They're really not too bad. What makes them enjoyable is how quickly you can just sit down and pick them up. The presentation is simple, the systems are intuitive, and the plots+characters usually end up being quite good. They're also quite fun to break once you reach a point where you can power level.

Of course not all of the ports are available on all consoles, but my Top 3 that are available on PSN are:
Asdivine Hearts
Fernz Gate
Revenant Saga (its indirect sequel, Revenant Dogma, was meh)

So I saw a Youtube video a minute ago that didn't get all the Star Coins, yet still beat World 7 and went on to Wold 8, beating Bowser and getting credits, so I guess the Star Coins are not mandatory. I was worried it'd be some Super Princess Peach bullshit where you need to collect everything in order to even get to the final boss. World 0 just seems like postgame, in a sense.

I don't think I collected any keys. Are those in those pipes that I see after various secret exits?

So question. Can I beat Mario 3 Mix after World 7, or do I absolutely NEED the stupid star coins?

I've heard a TON of praise for Lufia II so I'm looking forward to diving into it. Especially seeing Natsume had a hand in it and Natsume's quirky style is something I love. I've played a lot of Harvest Moon and two years back, I played Adventures To Go, which was so charming.

Actually, I read on Twitter from Natsume's official account that Square Enix owns the licence to Lufia now. [Link] Though any hope of a new Lufia game is pretty slim.

Also, I never expected to get a reaction quite like that. Thanks!

Right? The crazy thing is that I vividly remember picking up the original DS version on launch day. That feels like just yesterday!

I really need to look at some comparison images between the two. It looks basically the same as I remember it.

No exaggeration: Monster Boy in the Cursed Kingdom is excellent. I'm tempted to list it as my favourite game of 2018, but I think Celeste just slightly beats it out.

It has the theme and fun of the classic Monster World/Wonder Boy games, but with arguably better level design and less frustrating combat. Despite having functionally the same transformations as Dragon's Trap, it doesn't really feel derivative.

I'm tempted to say I like it more than Super Adventure Island II (my other favourite action RPG).

I think you'll like it a lot.

I'm planning to get around to Monster Boy at some point this year. I'm pretty excited for it. Maybe I'll play it when I'm done with VC4.

Is there any series with more confusing names than Wonder Boy? They seemed to decide they wanted to drop the Wonder Boy from the series name with Monster World IV, and then they sort of half-bring it back by calling the new one "Monster Boy"! Not to mention, you have two different games called "Wonder Boy III" for some reason.

I don't feel like Sega ever really went away, really. I think they've always been relevant since they cut the Dreamcast. They certainly never stooped down to the level of, say, what Konami is now.

I would be really psyched to see Camelot and Sega gave us a new traditional Shining Force game, assuming they would give it the love it deserves.

You and me both!

People have wanted Lunar 3 forever (let's not mention the spin-offs). The director of the Lunar series is still alive (unlike his younger brother, who made Grandia) and is in fact one of the founders of Game Arts... Maybe he's out of story ideas, or just doesn't like being involved in video game development. I can only speculate, but I still feel like he'd be the best person to direct a new Game Arts RPG. XSeed would probably be willing to translate it, too, or at least what's left of them.

Lunar 2 really needs to be made available to more people, but from what I understand it's stuck in licensing Hell, with many different companies involved.

Grandia II HD Remaster was barely a remaster at all. It can be hard to tell the difference between that and the Dreamcast version, apart from the fact that HD Remaster actually introduced some new glitches (such as skill book effects remaining after you unequipped them, so you could stack 6 Zapfire Chants in one slot and break the entire game with Zap!). There's only been one account of how the Switch version looked when it was shown, and it was bad. GameXplain said that the Grandia name was being "dragged through the mud". Grandia 1 "Remastered" hasn't been shown at all. I'll keep my expectations low.

Other once-beloved developers are also in dire straits. Treasure don't seem to have done anything but keep porting Ikaruga for the past decade, and Cave haven't made a new game in 4 and a half years.

Nah, if I was a class in Fire Emblem, I'd want to be a Mage or some other magic using type.

I'd like to but I'll want to import my own copy before emulating it. I hear it's good and has a fully functional English patch, which is great. But unless it's for extreme reasons (like Rent a Hero for Games for Cherry), I won't emulate unless I own a physical copy of it.

I have a cart of Sonic 3 Complete, I mainly play it on my Nomad. I already have all Super Emeralds as Sonic, Tails, Sonic + Tails (I think), and Knuckles on my RetroPie's Sonic 3 Complete though, so I just use that to stream and casually play. I can technically stream my Nomad, but I'd have to move some wires around. I also have Sonic 2 Delta on my RetroPie, which has all of the Sonic 1 and 2 levels, including the cut Sonic 2 levels, at least the famous ones (Rock is only in Sonic 2 Lost Worlds, and then there are a few others that we're in the dark about), and has SRAM saves, and Sonic & Knuckles...which I have all the emeralds as both. For Knuckles, it has Tails' ending title card on the save slot, probably cause it's based off Sonic 3 save system? I'm not sure why they didn't just copy Knuckles' from 3&K.

I never was a huge fan of CT, even after I beat it, I didn't think it was anything too special. Earthbound definitely is a charming game, but there are parts about it I don't like, like the photo guy randomly showing up and stopping gameplay, the 3 minute thing for Belch's base, and your dad calling you to try to get you to take a break. Lufia II definitely ranks in my top 10 SNES games, easily, maybe even being #1. That reminds me, I have Super Mario RPG on my Wii U that I never beat, I'll probably do that soon, Super Mario RPG is one of my favorite games.

I may get Wipeout for the VR support, but Everybody's Golf? I assume it has more to offer than just being a golf game, right? I heard people clamor about it back when it came out, but I never quite understood why.

It's a bit disappointing that it won't be a true Transformed sequel, but I too have rather high hopes for it just because of Sumo doing a good job with the first two games. I'll definitely pick it up, if nothing else, probably to local co op...but I guess if it's getting online, I might want to pick it up on PS4, since I'm not really jumping at the idea of getting Switch Online. All the lag and disconnections despite being a paid service is just inexcusable, and that's after seeing a stream of online SSBU, it lagged so bad, I've never seen anything lag that badly from this generation, or at all minus Brawl. I got a ton of disconnects on Mario Kart Wii/8/DS too, and that just did not help my feelings towards Nintendo's online. That and the fact that Nintendo is just in the stone age with online play.

3mix is great, but what's the point of Star Coins? I don't have an NES.

How is Smash Ultimate holding up for you?

I honestly tend to not use guides for the most part, unless it's something I've played through multiple times haha. Probably comes from growing up gaming when guides really weren't a 'thing', so to speak. We shall see how well I do, won't we!

Haha! Please feel free.
So far, it seems a lot more straight-forward and easier than PSII.

I likely was, I don't seem to recall though. Then again, a lot's happened in the last while.

Does anybody know if that there Commodore 64 Mini is worth it? Tell me honestly.

SHHH she's just snoozing!

I think that's the one thing I really want to do is to get my hands on Shining Force. I never had the chance to play the games as a kid.

I know the feeling of all those s. I had a goal this year for mostly getting new games and finishing them this year while they're on my plate. I'm happy to say that it worked out great, and I fulfilled my goal. However, that giant long list of my Now Playing is getting bigger by the day it seems, and I need to slowly hack it off. For 2019 I'm going to work at chopping that list down, from the bottom.

Cheers, and have a Happy New Year! I look forward to seeing what you play next!

Pretty much S3&K, yeah, but with some extra cool stuff. The standouts for me are the options to toggle the music (so Sonic 2 Super theme and Jackson credits theme from Sonic 3 standalone), ability to super cancel without having to enter a bonus stage, Flying Battery between Carnival Night and Ice Cap, and sprites closer to Sonic 2, meaning a new Sonic sprite and normal sprites for the monitors instead of being like what they look like in 3.

[Link]

I always thought Chrono Trigger was a bit overrated and never liked it as much as most people, so I definitely agree that both games are better than it, at least personally.

Since everybody's talkin' 'bout their year-in-review of gaming, I figure I should hop on the bandwagon.

Looking at my Memory Card, it doesn't seem like I've finished too many games. I can thank working (at retail no less) for getting in the way of the motivation from playing anything you haven't already finished. So I did the next best thing... I did replays. This year, I saw myself playing games that I haven't touched in age, like Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Twisted Metal 2 in a summer campaign I did that involved playing the greatest hits from the three major consoles of the mid-to-late '90s. The past several months, which seems like one huge blur, I replayed over forty NES titles as well as nearly all the Shining Force games except the III trilogy, which I didn't do as the result of being burned out and the fact that it would just take forever.

I did, however, did a Master Run at the beginning of the year that involved doing a solo main character playthrough of Phantasy Star II. After doing my PS 30th Anniversary celebration in December last year, I felt like I could do it, and I was successful. It's not something I don't believe I could pull off again, because it took a great deal of patience leveling up high enough.

Speaking of patience, I also finished Championship Lode Runner, a game which had been listed as "Unforgiving" on GameFAQs. Forget I Wanna Be the Guy, Dark Souls, and SMB: Lost Levels, this game truly is for champions. The occasional esoteric solution really makes it difficult to figure out on your own.

Honestly, there were times when I tried to get started on certain unfinished games, like Dark Cloud 2, only to lose motivation. In Fall, I quietly d all my games not as a way of copping out, but as a way to make my gaming feel less overwhelming. That did mean, however, that I was free to do the replays I did in the last quarter of the year. If I happen to finish them, then great, but otherwise I should just play what I feel like, and that's really all that should matter.

And that's that for 2018. Now that my hunger for replays has been satisfied, I'm really hoping I can finally finish the RPGs that have been clogging my BL for ages. And several shoot em ups too!

I'm anxious to give it a try! I really enjoyed Hat in Time so hopefully this game will measure up!

Plus it was 75% off. :P