We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Speaking of Superstar Saga, I recently soldered together my old GBA SP charge cord! So I can play it again!

Actually it was the soldering I was really proud of

But Superstar Saga's one of the only games I actually bought in its physical, game pak style form, so you can tell I liked it a lot.

Also didn't I already write about M&L:SS in this very thread? Yonks ago?

I, too, have a physical copy of Superstar Saga, but I just don't think I'm ever going to play it again. Mainly because I know most of the game by heart.

I feel like Mario has sort of been "grandfathered in" in regards to ladysaving due to Nintendo's family-friendly image. I'd like to see it change, but it seems unlikely.

This game's a bit worse than usual. You have to rescue Peach from two different people within the first two dungeons, just to give you an impetus to explore new areas.

Also, I am in fact mildly red-green colorblind (deuteranomalous)! For me, this means I see basically the same number of dimensions of color as someone with three fully functional cones, but I can't distinguish as many shades of color in general. In addition, there's kind of an extra branch in the color wheel for me, where orange-red and lime green are sort of adjecent colors to me. I can also get tripped up about whether something is red or green, but this happens really rarely: it only happens with specific shades, and it's worse in low light, when the object in question is really small or thin, and when it's surrounded by white.

Basically, when an enemy's eyes light up red or green to show which Mario brother they're about to attack, I have no problem, but when they pop up with red or green eye alert lines, then it's more difficult. Yeah, game designers, check with a colorblind person to make sure everything still reads.

I'm also really into the grating maximum-saturation gif-compressed aesthetic. Not sure what that's actually called.

I also picked up the Ultima series in the GOG sales, so not having played the series, I started from Ultima I...

Interesting. Not for everyone, and I wouldn’t play it again, but I ended up beating the whole thing because it wasn’t terribly long or difficult, just a bit grindy. Combat is fast-paced and can be likened to Rogue, Gauntlet, or Wolfenstein 3D in certain ways. Most of the grind Stats are gained through grinding overworld exploration and repeating quests from kings—only cheat I did was raising the Strength stat from 81 to 99 in a hex editor, because they put diminishing returns on it unlike with every other stat, and I didn’t feel like doing 18 more quests. Fighting monsters is not really for leveling but is instead the primary means of obtaining currency (and hit points, if you decide you’re going to get them the inexpensive way).

Because it’s such an early computer RPG, the mechanics are all sorts of strange (for instance, you start with a low number of hit points and you just keep getting more), but as far as the RPG mode goes, it’s surprisingly accessible and probably beatable without a guide if you approach it with an experimental spirit, although you will need to look up the keyboard commands and reading the manual is probably a must. Other than my talking about stat grinding, the most important hint I could give that wasn’t too clear in the manual is that pub rumors are vital if you are going to play spoiler-free. But seriously, I had plenty of fun just playing with guides.

A very good thing about this unbuilt genre stuff: if you know what you’re doing, there’s almost nothing in the way of RNG unfairness. In the rare event you die (or common if you don’t start by getting your stats up), you’ll be resurrected. The penalties for this are kind of stiff, but they don’t touch your character sheet. But you can also save scum pretty easily if you want (at least in the GOG release, pressing “q” for quit doesn’t quit; it just saves).

The weirdest part of the whole thing is probably the fact that you need to go into a space-fighter mode as part of the main quest. Close second: kings seem to keep their princesses in prison cells. And they’ll be right back in there once you break them out and escape the castle with them (the guards, previously after your blood, won’t bat an eye). Well, that’s some 80s computer games for ya; they can be quite surreal even if they’re not trying to be.

After three years (on and off again), I've finally beaten Spelunky. Got to the hidden area as well.

This feels... less momentous than I expected? But it still gives me a weird sense of closure.

Now I just need to beat Nethack ahahahahahaha who am I kidding


In other roguelike(ish) news: Catacomb Kids looks dope



Can't wait for the alpha. The developer said it would be ready by December...

It probably doesn't really apply to Catacomb Kids which is a replayable Roguelike but with the advent of Kickstarter, I'm always fairly confused by Alpha/Beta releases of linear singleplayer products
Who would want to use these? Surely you're just making the final experience less interesting for yourself?

Personally, if I'm really excited about a game, I'll try to play the preliminary build because it gives me a sneak peek. I played Cortex Command for like two years before 1.0 finally came out, and it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the game at all.

But basically public alphas/betas are just a way for developers to get free playtesting

I'm pretty sure Cortex Command only ever left Beta mode in name, it was an ongoing test that lasted five years and never really achieved everything it wanted to

Still a fun game but I mostly just stuck with it because of the mods rather than anything the creator did

I know betas are ostensibly for testing but these days they're often more like publicity or demos. Especially when used as a sales tactic for your kickstarter!

Now I just need to beat Nethack ahahahahahaha who am I kidding

I have beat the Nethacks! One guess what my first ascension class was

Still haven't beaten Stone Soup proper, though. Zot defense a few times, but no Crawl.

Nice! It's been ages since I played, so I don't remember which classes are supposed to be easiest. Valkyrie?

And oh God, Crawl. I never got as into it as Nethack, but I've heard it's supposed to be even more difficult.

Talking about this makes me want to play a new roguelike. Any recommendations? I tried Dungeons of Dredmor recently and it was a little underwhelming. I've always wanted to get into ToME...

I like DoomRL because I like Doom and also because it's a lot easier to get into. I could never really get into those "every keyboard button does two separate things" games, as much as I've wanted to, so it's nice to have a roguelike where primarily you're jamming F for Fire and just a few other miscellaneous keys. Where my biggest problem is often "This medkit can't fit in my inventory alongside these thousands of bullets"
It's a different kind of your traditional roguelike, and I just find it really fun. And maybe some day I'll get a full win and not a "nuke myself to oblivion" win.

Try Brogue. It’s really pretty.

Oh man yes Brogue is great. Just don't let your allies study flying enemies otherwise they'll go chasing stuff too nasty for them all over the damn level.

Brogue! I remember playing that when it first came out and enjoying it a lot. (and yes, it's surprisingly pretty for an ASCII game) I must have completely forgotten about it, though. I'll have to check it out again. Good suggestion!

I heartily recommend ToME. It's got a much more streamlined UI than most roguelikes, a really diverse and interesting class system, and an actual story even! It's good stuff.

(Also no, it was Wizard)

Ha, a day after I posted that, the first Catacomb Kids alpha build is out. I'll still try Brogue and ToME, though.

That is pretty sweet, although his actual theme song is pretty excellent as well.

Also thank you very much for JSR . I've only played Future a couple of times on a friend's house and i'm excited to try it out.

Hmmmmmmmmm? I'm not quite following

Don't get yoke; feel like fool.

I'm mostly familiar with the soundtrack, which i love. But i'd like to fully know what the whole thing was. Will report back after i'm done playing it.

The joke being that the name I entered for the steam gift was "the city of Edmonton, Alberta", and that Ed would have to share his game with every resident.

Wow hilarious.

Oh, hey, thanks. I'm sure we'll get a lot of use out of it.

Don't worry, i'll embrace your obscure jokes.











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Spoiler

"When is someone going to leak the Tron 2 soundtrack already"

hahaha so optimistic

Replacing your pokemon a lot would be my guess. Up until the endgame where you really can't win with just-caught pokes mostly? In which case I guess it's a matter of learning new moves to restore PP.

wowww that is metal
gonna watch it because I want to know how he dealt with the Elite Four

I imagine there'll be a fair bit of grinding for berries if it's sapphire :v