Roundup time! Yakuza 4 (PS3) It’s been a while since I played Yakuza 3. I did really enjoy it, but never got round to picking up Yakuza 4, probably because it was a PS3 game and I don’t really like playing PS3 games, however good they are. However, for reasons I won’t explain, I got a PS+ subscription and with it came Yakuza 4. I’m a few hours in, and have spent most of the game so far watching cut …
WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE! Or, even better, stay dead and buried. Why on earth did Sega think that porting the Megadrive version (not even the arcade version!) of this infamously terrible game to the 3DS? Or even to any other console? Nobody, absolutely nobody at all, wanted it, liked it originally, or is ever going to buy it. Er, except that I did, of course. Um. In my defence, I did only get it because it was half price. And …
Long awaited by many, 3D Outrun finally found its way onto the European eShop today, and I had to buy it instantly. It’s a superb conversion, actually improving on the original arcade game by making it widescreen and 60fps (not that I can tell it’s not 30fps any more – I’m fps-blind) and most importantly, 3D. It’s hard to express just how fantastic the 3D effect is. It was great in 3D Afterburner II and 3D Space Harrier, but in …
No, I hadn’t started this already and no, I didn’t return to another previously started game having finished off Shovel Knight. Just shut up, OK? Shut up. I was rearranging the icons on my Wii U home screen. Like on my 3DS, I have to have them arranged in an OCD friendly manner, where games I’m currently playing or haven’t completed sit on the first screen, and games I have completed or aren’t likely to play any time soon are …
Yes, I’ve returned to another incomplete game to finish it off. Technically, I had already completed it, but I’d not managed to finish Special Mode which is unlocked after reaching the end of Arcade Mode. I’d had a couple of attempts, but failed. Unlike Arcade Mode, you can’t restart from any previously reached stage on Special Mode – you have to start from the beginning each time. Annoyingly, I’d reached the final stage on one of my attempts, then lost …
It’s Duck Hunt. What more do you need to know? I bought it on Christmas Day, when it was released on the Wii U Virtual Console, but only got round to playing it today. It plays pretty well, but it’s harder than I recall. I’m going to blame that on the Wii remote though, rather than my faded skills. Once nice touch is how the speaker in the Wii remote makes the clicking and echo-y spring crunchy clangy noises of …
In a (very) late entry into completed games in the year 2014, I give you Pop’n TwinBee: Rainbow Bell Adventures! It’s not a shoot ’em up like the other Pop’n TwinBee games – instead being a platformer with some elements borrowed from the likes of Castle of Illusion, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World, but somehow totally different from all of them. Whereas in the shooter games in the series you pilot a cute spacecraft and take down other …
Roundup time! Hyrule Warriors (Wii U) With over 80 hours racked up now, this became my most played Wii U title some time ago. No matter how repetitive it seems to be, even playing exactly the same mission over and over with the same character, it never gets boring. I have now at least started the Master Quest from the first set of DLC, albeit to just play about four missions to see what they were like. Since then, there’s …
Yes, this did take a while longer than previous Mega Mans (Men?). Not in terms of actual play time, as this came in at a little over 4 hours, so slightly shorter than Mega Man 4 (bucking the trend of Mega Man games getting longer in sequence!), but in terms of number of weeks over which I played it. My excuse is HYRULE WARRIORS, which has eaten most of any game time I have. I’ll turn the Wii U on, …
It can’t be two and a half years since I last played this. Surely. I’m sure I’ve played it more recently. Maybe I did, but didn’t mention it. This playthrough had a rare occurrence! Usually, when I reach the final level, I have nobody to beat and just instawin. You see, in the last few epochs, you’re supposed to hibernate some of your men so they’re around for the final battle. Your rival gods are supposed to do the same, …
Yes, I know it’s not considered to be a great game. And I know it’s less than an hour long. And yes, I know it’s very, very easy. And I’m aware of how the graphics are a bit odd and how the viewport is too small and that the controls aren’t as tight as most Mario games. I know all this. But it doesn’t matter because Yoshi’s Story is the most god damn happy game ever made and if you …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Well, it’s the next console I’ll be buying, anyway. I’ve literally zero interest in the PS4 and Xbox One. I’m slightly surprised at myself actually, as I secretly thought I might be by now. Anyway, the Retron 5 is coming Real Soon Now, with the current release date set as April. Sadly, there have already been a few delays (it was originally supposed to be last October), but lets hope it meets this one, yes?
