It’s been about six months since I started putting up videos of one or two games every week, but in terms of consistency that might be coming to an end—I’m running out of easy-to-do games. The reason I’ve been able to put up so many to this point is that I’ve been playing short games lasting under an hour, but I don’t have many of those left that I can survive in for longer than fifteen minutes or so, and while I’d like to branch out into some longer games like Neutopia or Wonder Boy, the time it takes to create and upload these videos makes them a bit prohibitive to do on a weekly basis.
I’ll say more about this when the time comes, but I’m just giving a heads-up.
And now for something older—the Adventures of Lolo series, something of a Nintendo relic from the NES era. I’ll be flat here: I can’t remember if I’d even heard of it until it was announced for Virtual Console. Even so, I really enjoy the two games that are out; Lolo provides a long series of fun self-contained puzzle rooms that can get rather devious in later floors. It’s good stuff for anyone who likes this genre, but perhaps I’ll let the footage speak for itself:
Now if only Nintendo would release the third game on VC, I’d put up more complete footage in a first-time playthrough for that one. I’m shocked and honestly disappointed that it hasn’t been released already—it’s been almost two and a half years since Lolo 2 was released for the service.
For one last time, Mega Man 10 videos! This rounds out the full set: I’ve done the Mega Man playthrough, Bass playthrough, and Special Stage 1, so we only have a couple aspects of the game remaining—unless I feel like putting up a hard mode Proto Man playthrough or something like that, but that probably wouldn’t be in the immediate future since we’ve been overloading on footage of this game.
But enough of that since there are still some things left unposted. First up, Special Stages 2 and 3:
While Special Stage 2 took me several tries, Special Stage 3 was a case of one and done—so you’ll see a little cluelessness on my part in a couple areas since I’d never seen the level before.
And now for the really good stuff, Endless Mode, recorded last night:
The music is so much better than its Mega Man 9 counterpart, and overall I find it quite a bit easier—but the very coolest thing here is that while I’m the type who never breaks into the rankings of anything with an online scoring system, with Endless Mode I actually got my one shining moment and made the day-one top eight for the WiiWare version. I suspect I’m way down there by now (I haven’t looked yet), but I’ll always have my moment!
On the same day as Bass in Mega Man 10, import Neo-Geo shooter IRONCLAD was released on Virtual Console. The obvious choice out of those two took precedence for me last week, but here’s some footage of the other since one of our forum members was requesting it:
Let’s explain a little. IRONCLAD has a total of sixteen stages divided up into branching paths, where “A” stages are the hardest and “C” stages are the easiest. Whether I’ll ever manage to see 6A considering my attempts to date, I’m not sure—but it usually takes me a while to get used to any given shooter. Hey, just as one example, I may eternally suck at certain games, but in Super Star Soldier it used to be a serious struggle for me to even get past the first stage on the default difficulty. Today I’m disappointed if I don’t beat the game in a single run on normal and if I don’t get to at least stage five on the super-hard difficulty.
…but that took time and I haven’t had very much of that with IRONCLAD just yet. So for now I’ll just show you the easiest route (something I can definitely do) of what’s probably sure to be an overlooked game.
Let’s revisit just one more time since Bass was released yesterday!
And a bonus, here’s the first Mega Man 10 Special Stage:
I’m probably a little late on both of these since they weren’t up on the day of release like before, but hopefully they’ll be new to at least some people.
I technically did this without needing a continue, but I didn’t want to call it by the usual One Credit, Zero Continues name since I was restocking on health between deaths to bosses and that kind of cheapens it. ;P
Anyway, here we have DoReMi Fantasy, a 1996 Super Famicom platformer by Hudson that was never made available in North America until March 2008. I bought it and loved it back then, so I’ve been meaning to get around to a video series for a while, but platformers I’ve done before (like this, Pulseman, and Wonder Boy in Monster Land) always take a lot more out of me than shooters—but it’s here now!
Among the best of the best SNES sidescrollers (whether they’re action-oriented or platforming-oriented), I’d say that Super Mario World’s strength over its competitors can be found in its offbeat characters, Donkey Kong Country 2’s in its challenge and wealth of secrets, Super Metroid’s in its sense of discovery, Kirby Super Star’s in its enormous moveset, Mega Man X’s in its non-linear level progression, Yoshi’s Island’s in its mixture of explorer collection and straightforward action—and DoReMi Fantasy in its settings. I love jumping on and over falling cookies, growing Pinnochio noses, wine glass pyramids, peeping mouse heads, floating cymbals… I’m kind of curious what our forum’s resident artists and food fanatics will think, actually.
Several people in the forums were really looking forward to this one and telling me I needed to play it, so I thought I’d go ahead and put up some gameplay footage of this one.
Short thoughts: they were right. I needed to play it. I like blending action, adventure, and almost something of an RPG bent with the damage dealt in numbers and the exploration played up. More videos on the way later, probably, but of course I have to play before that can happen!
