What are you playing these days?

Pokemon Red ++ v3.0.2 - HARD MODE
A very good hack of Red version which uses the disassembled rom as a base. It’s a quite modern hack, which fixes most gen 1 bugs, and comes packed with much needed quality of life changes too. Also has gen 2 colours, physical/special split, and gen 1 and 2 mons, plus their evos, updated movesets and type changes in line with current gen.

Every year to 18 months I get the itch to play a game freak title. I’d tried an earlier version of this a while ago, but most recent patch has a lot more polish.

I couldn’t get it to play nicely on a Bennvenn custom flashable Pokemon Crystal cart, so I elected to make a cia for the 3ds.
It’s using Gambatte as the emulator, and it’s been flawless to my mind. Plus there’s a fast forward button (hard mode requires significant grinding early on).

Highly recommended.

If you’re more interested in a Johto, Polished Crystal is an excellent hack in the same vein.

Screenshot of my n3DSxl.

What bilinear filter? I apologise for nothing!

A Hanafuda Koi-Koi game from MSX-FAN 1994-06 cover mounted floppy disk. This one is quite unique as it features a shop where you can spend points on special cards that really mix up the standard game.

Playing through RetroArch fMSX on my N3DS.

Tetris With Cardcaptor Sakura. This is quality. I always like it when a licensed game - well this time, two licenses - is handled with love and care, and Arika was such a good pick for this given their involvement with TGM.

The main story mode is a series of 20 or so stages where your sole objective is to eliminate blocks that have jewels in them. The positioning of these blocks gets more and more interesting and demanding as you progress, and there are often external factors that you need to deal with - like a stage which mirrors itself every so often, or a level that hides all your placed tetrominos behind shadow.

At first it seems like the challenge is to just clear these stages without making a mess of tetromino blocks above the gem blocks, but the real challenge is pretty smart: Your time limit carries over from stage to stage, and you only have 20 minutes to clear the entire game. So there’s an incentive to go back to previous levels and optimise your run. Moreso if you make it to the second-to-last stage like me with just 20 seconds left on the clock.

My only nit-pick is the maddeningly sensitive soft drop. When combined with the very short window of timing you get when the pieces lock in it’s easy to unintentionally manoeuvre a falling piece into the wrong place. I’m using the Namco arcade stick too!

Going to try and finish the game on normal difficulty later today!

1 Like

I need to play this!

It’s really good! I prefer it to Tetris Plus’ puzzle mode since the Tetrominos you’re given aren’t random (you can cycle through three premade sets per level)

Just finished it. Even though I’m not familiar with the anime there’s also a lot to love from the CC Sakura side. The soundtrack, while not originally composed for the game, is excellent.

Hey everyone, it’s Monday, what’s on your playlist for this week? I’ve got a few I’m planning on sinking some time into:

Resident Evil 2 - Xbox One: I’ve put about 2 hours into this so far, and as a HUGE Resident Evil fan, I’m absolutely loving it. RE2 is my favourite in the series, and the game I’m most familiar with, so seeing the Raccoon City Police Department redone is super thrilling. What’s impressive is how fresh the game feels, even though it really is VERY similar to the original.

Zelda 2 - The Adventure of Link - NES (Nintendo Switch): Inspired by Fuzzy’s post in the “Retro game you just beat” thread, I’ve picked Zelda 2 back up. Only played about 45 minutes last night in bed, but already I’m having fun leveling up and getting ready for the first Palace. It’s the first time I’ve played around with the NES games on the Switch for more than a few minutes, and I’m impressed by the emulation. I haven’t played Zelda 2 since I was in high school when I beat my old NES cart, so I’m excited to get to some of the later areas that Ij had a lot of trouble with to see how I fare this time around.

Thursday is my “Games night” with a couple friends who live out of town, and we usually play either Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, or Call of Duty Black Ops 4, so I’ll put some time into either one of those as well.

Finally, I might go back to do a couple of last things in Red Dead Redemption 2. I finished it last night, but there’s a couple side quests I wouldn’t mind tidying before I completely move away from it.

Been meaning to play Final Fantasy V for years now, and I picked up a boxed copy of FFV Advance a few months ago but never got round to starting it.

Until now - really looking forward to what seems like classic Final Fantasy.

1 Like

Finishing up the first case of Jake Hunter Ghost of the Dusk. Been plugging away at it before bed every night, it’s a good game to wind down with. The story so far has been interesting with a few twists and turns, and I’m curious to see how it wraps up.

Kirby Star Allies - Finished. It was an easy game but a lot of fun.

Octopath Traveler - There’s a lot of grinding here. I finished part 1 of all 8 character’s stories.

Hyper Duel - The game is growing on me. I just found out if you’re in mech form there’s no area collision.

Muchi Much Pork - A fun cute em up. I’m working on understanding the scoring system.

Thunder Force V - I’m revisiting this after playing TF IV. I like it but not as much as IV. Must be the music.

Smash - Still unlocking characters slowly.

Breath of the Wild - I own this game on Wii U but I just started playing it on the switch.

Dead Cells - It’s a lot of fun and the switch seems like a perfect place to play it.

Nice! I put about 10 hours into the mobile version, which I think is a port of the GBA version, over the holidays, but haven’t had a chance to get back into it too much. The job system is fun.

Ah yes, the mobile version is indeed based on the GBA games. It’s a shame that Square Enix lost the original materials. Looking forward to experimenting with the job system!

  • Gabbuchi: BOXBOY-inspired game from Sapporo-based studio h.a.n.d

  • Psyvariar Delta

  • Planetarian

  • Densha de Go Pocket Chuosenhen (PSP)

  • Densha de Go Yamanote Line Revival (DS)

Impressions to come but they are all pretty good games in their respective genres.

What’s this like? I’m on the fence.


Finished the main story of Jake Hunter Ghost of the Dusk today. Took me a little over 9 hours. Really enjoyable story with lots of twists and turns. There’s five other cases to play, which are remakes of some of the mobile titles. If you’re a fan of VNs or detective games, i’d recommend checking it out. The series seems super niche here in the US, but in Japan this was the 30th anniversary of the series. I hope that it sold well enough here that we get more localizations of future games.

Gabucchi is alright, it’s not as ingenius as BOXBOY as it feels like you solve many of its harder stages passively (thinking about which blocks to remove), or via trial and error (executing that often requires a very specific pattern of jumps), than via experimentation.

Basically core concept of gobbling blocks isn’t as flexible as making and positioning new blocks. The game does introduce enemies and locks and keys by worlds 5 and 6 but it doesn’t feel as inventive as BOXBOY was.

The tutorial is really well done though. For the price I think it’s worth a go.

I’ll wait for a sale :joy:

What the hell is RiME? Rimming in Migrant Elephant? That would make me cry too :stuck_out_tongue:

Old Ridge Racer games and Fire Emblem Echoes at the moment. Now that I have a NeGcon I’ve been playing Ridge Racer Turbo, R4, and Rage Racer in almost equal measure.

I’m so glad I gave R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 another chance, having last played it almost seven years ago. As I’ve mentioned on other threads I’ve never been a huge fan of it, finding the drifting and emphasis on more realistic ‘grip’ cars puzzling, and the car unlocks grindy.

But really, the game is a lot more straightforward than I gave it credit for. Ironically I picked up Rage Racer because I thought that would be more arcade-like in its immediacy for challenge, but Rage Racer often forces you to grind older, less challenging races for cash to buy more cars. Some cars aren’t suitable for some courses in the upper class grand prix races either.

R4, by comparison, lets you pick a team, which determines your difficulty, and away you go. Performance in race determines your car upgrades, which all seem perfectly suited and pitched against the difficulty setting or race in the grand prix.

I think the NeGcon changed everything for me, though. The drift-type cars just feel so right with that controller. Picking an angle to start drifting, then slowly adjusting your drift afterward is an action that’s almost perfectly matched to the subtle nuances of twisting that controller.

So far I have only played with drift cars on the normal and hard difficulty teams, bit hesitant to move on to Grip cars…

The presentation is still as slick as I remember it - especially the frontend - it’s certainly aged a lot better than Ridge Racer V in that respect. Forgot how great a lot of the music is during races, and that epilogue music is rather special…

A little Saturday PB

Radiant Historia Perfect Chronology on 3DS.

Wow, this game awesome. I love the music, the story, most of the dialogue, and the time travel mechanics (causality seems slightly simplified, but I’m no cosmologist either).
I found an Un-dub patch online, as I wasn’t totally sold on the English voice acting.

These shots are from around the 10 hour mark, but I’m nearly twice that now, and I’m not tiring of it yet.

Recommended.

2 Likes