This little pocket-sized unit was released in 1981, three years after the VCS/2600, but as the Gameboy proved years after, pocket-sized gaming can get away with less complex hardware than consoles. They called this their D&D “Computer Fantasy Game.”
Mattel made pretty good use of the D&D license. They also released the “Computer Labyrinth Game,” which was a mixture of physical and electronic components. This version is wholly electronic, and has the same kind of feel as a Game & Watch title. It has the old-style of LCD components, black shapes that are faintly visible at all times, but can be made much darker to “display” images.
This 13-minute unboxing and demonstration video is by Youtuber Nerd Mimic. If their gameplay description sounds a bit familiar, it seems that this game is mostly a handheld port of the older (yes, even from that time) computer game Hunt The Wumpus, which is played on what the math people call a graph of nodes. The idea is to use clues given by the game to deduce the location of a monster and to kill it by firing an arrow at it from an adjacent space. Stumbling into the space of the monster or a bottomless pit is lethal, and there are bats wandering around that can drop you into a random space. It’s a classic of early gaming, and a pretty good choice for a pocket-sized version.
Mattel made two console D&D games for the Intellivision, both of them interesting and thought of well today: Cloudy Mountain and Treasure of Tarmin. None of these games made use of the true AD&D ruleset, as it would have been called at the time. They’re original game designs with a vague sort of fantasy theme, but they’re still interesting to play.
A bit of scanline flickering is a fairly common problem on the NES. Even Super Mario Bros. 3 had it, and that game was made by Nintendo themselves.
Game graphics in the 8- and 16-bit ages often came down to tricky hardware manipulation. The art of doing raster effects, changing the registers in the video hardware so as to divide the screen into different sections, ultimately comes down to timing. On the Atari VCS/2600, nearly all the graphics had to be done that way, but it was still a useful technique for over a decade after that.
A lot depends on the specifics of the video chip, a custom-built piece of silicon developed for the express purpose of taking graphics defined in memory and folding it, like electronic origami, into a shape that the TV would perceive as a broadcast signal. At that time, while it might still have been possible with clever coding, CPUs weren’t nearly fast enough to do that job themselves and still produce acceptable graphic quality and run game logic. (If you want to see what it would be like, I refer readers interested in doing it the very hard way to the amazing Freespin demo, which runs on a 1541 disk drive, and no video hardware at all.)
Older NES games used a supported bit of hackery called the “Sprite 0 Hit,” a signal the PPU would send at the moment the first of the system’s 64 sprites began to be drawn. By watching for it, games could do rudimentary raster effects on a system not designed for them. The issue there was processor time: the Sprite 0 Hit feature wasn’t hooked up to an interrupt line, so the program had to continually watch for it, checking a memory location repetitively over and over until it changed. Some games spent large portions of their runtime in a tight loop checking for the Sprite 0 Hit. Since, from the program’s perspective, the signal might come at any time, the loop needed to be tight, meaning the game couldn’t spend that time doing other work or else it might be delayed in responding to the extremely time-sensitive signal.
The MMC3 mapper had a special function though that could time out when a programmable scanline was reached, and send the processor an interrupt request at that time, greatly freeing up the processor for doing other things with that time. But not all programmers understood the best way to use it, which is why Mega Man 3 has some scanline glitching in a couple of very visible places, in the pause window and on the level select screen.
Displaced Gamers’ Behind the Code series, which we’ve linked to multiple times in the past, has done an exposé looking into how Mega Man III’s glitches happen (28 minutes), and even wrote some code that erases all trace of them. As usual for Behind the Code, the explanation is fairly technical, especially of the fix, but the first half of it is fairly comprehensible. No one says you have to watch the whole thing. Or, indeed, any of it, but I always enjoy them!
Today’s link is to a madperson who explains how to compute digits of pi on a NES’s 6502 to an arbitrary length. As you do. Along the way it explains how to multiply and divide in binary on a processor without hardware support. It’s around nine minutes long, but if you want a machine to get to the end of pi it’ll probably take a tad bit longer.
We link to such a variety of things here. Sometimes we post light videos where someone has Kirby do funny things. Sometimes we show explainers that explain how to do arithmetic on old processors. I presume that you’ll take from these what you want, and leave the rest to the crazy people, by definition the people who are not you. I understand.
A few weeks back I mentioned Dungeon, a Commodore 64 CRPG system created by David Caruso II and published in 1990 on the disk magazine Loadstar. We’ve made it available through emulation on itch.io for $5. It’s here, and it’s awesome. It’s not just a way to play CRPG adventures but to make them yourself, and it even contains a random dungeon creation feature.
Dungeon’s map editor
I make it available with some trepidation. Dungeon has a few significant bugs. For example, it supports two disk drives throughout, but if you use its Dungeon Maker then you need to set it for single drive mode, or else you’ll encounter a Disk Error just at the worst possible time: when saving your project. Its randomized “Lost Worlds” often create dungeons that strand your character in impossible situations, and while there is a way out of them, it involves loading the Guild menu 15 times.
But I’ve played a lot of these random dungeons, and I think overall David Caruso II made a clever little game system, and I think his ideas are worth building upon. That’s why I’m working on a remake/update of Dungeon, that I’m calling Dungeon DX.
I’m making it in Python using the Pygame library. I’ve tried making a game with Pygame before and had some problems with it (I may bring myself to talk about that experience someday), but using it now I’m pleased to see Pygame 2 has become a lot more performant, and that’s even before trying to compile it into a faster form. I’ve built for Dungeon DX a kind of bespoke terminal emulator, but one with support for loads of cool graphics effects. I’ve made dungeon art and monster images for it using the website Fontstruct, which gives the images a low-tech, but distinctive look.
A collection of monsters, in font form, still being worked on. They’re reminiscent of the monster silhouettes from early editions of Call of Cthulhu!
I’ve been working very hard on it, to the extent that I can feel myself getting my hopes up that a substantial number of people may actually play and enjoy it. Most of the times in the past that I’ve done that I’ve had those hopes get crushed, but hey, maybe the nth+1 time’s the charm?
Besides not having all of its bugs, why do I think this project is worth working on? These are the things I find appealing about the original Dungeon, the reasons that I played so much of it myself, things that I don’t generally see in CRPGs these days:
It’s not a game but a game system. It isn’t a single huge campaign that you play and finish, and it isn’t a single story. Your characters can keep going so long as there are adventures to be had.
In structure it isn’t like a novel, but it’s more like a series of short stories. Each dungeon is a single screen, that fills out as your character explores it. That may sound a bit like a classic roguelike, and there are some elements of that, but the feel is subtly different. Each single-screen dungeon usually has more adventure packed into it than in a single roguelike dungeon level.
It’s like a collection of short stories, but that stars your character as they progress through it. The focus is more on the development of that character as they continue their adventuring career. Like how the Conan the Barbarian novellas are each an episode in the life of a single adventurer.
It features what’s known in some circles as slow character growth. D&D has rapid growth, and it’s gotten even faster as the system has changed through the years. 5th Edition characters advance to second level absurdly quickly, after earning only 300 XP, and that advancement practically doubles their power! 0th-level Dungeon characters (it starts counting at 0) have a lot more durability, but it takes them more time to advance to Level 1, and when they gain it their power only increases a little. In this, a lot more of a Dungeon character’s life is decided at character creation. But it also means, as they increase in power, you know it’s due to your own efforts.
It’s more simulationist that CRPGs have become as of late. A lot of CRPGs have crept towards gamishness, which generally is okay, I mean they are games after all. But I think RPGs work the best when you can imagine them as being the adventures of real people, so as their power has crept up, and their abilities have gotten more abstract and arbitrary, they have come to feel more and more like playing pieces than living people.
While there’s a random dungeon maker, you can also make your own adventures for it, and give them to other people! That’s potentially a very great thing. It reminds me of EAMON, an 80s CRPG game system that people could create their own adventures for. (There are still websites devoted to EAMON! It’s a rabbit hole worth exploring, but that’s something more suited for its own post.)
And finally, it’s hard. Characters die frequently. You can revive them up to three times, and if you don’t mind reloading the guild menu 15 times you can turn the game off to preserve their life, but defeat is frequent without very careful play. You often have to play like a scavenger: take what easy-to-find rewards and successes you can, build your power over time, seek out easy adventures, and don’t take unnecessary risks. Dungeon characters are not heroes, not at first anyway, and if they’re ever to become heroes you’ll have to watch their steps.
The current appearance of the new Dungeon Maker module
Because these are the aspects of Dungeon that I like, they’re the elements that I’m focusing on in making Dungeon DX. My plans aren’t to make it quite as hard, but to still emphasize that these people are not demigods, not yet. A character’s career may be the story of the creation of a demigod, like how Conan, through countless trials, eventually became king of a great nation. It’s kind of a lie that people who rise to greatness frequently do so because of their own efforts, but it’s a pleasing lie, and it makes for a fun saga if you don’t take it too seriously.
My other plans for Dungeon DX, which may change, for while progress has been rapid (because Python is awesome), I’m still iterating over lots of things:
A retro look, kind of akin to how Dungeon looks on a C64, but still with enhancements. It doesn’t use pixel art, instead using vector graphics created in Fontstruct.
Dungeon was all one-on-one fights. Dungeon DX should have parties of three characters, fighting enemy groups that can be larger than that.
Dungeon doesn’t let characters keep items between adventures. For the most part, characters only advance through gaining experience. DX should let characters have a persistent inventory.
Dungeon doesn’t have any money system at all! DX should both have money and a shop where basic necessities and equipment can be obtained.
Dungeon doesn’t simulate much of the basis of exploration. My ideas for DX let characters rest in the dungeon, for example, but they must consume food to do so.
Dungeon has very little graphical splendor. Dungeons themselves are just blocks of green, with black tunnels dug through it, and once in a while a graphic character. That has to change.
Dungeon’s encounter model isn’t scriptable at all, which limits what can be done. It’s a lot more flexible than you might think it would be, given the C64’s memory limitations, but the edges of what’s possible are still easily reached. I want to change that.
Dungeon’s magic system is very interesting for its own sake, a collection of 16 spells that are more useful outside of battle than in it. Only one of those spells that does direct damage to enemies! Magic is much more of general utility. While my design has more damage-doing magic than that, I want to keep that feeling that magic is not primarily for harming monsters.
Dungeon doesn’t let characters learn spells themselves: all magic comes from items that contain it, and depletes with use. There’s interesting things about that system, but it kind of means that high-Intelligence characters aren’t very viable if the dungeon constructor doesn’t give them any magic to use early on.
Dan Olson is the brilliant documentarian behind Folding Ideas. He’s covered a range of interesting topics ranging from Decentraland, gamer culture, NFTs, financial scammers and Minecraft.
James Rolfe plays the Angry Video Game Nerd, that long-running game commentary and comedy series, and to some degree he is the nerd, even though the character doesn’t reflect his own views or personality. Although he plays a character, playing it has become his career. He does other videos too, but it’s what he’s known for, it’s his mark upon the world, and so it’s how he’ll be remembered.
Rolfe is the head of a little empire called Cinemassacre. Rolfe was really popular at one point, but over time his subject became less relevant. Time is unkind. By the time the mechanisms became available to effectively monetize what he does, his fandom had diminished, although he keeps plugging away, and it sustains him. Cinemassacre partnered with an outfit, Screenwave, to help him monetize it, which involves making five videos a week. It’s provided him with an income to support a family. That’s the same tradeoff most of us make, only he gets to do something he likes doing.
It makes the case that James Rolfe was a victim of his own success. The Nerd character was extremely popular for a while. If you have three things you do, and one of them turns out a popular as the Nerd was, you’re naturally going to focus on that, and the others must suffer.
Dan Olson’s video is not against James Rolfe, but it’s also not in favor of him. It presents him as a hack, a jobber, a person who, when he finally has the chance to do something with his own ideas, they end up half-baked, iterations over things he made as a teenager. These things are probably true, but they’re also better than what most of the rest of us get.
I have never really been a fan of the Nerd. I think that the relentless negativity has fed into a culture that tears things down. But there is effort in how they’re made. There is a weird skill in coming up with so many distinct ways to insult things. I don’t agree with all his videos, which don’t leave much room to consider things noble attempts or failed experiments. But they’re just games, after all.
James Rolfe isn’t a bad person, far from it. Even so, Olson’s video tells us that Rolfe has an anti-fandom, a band of people who just hate him and what he does for no reason, for the crime of having a family and doing what he needs to survive. What an awful thing to exist. To think that there’s a category of person so petty. But also, this kind of pettiness is a great invisible sea. It is one of the worst of the early internet’s many legacies, and it’s largely the result of most people having no real, I’m not going to say life, but I will say stakesin life. When people’s lives are devoid of real meaning, they find what little meaning they can, and sad to say, there’s a lot of people who, to put it in Balatro terms, the best card they’ve been given is a five of clubs, and the rest of their deck is mostly twos and threes. (Can you tell what I’ve just came from doing?)
I’m rambling a bit, and part of that is due to the fact that Olson’s video rambles too. Dan Olson became obsessed with James Rolfe and his legacy, due in part to the similarity between their lives, and it feels like the video was released partly to exorcise James Rolfe from Olson’s mind.
I hope that Olson has successfully evicted the nerd from his brain attic. And I hope that Rolfe continues to be successful, even if I won’t watch his videos. It’s a hard life for all of us, far too hard to spend it tearing others down.
Twinbeard is a pretty active gamedev and Youtuber. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he made Frog Fractions and Frog Fractions II. Yes! Him.
Lately he’s been playing Mario games on the installment plan: one significant unit of the game per video. One level at a time, or one star, or shine, or whatever luminous MacGuffin the plumber is lusting after at the moment.
We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.
Both Frogfall from the day before yesterday and this one were recent itch.io highlight honorees, and both are interesting enough to feature here too, although they’re very different kinds of games, and for very different reasons.
The Silly Knight is a classic-style point-and-click graphic adventure game. Click on things to interact with them. Some things can be picked up and put in your inventory. Half of the fun is clicking on things and seeing what your character has to say about them.
The Silly Knight is claimed to be a prologue. It has a simple puzzle, and some voice lines, and then things take a turn for the surreal. Then, the game claims it’s over, but actually you can go back in and “play” it “again,” and things will be slightly different, and again, and again. Even with all of that, it’s still extremely short, but what do you want for free?
The Silly Knight Prologue has a playthrough video on Youtube, embedded below. It’s 6 1/2 minutes long and spoils the whole story (what of it there is), and the game is free anyway. It doesn’t reveal all the jokes though. Presumably, if the full game gets made, the story will pick up from here, although who the heck even knows how that would be possible….
The Silly Knight: Prologue (by Alexander Preymak, on itch.i0, for Windows and Mac, $0)
Well, it looks like another Nintendo Direct has come and gone. Coverage of current-day Nintendo things lies at the very edge of our tripartite purview, that of Retro, Indie and Niche, but in a way they are part of all three. Retro and Niche should be obvious; Indie, not nearly so much, but Nintendo is the least beholden of the three great console makers to the winds of trend, and even with their billions and billions of dollars they still at times manage to surface their long-held toymaker mindset. (At least, if you’re talking about game design. When it comes to throwing around their legal weight they’re the most corporate, the Disney of gaming.)
Well I’m not going to fight it. Here is my impression of every ever-lovin’ game presented in yesterday’s Nintendo Direct. Tomorrow I’ll get back to writing about random itch.io things, or Youtube videos about obscure arcade game. Those sound like something I’d do.
Overall: I really miss the days when Reggie Fils-Amie, Shigeru Miyamoto and, especially, Satoru Iwata would present these. Remember the time they had puppets represent everyone? Those three had chemistry. I still can’t say I approve of the reading of the narrator, who, nothing against him personally, is set at Smarm Level S.
So, the games. Titles link to the upload of just that part of the presentation on Nintendo’s Youtube account.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership. The series that bankrupted Alphadream, brought back to life. We don’t yet know if it’s a Nintendo in-house production or if another company’s making it, nor do we know if any Alphadream employees are working on it. Destructoid wonders about that too. I hope they get some credit for it, in some way.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. News of this was leaked a bit early. It looks to be of similar lineage to the NES Remix games on 3DS and WiiU. It’s weird to see Nintendo embrace speedrunning, considering that that entire community was enabled and greatly furthered by emulation, but I guess if there’s money involved corporate qualms shall be set aside.
Fairy Tale 2. I barely know what this is, and I hate to tell you this, but I don’t care about you enough to go find out. It’s okay, we can still be friends.
I know it’s based off of an anime. I find it hilarious that the first words said in the trailer are “Let’s go, Happy!” Speaking of, the slogan of Koei-Tecmo now appears to be “Level up your happiness.” I have never lost my disdain for the engrish phrase “level up.” I dislike it nearly as much as “getting a Game Over.” That how I feel, it’s because I’m right, and the Great Trash Heap has spoken. Nyaaah!
FANTASIAN Neo Dimension. “From Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, and composer Nobuo Uematsu.” And from Square-Enix, natch. Maybe I’m just old (51 now) but sometimes I see a trailer for a JRPG and I just start to get a migrane. The plot has to do with restoring memories, which is like the plot of more than half of all JRPGs for the last thirty years. Someday there’ll be a JRPG plot where everyone knows who they are and is in complete control of their faculties for the entire story and it’ll be a frogdamn sensation. I haven’t even started on how it seems to be about a bunch of teenagers trying to kill God again. But I’ll say this for it: it makes unironic use of the word DIMENGEON, so I can’t hate it all that much.
Nintendo Sports SWITCH. The Switch successor to the incredibly popular Wii Sports tends to get forgotten about, but it’s still kicking… and swinging, and bowling, and now is getting a new sport in Basketball. So, now Miis can dunk. Setting all of that aside: what the hell is Spocco Square? Is it their version of (ugh) Wuhu Island?
MIO: Memories in Orbit. Nothing much to say. It seems to be an exploratory platformer where you play the part of a humanoid variation of a GLaDOS core. They don’t say anything about it in the trailer either, so I am absolved.
Disney Illusion Island update. The update is free, and it launched the day of the Direct. I also don’t know much about Illusion Island, but Mickey looks like a goofus, and I love it for that.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure. More often than you’d think, a Hello Kitty game comes out and it’s unexpectedly good, and this may be one more for that notable pile. It looks like it might be worth it for the customizable Sanrio character creator all by itself. Hello Kitty has long been the butt for a certain irascible breed of internet funnyperson. The Brunching Shuttlecocks once suggested the creation of a Sanrio fighting game called Hello Kitty, Goodbye Teeth. “She has no mouth, and she must pummel!” I’m still trying to round up enough figures to field a Hello Kitty 40K army.
I love how among this field of brainplush animals there’s the Evil Sanrio Character Kuromi, and of course, eternal malcontent BADTZ MARU, always too hip for the room. No sign of Aggretsuko tho.
Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports. On the other hand, I have absolutely no faith that this will even live on the same continent as good. Kids these days barely know what they missed, and probably think of Bugs Bunny as Michael Jordan’s sidekick (or even LeBron James’, because we live in hell). When me and my decrepit ilk roamed the wastes, Bugs Bunny and friends, still the best cartoons ever made and I will fight you on that, were on the air constantly. Now you have to go to MeTV Toons to find them, and you definitely should find them.
You probably should not find this game. I’m almost prepared to lay money on Bugs Bunny’s face on the box, if it gets a physical release at all, having American Kirby-Style Angry Eyes. Like Mickey and Donald got when they played Soccer, Basketball, Football, went Skateboarding and rode Motocross. (But not, strangely, when they played Golf.)
American game box art starring cartoon characters has had a long and angry history, except when golfing. Unless you’re Donald Duck, but he gets a pass as his fury, and his lack of pants, are his defining characteristics.
Anyway, so the trailer’s lead character is Lola Bunny, the one who was created for Space Jam, and that tells you nearly everything. I am prepared to admit, though, that it was good thinking to tape the tennis racket to the Road Runner’s wing. Attention to detail right there.
Farmagia. Urp, another anime JRPG, every Nintendo Direct’s like half this stuff by weight. There’s so many of these games to get through and not enough to say about them. In the game’s lore the word Farmagia is the name of a profession, but it seems to be a synonym for Pokemon Trainer.
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD. Or, Donkey Kong Country Returns Returns. It’s been so long that the reboots of the reboots are being remade.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D. Ah! This looks interesting, Dragon Quest III was always the best of the early DQ titles, allowing you to actually create the characters for your party and run with a team of three Goof-Offs if you want, who cares if it makes your group insufferable and you doom the world, you do you. Instead of making it in the more recent style pioneered with Dragon Quest VIII, they’re using the Octopath Traveler engine, which looks like a great fit for it. Also announced are remakes of the first two games, in that same style, next year. It’s only a matter of time before the Famicom/NES Final Fantasy games get the same treatment, I’m sure.
The clip ends with Yuji Horii himself greeting the viewer, dopey haircut and all, and I say that with immense love. I’m happy that the same guy who designed the original Dragon Quest (and also the Portopia Serial Murder Mystery), who went to California to that early Apple II demo and saw Wizardry and Ultima there, is still helming the series after so long. I really think it shines through and makes Dragon Quest a special thing.
Richard Gariott doesn’t make Ultima games any more, since Electronic Arts keeps it and a great swath of other classic computer IP locked up. Andrew Woodhead and Robert Greenberg haven’t worked on Wizardry for decades, and Sir-Tech is long long gone. All of those missing creators is a huge shame, but Yuji Horii’s still at it, and we should all be grateful. Of course, it’s all possible because of Dragon Quest’s gigantic cultural influence in Japan. That influence is also why there’s so many anime series that adopt video game conventions without questioning them, and I can’t say I much approve of that, but I never said it was a bad thing I’m not in charge of the world.
I notice they’re still calling Loto “Erdrick” in Western territories. Dost thine other characters continue to speakest Elizabethan English also? Dost thou carest?
Funko Fusion. You know the thing about Funko Pops… they’s got dead eyes. At least these plastic monstrosities, being visual only, won’t be cluttering up the planet in a century. The whole gimmick of this game is that it’s a huge crossover of a long list of properties. Didn’t we already see that with Lego Dimensions? Are they still making movie-based Lego games?
The trailer puts a lot of focus on Freddy Fazbear’s Pop.
I’m not even halfway through the video yet! Let’s shift this recap into high gear.
The New Denpa Men. The what now? Ah, was a 3DS game where you collect funky little guys with heads like the Prince of All Cosmos and have them fight in dungeons. I’m interested.
Metal Slug Attack Reloaded. Don’t get your hopes up, it’s a remake of a mobile game that only uses the aesthetics of the arcade classics. It’s got the animation of the games but tower defense gameplay. Tower defense games are not anywhere near as popular as they used to be, but I still scoff at them, scoff scoff, and I bristle when I hear someone describe my beloved Rampart as a tower defense game.
Darkest Dungeon II. I’ll be honest, I’ve never played either of the Darkest Dungeon games. You’d think I’d be all over them, like pretty on something that isn’t an ape, but no. There’s so many games that get made and nowhere enough time to play them all. I feel bad about it too. The trailer narrator tells us, with the most ominous tones they can muster through all the smarm, that your group must avert an apocalypse, but looking at the world they’re traveling through I think it might have already happened.
Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack new games. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Four Swords: Colon Confusion. (It’s good.) Metroid Zero Mission. (It’s GREAT.) Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. (Who owns the rights to Acclaim’s output now?) And Perfect Dark. (probably a result of the deal that brought Banjo-Kazooie and Goldeneye 007 to Switch). Perfect Dark even gets online multiplayer. It’s time for a new generation of players to learn to curse the Farsight.
Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics. I am not a fan of fighting games generally. I think the fighting game boom, while it resulted in a burst of popularity for arcades, by greatly diminishing the styles of games that could be popular, ultimately resulted in their downfall. And I’ve never even played a MvC game. But I’m still kind of interested in this. Capcom’s crossover fighters are the ultimate inspiration for the Smash Bros games, after all. A lot of people will be pleased to see this. Among all those fighting games, sticking out like a sore gun, is The Punisher, a lone belt brawler.
Super Mario Party Jamboree. I guess they’ve abandoned the numbering system for good. It was getting silly after 10 numbered games. I wonder who makes these now that Konami owns Hudson Soft. It features online play for up to 20 players at once! With 110 minigames, it looks like ZoomZike‘s gonna have his luck cut out for him on this one.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. THIS is the one the internet’s been abuzz about, even making it over to my other internet home at Metafilter. Why? Because ZELDA’S FINALLY PLAYABLE BABY! Not as an animate statue or in a romhack or in a weird CD-i game but as the genuine bonafide protagonist in a Nintendo-made title! What is more, it’s not a game in the Breath of the Wild style, a gigantic non-linear exploratory monsterpiece. It seems to signify that Nintendo thinks there’s room for both styles in new games. And it’s also made with the HD Link’s Awakening engine, which looked great! Even the gameplay looks really interesting. Zelda isn’t a traditional sword-wielder, but instead has a magic wand that can duplicate lots of different things, including enemies that will fight for her. I think people were hoping for a warrior Zelda, but I appreciate that they didn’t want to just make her Link but with breasts. (Isn’t that Linkle is supposed to be, anyway?)
There was also announced a new Switch system design to celebrate the game. As DoctorFedora on MeFi said, it seems odd to announce a new design when the Switch’s successor is supposed to come out only next year, but Zelda merch tends to be evergreen anyway.
Just Dance 2025. While I’m still sad that they aren’t still making Wii versions of Just Dance. The last Wii version was made in 2020; the line for WiiU didn’t even make it past 2019. The first Just Dance was a Wii game made in 2009, meaning there’s eleven Wii versions of Just Dance, released over that many years. They stopped making the Wii in 2013! But besides that, I don’t have a whole lot else to say about Just Dance.
LEGO Horizon Adventures. Before, they’d make Lego games that crossed over with movies; now, they make them crossing over with other games. You could always count on Lego to provide a cheeky irreverent take on whatever property they crossed with. While the gameplay is usually simple and kid-friendly, there were a lot of jokes for the adults playing along with them to get. I don’t know if that continues with the newer games, but I really hope it does.
Stray. Ah, the kittycat game. Everyone knows about this one, even me, although my tastes run more towards Little Kitty Big City. (A Q&A with its makers that I did should be up on Game Developer before long! Another fun cat game I did a Q&A about is Gato Roboto!) Even after the end of humankind, cats will still be knocking things off of shelves, and I’m certain that cats will outlive us. I’m not sure about dogs though.
Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings™ Game. This The Lord of the Rings™ game promise to be the enjoyable! Let us the all obtain the game when the it come out! Shall provide many time of the joy! Switch fun to have the entertainment when the play on TV occur! What the happy shall be!
How did that title even happen? And of course Nintendo’s promotional materials will all faithfully copy that extraneous The, because The Title of the Property is The Lord of The Rings™, and it MUST BE OBEYED, or else face the wrath of Melkor who is Morgoth.
I’d be done with this recap by now if I didn’t keep embarking on these cockamamie digressions, but they’re too fun to pass up. Trailer observations the now!
Everyone remembers the perfectly round doors that Hobbit dwellings have. But how many renditions of Middle Earth remember the doorknob in the center of the door? And how many remember that Bilbo’s ancestor Bullroarer invented golf, the sport with the power to quell even Mickey Mouse’s rage?
The promise of the trailer is that the game will let people experience life as a Hobbit. Was there ever a great demand for that? Most Hobbits, like Bilbo’s cousins the Sackville-Bagginses, were pretty insular and conservative. They’d probably have voted Tory. Bilbo and Frodo were exceptions, because of the fairy blood in their lineage from Bullroarer’s wife. Yes it’s true, I know Middle Earth lore, but, ah-ha, I never pretended to be cool! Bright blue my jacket is, and my boots are yellow!
Continuing the trailer, wow they’re really into this Hobbit home life thing. It’s essentially Halfling Crossing. No adventures at all. Nasty things, they make you late for dinner! The last shot of the game has Gandalf in it, so I guess the Wider World does factor in slightly, but it still doesn’t look like you get to do any burgling.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. The trailer itself notes that one of the two games in this package was never localized. I wonder if anyone’s gotten a distorted view of the legal profession from the Ace Attorney games? Phoenix Wright and his cohort spend a lot of time tracking down clues themselves, instead of brainstorming ways to restrict what young people do, which the media tells me is the common objective of all lawyers.
The Ace Attorney series is beloved by a lot of people. Like me, I am part of that lot. I still remember fondly the time when Phoenix called a parrot to the witness stand. Even sidekick Maya Fey, the girl who claimed to have two stomachs, was a bit worried about that one. That moment isn’t one from these games, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other instances. And these games star Miles Edgeworth, fan favorite yet also the most stuck-up person theoretically possible to exist. I want to see him call a parrot to the witness stand. Make it happen Capcom!
Uh-oh, he’s got that look in his eye.…he is.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. The trailer opens with two anime highschoolers walking together. The boy has weird colored eyes, like many anime protagonists. The girl has an incredibly short skirt, like many anime girls. It’s gotta be a JRPG.
Then the screen flips to a flaming hellscape! Caused by oddly cute and colorful monsters! I knew it, it was only a matter of time: the Pokemon are fed up and taking over.
The narrator then tells us how Takumi Sumino’s life got turned upside-down. He’d like us to take a minute, to just sit right there, and listen to how he became the prince of a place called Bel-Air.
“A mysterious school mascot suddenly appears.”
…
I am having to fight the strong urge to just close the browser window now. I have to note that this trailer is being played straight. It sounds like the silliest thing on Planet Earth, but the cutscene doesn’t realize it.
As the trailer continues with its story about cute blob monsters attacking a school that the protag must enroll in, it becomes clear this game is
a high school-based time management sim like Persona, and probably also a dating sim,
that has grid-based tactical combat, and
has permadeath. Choice quote, spoken by a student in the game: “That was the first time I ever saw a person die….”
It’s like they found a second solution to the anti-life equations that led to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.
I am somewhat joking here. Why? Because it’s easy. I could probably rewrite this whole recap and the jokes would be completely different. But all of these crazy ideas kind of make me want to see how they all fit together. We need more crazy ideas in gamedev, and these developers are clearly smoking the good shit. But, I still don’t think this one is for me.
“The creators of Danganronpa present…” Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah now it all makes sense. Or as I should say, it doesn’t make sense, but in a really familiar way. It’s from Spike-Chunsoft. Listen, anything that helps this deeply weird company survive long enough to make more Shiren games is okay by me. So I approve of this… provisionally.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven. Another JRPG, as I told you every Nintendo Direct has several of them. I think of how the Dreamcast had only like three.
The SaGa games are all bonkers, but they’re my kind of bonkers. This is a full remake of the Super Famicom Romancing SaGa 2, and not the Octopath Traveler kind of reimagining, this one’s been turned into a very different-looking game without pixel-art trappings. I may have to look into this one.
…and finally, after 41 minutes of video and four hours of writing…
We find out very little about the game from the trailer, it’s really just a teaser, but it’s glorious. It does leave me wondering though: after all this time and so many games, why are Samus’ main antagonists throughout still called just “space pirates?” They don’t even get a proper noun! None of them except Ridley has even a name. (He counts as one of them, right?)
Producer Koji “IGA” Igarashi and director Shutaro Iida posted a video last night (7 1/2 minutes) to their Youtube channel looking back on the game’s creation, starting from its Kickstarter announcement and their many stretch goals, and the game’s planning and development.
We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.
It’s not FrogFind, which is an web search engine with a retro-computing theme run by the person behind Action Retro.
No, this one’s a charming and free action game from itch.io. It’s a lot like a platformer, but not quite completely one, because you never land on any platforms. Once you leave the ground, it’s up to you to guide your tiny friend to eat every fly on the level before they touch the ground again. Each fly gives the frog a burst of height, like they’re bouncing off of them. It’s satisfying to collect every fly on one pass, bouncing off of each one like a little amphibious pinball.
There’s some leeway you’re granted. They frog can hit ceilings without danger; they won’t collide but will just fall from there. Sometimes you can hit walls, although sometimes they’ll result in failure. Retrying is instantaneous though.
As you progress, the game introduces new elements. “Empty” flies only appear and become snackable once all the other flies have been nom’d. Flies with a dot on them must be eaten twice; they become edible again after any other fly has been eaten. Skate rails (the itty bitty froggy can shred, it seems) give the frog a place to grind safely for a while, and can be used sometimes to get around barriers or return to heights to get more flies. There’s bouncing spots the frog can hop endless on too.
There’s 48 levels in the game, three of them tutorial levels and then nine levels in each of five worlds. After they’ve all been cleared and the frog has enough food for winter, you begin to unlock harder “B-side” levels, which introduce new tricks.
The aesthetic is laidback, and the music is quiet contemplative, somewhat in contrast with the frog’s acrobatic feats. So help a frog out! Winter is coming!
Frogfall (by Kultisti, for Windows, on itch.i0, $0)
Here’s video of a playthrough of the main game. Note that, while it does show the ending, it doesn’t show any of the B-side levels.
This late-appearing board is aptly named: “that level”
