Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

After what seemed like ages, I finally found another boss – a giant ram’s head thing that threw ghost faces and stuff at me. He was really easy to kill though, as I had my magic fireballs-that-spin-round-me on (which killed most of the projectiles before they hit me), leaving me to just jump-whip his head over and over. Once dead, I could hit a switch which I think has now made new pathways available elsewhere on the map. No new …

Guitar Hero (PS2)

Well, I’ve managed to get past Pro and now I’m a Guitar Hero. Of course, I still have five more tracks to go, all of which seem completely impossible. I’d read that “Bark at the Moon” was really somewhat difficult – not surprising since it’s the last song on the list, but I hadn’t realised how hard. Around ten attempts later, and I was still only 22% through the song. Impossible. Luckily, I managed to get the other four tracks …

Guitar Hero (PS2)

Started Career Mode this evening, with the intention of unlocking some more tracks, but ended up wading through all the “levels” playing for real. I’m up to “Pro” level now, and the tracks have got really hard. It doesn’t help that I’m playing on Medium, and it keeps throwing in a load of blue frets to make things harder and hurt my fingers ever more. “Ziggy Stardust” for the win, though.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

I’ve just realised that this game has an ID in my games database of “1337”. Hilarious. Anyway, I’ve now opened up what seems to be a huge portion of the map. I’m getting very lost still, trying every dead end with each new power-up I get. My most recent one is wall-jump, and with it I’ve got into an area full of were-bears and hippo things and all sorts of baddies that take loads of hits. I’ve found three teleporters …

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

I killed the puma boss thing without much difficulty on my first attempt today. I’d levelled up a few times first, however, and had picked up some better armour and a couple of cards (which when combined gave me a magic power that made my whip do more damage), all of which helped a lot. I then wandered round for a while trying to find where I needed to go next, which turned out to be pretty obvious as it …

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

Since I’m limited to handheld consoles at the moment (I’m at relatives for Christmas), I’m using this opportunity to actually start some games I’ve had for a while but not touched yet. See also Contact on the DS from earlier today. Anyway. Since I have all three GBA Castlevania games, this is the one to start with. When it came out, people complained it was virtually impossible to play on the non-lit-screen original GBA. No such problems with the super-bright …

Contact (DS)

So I made a start on this today, and so far, I’m really liking it. I’ve done the ‘tutorial island’ section of the game, found some kind of water ninja suit for Terry (the main character) and levelled up a fair few times in most of my stats. I’ve also been to the island where the (literally) naked chef is, got his clothes back from a monkey, and moved on to the island where the next power cell is. I’ve …

Qwak (GBA)

Normal Mode is too hard. This is now a Fact. As such, I can’t make it past level 14, so I’ve knocked the difficulty down to Easy (because I’m a coward) and managed to get to 23. I’d have managed much further, but the second Guardians level wiped out virtually all my lives, and all of my continues. I wish I knew what all the little potion things do. I know the shield ones give you, uh, shielding, but the …

ToeJam and Earl (Wii)

Friday is “New Games on the Wii Virtual Console Day” (rather like Wednesday is “New Games on Xbox Live Arcade Day”), and in today’s batch of new old titles was ToeJam and Earl for the Megadrive. So of course, I bought and downloaded it. And it’s still great, even though I played with the Wii Remote, which really doesn’t work well. The most used button is A, which when you use the remote sideways is next to the d-pad, so …

Rayman Raving Rabbids (Wii): COMPLETED!

Two days and two Wii titles finished! This one feels like the first “proper” game on the Wii that I’ve completed, however. So there was more dancing, shooting, warthog racing, marbles-in-the-brain maze tilting, pulling worms from teeth, barrel bowling (with rabbids as pins), and Super Bunny launching. Amongst other things, anyway. Overall, I’ve only skipped two mini-games (you only need to do three of the four each day to progress, but I’ve done 4 each day bar two), so I …

Gottlieb Pinball Classics (Wii): COMPLETED!

Yes, I know Pinball is generally a high-score based genre of gaming, but Gottlieb Pinball Classics does have a single player Tournament Mode, which is essentially a set of levels. So I’ve taken this as a “story mode” or something, and after many attempts this week, I’ve finished it. There’s a bug in the game though – I’m sure of it. The “points” you gain from each table when qualified and completed are generally in the range of 1-10. For …

Rayman Raving Rabbids (Wii)

And so the games get more bizarre. Today, I had to fall from the sky, through a load of smoke rings, as quickly as possible. Then I had to play some kind of four-player curling, slap some bunnies that were singing out of tune, and do some more dancing. I’m now 72% complete on the game, and it looks like I have four “days” of events left.

Qwak (GBA)

Wow. This is my 100th GBA game, which is a milestone in itself, but it’s also the first non-licenced, home made cartridge-based game I’ve ever bought! Qwak is a remake (or port, or mix of the two – I’m not entirely certain) of the Amiga game of the same name. The GBA version is done by the original author too, so you can be sure it’s authentic! I don’t have the Amiga version, and I don’t recall playing it either, …