes is fun! I like the glasses and reflective dresses! You can put a mushroom on your character’s head. That’s all I need!
Please don’t tell anyone I know what this game is.
15 Likes
feeling inspired to play super galdelic hour
4 Likes
This is exactly what my wife warned me would happen!
7 Likes
Who is the artist? I tried looking up what Mobygames had listed but i didn’t find any leads.
Polaroid Pete
This is a sequel to a PC Engine game that was almost released in Europe. The localization was nearly finished and the review copy floats around on the internet. Like No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! and Incredible Crisis it is the kind of off-kilter game that feels like it could only have existed on this scale at this particular time. I had my wedding in about 2 hours but there are a lot of secrets to capture.
I received cases from the head editor of a newspaper. He says things like, “Hey, I heard there’s a flying train,” or “Could you take a picture of women in the bathhouse?” So yes, I’m not a professional journalist but a lapdog of lurid sensationalism.
Playing the game is a bit like flipping through a richly detailed kid’s book like Where’s Waldo or The Eleventh Hour. My eyes scan the screen looking for something interesting. If I’m fast enough, I can catch moments that only last for a second, like when a dog gets sucked up by a street cleaner. My favorite facet of the game is how I can jump and the whole world’s perspective tilts. I could see things I wouldn’t otherwise find, like a man sunbathing on a roof. The game hints where these opportunities are by showing characters with their backs turned to you, peeking at something. I like being rewarded for my perceptiveness.
I could never be a photographer in the real world. I don’t want people to see me seeing things. I don’t want people to wonder, “why does he think that’s worth taking a picture of?” But as Pete, I can take pictures of poop floating in a bathtub and no one will judge me.
14 Likes
Spring 2001 Part 2
Spring 2001 Part 2
- Bloody Roar 3
- Densha de Go! 3 Tsuukinhen
- Flower, Sun, and Rain
- Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec
- Okage: Shadow King
- Red Faction
- Tokyo Extreme Racer: Zero
- Zone of the Enders
0 voters
4 Likes
What a selection of games wow
1 Like
that is an impossible poll
also reminds me that i’ve had a copy of flower sun and rain on my ebay watchlist for like 4 months and have to keep reminding myself i’m not that good at japanese. but the box art is so good! the manual is even better! it’s a travel guide to the island, just like endonesia!
3 Likes
That manual sounds so cool! I have only a rudimentary understanding of Japanese so if this gets voted in, I’ll be playing the DS port. I meant to say that up front but I was too busy admiring all the beautiful boxes of PS2 games.
2 Likes