arch_8ngel

The PC version of Dark Forces is on GOG and still plays pretty well, IMO. The sequel (Jedi Knight) is a much more updated experience, though I think the lightsaber-battle-bosses are not very interesting or well-implemented. (haven't played any of the further sequels) Shadows of the Empire also has a solid PC-release, and is more of a "play the movie" kind of experience with a mix of 3rd-person-platforming levels, space flight, and gunnery simulation. EDIT -- though updating Shadows of the Empire to having the same control scheme as RE-4 would be phenomenal. And rebuilding the original Dark Forces in a modern gaming engine would also be cool.

If you want a puzzle game - 20 minutes in the Witness can feel pretty meaningful. (or Tetris, of course) For action - Spelunky is a good roll of the dice with 20 minutes.

I got it for $1 as part of a Humble Bundle, way back. It is a fun game, IMO, since it fills a fairly narrow gaming niche of taking the "high precision" space shooter concept (where it only LOOKS LIKE "bullet hell" but is really a memorization game of exact locations and inputs) and putting it in a platformer/Jill-of-the-Jungle-look-a-like. Once you really get anywhere in the game it is hard as hell, though. (major "Gradius Syndrome" related to weapon/armor power-ups)

My 4 year old has a pretty high tolerance for it, because he has watched me play (and die) so much Spelunky He understands that dying, and dying a lot, is just part of the game. (and as a result, he got through the first level of SMB, unassisted, after one or two tries -- and he's actually managed to luck his way through a level or two of Spelunky) My 7 year old has a lower tolerance for it, because she's getting into the mode of wanting to do well at it. But 7 was the age I got my Nintendo, back in the day, with relatively little other gaming experience. The kids are getting a Switch this year with Mario Maker and Link's Awakening (they both love classic Legend of Zelda) - and I'll probably pick up Mario Kart. (I've tried playing the original Mario Kart with them on the SNES Classic and it is just too damn clunky)

The "easy mode" I'm giving my kids for some classics is just getting them a few extra hearts or early access to the ring in Legend of Zelda - or playing 2 player DD2 and doing most of the heavy lifting. Otherwise, they learn resilience from knowing the dying - A LOT - is part of the intended experience

If you want "easy mode", then the Ghosts and Goblins series is not for you.

Neat. I've been playing Super Ghouls and Ghosts lately with my kids, and we'll be getting a Switch for Christmas.

Yeah, definitely for the first couple of dungeons that are close to the beginning and easy to navigate. Later/larger dungeons, you're probably higher level anyway, and the risk/challenge of navigating the level twice for the higher XP reward kind of cancels out.

No, nothing random about it. Each level of attack / defense / magic costs a known, predetermined amount, and you trigger the "level up" screen when your XP crosses a threshold of being able to afford one. (and from there you can "save up" for something more expensive in XP cost)

What are you talking about with "random buffs"? You get to pick what you can currently "afford" with your EXP, or you can save up for something you can't "afford" yet. (i.e. you typically want to front-load some attack power, for instance, to be much better equipped against Iron Knuckles)

Admittedly, I don't remember all of the secrets, having not played the game extensively in probably 20+ years -- but my friends and I worked out 101% by ourselves "in the old days", and it was nowhere near as tedious as finding everything, unassisted, in the original Legend of Zelda. You have the "!" notifier of whether you've fully cleared a level, or not. And that more-or-less cuts you down to keeping an eye out for suspicious pits (that usually have a visible barrel rim or some other visual cue like bananas) and maybe making a pacifist run with a barrel in hand trying to break walls. It definitely felt like an accomplishment as a kid, though.

Seeing this in writing, and thinking about hearing that he had died on the morning radio show while I was driving to a shitty on-campus job before classes, really drives home how long ago this movie came out

No kidding. AM2R is probably the best 2D Metroid implementation, period.

Sorry, you're right -- Thurman, not Herman -- an even worse name if such was possible.

It's a raunchy-comedy heist movie involving a mall santa and a dwarf that dresses up as one of the elves. And it has a character named Herman Merman.

Fez definitely requires some willingness to take notes in real life.

Honestly, my biggest gripe about SOTN is that it somehow spawned the misnomer of "Metroidvania" that gets over-applied to Metroid-like games that bear no similarity to SOTN, while SOTN itself bears relatively little similarity to Metroid in the first place

I would be willing to bet that most Biden voters don't believe Rittenhouse has a legitimate claim of self defense. And I would similarly be willing to bet that most Trump voters do think he has claim to it. But that is a bit different than them feeling strongly enough about it to send the kid money for his legal fund -- which was the point of my earlier comment -- being glad that despite 74 million people voting for Trump, relatively few of them support what Rittenhouse did enough to contribute to his legal defense.

It's a really good game -- you just have to go into it with an era-appropriate expectation for how hard Disney-licensed Capcom games were intended to be. And compared to something like Mickey Mousecapades, DuckTales was a walk in the park

It would be a better game if it was actually Castlevania in the Metroid format. But "Metroidvania" has relatively little to do with what makes Metroid good -- and is really just an attempt to rebadge side scrolling Action RPGs like Faxanadu. SOTN (and other Castlevania games in that style) suffer from some fairly tedious grinding at times in a way that Metroid absolutely does not. I deeply enjoy the Metroid-like indie games that hold true to the Metroid style of item-based exploration. I find most "metroid-vania" indie games (i.e. SOTN clone / action-RPGs) to be incredibly tedious because they miss the point of what makes the genre fun, and suffer from balance issues that either lead to grinding or just make the game effortless/pointless. It would be interesting to look back and see what game managed the play style of SOTN prior to Faxanadu, and who did it better, long before SOTN on the PS1

We're in a country of 350 million people, where 74 million of them were willing to vote for Trump to try and get him a second term. If anything, we should be glad that so few of them saw fit to support Rittenhouse' legal fund...

Get a 4 from me. Tons of games I'd rather play. And maybe I haven't played the game enough to appreciate where the challenge lies, but I always thought the Sonic games seemed ridiculously easy (with the ring-health mechanic) and seem to cater to being "accessible" to kids where they feel like they're doing well by just rushing through the level in a way that would be unsurvivable in SMB without practice or skill.

Amazon is the worst for this sort of thing -- I have had at least a couple of boxed board games get shipped in an oversized box with absolutely no additional packing material.

Bump for new listings. Transformer and TMNT accessories coming online. Still to-do (PM me if you want an advanced look) -- more TMNT bits, CIB PS1 system with extra accessories, some Inhumanoids, a Handy-Pak and OG Gameboy, and eventually some early 90's PC games and instructions.

I'll give it an 8, as far as that genre is concerned. I would love to have RE1 with RE4 controls, since too much of the difficult in RE1 is simply bad play control. RE4 has some of the best 3rd-person play control of any game, on any system.