Friday does what Nintendon't

[Friday]

So some of you may remember me running a poll, which is a thing I do from time to time dunno if you've noticed

After you guys voted, the top ten Genesis games you voted for me to play were:

1. Popful Mail
2. Alien Soldier
3. Streets of Rage 2
4. Phantasy Star 4
5. Lunar Eternal Blue
6. Shining Force 2
7. Contra: Hard Corps
8. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles
9. Snatcher
10. Shinobi III

So this is the thread where I play these games and then WRITE THINGS ABOUT THEM LIKE SOME KIND OF VIDEO GAMER

So for those of you who didn't read my poll because dear god why would you read my polls; The Genesis library is basically one giant blind spot in my gaming profile, with me having only played a little bit of Sonic 2 and 2p Gunstar Heroes with Brentai back before the world went crazy.

So that means the reviews of these games will be basically entirely blind.

[Friday]

I started with Shinobi III because Brentai said it had a horse.



What he didn't tell me was that it also had a surfboard.



10/10 game of the year

So Shinobi III plays like an oldschool platformer with that, uh, "Genesis feel", that even I as a Genesis virgin could feel as I played. It's got all the oldschool tropes for better or for worse, including blind jumps and limited lives and continues.

Overall it was a blast to play. Crisp graphics and good pacing. The controls are a bit stiff and weird, especially the double jump, which has that weird space jump timing window that makes it unreliable and clunky. You can wall jump too, but it does that thing where it forces you away from the wall you sprung off of to prevent you from just climbing a single wall, which I hate.

Luckily, the game didn't seem to require much of either double jumping or wall climbing, which both were the worst and clunkiest aspects of the game to me. The horse and surfboard levels felt really fun and reminded me of Contra 3's bike level, but better.

I ran into some trouble with GIANT BIO HEAD BOSS because of his counter attack giant hand thing that I could not reliably double jump over, but finally Brentai clued me in that I could downkick and spring off of it which got me through finally. However the damage was done, as I burned about half my lives and continues on him and then ran out of both a few stages later after dying to pits as I learned the stage layout.

It really did feel like a "Genesis" version of a game I've played before. Like Mario to Sonic, this was Ninja Gaiden to Shinobi. All in all it was a solid game. I'll probably swing back around to finish it at some point, but for now I'm going to move on to PS4 since I've been in the mood for a good old fashioned JRPG grind.

FINAL SCORE: HORSE/HORSE

[Friday]

helo i am chaz and i am a hunter. i am 16.

i am strngr than i am mental, and my agile power is better than my dxtrty.

i am down 3 tp because i was wondering what tech "res" is do and i discover it do: "there was no effect."

i have learther cloth. am helm.

two knife, one for every hand and both hunt.

sometimes when i am alone i say to myself: mumbl. where is alys?

i am at 0 ex and i next 21 to go nx.

my def isn't here but my dfs is 10.



how much is this book to go nx?



?!??

[Friday]

I'm Alys, and it's not polite to ask a lady her age.



I am currently travelling with an idiot who doesn't know about the Adventurer code of robbing.



*sigh*





The Year is 2020, and in space, all is not well.



I'll tell you about it when you're older, Chaz.

[Thad]

The Year is 2020

C'mon Friday, it says "the end of the millennium" right on it.

[mharr]

Alys was always my default mental image of Friday.

[nosimpleway]

My main memory of Shinobi 3 was working at GameTap, where the guy they got to do the promo footage for our ads for that game had pretty clearly never played it before, and was very deliberate and slow. So I got the video capture wossname from marketing and recorded a video of running over landmines before they explode and blocking cannon fire with a kunai and horse dropkicking dudes

I don't think anyone ever watched those promo videos for anything but they actually made the game look interesting that way

[François]

Among all 16 year old JRPG protagonists, Chaz is definitely the 16 years oldiest.

Plus he's been raised by a woman who kills things for a living and takes absolutely nobody's shit, for better and for worse.

[Friday]

Well, might as well jot down my thoughts as I play.

First thing is, wow this game doesn't fuck around! Right off the bat you're investigating a basement infested with brain monsters with legs who shoot lightning at you, and I mean you usually don't get to the brain monsters until at least halfway through the game!

Alys in an anime cutscene window putting her finger in Hahn's face is adorable. I really enjoy how so far I'm being paid to just wander around because Alys keeps demanding more money from Hahn.

Combat is fast and breezy. MACRO system seems useful for programming in a standard pattern to save time, and it also seems to fix turn order, which manual command doesn't.

I like how just everyone can either dual wield for more damage, or use a shield for more def. Sorry, dfs.

Speaking of not fucking around, Zio the bad guy black magician is like going on a killing spree right out of the gate. Eat your heart out, Luca Blight.

"Zio turned everyone in town to stone. But we can fix it if we south to this other town that has the antidote oh wait shit Zio burned that town to the ground."

Oh man, in Hahn's hometown at his waifu's school, all the library books are kids picture books and references to other Genesis games. Kawaii!

The leveling curve is super steep! I started with two level 1s and level 7, and kept expecting Alys to fuck off after the tutorial dungeon, but she just stuck around and now the whole party has caught up to her. And now I have Rune, who starts at 17 and can cast GRA instantly dealing like 100 to the whole enemy team when Chaz is hitting for like 25 with his two handed steel sword.

Is -- Is Rune going to fuck off after a tutorial dungeon

Am I still in the tutorial dungeon

Having both normal mana spells and per/day spells is interesting. Reminds me of DnD! I hope Chaz gets more casts of Cross Slash than 1x, though, because that's pretty limiting. I mean Alys has Vortex 5x.

Anyway, gonna pick up the controller and play a few more hours. Until next time, friends.

[mharr]

Am I still in the tutorial dungeon.

I'm gonna say yes on balance.

[Friday]

Wow why did nobody tell me there was a village of adorable raccoon people with yoshi mounting noise music



sup we need some anti-petrify juice



> no




> no





> very yes








right before I go eight strokes yeah

Then Rune fucks off with Dorin and I get a new bird person party member.

But before he leaves...






Damn 4th wall breakers. Rune get the fuck outta here with your level 17 bullshit.

[Friday]

Alright! My first real boss fight! The music has my blood pumping! I'll start with Alys Shifting Chaz's Attack up so he can Cross Slash, and Hahn will up our dexterity, and I guess I'll see what Gryz's ability Crash does, and --

Gryz - Crash

Boss: *thud*

what the fuck is this game

[Brantly B.]

For what it's worth, Eight Stroke Warrior is an awkward translation of (lit.) "she who tears into eight pieces" or basically just Alys the Ripper.

[MarsDragon]

The manual has a brief list of some of the more important skills/techniques in the game, if you want it. PS always used kind of weird spell names, so it might be worth taking a glance. Of course, it also goes over all the playable characters including folks you haven't met yet. (but since they're in the manual, is it really spoilers?)

[Friday]

Thanks, someone linked that to me already but it is helpful.

Crash wasn't on the list as far as I could see, but it seems like it's an instant death technique of some variety and either it works on bosses, or bosses don't have status immunity. Or I guess the most probable thing is that one didn't.

It was just funny because I went into full DQ buff the party for protracted battle mode, and Gryz just walked up and casually one-shot the boss.

[nosimpleway]

Looking over a skill list, it seems like instant kills are pretty important to the PS4 combat system? It seems that between Explode, Death, Eliminate, Diem, Crash, Spark, Holy Word, Deathspell, Phononmaser, and Negatis nearly everyone in the party gets at least one. And it's running up on Final Fantasy II levels of instant death abilities with different elements, presumably working on different targets.

Of that list, it looks like Crash is one of the more accurate instant-death moves, short of Negatis. And I don't know much about PS overall, but I imagine "hack in twain with a big fuckoff axe" is a hard element to resist.

(Spoilering tech names not listed in the manual, idk how important that is but hey.)

[Thad]

When we were college roomies, my friend Brad used to have that as his wallpaper, except he changed the text to "I'm the information monger, I mong information." And he replaced the portrait with this picture of himself:



For awhile after that, he would casually drop "mong" into conversation. Such as "Say, you mind if I mong some of those" in Mighty Trinity Episode 9.

[Friday]

Streamed my first full playthrough of Streets of Rage 2 for about 5 people in #ff.

It's good! I played through the first 6 or 7 stages as Blaze, the girl with the stockings and red miniskirt, then switched to Axl for a stage when the game started to ramp up the difficulty, then switched to Skate for like the last half of the last stage and beat it with 1 life to spare.

Blaze was the most fun of those 3. And also come on, what an outfit.

Anyway, very much like Finalfight, which is of course my baseline standard for beat em ups, but pretty much just better in almost every way. The music is of course absolutely amazing, but the action is also great (and seemed more fair than Finalfight too.) More moves, more characters, better bosses.

AND ALSO WHAT THE FUCK ALIEN LAIR?!?!

Anyway, great game, had a blast.

Then I streamed PS4 for awhile and got a robot catgirl with thigh highs. Excellent.

[Mazian]

You could easily run a whole poll just for SoR tracks.

[François]

Combat is fast and breezy. MACRO system seems useful for programming in a standard pattern to save time, and it also seems to fix turn order, which manual command doesn't.

For my money, the aspect of PS4 that has aged the best is definitely the pace of the combat system. Absolutely everything is animated (which by itself I still find impressive), but animations last a second or two at most, and it always feels punchy and snappy. You never have to wait for a bar to fill up, and even the exp/cash screen after every fight is 100% designed not to waste your time.

I like how just everyone can either dual wield for more damage, or use a shield for more def. Sorry, dfs.

Dual-wielding shields is also surprisingly an option, and not always as useless as you might think.

The leveling curve is super steep! I started with two level 1s and level 7, and kept expecting Alys to fuck off after the tutorial dungeon, but she just stuck around and now the whole party has caught up to her. And now I have Rune, who starts at 17 and can cast GRA instantly dealing like 100 to the whole enemy team when Chaz is hitting for like 25 with his two handed steel sword.

Rune starts out as basically Gandalf, and everyone else is a hobbit by comparison. (Or, well, anime prettyboy Gandalf.)

Having both normal mana spells and per/day spells is interesting. Reminds me of DnD! I hope Chaz gets more casts of Cross Slash than 1x, though, because that's pretty limiting. I mean Alys has Vortex 5x.

That's a super clever element of the combat system right there, because it opens up the idea that, say, a character can have healing and buffs on TP, and offensive moves on individual skill charges, so you don't have to worry about wasting your healing juice on cool attacks or vice versa.

Looking over a skill list, it seems like instant kills are pretty important to the PS4 combat system? It seems that between Explode, Death, Eliminate, Diem, Crash, Spark, Holy Word, Deathspell, Phononmaser, and Negatis nearly everyone in the party gets at least one. And it's running up on Final Fantasy II levels of instant death abilities with different elements, presumably working on different targets.

On the backend, there are literally 14 resistance types. But there are essentially three flavors of monsters (biomonsters, machines, and demons) and it's pretty consistent what skills are good on what broad categories even if it's not always immediately obvious.

Blaze was the most fun of those 3. And also come on, what an outfit.

I thought SoR4 couldn't possibly improve on her design but uh well



what was i talking about again