"Back to School!

September is coming fast... and you know what that means! Start the school year off right with these classic edutainment titles from Nintendo starring everyone's favourite plumber!"

Final level themes:

Doom - This one does a pretty good job of building suspense. I hope it's not used for the whole level, though. Doesn't seem very action-y.

Gradius II PCE - I like that it shares the upbeat, heroic sound that other final levels in the series have, but I'm not too keen on the instrumentation of this game.

Greendog - *Justin's disgusted face* Well, all I can picture here is Joe & Mac, Chuck Rock and Master Higgins. Grass skirts. That's all that this music says to me.

Lufia & The Fortress of Doom - Lovely. Very heroic-sounding. Suspenseful. This does the job perfectly.

Super C - Sounds tense, but... I don't know. It doesn't sound like a climax to me. It's like it's building up to nothing.

I understand what you mean about games missing ‘soul.’
I’m glad that you’re having fun revisiting classic titles.

This may shock and appal you, but I don't like any version of Sonic 3D, which is why I've never owned any version of it. It's fine for, like, 5 minutes. The music is even pretty good. But the gameplay is an annoying, confusing mess, and Sonic controls like a bar of soap. I'd say the game is average at best.

Earthworm Jim 2 Genesis - See Jim Run, Run Jim Run (chase) - Pretty average, but there comes a point where there's an awkward high-pitched note or two that plays in the right ear, and that was when I stopped listening. It's bad.

Grandia: Parallel Trippers boss 3 - Love it, but maybe that's because I know the situation in which it plays in-game. Those first few notes tell you that you're in for some excitement, then the speed and chaotic nature of the piece build on that and make you feel like you're in a hurry. And you ARE in a hurry. I like what they did with the percussion, too.

Kirby's Dream Land 3 boss 3 - I don't like how much this one switches up its style. It seems to lack identity. It does offer some fast-paced excitement, though. I'd put it through to the next round, but I don't think it would make it past the semi-final.

Street Gangs boss 3 - Street Gangs...? You know, the first time I played Double Dragon, it was the Spectrum version. And while I did actually enjoy it for what it was, it didn't have music, so this musical cameo was lost on me when I played River City Ransom. Looking at this purely as a boss theme and ignoring that it's a reference to another game... Hmm... It's pretty good. Invigorating, catchy beat, no unpleasant noises. Sounds a bit like a Mega Man level. If there's one critique I have, it's that it sounds a bit too upbeat, like it could be a victory theme.

A-Jax boss (3D) - This is cool! How metal. Rock on, dude.

Contra Force boss 2 - I like how it uses the leitmotif of the original Contra jungle theme. The drums are pretty neat too. Oh, wait, this is for a FINAL boss? It's not quite intense enough. Sounds like a first boss theme.

Final Fantasy 7 NES bootleg boss (Track 7) - Hahaha. It's the FF3 boss theme slowed down and looped before it gets to the cool part. Well... It's too slow. Lacks urgency. And it's turning my ear lobes blue, if you're picking up what I'm throwing down.

I don't think I have enough room left in this post to cover those 4 "final level" tracks, so I'll get to them later.

Persona 5 Royale will probably barely run on the Switch anyway. I don't know why people keep begging Nintendo for games that have no chance running well on the Switch without getting heavily watered down. Asking for a current/last gen game to be ported to the Switch is stupid, do you really think a system that is only barely more powerful than the PS3 can handle these? Especially Nier Automata. Absolutely zero chance there won't be some kind of major concession to get it to run.

The Switch is only good for first party Nintendo games, and something they even mess THOSE up! (Link's Awakening, plus there are games like Age of Calamity that were only released for the Switch but are STILL really bad framerate wise)

Buying third party multiplatform games on Switch is asking to be disappointed.

The Sonic Origins thing is a fucking trainwreck. Yes, the thing is that some of the tracks are owned by Jackson's estate, which would require a WHOLE lot of headache to get out of them. Way back when Origins was announced though, people SAID that restored beta tracks would be a good concession. That's what they did, and...people are STILL upset.

It's hardly "George Lucasing" or whatever. It's not as simple as you think it'd be.

I know, right?

"when did you first discover Kirby's Dream Course and what drew you in?"

Dream Course is one of those games that has just "always been" for me. I don't know where my copy came from or when I/my brother got it. It was most likely a used copy bought from the local game store in town during the SNES era. That's as good as I can narrow it down.

As for what drew me in, it was probably a combination of having Kirby's name on it, and the fact that nothing else was really like it; the weird isometric pseudo golfness of it all in a Kirby setting. Combine that with the art style and the music, mmmm..

Multiplayer was always fun even when I lost (which I usually did), but I remember getting SUPER mad in the single player courses, Courses 3 and 5 in particular. This was long before I got into masochistically hard games, which zenned me out for good.

'Competition? You would no doubt cream everybody!'

To be fair, 2-player is a different animal to 1-player, which is almost a puzzle game in a way. I don't know the optimal routes of the multiplayer stages, for example.

Krusty's Super Fun House? Funny timing, "Today is June 17th, 1992": [Link]

Weird that you mentioned Willow, I just watched the original movie last night. I thought it was OK. I was always a Bionic Commando fan. Rearmed was super decent.

Well, to be fair, the people buying Sonic Origins (myself included) have played these games countless times before so it's somewhat expected we'd beat them quickly. This is why I think the dollars to game hours metric is a short-sighted way of thinking: it doesn't account for replays (which I'll certainly be doing with Sonic Origins, as I'd like to do the entire series including Mania as Tails and Knuckles), or for that matter, games that promise hundreds of hours of gameplay but the gameplay is mostly "bleh". I remember when I bought Kirby's Return to Dream Land at full price despite it "only having a few hours of gameplay". My brother came over for a bit, kind of down and depressed, but he agreed to play it with me. We went through the entire game in one marathon session and had a blast and he cheered right up, then he insisted we redo the entire game on the harder difficulty (which we did, including the Arena). Sure, we were up until like 6 in the morning but it was worth it and I'll never forget that experience.

I've already more or less completed the game (everything's unlocked, all "Mission Mode" challenges done) but I got a few days worth of concentrated fun going through the games again and doing the "Mission Mode" challenges which were really fun but also extremely easy to get an "S" rating on the vast majority of them. I even gave Sonic Mania another go yesterday to cap off the series. I might go through the games again as just Tails or Knuckles sometime soon, or just anytime I feel I need another retro fix.

I don't think I get that reference; Chuckie makes me think of those movies with the murderous doll (never seen 'em, though), but I don't know who Andy is. The quote sounds familiar, though.

Been going pretty well; I'd played the first 3 already, but the last 2 are new to me. Half-Genie Hero was a weird sidestep into map-based Platformer territory, but it works, even if most of the DLC is a waste of time; the Risky mode was pretty good, but Friends to the End was misery cobbled together from some of the worst mechanics that Steam trash has to offer. Don't like how weirdly grindy this last one is - they put a little too much Castlevania in without any of the elements that make Castlevania's shitty grindfest worthwhile - but it's been an overall positive experience. Maybe cross-promotion? I get that Inticreates worked on a lot of them, so they had the rights, and Creepy Castle was published by Nicalis, so they could have Binding of Isaac, Five Nights at Freddy's, Shovel Knight, 1001 Spikes, and a ton of other characters (weirdly no Cave Story, from what I remember), but why the hell was Shovel Knight in Road Redemption? You know about those, too!? I saw them when I was randomly checking out Seanbaby's website not that long ago, and what he describes is a fascinating (to me) wasteland devoid of any kind of logic. I'm tempted to dive into that pool of acid, but I'm not sure I'd ever come back out. An old colleague of mine used to say that a child's brain consists of mush and rainbows, and I'm wondering if that's why they're so weird, or if they're some kind of horrific brainwashing scheme to manipulate the younger generation. I know that sounds like a wild conspiracy theory, but they did that in the '80s, and that's why we have grown men fist-fighting over Pokémon cards today; thanks Reagan.

Well, that's not completely my early years in high school, since my sister was much younger, and I never moved, but still pretty relatable. I ran with the goths, but they were kinda scared of me, so I didn't completely fit in with them, either; I must've looked like some kind of ticking time bomb to everyone else. I went to one of those small town high schools where sports was the most important thing ever, so double on the school spirit thing, and as that weird flipper child that lives in the goths' attic, let me tell you how SUPER enthusiastic I was about sports. Junior and senior year were more chill, and I was friendly with most everyone, even if we didn't hang out after class or anything. Hell, for a while, those had been the best years of my life, sad as that is. Anyway, sounds like something I'd like to check into; I'll see what I can find. Or maybe we'll get another box of DVDs and that'll be in it.

Or my avatar as William Shatner's kidney stone that someone is selling on eBay. Or a second grader makes it out of origami and everyone gets super nostalgic for their childhoods because it looks like an N64 game.

Are those the ones where silhouettes dance badly to worse music against a wildly-colored background? I remember seeing one of those where some nobody Avril Lavigne wannabe was wailing about how music was her daddy, and it ended with "Music is where I want you to touch." I turned to my lady and said, "Hey, baby; touch my music," just to see what the hell she'd do; she couldn't figure it out either. Since YouTube is my TV, I'm blissfully unaware of most commercials... 'cept fuckin' Marco's backpack. I sure hope they don't; we don't need the return of Smosh, Ray William Johnson, or the Annoying Orange. The whole point of remembering the past is to not repeat it!

I wouldn't really accuse the game of being style over substance, it's more that too much of the game is based around a poor mechanic, which is the super attacks. They give invincibility and have huge hitboxes, and you can also use them near-constantly, so in order for the game to have any kind of challenge the bosses need huge periods of invincibility and attacks that hit most of the screen. Pretty much every boss follows the same pattern, they do a bunch of attacks during which they either can't be flinched or are outright invincible, then they have a short window where they can be hit (generally, exactly enough for one basic combo), then they repeat the process again, with the cycles taking longer and longer as their health drops. It's a fairly common complaint on the forums that the boss battles are boring, but without severely tweaking the super mechanic it's probably not fixable.

Indeed! I sometimes forget that myself, ha ha. In any case, much appreciated.

I got my MISTer FPGA all set up. I didn't realize there's no "frameskip" button (which makes sense since it's not really a software emulator), so I'm obviously not going to be using it for speeding through JRPG replays and romhacks (that's what the RetroPie is for).

That said, I played some Adventure Island IV on it though (I've been dying to finally check this game out) and it performs decently. I'm not really one of those people who notices input lag that much so I didn't notice a huge performance boost over, say, an emulator, but it feels pretty close to playing on a console, I think. I'm not sure I prefer it over the RetroPie because I've been spoiled by frameskip/fast forward, but I could see this being my new dedicated retro console for certain things (arcade, etc).

If I had another room in this apartment and a CRT I'd just build a retro game room with what I have left in my collection (thankfully I have Everdrive type things)

Boss themes

7th Saga, The boss 1 - I don't have much to say about this one. In fact, I already forgot how it went. It was fine, but didn't stand out in any way.

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker boss 2 - Pretty good. Probably about the best you're going to get out of the Genesis. My only complaint is that it seems to be just a teensy bit too slow. Hopefully the pacing of the boss fight matches up with the tempo of the music.

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal - Courtney Gears - This is neat. It's by the Backstreet Boys, right? I kid, I kid. It does have a kind of early 2000s pop vibe to it, though. It's catchy, and just intense enough to work as a boss theme. Do you like GaMetal's cover of it? [Link]

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves boss 2 - No. Get that out of here.

Shining Force II final battle - I was willing to give this one a pass, but then it assaulted my ears 32 seconds in and I was done. *Hits the big red buzzer*

Splatterhouse 2 - Unholy Crystal - Interesting. As a piece of music, I like it, I think it sounds great. But as a boss theme? It's terribly unfitting. (Yes, Genesis audio CAN sound great, as long as certain instruments are avoided. You know the ones.)

Kid Icarus GB boss 1 - This is more like the kind of short loop music you hear after your NPC helper reveals himself to have been a bad guy in disguise, and is telling you all about how easily he tricked you. It feels like there should be another part to it.

Prince of Persia Super NES boss 2 - Hmmm. Well, this is unique, but is it GOOD? I can't quite decide. Yeah, I'm stumped with this one.

Wonder Boy in Monster Land SMS boss 1 - The higher-pitched notes are too loud and off-putting, but then it kinda redeems itself with the catchy part from the 26 minute mark until the loop. I think this one could benefit from a remix using real instruments or more modern hardware.

Final level/dungeon themes

Beyond Oasis: Evil Territory - This doesn't sound very "evil" to me. It doesn't inspire hope or fear. It almost sounds like it was supposed to be a peaceful underwater theme.

Dragon Spirit ARC - I see and like what they were going for, but the instruments are pretty bad and farty. I'd like to hear an orchestral version of this.

High Seas Havoc - This one's quite good. I don't think it's very catchy or memorable, but it has the energy and excitement that I'd expect for building up to the climax of the game.

Prince of Persia (SNES) - Hmm. Well, this one is interesting. It sounds mysterious, but also a bit happy and goofy. It's an enjoyable piece of music, but it doesn't seem like it would fit well for a final area. The "stage 10" theme does a better job of that.

Shining Force Neo - Oooh, this is a nice one! Good instruments. Slight sense of dread. I wonder if a "heavier", more intense cover/remix of it has been made, because I think that could be a bit better than this version.

Vice: Project Doom - Man, this one's a shame. It's a really good composition that's completely ruined by awful instruments. It's intense, it's exciting, but it sounds like someone playing a Casio keyboard while their roommate is trying to stop their Nokia phone from ringing by putting a drill through it. And of course, it's too obscure for anyone to have covered the track to do it justice.

That's fair. If you've already got the games it doesn't make sense to purchase them again unless the added features are worth it to you. To me, they are. But hey, if you can actually play it on a real Genesis, then why the heck not?

You're doing really well. I mean, if you already have stuff you want to play anyway, then just play that. Like I said, the digital storefronts aren't going anywhere (at least not for a good long while).

And a lot of them had this idea of "catch all the character-shaped noodles on your spoon at once and you win!". I guess that was for if you were sharing a can with your brother or sister, but I was the only one in the house growing up that liked that stuff, so I guess I won every time. I actually really liked the one themed after the Spider Man animated series, because the webbing-shaped noodles seemed to hold the sauce better or something. I wonder if they still make that stuff and theme it after current popular cartoons/comics/etc.

Sonic 3 Complete is great, but Sonic 3 AIR is even better. That one is a PC fangame, though, but it has way more options built in, and mod support (I use a mod to randomize Chaos Emerald monitors into the normal monitors, because I've done a LOT of blue sphere)

I don't have much room in the CRT room aside from a second Dreamcast, Saturn, PS2, and my PS1 with lightguns.

I'm a terrible judge of how much a game is worth, but I'm enjoying it, and its worth it to me at least. If this didn't have the games in widescreen with the quality of life improvements or the "Story Mode" (there's something appealing about just marathoning every game), I wouldn't have bought it because I have these games in enough other formats already. I still have my Sonic 2 cart apparently, even.

But I'm getting enjoyment out of it. I don't care about all the manufactured controversy and the "you're supposed to hate this" videos and articles or that some of the music is missing. It's fine. I actually like the "beta" music tracks they used here (they're from the PC port, which is what my brother and I had growing up). The widescreen does add a lot to the game, and it's the only way I'm able to play them unless I want to mess around with the Bluestacks emulator (I don't). I didn't buy it because I'm a "mindless fanboy" (I'm not even a Sonic fan in particular). I just loved these games growing up and this is a neat new convenient way to play them, perhaps the definitive way for me from now on.

100% agreed on that front! The amount of effort that must have gone into developing so many new retro games (and having them be so accurate to the times as well!) must've been a crazy labour of love for the team making it, and it shows. Just fun all around. I'm a big fan of Game Center CX as well, so it's all the more fun hearing Arino yell at me when I lose. Here's hoping the 3DS one gets fan translated one of these days!