Post a screenshot of the retro game you just finished!

[harborline_765]

So I finally got round to playing Star Fox 2, it was an interesting journey. I just completed the game on Hard difficulty:

My first playthrough on normal underwhelmed me a bit. The premise of having a real time battle unfold, where time moves even while you’re in missions, is a good one. But the missions themselves seemed shallow and short, which was a shame because the game is mechanically very well designed.

Had I just played it on normal I would have written it off, I’m glad I didn’t! Thankfully the game is the perfect length for replaying, being from a time when the quality of being a shout but replayable game was lauded rather than shamed.

Normal probably just exists just for players to get their bearings with the controls, the setup, and mechanics. When I played it again on Hard I feel it really came into its own, the strategy elements are tighter, levels are longer and more complex, and you’re generally tested a lot more, which is a big deal since you’re ranked at the end of each playthrough on a number of factors. I almost lost my first ship three times in that playthrough - had I lost it once I wouldn’t have just scraped a B rank.

Despite the consistently low framerate, I wasn’t expecting to be positively surprised by the game’s technical aspects either. The 2D sprites and menus are beautiful, the camera is impressively programmed for its time, and the variety of locales is impressive. In Fortuna you have to land on these little carrier ships to activate switches, and there’s a whole underwater segment where the music even switches to match.

I definitely plan on replaying on Hard until I unlock Expert difficulty. Star Fox 2 is an ambitious game - as ambitious than many of the other 3D games from the era - that just about manages to execute well on what it’s trying to do. I can see why it was cancelled, as a lot of its interesting ideas made it into games in development for the N64 at the time, like Super Mario 64, Wave Race 64, and Star Fox 64, but Star Fox 2 was more fascinating to visit than I expected it to be.

[Laevateinn]

I played through Monster World IV again the past few days. Really lovely game and quite the technical marvel.

[Peltz]

I really struggle to enjoy that one. And I’m someone who loves me some SNES Star Fox. I just cannot get into the flow of enjoying the game with the time limit. I may give it another shot though.

[harborline_765]

It’s worth another go for sure. The ranking system will ultimately reflect your play style and trying to be as fast as possible will come at the expense of other scores. If you want to take your time and eliminate all threats as diligently as possible you’ll score highly in the other areas and low on time, but that’s probably the best approach for unlocking Expert difficulty, whereCorneria has to sustain 0% damage and you need a B rank on Hard.

[harborline_765]

What an intense finale, on my first attempt Dark Link literally just cut me up before I even managed to damage him. I enjoyed Zelda II a lot, it’s interesting to read that it was by a different team, because despite the game’s differences it still very much feels like it’s in the spirit of Zelda from the era, since it really did feel like a quest you conquer.

The star of the show for me was its vague world, which effortlessly communicates a need to be wary of upcoming dangers, while also encouraging you to be intrigued by what’s up ahead. You actually want to speak to every townsperson.

I regret making the game easier for myself after you cross the river to Eastern Hyrule. I did quite a bit of level grinding there, which made the second half of the game more manageable than the first half. Well, except for the final palace, which was really challenging - but the game’s difficulty catches up with your levels by then.

The dialogue made me chuckle as well, particularly as you really do have to use fire later on. If all else fails…

[Listai]

So after finishing DKC2 last week I thought - why not go back and get 101% in the original?

Playing the game back to front really highlights how much better DKC2 is, especially the level design which is really the weak point of this game. That said the atmosphere and music are still on point so I found it a short, enjoyable romp.

[harborline_765]

I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with Freshly Picked: Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland so quickly, let alone be enthralled by it to the point of completing its 30 hour or so adventure within days of receiving it in the mail - just finished it this evening!

What makes the game so compelling is not only its unique mechanics, which all carefully feed into the idea that you must spend little and extort large to fulfil Tingle’s dreams, but how it’s absolutely its own game, despite technically being part of the Zelda series. You’ll find no cheap references or name-drops to other Zelda games, instead the game relies on utilising its wry sense of humour to either subvert video game convention. No surprise given director Taro Kudo designed Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, and wrote the Wii U Paper Mario. Where there are direct references to Zelda it’s still done in an indirect, subtle way - for example one bodyguard will dig out a boombox to play a Zelda sound effect after clearing puzzles, and this only happens twice in the entire game, maximising its impact.

So it’s a really unique game with an intriguing world, mechanics that still feel fresh in 2020, and an entertainingly wry sense of humour. There’s a lot more variety to the game than you’d expect - even the boss fights don’t see it rest on its laurels. Simply put: You never quite know what’s coming next.

The other thing that surprised me is just how well designed it is around the DS’s hardware, it reminds us that the DS really did seek answers to the question ‘what should a portable system be?’ in the sense that what it brings to the table could have only worked in that form factor. Tingle RPG is entirely played with the D-Pad and touch-screen, and it just works at bringing what is a hybrid adventure game to life. You control your bodyguards by tapping and dragging while walking with the D-Pad, the two displays are used to make the environments feel rather humbling to Tingle, there’s a wonderfully tactile mapping system on the touch-screen…I could easily double this list.

The audiovisual design also floored me, the art direction is clearly rather abstract by the standards of video games from its time, but it’s really brought to life by the character designs and animations, with Tingle being the star of the show. The range of expressions continued to surprise me well into the game’s finale.

At the end of the day, this is a game whose qualities are really hard to market, but it’s well worth seeking out and playing. It’s not without friction - bartering in particular is highly prone to trial and error, and I’d recommend using a negotiation guide - but I feel given the tone of the adventure coasting would count against the game, so I didn’t mind it. And there’s nothing else quite like it out there. Really! And because the game was released in 2006 - before the advent of social media - the impact of its wry tone is maximised. It’s very genuine.

[Listai]

I just finished up Sonic 2.

It was always my favourite Sonic game, but after playing through it the back half isn’t the best - the level design is a little confused and has some cheap deaths. That said you certainly can’t fault the presentation, the music, the sprites make it one of the most memorable games on the Mega Drive. Now I’m kinda on the fence whether I prefer 2 or 3.

Sorry about the quality of the shots - a lot of these are only up for a second or two!

On to Sonic CD!

[Peltz]

You sold me on it. I’m totally buying this game.

[Sapiens]

I can immediately hear the music.

[harborline_765]

Just finished Xanadu Next. I enjoyed it a lot.

At first I had worries it might suffer from coasting due to some easy puzzles and combat that felt more stat-based than skill-based. But it quickly opens up to be much more than that.

The level design is fantastic - individual locations and dungeons are small, but they have interwoven paths and rooms that link back to other locations in the world. There are many systems that impact your risk and damage output, and while they give you a lot of choice in a first playthrough, their potential will be realised in repeat playthroughs.

Xanadu Next features an end-game ranking system, where you’re ranked on aspects like Time, Number of Deaths, Number of Saves and Treasure found, so you can never truly be finished with it until you take your knowledge of the game and reapply it in new ways on a future playthrough.

Given the game’s short length it works very well, and I’m certainly going to be back once I find an old computer monitor to do justice to its visuals. 1024 x 768 upscaled on a modern 2560 x 1440 does not do it justice, and the game’s interface was made for 640 x 480 output.

[Laevateinn]

Shining the Holy Ark

[harborline_765]

Those prerendered sprites look gorgeous on your display, that’s one thing lost in Camelot’s transitions to modern games - golden sun’s battle sprites looked too harsh on the pixel grid. The smaller sprites looked great though.

[Peltz]

Wait what!? Those are sprites?!!

[stereoasis]

Yes they are… Shining the Holy Ark was an amazing RPG then and it still holds up today.

Another classic Saturn game.

[harborline_765]

I was looking at the credits for Shining The Holy Ark and both it and Golden Sun had four game designers - three of which were shared between the two games. Makes a lot of sense, I started playing it last week and I’m impressed so far with the level design and attention to detail with the visuals.

[harborline_765]

Been hooked on the Switch version of Burnout Paradise since it arrived in the mail, making this game portable led to a dangerously compelling game. Just cleared all events in the main game and Big Surf Island.

The port of course suffers from the same issues as it did in 2008 - namely the single player takes much too long to become challenging, the difficulty only slowly increasing with repeat attempts of the same mission types and some burning routes.

-But- that aside it’s largely still the gold standard for taking the racing genre open world, as far as I’m concerned. While its contemporaries often barricade up parts of the course or force you to follow set checkpoints, Burnout Paradise created a small number of ‘goal’ locations on the map that races finish by, and leave it up to you to take the fastest route. This makes for some immensely satisfying racing as you use your knowledge of the city to take the best route, or even challenge yourself to take an absurd route to meet and beat the competition to the goal by a slither of a second. Such moments aren’t as rare as you’d think, and they make for a change from the usual rubber-band AI tail-gating you.

I’d never taken the time to check out Big Surf Island before (I think it wasn’t ported to the PC version that I previously owned), but it impressed me as well, with developer Criterion taking a ‘less is more’ approach with a densely packed small location filled with stunt opportunities. It only has 15 events, but they rectify the difficulty problem I mentioned earlier, since they all feel like they are set to the highest difficulty tier, and they all encourage you to make the most of the island’s terrain. Really good stuff.

The Switch port is near-flawless too. Considering a game like this and its predecessors really can’t come out of EA again, I’m hoping they just port the classic Burnout titles as well, particularly 1 and 2. But for now I see this as another ‘forever’ game I’ll keep coming back to. It’s both easy and difficult to believe the game is twelve years old now.

[Peltz]

I’ve only played Burnout 3 and Paradise, but I feel like Burnout 3 was a lot more enjoyable to me.

Still, paradise has its own unique hook and I spent a lot of time with it on my Xbox 360. I hope it drops in price sometime because I’d be interested in revisiting it on Switch at a discount.

[harborline_765]

Burnout 3 is the only one I haven’t played, well not including Legends which was basically portable 3 with tracks from 1 and 2 thrown in!

You might want to check out 1 and 2 before revisiting Paradise - I actually prefer Burnout before the takedown mechanic was introduced! The games play pretty differently to post-EA Burnout.

Burnout 1 is a pretty blatant clone of Konami’s Thrill Drive but that game was likely obscure in the West so no one noticed. However, the first two Burnout games do require a much higher sense of danger: Crashing more than a couple of times often meant the difference between winning and losing a race, and your car was a lot more vulnerable.

That was in part due to there being a lot more traffic on the roads, but because your cars travelled more slowly there was a bigger emphasis on good control - in Burnouts post-3 you could slide your car against the side of the course and the game wouldn’t penalise you for it due to the takedown mechanic encouraging you to drive sloppily, you can’t play that way in the first two games.

You were also encouraged to drive on the wrong side of the road more often because your boost meter refilling was wholly dependent on racking up oncoming metres and near misses, whereas in later games you could get more boost by executing more takedowns.

The first Burnout is one of the hardest games I’ve ever played, even to this date I can’t clear the final championship! The enemy racers are unforgiving where in later games they’d happily exhibit rubber-band AI behaviour, slowing down so you can take them down!

[harborline_765]

This is the only home version of a GTI Club game available (precisely 2008’s GTI Club Supermini Festa), and I’m really glad I got round to playing it. The handling makes for some exquisite last minute manoeuvres into narrow shortcuts and around dense traffic, while the five courses, with their own complex webs of routes, wisely adopt the 90’s arcade gold standard where less is more.

It’s not perfect, with a flawed third person camera (helpfully pointed out by @Vespa) and locking away harder difficulties from the start, but its campaign mode respects your time (and tolerance for initial easy tedium) more than many a modern arcade racer. I’m still puzzled as to why it received such a negative reception from the few outlets Konami sent review copy to - it’s good honest unique fun.

Advanced difficulty is going to have my tearing my hair out this weekend.

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The credits have rolled after clearing all the attractions in Mr Driller: Drill Land, but let’s be honest - this is just the beginning. Going to spend a lot of hours mastering the harder difficulties! Great game, great port.