Super Metroid (Wii U): COMPLETED!

And that’s it. Samus saved the day (although, in the end, all she saved was herself – spoilers). The game was completed in 7 hours 40 minutes, and with a collected items percentage of 79. I’m surprised it’s as low as 79%, as although I didn’t attempt to get 100%, I did search pretty much everywhere and only knowingly missed three upgrades – two missiles that I saw but couldn’t figure out how to reach, and a Reserve Tank that I …

Super Metroid (Wii U)

To my eternal shame, I have never completed Super Metroid. In fact, I’ve never played it for more than the first five minutes. I don’t know why I decided to rectify this situation now, but I did. Maybe it’s the fun I had with of-the-same-era Earthbound, or maybe it’s a Backlog Fighter/OCD Unplayed Home Screen Games combo prompting me. I’ve always intended to play it, and I’m a big fan of the two GBA Metroid games so I was pretty …

Super Mario Bros 2 (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Super Mario Bros 2 appeared on the Wii U Virtual Console months ago. I think it may have been one of the 30p games from a year ago. Either way, I’ve not played it since it came out, although I had reached level 5. Spurred on by playing NES Remix 2 recently, of which Super Mario Bros 2 is a part, I thought I’d best finish up the full game properly, and so did. It was much easier than I …

NES Remix 2 (Wii U): COMPLETED

I loved the original NES Remix. Even though several of the included games were, er, not of the best quality (Pinball, Clu-Clu Land, Urban Champion, Golf), the package was fun and the challenges were great. Getting Remix 2 was always going to happen. And it happened! And all was good. The selection of titles this time round seems much better. That’s not surprising as Nintendo have picked some later NES titles for this sequel – Metroid, Super Mario Bros 2 …

Nintendo Pocket Football Club (3DS)

Those of you who know me are well aware of my level of love for football. The world’s most popular sport. The beautiful game. It’s all rubbish, innit. 22 overhairdressed pansies kicking a bit of pig around for 90 long minutes. Have you seen Robbie Savage? Good lord. My forays into football games have been short and infrequent. I’ve booted a ball about variously over the years in PES and FIFA and so on, but nothing has ever held my attention …

Earthbound (Wii U): COMPLETED!

It took around 30 hours, and there was a break of about eight months between the first six and remaining 24 hours, but finally, Giygas has been defeated, Ness has saved the universe, and everything is perfect and wonderful again. Which is lovely, and the game was utterly superb, but there’s a darkness there. Behind all the sunshine and happy box of Crayola, I realised that this Giygas wasn’t just the end of game boss. He wasn’t only the terror from …

Dear Esther (Mac): COMPLETED!

I’ve had this sat on my Mac’s hard drive for some time now, but being a non-console game it never crosses my mind to play it. Not least because connecting up a TV and a controller and so on… Today I had a couple of hours free and a game a couple of hours long was available, so Dear Esther came out. First, I should point out this isn’t a game. I know there are people who would argue that …

Things I’ve been playing recently

Earthbound (Wii U) Progressing well through this now. Well, at least I was until I entered Moonside where everythings is… wrong. The map is like Fourside only upside down, and all in neon. And there are invisible walls. And some people you talk to warp you all over the place but not to anywhere useful. And “yes” and “no” are reversed, except when saving your game. It’s very odd. Oh yeah, and Paula got kidnapped by a green squidalienghost in …

Switching audio output between jack and HDMI on RetroPie

RetroPie is a great multi-emulator project for the Raspberry Pi, but I noticed that its auto-detect for which audio device to use seems a bit erratic. I’ve speakers plugged into the 3.5mm jack, as the HDMI cable runs to a speaker-less monitor, and usually (but not always) RetroPie defaulted to squirting sound out the HDMI port. There’s two ways of fixing this. Firstly, you can change the audio output for the current session (i.e. until you reboot it) by issuing …

Earthbound (Wii U)

Even though I was all over this several months ago, I stopped playing. Not because I was bored with it, but I got stuck. I couldn’t get much further than the pencil bit – the enemies were just too hard, and I died $hlmun times. But, with Backlog Fighter still in full effect, I returned to it a week or so ago and did that bit on my first go with no difficulty whatsoever. The game was back on. Woo! …

Heroes of Ruin (3DS): COMPLETED!

What seems like a very long time ago now, there was a sale on at some place I don’t even recall where three 3DS games were a tenner. Or something. One of those games was Heroes of Ruin, and since it was the first time I’d seen it alone for under ten quid, let alone with two other games for the same price, I leapt on it (along with Tetris and Steel Diver). Then they all went on my backlog …

Finally! The version of RSG you’ve been waiting for!

Many, many, many years ago, I wrote a terrible text based roleplaying game called RSG. I initially made a version for the Sinclair Spectrum, but lost the code soon afterwards. Then I wrote a version for the Acorn A4000 in BBC Basic instead of doing my A level computing project. Then a version for the Casio programmable calculator when I’d finished a physics exam. At some point I also made a version in AMOS on the Amiga, and eventually rewrote …

Knytt Underground (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Chapter 3 is enormous. Like, really enormous. It contains the maps from chapters 1 and 2, and then about 50 times as much content again. And it isn’t just how many rooms there are, either – the puzzles and platforming sections are harder, so take longer. There are quests to get  items which have you travelling (not too far, usually, thankfully) round the map as you try to complete them. With enough of certain items, you can ring bells, but …

Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (DS): COMPLETED!

Obviously, I’m going to have to stick some spoilers in here, otherwise I’m not going to be able to say anything about the game. Because, oh boy, were there a few reveals in the latter half of Last Window. Like in the first game, hardly anyone was quite who they appeared to be, and everyone had at least one secret to hide. The main “what?!” moment was when Dylan – as in, bumbling clumsy sticky-beak handyman Dylan – is revealed …