Thursdays here at the moment are the domain of Edit the Frog, so we put off our overview of the Nintendo Direct until today.
While most sites have already regurgitated the news into your waiting beaks, this time we’re recounting the release dates chronologically, so you’ll know what order to expect everything. Specific games of possible interest to a hazy mirage that I imagine to be our readers are in bold:
FEBRUARY 8th: Nintendo Switch Online Gameboy & GBA Support, Fire Emblem Engage Expansion Pass, Metroid Prime Remastered 15th: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass DLC volume 3 22nd: Metroid Prime Remastered on cartridge 24th: Octopath Traveler II, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe
MARCH 6th: Dead Cells Return to Castlevania DLC 17th: Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon 20th: Spring begins. Releases for Spring: Splatoon 3 Expansion Pass, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC Wave 4,
MAY 12th: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
JUNE Some time in June: Harmony: Fall of Reverie 1st: Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection 2nd: We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie(what is it with the word “reverie” this month?) 21st: Summer begins. Releases for Summer: New Samba de Amigo, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster
JULY 21st: Pikmin 4 28th: Disney Illusion Island
AUGUST 29th: Sea of Stars
Some time in 2023: Fashion Dreamer, Decapolice, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam
The Metroidvania category continues to be an indie staple and this year saw some very interesting ones getting released and hopefully a good sign for 2023.
#3: Haak
The first of several metroidvanias that came out after being on early access, Haak delivers a combination of combat, platforming, and exploration through a stylized destroyed world. The game starts out simple enough, but it does get quite difficult near the end. There are multiple endings, secrets, lots of collectibles, and bonus quests to find in it.
What keeps it from getting higher is that the game tended to rely a bit too much on having to find secrets and hidden stuff to stand a chance, especially at two bosses near the end that spike in difficulty. If you’re looking for a challenging metroidvania, this is a very solid example.
#2: Dungeon Munchies
Even longer on early access and finally out, Dungeon Munchies comes with a lot of variety and charm. What starts out as you coming back to life to learn to cook food from a master necromancer/chef, turns into an ever-escalating journey into this strange world with a lot of heart, soul, and food to uncover. The game takes a lot of interesting turns that no one will really expect where it all leads, and still manages to keep its heart until the very end. Using your food items as a source of customizable buff lists is a different take. What stops it from getting higher is that it did feel janky in spots, and some of the metroidvania progression felt forced.
I hope we see more from the universe as there is a lot more stories to tell and food to make.
#1: Haiku the Robot
Haiku the Robot is a solid metroidvania with inspiration heavily from Hollow Knight while still carving out its own unique take. In a world where humanity is gone and there are nothing but robots around, when a strange corruption starts spreading, it’s up to Haiku to figure out what’s going on.
This is just an all-around great take on the design — controls feel solid, upgrades substantial, and there are plenty of secrets and collectibles to find. If you’re someone who is itching for Silksong and that style of metroidvania, don’t sleep on Haiku.
On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.
There aren’t many game series with the reputation that Castlevania has. While it’s always been very popular, the stature of the original game has only grown over the years, and it’s now seen as one of the very best games on the NES. We’ve talked about it here before, and about how badly the creator of one of the best-designed games ever made was treated by his company, but we’re not here to talk about sad things today.
You’d think Castlevania would have more imitators, but there aren’t as many as you’d think there would be? It has specific and definite ideas, some of them not obvious to a random player. Simon moves slowly and jumps stiffly, but it’s clear with repeated play that not only is the game designed around this, it’s even a better game for it! It’s a good example of how reducing a player’s abilities, relative to Mario-standard, can actually result in better play.
Some of the enemies were changed too. I don’t think this enemy was a skeleton in the original?
One of the few definite Castlevania clones that come to mind is Thinking Rabbit’s 8 Eyes. It could not be more obvious while playing it that its designer played a lot of Castlevania; its hero Orin’s movement is nearly an exact match for Simon Belmont, and it even has staircases that he can climb and hidden items buried in the walls.
It’s not as good a game as Castlevania, definitely, but it has its own ideas, and I respect it for adding some unique features. The player can determine what order the first eight levels are played in, and every time they finish one their attack power is upgraded. It has devious level designs that don’t always map cleanly on paper. It has a player-controlled drone character in the form of a falcon that can be deployed, and then flies around on its own, and can be commanded to attack and return and even has its own health. Most interesting of all, every level has hidden with it a clue, a piece of text that must be found and used at the end of the game to solve a logic puzzle to finally win.
Here’s one of those clues! Unlike the clue books in Castlevania II, every one of these is essential to solving the final puzzle.
There’s a lot of cool ideas in 8 Eyes. If it had some more design and development work put into it it could have been seen as a later highlight of the system. elbobelo has, for over fourteen years, been at work on a huge hack to put Simon Belmont into the game. In a forum thread they started long ago they mentioned that, while work has slowed, it’s still going. They haven’t issued a public release since an old beta in 2008, but there’s enough present in it to make one wonder how it’ll play when it’s finally released.
Here’s one of those clues. BTW, it’s not well known that 8 Eyes actually has eight quests. The game is mostly the same each time, but the logic puzzle is different!
Fortunately, the 2008 version of the hack keeps the cool ideas that 8 Eyes contributed, and it just adds features from Castlevania I and II. It keeps the falcon, the diabolical levels, and the clues and game-ending logic puzzle. Gone, however, is the player’s sword, replaced with Simon’s whip, which is a vast improvement. In addition to the falcon, Simon can find his usual subweapons, which don’t replace each other but can be switched between with the Select button. It doesn’t make the game too easy because 8 Eyes was a very difficult game. It just makes the challenge more reasonable.
Most levels have at least one puzzle that requires you to release the falcon somewhere on screen to fly around while you run to the door, so you can attack the switch with the bird then run in the door before it closes.
Best of all, it also keeps 8 Eyes’ weirdest aspect: after you beat each boss, you sit down and have tea with them! In the original the tea was brought by one of the boss’s flunkies, but in this hack one of the skeleton enemies brings it in. It’s surprisingly adorable!
Another LUA-based game hack from 10yard! This one’s a mashup of two perennial arcade favorites, Galaga and Donkey Kong. Each level has a chevron powerup somewhere in it. When Jumpman picks it up, he’s joined by the spaceship from Galaga. The jump button is also the fire button! Further, the ship’s shots are piercing, and can destroy more than one enemy with a single blast.
You’d think it’d make the game much easier, but the difficulty of the game has been subtly increased to make up for it, plus controlling the ship as well as ol’ Jumpy is a distraction, so it’s still pretty challenging.
In addition to Donkey Kong, the hack’s github page notes that it works in Donkey Kong Jr. as well!
In a surprising twist from 2022, a new sub-genre found its way to dominate the landscape with the Vampire Survivor likes, Bullet Heaven, auto shooter, whatever we want to call it. With so many games being released, I had no choice but to add the category to the list this year.
#3: 20 Minutes til Dawn
20 Minutes til Dawn was the first of the many VS-likes to show up with a more active-style game. While it may not have the same potential for crazy combos like Vampire Survivors, there is certainly a lot of room for it to grow. What keeps the game from getting higher at the moment is that there isn’t as much of an escalation in terms of power and the situation that we see from the other games. Once you get control, it’s very hard to lose it in this game, and a lot of runs are almost decided before the halfway point. There is potential here for more of a skill-driven take on the design that I hope we see more of.
#2: Brotato
Part of the problem with trying to compare to Vampire Survivors is that a lot of the games tend to avoid both the spectacle and the snowballing of a play. Brotato is one of the best ones that come the closest thanks to its focus on builds and roguelike design. Each run plays out over 20 waves, and you need to match your weapons and items to the character you’re using. While it’s not as skill intensive as 20 Minutes Til Dawn, there is more going on with the items and planning you’re doing.
Of the other VS-Likes I’ve played, this is the one I’ve spent the most time with that isn’t Vampire Survivors, and I hope we see more to it in the future.
#1: Vampire Survivors
Was there really any doubt here? Vampire Survivors, love it or hate it, is one of the most influential games of 2022, and the entire reason for this category. One of the best examples of how much a simple gameplay loop can be elevated. It is one of those lighting in the bottle kind of games that has obliviously been copied, but not one other game has managed to reach the same heights. It is the Slay the Spire, Dwarf Fortress, or Factorio, of its genre.
The aspects that make Vampire Survivors work are that it is easy to play, the feel of the different weapons and builds, and the escalation. The game perfectly encapsulates an enjoyable 30 minute (or less) gameplay loop that can be repeated again and again. It is a game where essentially “stuff” is all it needs from a content point of view. I honestly don’t know where else the developer can go with it, or if we ever see another game like it at this level of recognition, but Vampire Survivors takes the award for “nuclear bomb dropped on the game industry for 2022”.
Some more selections possibly of interest from AGDQ 2023. Note that times given in the text are not the length of the run, but as according to our usual policy the run length of the video itself.
Ape Escape 2 (1:04):
Goat Simulator (34m):
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Any% No 0HP race (42m) – at 19:40 in begins an extra Julius Any% run:
Super Mario Galaxy 2 four-player Any% race (3:27):
Please pardon the stuttering, evidently capturing the game at high resolution was a bit much for OBS to bear.
Vector Kong is not a romhack of Donkey Kong. Instead, it’s a LUA script, run through MAME’s plugin support, that makes the graphics display as if they were on a vector monitor.
It doesn’t leave the game unaltered otherwise: the only boards playable are Girders, and it also skips over the scene at the opening. Still though, it definitely looks sharp! Here’s hoping creator 10yard applies this treatment to the rest of it someday!
CW: Not game related, which is why it’s up as a Sundry Extra. Also, has to do with Tibet, so I’m probably now making the Chinese government allergic to this post, yikes.
Some years ago, around the web went this interesting and entertaining comic condensation of the Bardo Thodol, a.k.a. the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It had fallen offline since then, although if one searches for it it might turn up again. (Ah, I see it’s up on ultraculture.org.)
The Bardo Thodol is a guidebook for those who have just died, detailing what worlds (Lokas) a soul will wander through, as well as their ruling entities (Buddhas) as it searches for a place to be reborn, unless it can become liberated from the cycle of rebirth, slipping between the cracks and not having to do it no more.
Well, as web observers may have noticed, different sites have different levels of staying power than others. The original was self-hosted, meaning when its creator Thomas Scoville stopped paying his site’s server bills it evaporated into residual electric charges.
While big tech sites tend to keep things around only for as long as it suits them (witness Geocities), Google tools that have had a substantive presence (other than Google Reader) seem to persist for a little bit. Por ejemplo, Blogger is still up and functioning, at least for now. Another thing within Google’s domain, at least until some bean counter decides the company can be made slightly more profitable by deleting it, is Google Sites.
So, with the permission of Thomas Scoville, I have put up the Comic Bardo Thodol in a corner of my Google Sites space. Please enjoy reading about all the wonders and horrors that await you after you pass away. And in particular notice which pop culture image was chosen for Yama Raja, the Lord of Death!
We love weird old game commercials from before (or in this case during) the crash, before games and game ads began skew quite so much towards the stereotypical tastes of teenage males, and before companies like Nintendo became such jealous guardians of their products.
And just look at all the effort that must have gone into this commercial! This isn’t just people sitting in front of a TV raving about a game, these actors are wearing costumes and running from puppet creatures on an actual set! And this may well be the first human actor to ever portray Luigi in front of a camera (he may look like Mario with his color scheme, but his hat says Luigi, and he’s calling Mario for help). It even calls back to the theme song of Car 54 Where Are You. It’s a shame that the game couldn’t possibly have moved enough units to justify this production.
Watching massive layoffs happening at multiple big tech companies, Wizards of the Coast’s current licensing debacle (it’s what, their third?), and the Age of Owner Idiocy happening over at Twitter, I think right now it’s worth going over some of the big game properties that have been harmed, ruined, wrecked and generally destroyed by clueless executive edicts.
For some reason MMORPGs are particularly rife with this. City of Heroes was a popular game that was shuttered completely because NCSoft decided they didn’t want to run it any more, at all, full stop. Oh, and no one else can run it either. I seem to remember, two long eons past, that WorldsAway, an early graphical service I was an avid member of once, was racked with management argument over whether it wanted to be a virtual world or a chat service, and in the process technology just left it behind.
This kind of thing happens all the time. Recently I was reminded by a Metafilter thread of the story of what happened to Star Wars Galaxies.
All images in this post from Mobygames
This recent article at PC Gamer is basically a love letter to Star Wars Galaxies’ early days. It highlights its great sense of immersion, something that has been lost from MMORPGs as World of Warcraft’s massive success drove everyone to make their games much easier to play, regardless of other factors. It also mentions its many design missteps, which make it seem almost inevitable in hindsight that, eventually, the game’s design would be completely overhauled.
Before the change, called by the management the NGE, or New Game Enhancements, Star Wars Galaxies had a classless, skill-based system. Jedi powers, particularly, were notoriously difficult to unlock. They required that players find very rare Jedi Holochrons in the game that would tell them what they had to do to awaken the Force in their character. It was a demanding system that meant most players would never become Jedis, but it kept Jedi powers special, ensuring that they wouldn’t overwhelm the game universe, especially important since SWG was set at a time, between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, when Jedi were thought to be almost extinct.
Lots of players wanted to be Jedi but couldn’t, but the game had become known for making a difficult design choice and sticking to their guns, and if players did achieve Jedihood, it accorded them a level of respect that was rare in MMORPGs. Anyone can reach max level in an MMORPG if they just spend enough time playing, but this was something special. And Jedi characters had permadeath on; if one perished, it was gone.
In short: the game switched to a class-based system, Jedi were made an ordinary starting class, and gameplay was made much more action-oriented. While locations remained the same, the underlying gameplay was completely changed. It immediately lost a large portion of its userbase. It gained some back over time, and continued along for six years after, but the popular perception was that it was a grave misstep.
Server-based games like MMORPGs are in a difficult spot in cases like this: the pre-existing game basically ceases to exist, even for players who preferred it. There is no going back for them. People who didn’t enjoy that style of play had no choice but to like it or lump it. Meanwhile it has to build a membership anew based off of its new form, while overcoming all the negative press around its change of direction.
The pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies spawned a fan recreation using the old gameplay soon after the gameplay changed, called SWGEmu, and it’s still running today with two servers. People who liked the later system, which was still in place when the game shut down, have had no recourse until relatively recently. Now a new fan-led effort, Star Wars Galaxies Legends, looks to revive the game as it stood when it closed, NGE systems and everything. SWGEmu’s website is just a forum system; SWGL’s, by contrast, is surprisingly slick by the typical standards of a fan project.
That’s a lot of words to write about a game that, in either form, I have never played, but that’s how much people care about Star Wars Galaxies, in both its forms, and Star Wars in general. I hope both are running decades into the future.
“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter
My cell walls are feeling kind of rigid at the moment due to a computer issue that caused me to lose the first draft of this post. All of my witty remarks, lost to the electronic void. You missed out on my entertaining usage of the phrase “odoriferous blorpy.” Truly we are in the worst timeline. It’s all left me feeling kind of cranky, let’s get through it quickly this week.
Tyler Wilde, also from PC Gamer, on a $2,000 game on Steam and what it’s about. Summarized: it costs $2,000 but is short enough that people can finish it within the return period, and it amounts to a screed against women. Blech!
Zoey Handley at Destructoid on the 10 best NES soundtracks. The list is Bucky O’Hare, Kirby’s Adventure, Castlevania 3 (Japanese version), Contra, Dr. Mario, Super Mario Bros. 2, Mega Man 2, Castlevania II, Journey to Silius, and… Silver Surfer?
Gavin Lane and the NintendoLife staff on the 50 best SNES games. The list is compiled algorithmically from reader scores, and can change even after publication. At this time, the top ten are, starting from $10: Donkey Kong Country 2, Earthbound, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV, Super Mario RPG, Yoshi’s Island, Final Fantasy III, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario World on top.
Tom Phillips at EuroGamer mentions that the original developers of Goldeneye 007, recently rereleased after 25 years on Switch and Xbox platforms, were a bit miffed that they weren’t asked to participate in the festivities. At the time most of its developers were completely new to the game industry, and they’ve been generally snubbed by its publishers in talking about the new versions. Does feel pretty shabby, Nintendo and Microsoft!
Andrew Liezewski at Gizmodo talks about the graphics in an upcoming Mario 64 hack made by Kaze Emanuar. I’ve followed Kaze’s hacking videos quite a bit (I think one’s been posted on Set Side B before), and the optimizations they’ve made to Mario 64’s engine are amazing, not only eliminating lag but great increasing its frame rate and making it look better to boot.
And, at Kotaku, Isaiah Colbert reports on various things being done to celebrate Final Fantasy VII’s 26th birthday, including official recognition in Japan of “Final Fantasy VII day” and a crossover with Power Wash Simulator. Maybe they can do something about cleaning out all the grunge from Midgar, that city could use a bath.
