ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Kirby's Dream Land 2
(Completed on 29 Mar 2022)

  • When I started this game, I wouldn’t have thought that I remembered very much, but that is totally wrong. Every level I struggled with as a child came instantly rushing back when I got there, it was a nice little nostalgia trip.
  • I don’t remember whether I beat this game back when I originally had it, but as an adult, I thought it was extremely difficult for a Kirby game.
  • There might be some kind of New Game+ stashed in here somewhere, but I think I would need an entirely new file to get at it. I did something really dumb with this save file:
    • Bonus content is unlocked at 100% completion and up.
    • I am missing a total of 7% completion.
    • 6 of that 7 % comes from the “Bonus Stage” challenges you can do in each boss room after you beat the boss itself.
    • Trouble is, in order to get % credit for each one, you have to beat those bonus stages BEFORE you complete the mainline game.
    • I did not know this; I thought I could finish the game (including the “real” final boss, from getting every rainbow shard) then come back and tackle the Bonus Stages later.
    • WRONG. The bonus stages seem not to increase % completion at all any more. I beat one of them and the number didn’t go up.
  • Since there is no Bonus Stage on lv.7, the remaining 1 of 7 % comes from finding Girl Gooey in an Animal Friend bag.
  • Anyway, my only complaint about this game is that the controls are a little wonky. I think it’s way too easy to accidentally push đŸ”Œ on the d-pad and end up in ‘flying’ mode, which causes this whole cascade of problems:
    • You move much slower than a jump
    • To get out of it, you spit out air, which can damage the star containing the power you just lost (if you were trying to jump away from damage)
    • The in/out animation takes forever to complete, so if you do it while trying to dodge something, you almost always get hit again
  • I don’t think that problem is due to the Analogue; I remember thinking the same thing about my original GB Pocket back in the day.
  • Everything else about the game is really awesome. It has aged incredibly well; I would even hook this up to the Pocket Dock and play it on the big screen if I had the rest of the hardware.
ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
(Completed on 19 Mar 2022)

  • I began this game from the Linked Game of OoS (completed 22 Feb, see note). It also spit out a Link code at the end, and I’m pretty sure I’ve read that the only way to 100% everything is to play both games, both with and without Linked Game enabled. I doubt I will be doing this, but if I come back to these games in a few years, as I do periodically with Link’s Awakening, I should play them in reverse order.
  • Most reviewers seem to think that OoA is the better of the two games in this series, but I’m not entirely convinced. This game has real problems; it’s hard to get around, the worlds of ‘past’ and ‘present’ don’t feel related to each other enough to form a coherent picture, and there is a lot of puzzle design which doesn’t really boil down to “it’s hard,” but more “extremely inconvenient.” Jab-Jabu’s Belly is a great example of this last point. Unlike the OoT Water Temple, where the trick is knowing what to switch and when, the trick here instead is to not make a SINGLE wrong move with regard to a door that will close and lock behind you. If you do accidentally do this, your punishment is a shit load of backtracking. Zelda puzzles shouldn’t feel frustrating in that way. When you get it right, you’re meant to feel like you solved something because you have a big brain, not that you got it right because you’re the best at obeying rote procedures.
  • The passwords feature is really, really awesome. I was amazed over and over again at just how future-proof these games were. Plus, stashing away a few secrets and then revisiting Holodrum to go find them is a nice, relaxing way to break up some of the more grueling parts of the game.
  • All things considered, the right way to do a Linked game is almost certainly to play Ages first, which I have not done here. Around halfway through the game, after having got the Master Sword and Red Ring, it starts to feel like you have this amazing arsenal of weapons, but nothing to use them on. It’s not combat-oriented enough. Even most bosses can’t be killed from slashing the sword, but rather by some ‘puzzle’ that ends with “X hits,” where X is always the same regardless of weapon.
  • I remember learning this 10+ years ago when I first owned these games, but I had forgotten it, and was again amazed: BOTH games offer access to ALL 3 animal friends, but the flute you get is locked in depending on which one of the animals you use to cross their respective areas. The areas also change based on which animal you’re riding, so really each game has 3 different potential world maps. In a linked game, you are locked in to whichever animal friend you got in the first game. Back in the Old Times, I played Seasons first, and ended up with Ricky because that was most obvious. Didn’t have a clue that any other flutes were possible. Apparently, not much has changed, because I did that exact thing this time around, and was again surprised when I was reading a guide and was reminded that Ricky was an option, and getting a flute for a different animal was possible.
  • Another example of strange design choices: I did not completely “fill out” either map, in the Past or Present. It seems odd that this wouldn’t be a requirement. My OoS file for sure has all of the real world, and all of Subrosia filled out. I assumed that was because it was required; there’s lots of content, so they had to ‘use the whole map.’ I suppose my OoA file could have some gasha seeds or other small secrets stashed away in these blank squares, but it feels more like the reason for this is that everything is so dense. They could have spread it all out more, and forced players to cover the map in order to complete the game.
ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
(Completed on 22 Feb 2022)

  • This was the first game I beat on my Analogue Pocket. I should probably also write a review of the Pocket before I forget, but that isn’t what this is about.
  • It was surprising how much of this game I remembered from having it 20 years ago when it originally released. I do not, however, remember ever trying the ‘secrets’ system at all. I do intend to use this one to play through Oracle of Ages though.
  • I probably couldn’t have ever fully appreciated this fact without having played so many other, earlier Zelda games (especially the original on NES) but the combat of this game is absolutely brutal. There are some bosses, and some rooms in some dungeons which are every bit as awful as the original. It’s of course possible to again hang this on old man, boomer reflexes, but I absolutely died on several occasions and had to walk all the way back through a dungeon to retry some horrible room.
  • But, in spite of all that, the final dungeon and final boss aren’t hard at all. Granted, I carried in a L-2 upgraded sword AND the Ring given as a prize for killing all golden beasts AND a potion. But I still got it 1st try and this still surprised me.
  • Not really sure how much of this game was Capcom’s responsibility vs Nintendo, but the soundtrack is incredible.
  • From a technical standpoint, this game seems really advanced and must have been fairly late in the GBC’s life span. There are even rooms where enemies move so fast and are so numerous, that the frame rate starts slowing down. Hard to believe that was even possible back in the day.
  • It’s hard to write much else about the sounds and technical stuff because I’m past the point on the curve where any of it feels like a ‘new observation’ — I’ve played through Link’s Awakening DX several times, and OoS runs on the exact same engine. It feels like walking around doing a different set of jobs in an extremely familiar world. There isn’t anything wrong with this, but it’s hard to put into words.
画滊 IMAGE STREAM

ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Castlevania
(Completed on 21 Nov 2021)

  • After The Sword of Hope, I wrote that I needed a victory because I had used emulator features on both that and Fire Emblem Gaiden. Thankfully, this was that victory. It was brutal as all hell, but I did not use any emulator features.
  • The “Continue” system here is actually fairly forgiving compared to a lot of other NES games. Castlevania also falls into the category of “it doesn’t matter at all how many guides you use, you still have to input the commands.”
  • Having the right items is always the key to success. If you git gud at the actual levels leading up to the boss, to the point that you can walk into the boss fight with whatever item you want, you will have a MUCH EASIER time.
  • This goes for pretty much every boss other than The Count. Obviously there was no way around this; it’s the final boss, of course it’s gonna be brutal.
  • This feels like a sentence I write about everything but I’m writing it again because it’s true: The music absolutely is all it’s cracked up to be. It really is incredible, and it’s one of the things that keeps the levels from feeling monotonous while you’re grinding them thousands of times trying to learn how the hell to get through.
ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Strider
(Completed on 21 Nov 2021)

  • The date stamp on this entry isn’t a mistake. I played it from start to finish on the same day I finished Castlevania. Castlevania took several sessions over several days, but Strider was complete in a day.
  • I was surprised that this came out in 89, because the graphics are really, really good. Even at that time, Capcom probably had the money to spend on such things; I just thought it looked beyond what the console was capable of.
  • Like Kirby though, the good graphics come at a price. This game is really choppy, long loading times, etc. There are places inside the middle of levels, in the heat of the action, where the game just freezes completely while it loads something onto the screen.
  • The combat of this game feels good and smooth, but the platforming is a real mess. There’s no sense at all of when you will or won’t land on something, you’re constantly “clipping” uphill or sideways, there are these giant slopes up and down where you never really feel in control, it honestly just looks like bad programming all around (but, this also could be a consequence of choosing to sacrifice absolutely everything for “good graphics”).
  • Nothing about the music stood out, except maybe the Africa level. I remember thinking “this is different.”
  • I didn’t really do any research into this game before playing it, pretty sure I just saw it featured on GCCX or something. That said, it “feels” to me like one of those arcade ports. There are certain sections of certain levels (such as the last train car on the Egypt level) where it is literally impossible not to take damage. There can’t be any reason for this, other than the house advantage you’d need if you were designed to eat quarters.
  • Using a walkthrough, the first 95% of this game is really easy. The final level, though, is long and excruciating and the last boss gauntlet is very brutal. I wouldn’t put it quite at Megaman-level but still pretty bad. Due to the reasons explained in the above bullet, you can’t just git gud and take no damage. There are also very few Health and Energy powerups in the level, and every time you die once (there is no “check point” system) you have to do the entire level over again. Each individual attempt at the final boss takes ~20-25 mins.
ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Sword of Hope
(Completed on 31 Aug 2021)

  • It’s amazing how fast I got sick of this one. First things first, Fire Emblem Gaiden was the first one of these I used any emulator features on, and I’ve done it again on this one. Need a victory after this, because winning that way feels really bad.
  • The first 80% of the game is great, and a lot of fun. I even drew out the maps by hand. This style is exactly what I was expecting when I played Uninvited (which is not a very good game)
  • The last 20% of the game is downright awful. Terrible balancing, like it’s begging you to go grind, but with no real place to do it. It feels like a complete chore, like you’re being disrespected somehow. I got so tired of it that I didn’t even draw a map of the final area. Even if I had wanted to, I don’t know how I’d have done it; way too many ‘teleport’ points that drop you into the middle of nowhere.
  • The only good thing about some of the final levels is that the music is great.
  • This is also the first GB game on the list, and I played it with a NES controller. I want to do other GB games, but it might be best to wait until the Analogue Pocket I preordered comes in
ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Fire Emblem Gaiden
(Completed on 30 Aug 2021)

Commentary written before finishing the game

I am writing this note on 27 Aug 2021.

  • The reason I’m writing this now, before the game is even done, is because the battle system is such that when you need to just grind for exp, you can set it on auto-pilot while you do other things. I’m sure this was intended as a convenience thing, because there is a LOT of grinding in this game.
  • People have said this is the “black sheep” of Fire Emblem games, and I don’t think I can really tell that because I haven’t played enough of them. There are things about it that I really like.
  • This is the first, and I hope to God ONLY game, where I did use emulator features, specifically load and save state, to get through it. It does not feel great to do this, but I’m playing an English translation patch (the game was never officially translated) and I started out using these just to try and quickly learn game features (mechanics, etc) that aren’t explained elsewhere. I then learned that I could sometimes do it in battles, to get an edge, but really even those times were rare and I don’t think made or broke the game. I also NEVER ONCE used Rewind or Fastforward to get ahead. I tried to do it with Rewind, but it never worked to change the outcome of a fight. I did NOT ever fast forward through the extremely long battles just to farm for exp.
  • Also, just as a side note, the consequences of a disaster in a FE game are hilariously bad. Like, “lose 20+ hours of time and/or restart the entire game from the beginning” bad.

More commentary added, since finishing the game

  • By the end of this, I was ready to be done. The final level is brutal, the final battle is brutal, there’s just a whole like 5-10 hours at the end of the game which are NOT any fun at all.
  • Everything else about it is great though. I liked the RPG elements, exploring dungeons, etc. Apparently this was the first FE game to do that (other FE games are battles only).
  • Graphics, music, and gameplay are all great. You can tell that this was made later in the life span of the NES; so many of the animations are really polished and nice looking.
  • This game was đŸ‡ŻđŸ‡” only, and I played a patched đŸ‡ș🇾 translation. For some reason, this doesn’t feel quite “right” to me, like I still wasn’t intended to play it any way other than how the creators made it, and because of that, I’ve ‘missed something.’ If nothing else, it surely would have been helpful to have a manual in english.
  • There are also guides in english, which are based around the patch I used and various other english language patches. Pretty much all of these guides are worthless. There isn’t a “grand strategy” or “secret” to getting good at these kinds of games. If you can’t get through a battle, a guide won’t really help you, you just have to grind it out.
ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

The Leged Of Zelda
(Completed on 14 Feb 2021)

  • Used strategy guide, which I’m sure is what everyone did, even at the time. The bones of what you’d think of as “a Zelda game” are all here, but there’s no way anyone could have got through this game without a guide back in the day.
  • It’s cool to see the stuff which has been here from day 1: Boomerang, silver arrows, LIKE LIKES EATING YOUR DAMN SHIELD, Lynels, even the Power Bracelet
  • Not entirely sure how not to grade this game on a curve. It absolutely, definitely has problems, but what should it be compared to? Later Zelda games? Other games on the platform?
  • The most annoying problem is probably the d-pad controls with regard to movement direction, door detection, getting up against a block to push it, etc. I never got used to this, and it isn’t just a problem of this game. The game boy Zeldas feel this way too. Don’t remember whether the SNES one does.
ă‚”ăƒŒăƒ•ă‚Łăƒł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Crystalis
(Completed on 4 Feb 2021)

  • Something about this game is very hard to explain, and I know won’t sound right when I try to type it out and I’m reading this back to myself later. It is definitely a “keep the strategy guide / walkthrough handy” type game, but that isn’t what makes it good or bad — plenty of NES games are like this. The first few hours of the game feel very fun. After that first few hours though, the whole thing starts to get
 annoying?
  • Maybe this has more to do with my mood or something but it was around the first General Kielbasa (not looking up his real name) fight that I started thinking nothing about this is any fun at all. The middle part of the game feels like a slog, though it does sort of pick up again toward the end, when you have so much equipment that it feels like you’re an all powerful deity.
  • Like so many other NES games, this one rolls out that trope where toward the end of the game, you have to go through a gauntlet of fighting all the other bosses you’ve fought so far, in succession.
  • Visuals in this game are really good, nice graphics, interesting colors, even cool enemy design. Sounds, however, are very bad. Every music for every location started to get annoying after a while, the “you’re hit” sound is awful and makes you want to snap the controller in half, and mostly there’s no way out of this because you need the volume turned on to hear whether an enemy is completely resisting your attack.
  • Overall I’m glad I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again.

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