Thank you! I’m still plugging away at the first one (via the collection of course), problem is when you die you can be stuffed depending on what enemy formations are nearby. Furthest I got was stage 4…
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I beat Mega Man X7!
One of those rough 2D to 3D leaps, X7 was immediately met with derision and is something of the Sonic 2006 of Mega Man, with frequent complaints centered around slow and uninspired platforming, ugly graphics, atrocious english dubbing, an uninteresting and inconsequential plot, etc etc.
And most of that is true, but you know what? I enjoyed playing through it. Underneath the jank there’s still a Mega Man underneath and while I won’t defend it as a hidden good game, there are some things about it I think are stronger than people give it credit for:
-The team system was a great idea, adding some strategizing and more ways to experiment and find solutions to problems.
-I actually like the reploid rescue system for the most part. It makes for some interesting puzzles and adds a little urgency. Just let the poor bastards tank more than one hit and it would be perfect.
-While the idea of having to unlock the franchise’s protagonist is quite inane, I disagree with the idea unlocking X and leveling him up is not worth it. If you make a point to rescue him as early as possible (64 hostages, so 4 levels with all reploids rescued) and feed him chips, he’s a goddamn monster. And if you don’t want to engage with that system too deeply, there’s NG+ at the corner.
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I think the thing that made me most mad about the games transition to 3d was how I felt they had already done it better with Legends, and I just wanted more Legends games since there hadn’t been one since the previous generation. Little did I know…
Hooked up the ps2 and played through Darius Gaiden.
It’s such a beautiful game. And the music is so relaxing. I really like the enemy design but this game is brutal. Pretty sure I went through at least 10 continue.
It’s not overly long but after each level you get to choose what level you want to go to like in outrun so theres ton of replayability. You’ll have to excuse the poor quality picture. Holding a baby and gaming at the same time is difficult.
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You beat a shooter while holding a baby? Bonus points @asmith906! 
Zelda II. Somehow I finally did it. This was, by far, the hardest game in the series. And as much as I liked it, I’m glad the series went in another direction.
Some of the roadblocks in this game are downright cruel and require the player to know the exact right place to find a secret to advance, without any visual cues. I’m not going to lie, it would have been impossible to beat this game without checking a guide to find New Kanto. The fact that I needed to use the hammer to reveal it rather than the flute was such a “how the heck was I supposed to know that” moment.
Unlike other Zeldas, I doubt I’ll be returning to this one for another playthrough. I did, however, enjoy the boss fights.
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I love Zelda II, didn’t give it a fair shake until this year. Its unwavering commitment to dropping you in this vague and vicious world made the game really special for me. It never lets up!
Might be worth checking out the Famicom Disc System version, there were a lot of changes made between the two: https://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link/Regional_Differences
Speaking of which, I wonder what was tweaked for the Game Boy Advance port?
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Finally did Monster World IV, Virtual Console version I got years ago.
Annoyingly I had to hack the Wii region to run it in 60Hz, which means no RGB support, so had to use XRGB instead of the PVM.
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I really need to get round to this, got the same PAL version too and the 50hz put me off playing it, didn’t realise it was 50hz only in PAL until after I bought it.
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Yeah I played a few hours at 50Hz (it’s not too bad) but then used anyregionchanger (a very risky app that can lead to a brick) to set the video output to NTSC, which unfortunately disables RGB as mentioned. But can still use component.
Anyway the game is great of course, very much a Wonder Boy game with bullshit hard/confusing later levels!
Is this retro? 2010 was 11 years ago now…
I finished Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (2010) last week, it’s essentially NFS:HP III, but they didn’t label it as such. I watched a review for the recenly released remastered version of the game, and really had an itching to play some NFS. I’ve always been a huge fan of the early games before they went all crazy making all the games a shiny-rain-slick-city drift fest. Every game since NFS Underground in 2003 has been complete crap in my opinion. NFS:HP 3 in 2010 was a callback to the good old days!
I have the disk for PC from when it was released, but I only remember playing a very small amount of it. I no longer have an optical drive in my PC, though. I figure instead of buying the new remaster from 2020 (as it’s not getting great reviews) I would just download a not-so legal copy and ride on the back of owning the disk.
The game was develeoped by the amazing Criterion, responsible for the Burnout series, and the game looks, plays, drives, and feels very similar to a Burnout game. The crashing and takedowns go into a short replay just like burnout, and it feels just awesome.
The racing is super fast, and the controls and drifting of the cars is just sublime. One odd little thing though; the cars all have a little suspension characteristic that’s really noiticable in the cockpit or bumper views, where the front end kind of bounces around after cornering. It can get a little frustrating and probably even nauseating for some, but I managed to get past it and enjoy the game. If you play in a 3rd person view, it’s not noticable.
It’s a really fun game, as are the previous Hot Pursuit games. I found the game got a little stale near the end, but powered through the last 20 races or so to get the thing done. Ended up getting gold on all races and all pursuit events.
Overall a very enjoyable experience. Getting to drive some of the supercars of the era from Pagani, Bugatti, and Koenigsegg is just awesome, and they all come in police variants for your takedown needs.
Nicely done!
It’s good you went for the original game, I had the remaster on Switch and got a bit tired of it. Basically, they decided to integrate the DLC events in the main game instead of having them as a separate mode, so there’s something like 150 events to get through and the difficulty doesn’t go up as fast as it did in the original as a result.
Still, I was surprised by how demanding some of the gold medals are for the time trial/gauntlet/test drive events, just wish the DLC was still kept separate from the main game.
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Yeah I rarely go for DLC in games, I just find they usually feel tacked on or not worth doing.
Sorry about the lack of screenshot, but I just completed the original Doom on PC.
Couldn’t get enough of it so I started Doom 2 right after.
And to think I’m not a fan of FPS games… Doom just nails it! 
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You are now! Time to jump into Doom II.
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I been a fan of FPS games since Goldeneye 007 on the N64!
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That was a great game, I used to play 4 player dm
For me, my first FPS was Wolfenstein 3D, then Doom.
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Unreal Tournament was really my gateway into the genre, then Halo. But I’d played a level or two of Doom prior to that.
Speaking of FPS games: I finished F.E.A.R. today on PC.
As an FPS I give it a 7/10, really solid gun play and it’s tense and exciting the entire way through… the aim punch is SEVERE though.
As a horror, maybe 5/10… it’s good, but you get sort of used to what they’re doing pretty quick and it’s not that scary.
Overall it’s a fantastic game.
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