Genre mashup

A few creative-types at Talking Time have gone and decided that it’s time to forge an expansion pack for Super Talking Time Bros 2. Because I’m always happy to be a part of awesome things, as soon as I was able I went about painstakingly crafting a new stage for the “Super Squad Goes to SPACE” expansion.

Because I have no good original ideas however, I decided just to take another game and stick it into Mario.

I’m not the only one who did that! But so far I think I’m the only one who’s stuck Mario in a falling-block puzzle game. Of course, this is just the beginning of the stage. It gets a lot more complex once you leave the Tetris tube, and while I kind of hated it when I first completed it, it’s really grown on me and I’m pretty darn proud of it now!

If you want to check in on development and play-test some stages before the game is finished, come on over to the STTB2 thread. Sign up and give your feedback! The more people testing and helping to smooth these stages out, the better the end game will be! STTB2 was incredibly well-received, so the bar is set fairly high here. Otherwise, here are some more links.

Download STTB 1+2

STTB2 expansion wiki

Some jerk Let’s Playing STTB2

Nostalgia trippin’

Hey, so does it mean you’re old when just the air can cause waves of nostalgia to wash over you? Because I’m totally getting that right now. It’s been a beautiful fall day, and the first real one as far as I’m concerned, because it’s just got that feeling to it. I love this weather, and it brings back memories of everything I’ve ever associated it with. I have no way to properly convey these feelings in words, but I can feel them in my heart and I need to get them out somehow, so I kept a running list of every memory that came back to me today because of the cool autumn air. Here’s what I got:

  • Trick-or-treating in general
  • Beating Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes for Nintendo 64 one Halloween night
  • Playing Silent Hill for the first time
  • Daily visits to the Heath Sciences Center
  • Watching Criminal Minds on Stephanie’s laptop in my car
  • Guitar Hero 5
  • Visiting a small corner store downtown that smelled like curry, and buying Pepsis at said store which also smelled of curry
  • Treehouse of Horror
  • YTV’s Dark Night specials
  • McDonald’s Halloween McNugget toys
  • Driving around with the family to look at Halloween houses
  • That old McDonald’s Halloween cassette tape. “Spooky Sounds” or something of the like?
  • Pokémon Silver Version
  • The beginning of Christmas madness at Toys ‘R’ Us
  • Donkey Konga
  • Traipsing through yards covered in crunchy, fallen leaves
  • Finally earning my driver’s license
  • Purchasing my first car (I still love you, Spirit)
  • The beginning of hockey season, and all those dreadful practise sessions
  • Carving jack-o-lanterns
  • The last family trip to Fargo
  • Chasing a bunch of egg-chucking hooligans down the street while dressed as the red Angry Bird
  • Playing Rock Band 2 at a Halloween party, and my sister-in-law commenting at how intense I looked while I was playing
  • Creating the alias “Tito Sanchez” for reasons I cannot recall
  • Going to a corn maze and haunted house with a group of friends, and being thought of as a goofball (not in a good way) by the females of the bunch.
  • Playing Magical Starsign in the upstairs storeroom of Toys ‘R’ Us instead of working
  • My brother’s friend Brent dressing as a woman for Halloween, and being called “Brenta” for many years afterwards
  • Not giving out free cookies to trick-or-treaters at Tim Hortons
  • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, for some reason. I don’t know why, because I never played that at Halloween time
  • Pillsbury cookie rolls, with pumpkins coloured into them!
  • Enjoying those cold, foggy mornings where nobody’s around and silence abounds
  • The many times I said I’d participate in (or at least check out) a zombie walk, but never did
  • Pumpkin pie
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • Specifically, “This is Halloween”

The story so far

Let’s get this straight right away: I don’t always have the best judgement of when something’s a good idea, and when it not. But neither do you, so shut up.

Over the last couple weeks, Talking Time has been all abuzz about rougelikes. For any that might not know, roguelikes are games that are like a really old game called Rogue. Distilled down to their base elements, they are games that feature randomly-generated dungeons and make you start back from zero every time you’re killed. Most are on the PC, with Nethack being the big fish in that pool, and Chunsoft’s Mystery Dungeon series has carved out a pretty well-renowned name for itself as far as console editions go. Spelunky is a side-scrolling action variant on the normally turn-based RPG nature of the genre.

The kids at TT have always been into roguelikes, because Parish (our fearless leader) told them to. Lately, the mania has resurfaced because of a ROM hack, of all things.

Continue reading The story so far

Prolonged Fantasy VI

I’ve been very, very slowly chipping away at Final Fantasy VI. Or, I suppose it’s Final Fantasy III because I’m playing the Virtual Console edition. But all that aside, I started playing this in February. From what I’ve read about it over the years,  FFVI should not take 5+ months to complete.

The problem is that I cannot seem to remember that it’s there. Every time I pick it up and start playing again, it sems that a new game comes around to distract my attention from it. And this isn’t the first time I’ve had this issue either! I’ve tried playing it (admittedly the highly illegal ROM of it) a couple times before, and the farthest I’ve ever made it was to the ghost train. I know this for a fact because I haven’t got even the slightest recollection of Terra or Locke’s paths from the point where the party splits following the battle with Ultros.

I’ve finally progressed beyound that point though, and I’ve just arrived at whatever the town is where you can learn a little bit about Locke’s past. I probably should have remembered that one town’s name too, because Locke has always been my favourite FFVI character, even though I’ve never really played the game. That opinion is based almost completely from Nintendo Power’s coverage of the game. It’s funny, Epic Center was always my favourite NP feature, but I never played any SNES RPGs during their time. I was always afraid of games I wouldn’t be able to beat in one rental.

Before I move on, Locke is still my favourite character. “It’s a little tight, but the price was right!”

Anyway, I was a little distraught at the event battle just before this part of the game, where you have to defend a hill against a force of encroaching troops. FFVI up until that point wasn’t a tough game. I kept a big stack of potions on hand, and just chugged those as I brute-forced my way through anything that posed a threat. But this battle was different.

There’s a part that plays out the same near the beginning of the game, where you’re on a map that’s made up of a small maze. Your party is at the top, the enemy below. You get three groups of characters to move around while trying to stop the baddies reaching your side. The first instance of this is pretty easy. There aren’t a lot of bad guys, and it’s the beginning fo the game; of course they wouldn’t make it very hard. Only the second time around, you’re squaring off against a regiment of soldiers led by Kefka, who (SPOILERS) ends up being the main antagonist of the game.

It became clear very quickly that my parties were painfully underleveled. I had never stopped to grind in this playthrough yet, and while I still had a good supply of potions and tonics, the soldiers were doing a pretty good job of carving up my two-person squads. (There was one squad with three characters, but they only saw a single fight). In the end I got screwed because one party was constantly barraged by enemies, and since you can only move one squad at a time, your control is frozen as the camera pans over to any inactive parties that are besieged by enemies. Because of this, I was only able to move my backup squad at the top about one step between each battle, while the enemy party that was near the top was able to slide on in at two steps between fights. It was stupid, and a waste of like twenty minutes.

On my second time around, I tried something competely different. I stuck Terra and Sabin together, and sat my other two squads at the two choke points at the top of the map to intercept any incoming enemies. With Terra and Sabin, I beelined directly for Kefka. On the way they were accosted by at least seven enemy squads, which I cut down handily by spamming Sabin’s Aurabolt. Terra doled out poitions when necessary, and I FireDanced my way past the Rider at the bottom. I proceeded to continually blast Kefka with Aurabolt and he retreated before I knew it. I think only one enemy squad made it to the top before it was over.

I’m now starting to wonder if it’s a trait exclusive to FFVI, or if more FF games become a cakewalk if you just plow through them with a sack full of potions. I’m wondering if the rest of the game is like this too, or if I’m eventually going to have to put some thought into it. I’m sure that I haven’t seen the last of the gimmick bosses, but aside from that, is brute force the best way to get through all the mooks? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I think at this pace I should be done by about this time two years from now.

MMMMMMeh

So I finished VVVVVV yesterday on my lunch break. I’m kind of not sure what to think about it though. I think it’s a neat little game with a neat little concept, but I can’t in good conscience say I like a game that had me saying “F*** this s***” at every turn. Probably wasn’t the best game to be playing at work.

I still think the core concept (flipping gravity instead of jumping) is cool and fun, but the problem with the game is that Terry Cavanagh hates everyone. I was totally disarmed by the simple graphics and cute little smiley-man characters and the fun, breezy demo. I figured it would be an enjoyable throwback to the days of yore, but it’s just so hard. And not fun hard either. Hence all the potty mouth. I gave up on the stupid Veni Vidi Vici tunnel (you know the area) after like 100 deaths. The bouncy area was a lot of fun though.

The problem I have with VVVVVV is that it’s a game about precision. And I mean 100% precision. You hold that d-pad for even a fraction of a second longer than you should and it’s death. Probably over and over again. I’m not a big fan of laser precision. That’s why I’m not a doctor. I like to have a little wiggle room. I gave up on the stupid collectible thingamajigs because the challenges I needed to pass to get some of them were ludicrously difficult, and I’m a person who would normally be completely obsessed about getting all the doodads. Especially when there are only 20 of them.

Beating the game unlocks some time trial modes, and being good at those in turn unlocks No Death mode, which is the stupidest stupid crap I have ever seen. I died well over 500 times in the hour and half it took me to beat the game. No way in Hell would I ever even consider trying to beat it with no deaths.

On the upside, the music is really great. Not particularly memorable, but it surely was fun to bop along to while I was playing. Also I was playing the 3DS version because it was on sale, and is the first thing Nintendo has put on sale ever. I would have been much more put out if I’d paid more than $5 for VVVVVV.

Mass Review Time – Honeymoon Edition

Internet, I have a problem. I’m addicted to Fargo.

Maybe it’s not so bad as addiction, but the summer trip south to Fargo has become a tradition that I can surely not break free of. I need it. I need it so bad that I managed to convince my now-wife that it’s where we should spend our honeymoon. So maybe it is bordering on addiction. I’m not a psychiatrist, I don’t know these things. Surely there’s a better way I could have started this article.

As usual, the trip was mostly to get away, relax, and just be together for a few days. And from what I’m told, that’s mostly what a honeymoon is about too. So to that end the voyage was perfectly successful. Of course we also spent a buttload of money. Like, way more money than we were even allowed to spend while down there. By some random stroke of luck, the amount you’re allowed to spend when crossing the border increased on the day we came home, so we didn’t have to pay duty on what we spent over the previous limit. It’s the first time crossing the border was a truly pleasant experience.

To that end, I should note that this is by no means a complete list of things I bought in the States. I’ve obviously excluded anything The Wife bought, because this website is about me me me me me and God forbid I give anyone else more than a passing mention. I also spend a bit on a few little house things and some clothes that I don’t feel are nearly interesting enough to write about. On that note, let’s take a look at exactly what I judge to be “interesting.”

Continue reading Mass Review Time – Honeymoon Edition