Z Space Blog - Video Games

12-in-12, 2026 Edition

2026-01-29T00:54:00-08:00

It's already the SIXTH year of 12-in-12 for Z Space? Dang.

What is 12-in-12? It's the initiative to beat 12 games in 12 months. If this concept is new to you, check out my maiden post on the subject. Also check out last year's 12-in-12.

With that said, let's list the games I completed this year:

Secret of Mana [SNES]
Soul Blazer [SNES]
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky [NDS]
PEAK [Steam]
Soul Calibur VI [PS4]
Celeste [Switch]
Street Fighter Alpha [ARC]
Ballionaire [Steam]
Dark Souls III [Steam]

As usual, this list will update as time passes.

January

Late in the month, I took out Secret of Mana, the second game in the Mana series, and in Collection of Mana [Switch], the system I played on.

I will save the in-depth thoughts for a full review, but in short, it's a game that suffers from poor ally behavior, lots of time spent waiting for cooldowns, and too strong a focus on chaining magic spells to overwhelm bosses in a few passes. The art, music, and story are fantastic, however, and make the journey worthwhile!

February

A Soul's Chance

One day, I was prepping a stream for upgrading my Gentoo machine and other nerd stuff, combined with retro games. When I was done with the tech stuff, I decided to give Soul Blazer [SNES] another shot.

In two days, a passing interest became a realized experience. It was really cool to see what Enix was doing with the early Action RPG genre, right around the time Zelda: A Link to the Past came out. It has some rough edges, but it was a really satisfying experience without too many ways to screw up.

There are also shared themes between this, Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma, the latter of which will be in the list at some point.

Explorer's Delight

I had already started Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky [NDS] early in the year, but the end of the story came sooner than I expected. I played it on the WiiU via the Virtual Console. It was a solid experience, and the changes from Explorer of Time/Darkness are very welcome! I consider it the best PMD game in the series, thus far.

March

A Free-Flyer Turned Climber

I was originally going to finish up Retrovirus on Steam, but the launcher seemed buggy, the game never supported Cloud Saves, I couldn't find the old saves, and when I checked on the community and game page, I found the studio shut down and the game was de-listed. Dejected, I scratched it off as a game I cannot play. It was a stream day, so I was out of immediate ideas.

So, against my general ideas and taste, I gave PEAK [Steam] a shot. My girlfriend already had a copy to play with our Twitch friends. I borrowed this copy to play with them as well, and one of them bought a copy for me so the whole group could play.

I'll be honest, the game is a little better than I was expecting, but the performance issues, weird level generation, poor controls, and generally boring world leave much to be desired as an actual game. I enjoy the game's positional audio, and sometimes the vibes are great when you're climbing. I can't help but feel this game could be better without the obscene environmental difficulty, and more focus on the gadgets and multiplayer interactions. Knocking each other out with thrown items is a huge shenanigans increasing feature!

Ultimately, this is a game that's only as good as the crew you bring to it. I honestly kind of dislike this style of game because it feels unfinished, or like I'm supposed to imagine the fun in my head. Like a chatroom with a few interactibles. Mods are almost required for quality of life benefits, and the game still doesn't have single-press to run.

That said, I did peak with a group, and solo, to make sure I got the full experience.

I'd like to see crazy modes like Unbreakable Rescue Claws and No Fall Damage, to compete for time. The engine itself has potential. The way its used is lacking.

Transcending History and the World, Again

The next game I knocked out is a bit less involved, but Soul Calibur VI's [PS4] story mode was way better than I was expecting. I've only completed the main thread for now, but there are over a dozen other storylines to go down before I can consider the single player portion complete.

I'm not sure if it's me or adjusted movesets, but character moves feel a bit smoother, and I'm still learning how the showdown-style attacks work. Overall, this installment seems at least halfway decent, but we'll see if it stacks up against Soul Calibur II as I explore it more.

Climbing the Mountain

Next up in the list is Celeste [Switch], a technical platformer that got its start as a PICO-8 game! It's one of the indie darlings these days, and the expanded, full version of it lives up to the hype. Its story touched me in a way that most games don't. I've only made it to the summit with the standard ending, so I know there's more to experience, but I'm satisfied with the game for now.

June

I picked up Street Fighter Alpha [ARC] one night, chose Rose, and played through the standard arcade mode. Despite barely learning her moves, Alpha feels like a reboot or something. I'll try to be more deliberate in choosing a character and learning some moves in Alpha 2, but I've heard the most good things about 3rd Strike. Still, I wouldn't mind giving these 'prequel' games more of a shot.

July

I was gifted Ballionaire [Steam], which is an interesting mix of pachinko and rogue-ish mechanics combined into a dopamine dispenser. It's an interesting game that's good for playing when you largely want to turn off your brain and watch the pretty colors. Not a bad thing to have on your off days, you know? There's some legitimate strategy behind it, too, and plenty to unlock.

September

After finishing Dark Souls II, I was kind of itching to push forward in the Souls series, and do Dark Souls III! I spent about 90 hours or so grinding out the main game. I think a lot of the bosses in DS3 are a bit over-powered, relying on moves that "track" the player's position and turn the model toward you, and techniques that close the distance and force a roll or block. It made some of the bosses feel more like reaction-fests than calculated combat.

Beyond that, I absolutely loved the architecture, locales, world design, story, pacing... just about everything was rock solid in this Souls iteration! I played through as a Gerudo warrioress, wielding primarily falchions, axes, and a lucerne. In New Game+, I want to lean into more lightning miracles and proper tanking, to be an Iron Knuckle!

There's still the DLC to go through, including the Dreg Heap, Ringed City, and Ariendel. Thus far, I see why people love 3 so much. Playing a Souls game at 60fps feels great, too. A must-play for anyone who appreciates medieval games with challenge!

That's it for now. More as the year progresses!

12-in-12, 2025 Edition

2025-03-18T18:12:00-07:00

Welcome to yet ANOTHER year of 12-in-12 fun. What is 12-in-12? It's the initiative to beat 12 games in 12 months. If this concept is new to you, check out my maiden post on the subject. Also check out last year's 12-in-12.

With that said, let's list the games I completed this year:

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X [Vita]
Crash Team Racing [PS1]
Dead Cells [Switch]
Dark Souls II [PS3]
Banjo-Tooie [N64]
Crashmo [3DS]
Hypnogogia [PC]
Torchlight [PC]
Peglin [Steam]
Marble it Up! Ultra [Switch]

Totaling 10/12 games. Not too shabby, since I did art and other stuff this year!

February

At the end of the month, I picked up my Vita for a couple songs of Miku, only to finish up the last challenges of Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X [Vita]. The finale consisted of choosing one major song of each "vibe" and killing it with a great score. Considering I bought this so long ago, it's about time I get around to enjoying the main game!

March

At the end of the month, I was streaming some Crash Team Racing [PS1] for funsies via the PS1 classics on PS3, and ended up finishing the Adventure Mode! I played through as Crash, though I generally prefer Pura. It was fairly tough just to get through, and the extra challenges leave you with plenty of game to explore and savor. It reminded me of Diddy Kong Racing in its design.

April

In this month, I took apart my copy of Dragon Warrior 3 for GameBoy Color after it nuked my save AGAIN, only to notice that, uh.. the board didn't have "Nintendo" anywhere on it. And the cartridge was black, instead of the GBC-only clear cartridges. In other words, I had a bootleg cartridge! This takes it out of the backlog, despite it not being beaten. I'm going to count it as a backlog reduction if nothing else; the same as if it was destroyed or stolen. Some day I would like to play through this, but not on a cartridge that lost its saves 3 separate times since buying it.

To avoid confusion, we're NOT going to take any credit for this at the top of the post. I just wanted to share this story!

May

This month, I tackled Dead Cells [Switch]! It was nice to finish a game that's been in the backlog since 2018.

Dead Cells itself is a fantastic Metroidvania and roguelite fusion that gets better the more you play it. Permanent upgrades are unlocked via Cells, and dying resets the game and you lose your things. Each thing you put cells into makes the game that much better, that much easier, and attainable. You have to go through it multiple times in order to unlock all of the traversal abilities, so it's not a game for people with a short temper or lacking patience.

June

The tough games keep coming, with Dark Souls II [PS3] getting beaten early in the month! It was a great, if frustrating and odd sequel to the beloved Dark Souls. There's still DLC for me to get through, but I'm chomping at the bit to get through again.

This playthrough, I was a "battle mage", aiming for DEX-based weapons and high INT and ATN. Though, I must say speccing it out doesn't start to materialize until around level 100. I'm not sure how I would refine it, but I'm looking forward to exploring hexes in my next playthrough. After that, I should be ready to explore the top-level stuff like heavy armor + heavy gear builds.

Suffice to say, I actually kinda like the linearity, but it's somewhat open during a significant chunk of the game.

At the end of the month, my friend Elomeno_ and I played through Banjo-Tooie [N64]. It was a trip, full of collectibles. A ton of the game is locked behind the abilities; I'd love to play a version that has the abilities unlocked from the start.

September

This month, I finished up Crashmo [3DS]. It's a cute puzzle game where you grab various 3D shapes and can move them in the four cardinal directions. I beat the initial 100 levels, but the difficulty of them was becoming so grueling, that I didn't feel up to finishing the bonus content.

Still, you unlock a music player when you beat the game, and I believe it has a level editor, too. What else could you really ask for from a puzzle game? I might mix it up and have different play area themes instead of the same one for the whole game, but there's a story reason for that which I won't reveal.

October

My girlfriend and I played a bunch of games we found on Itch.io and other places. One that captivated me long enough to finish is Hypnogogia [PC], named after the state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. It's a game jam game that was developed in a single month. Pretty cool for what it attempts to do, it was a solid evening exploring the game.

November

A long-standing game in the backlog was finished early in the month. Runic Games' Torchlight [PC] came at a time when there were precious few Western ARPGs to choose from. It was okay for what it was, but playing it really made me want to go back to Diablo II: Resurrected or even just Diablo: The Hell. It's clear from the music direction and general design that it comes from the same minds that developed Diablo, but it's aimed at too casual of an audience for me to find much satisfaction in the game. I played through as a Vanquisher and focused on critical hits for much of the game. My build seemed decent for the most part. Still, it wasn't the worst 20-30 hours I've spent on a game. I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of the original developers concerning this game, considering it was developed in only 11 months!

December

I spent most of this month working on creative stuff and playing games that were gifted to me. I beat two of them, on the same day!

Peglin [Steam] is a fun pachinko + roguelike combination that is accessible, but deep enough to warrant careful decision-making. I pulled off my first win after about 6-8 attempts and 10 hours of playing. However, there's a bunch more to unlock and see after that first win! This is a game that I see myself coming back to when I'm feeling something casual and don't want to think too hard.

Next, I finished up Marble it Up! Ultra [Switch], a modern marble obstacle game. It has multiplayer modes and a bunch of unlockables for all of your hard work finding hidden items and getting fast times! It'd be nice try out the online with people some time.

That's it for the 12-in-12 this year! We did 10 out of 12. Not my worst!

12-in-12, 2024 Edition

2024-01-06T00:00:00-08:00

What's up guys? It's time for my FOURTH 12-in-12, the initiative to beat twelve games in twelve months and take out the backlog! Newbies to this concept can check out my maiden post on the subject; then you'll get what's up here. Also check out last year's 12-in-12.

As always, here's the successful hit list for 2024:

TMNT III: Radical Rescue [GB]
Sonic CD [Sega CD]
Factorio [Steam]
Final Fantasy Adventure [GB]
MagiCat [Switch]
Yoku's Island Express [Switch]
Hades [Switch]
The Misadventures of Tron Bonne [PS1]
Persona 5 [PS3]
Resident Evil 2 Remake [Steam]
Narita Boy [Switch]

That makes for eleven games this year! Not quite hitting the mark, but we're still on track to clear this backlog! There are some stats at the end of the post, if you're into that sorta thing.

January

A Radical Finale

I started the year off with a bang, finishing Donkey Kong Country 3's 103% with a friend. I've already beaten that game, however, so it wasn't quite the accomplishment it could have been. That said, a day or two later I started and finished TMNT III: Radical Rescue [GB]! This marks the final game that I needed to beat as part of the Cowabunga Collection that I got last year.

It's a neat Metroidvania for the original GameBoy which somehow lends a special ability to each turtle, has a world that makes use of those abilities, and even a few collectibles to motivate you to explore.

The extensive use of one-way doors and unfair enemy positioning makes the game begin to get tedious toward the end, and the hitboxes for boss attacks are laughably aggressive in their disproportional power. You hit them for a single bar of damage, while they hit for 2 or 3! The gameplay boils down to locating keycards to open doors, which lead to bosses. Defeat bosses to get keys which will free each of the missing characters. Very basic design.

There are also only four collectibles that you can miss, so this may be the longest, but also shortest game I've 100%ed. Considering it took me about 3 hours to 100%, but there only being 4 collectibles, it's in a weird place of "you didn't do much extra compared to a basic playthrough" but also "it turns out this game isn't actually lengthy".

For what it is and the time period, it's impressive. I would love to see a studio do a modern take on a Turtles Metroidvania. There's a lot of potential.

Gotta Go Fast

I picked up Sonic Origins [Switch] in January, just to relive the classic Sonic games with some upgrades. It turns out the "Plus" part in the physical release is just a code for the DLC! Talk about misleading...

Anyways, I've beaten the main 4 games in the series, but didn't remember if I beat Sonic CD or not. Well, with Origins now I have! So we'll count that as beating Sonic CD, rather than Origins entirely, since it's a collection.

February

I spent a lot of the month playing classics, but also chipping away at the goals in Factorio! It's a mind-absorbing automation sim where you try to escape a planet you crash on by... building another rocket from scratch, of course!

To say that this game has infected my mind would be an understatement. I've learned about various real world engineering things simply because the way Factorio has you do them is really similar to how it's done in the real world. I can build train networks, automated warehouses, wagons with fricken artillery on them...

Honestly, if you bounced off of Minecraft or Terraria, Age of Empires or Starcraft, give this one a shot. It has many different play options, many different technology trees to go down, and a steadily increasing difficulty that doesn't feel too harsh on its default setting.

The developers of this game stood out because they don't offer it on sale. Ever. I scoffed at this idea, but after experiencing how many different interlocking gameplay and resource systems there were... I'm amazed at how well everything runs, considering the level of complexity happening. It deserves every penny of the $35 USD I paid for it.

For better or worse it's still getting new content, but it seems to be QoL or advanced interaction stuff, which is still important but feels like the refinement stage. I approve of this sort of stuff.

If I could change things about Factorio, I would lean into the Landfill and get into Terraforming. It's nice that we can lay stone down, and concrete, but we can't dig trenches (to put water in) or build cliffs. Being able to do those things would greatly add to the base planning capabilities of the game and give the player a lot of defensive control.

The team at WuBe has more locales in the making, so that's exciting! Imagine playing on a planet where there's lava, or more biomes for the standard planet!

Anyways, it's a great game and you should get it if you appreciate design and automation in any capacity. It's multiplayer, too!

March

The Beginning of Mana

I had played this a long time ago when I borrowed my brother's copy, but I recently finished Final Fantasy Adventure [GB], which is also known as Adventures of Mana or Sword of Mana, if you're playing the GBA version. I played through on Collection of Mana, for the Switch, which uses the original GB version.

Considering that it came out in 1991, FFA is a fantastic Action/RPG that captures the feeling of a fantasy game quite well. Its story is simplistic, but considering the time of its release, it avoided a lot of pitfalls that other classic RPGs missed.

One of the things that stands out to me is, you can 100% the game through a pure intuitive exploration of the world. I ventured out when it was time to find the final sword of the game, and ended up learning two spells and fighting two bosses that the story was going to send me on later anyway. It felt nice to not need to go back and do anything; the game keeps its dungeons self-contained and doesn't rely on backtracking until the very end of the game.

The title screen music is part of what makes this game stick with me. It tells such a simple little fantasy story, but holds within a deep (for its time) and fun action game!

There are really only two or three things I would fix in this game to make it top-tier for its age: faster text option, better enemy placements (just don't spawn on top of me or block the entrance, please?), and let the Bone Key double as a skeleton key for the entire game. By that point, the player's earned it. Just give it to them. It would make the post-waterfall portion much better and not force the player to farm skellies for keys in the final area. That was the only thing that slowed me down to a degree strong enough to be annoying.

Anyways, if you like action RPGs, you owe it to yourself to at least play for a few hours. Part of why this game is a big deal is because it came out before Nintendo's Zelda: A Link to the Past and Zelda: Link's Awakening, so they were paving new ground in terms of equippable weapons and magic, and in puzzles more complex than pushing a block.

July

Magical Cats?

After some considerable determination, I finished up MagiCat, on Switch. I think this was originally a mobile game. It shows due to its increasing punishments for death, rather high skill floor, and mechanics that overall feel like it was meant to be padding. There are some great gameplay ideas here, but they're all missing that extra polish that makes them feel comfortable.

One mechanic that stands out is the spirit cat ability. MagiCat stands on a button, and can direct a spirit around, which can attack ethereal enemies while his corporeal form cannot. Why do both the spirit and the physical body have hurtboxes while this power is activated?

Another: There's a mechanic where you stand on a button, and a series of blocks that you can steer come out from somewhere. Why can you move around while these blocks are reading your input, and why is the time limit for their disappearing so short? This isn't a "git gud" complaint; some of the level design for these mechanics is overly punishing and it feels like not much testing went into making these levels more feasible to No Damage or even No Dash.

If MagiCat was my game, I would tone down a few of the frame traps and near-pixel-perfect jumps needed to get red jewels, and provide a way for players to backtrack in the level, where applicable. Games that only allow you to move forward were common in the 1980s. Platformers can do better now!

Bosses are another source of frustration. Every level has a boss that's a twist on an existing enemy. While the extra effort of bosses is appreciated, it became stale quickly. I preferred the end-of-world bosses, but the difficulty for them was also tuned for a mobile game and frustrate you so you'll play more and get some paw prints in prior levels.

With just a little tuning, this game can redeem itself while still retaining 99% of its current content. The level design and enemy design need work. The end-of-level bosses shouldn't be there and it can have a mini-game or other simple reward instead. The cost for death should also be more reasonable. Doubling every death until you take 32 paw prints is kind of overkill. (so is 16 with the item)

I'm relieved to finish this game, which is disappointing because I went into it thinking it was cute and fun. I still like some of the mechanics and abilitiess, like dashing upward! I discovered by accident you can heal by pressing down and X, so that's nice too.

A Bug-driven Postal Service

The next target was Yoku's Island Express, on Switch. It took a little patience, but it was worth it. It's a fun, light-hearted pinball and Metroidvania fusion. I really enjoyed the different ways to manipulate the pinball, on top of the movement of Yoku himself. The customizable ball sprinkles were cool, and some of the sidequests weren't half bad. I finished the game at 97% even though I collected basically everything, so there's probably some small quests leftover or something. Still, it was a solid game and I'm glad I played through it. If you like both pinball and Metroidvanias, give it a whirl.

A Dark and Treacherous Ascent

Lucky me, I managed to clear Hades for Switch. It's an interesting roguelike that innovates in the storytelling department. It rewards continued play, but at a rate that is less than ideaal for my liking. Even after clearing the game once, I will need to clear it multiiple times in order to get a "true" ending. While it was a great romp, and new gameplay options are opened up, I'm rather weary of the mechanics I had to endure to get where I am now. I assume the more readily available diamonds and Titan Bloods will make subsequent runs a bit easier, but for now I'm walking away from the game due to tedium. I feel that this game, like Blasphemous, is one whose sequels I will likely be skipping out on.

August

It had been percolating for a little while, but I finally finished The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, for PS1.

It's a fun and cute game where you're essentially paying off a debt to get your family members back who've been taken hostage, but you do various missions with your Servbots to earn the money and get the upgrades you need to confront Mr. Loath. In-between, there are fetch-quests, mini-games and scouting to improve your Servbots, and conversing with all of your minions.

I finished the game in about 15 and half hours. Not too shabby, and there's more that I haven't done, like the Casino level.

I will say that the mini-games for building Servbot stats are too strict. The Attack-building one isn't all that terrible, but it still depends on getting at least one pie and bazooka for the last level. I could barely manage the second series of levels in the food serving mini-game.

Overall, I'm glad I played it despite the jank. The world of Mega Man Legends has so much potential, I'm still sad about MML3...

October

Becoming a Phantom Thief

The push for Playstation games continues! I picked up Persona 5 for the PS3 back in 2018, played it to level 7, and never got around to picking it back up until this year. My girlfriend wanted to experience it with me, so most of our time this year was spent watching movies, or playing this game.

It was a wonderful JRPG, telling a story that I think most people can relate to; of fighting injustice and fighting for those who can't fight for themselves. It's a game of self-discovery, reflection, and tenacity. It shocked, angered, surprised, intimidated, elated, and even tore at my heart.

Across the game, you and your plucky gang of misfits face up to a sexual predator, con artist, blackmailer, gang leader, and even a malevolent god. Each stage of progression makes you feel closer to each of your teammates, not as sit-in avatars for mooks on a battlefield, but as somewhat believable and relatable characters. I feel like everyone who plays Persona 5 will find someone in its cast that they most closely resemble, be it in attitude, life circumstances, or personal challenges.

It's not for the faint of heart, though. This game will trigger people who have been through trauma, if they aren't prepared to think about fictional characters going through things. Personally, I found it reasonable and found it to be a great opportunity to reflect on the feelings characters made me feel.

Futaba in particular struck my heart to its core. To say that I relate to her life experience is an understatement. Without any spoilers, I think anyone with a troubled childhood will have trouble making it through her story arc with dry eyes.

Not ashamed to admit I cried a few times. Only the truly great games will make me do that anyway. Persona 5 has left an unforgettable mark on me. When I get the time to percolate more thoughts, you can look forward to a review. A story that's over 100 hours long deserves more than a mention on a timely listicle.

Becoming a Real Cop

Not even a full day later, I wrapped up the end of Resident Evil 2 Remake on Steam. Apparently, when I paused playing in 2019, I was only two bosses away from the end! It feels great to wrap up a long-standing game right after a really long game. It was a satisfying and atmospheric game that I'll come back to some day to play through as Claire.

December

Becoming a Narita Boy

The next game I finished up was Narita Boy for the Switch. It's a decent action-platformer with basic puzzles, but a wonderful story and great art direction. It tells the heartfelt story of a man's life and how he turned tragedy into a legacy for his son. Except, you're in a digital world on the verge of total ruin and you're tasked with saving it, with no context.

I really enjoyed the storytelling in this one, and the graphics. Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't as tight as I'd prefer, enemies and mechanics are a little too simple, and you can't go back to get any of the four missable collectibles in the game. Your choices are "watch the missing memory on Youtube" or replay the game entirely for a single paragraph of text. I'm glad I didn't do a second playthrough for such a small reward, but the story itself was cool. It was a worthwhile game that has left an impression on me, which is the best kind of game purchase if you ask me.

Sadly, I wasn't able to beat twelve games in 2024. However, we finished the gargantuan Persona 5, which was one of the big JRPGs on the list. I also took the liberty to tally up my progress since blogging about 12-in-12:

2021, 16 games;
2022, 4 games;
2023, 18 hames;
2024, 11 games.

This puts my total at 49 games over four years. At one game per month, that puts me one month ahead of my projected progress at this point! There are still many more games to beat. I can't stop now!

12-in-12, 2023 Edition

2023-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

What's up guys? It's time for yet another 12-in-12, the initiative to beat twelve games in twelve months and take out the backlog! Newbies to this concept can check out my maiden post on the subject; then you'll get what's up here. Also check out last year's 12-in-12.

As always, here's the successful hit list for 2023:

Dark Souls [PS3]
Marble it Up [Switch]
FAST rmx [Switch]
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [Switch]
Terraria [Steam]
TMNT: Shredder's Revenge [Switch]
BIT.TRIP RUNNER [Steam/PC]
Cogs [Steam/PC]
Furi [Switch]
Geometry Wars 3 [PS3]
Symphony [Steam]
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night [Switch]
Super Mario Bros. Wonder [Switch]
Castlevania: Dracula X [SNES]
TMNT: Tournament Fighters [NES]
TMNT: Tournament Fighters [SNES]
TMNT: Tournament Fighters [Genesis]
TMNT 2: Back From the Sewers [GB]

(yep, those TMNT games are each different!)

That's a total of eighteen games beaten this year! Huzzah!

April

I spent the first few months of the year dabbling in classics, but Dark Souls [PS3] had hung out in my backlog -- with an unfinished save -- since 2016! I decided to push through it, while streaming, and it turned out to be a great experience. I may come back to it some day, but I'm beginning to see flaws in the structure of the Soulslike genre. I think a little more work could be put into discoverability, but the art direction and world building is stellar. It has absolutely earned its place as a classic and I'll never forget my first time through.

I also picked up Marble it Up [Switch] in March and finished it in April, so despite the drought in game progress since Box Pusher in 2022, it feels good to knock out a long-running, 100+ hour RPG. Those are the true phantoms of a backlog, right?

Toward the end of the month, I knocked out the last of the cups I needed to finish in FAST rmx on the Switch. It's a great racing game if you're looking for edge-of-your-seat, white-knuckle driving! I got it years ago, but lacked the grit to finish out the races (placing at least 3rd) until recently. I'll come back to it from time to time, like I do most racing games that I hold onto.

June

After picking it up on release day in May, I finished Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [Switch], a game I'd been anticipating for six years! There is a whirlwind of thoughts in my head for this game, and it's definitely changed how I view video games, and the Zelda series as a whole. I correctly predicted that we're getting a third game: the plot lends itself to a continuation for this pair of protagonists. I give it a year max before Nintendo announces work on a third game. Overall, TotK was a wonderful romp, but a kind reminder that I'm getting too old for certain genres that require huge blocks of time to get anywhere in. There are still some sidequests and collections to complete, but I've done all the shrines and exposed all the map, and most of the equipment is found too. I hope the next Zelda leans less on device-building and open world mechanics.

July

At the beginning of the month, my partner and I finished up Terraria [Steam]! We ended up cheesing through some parts using the Builder's Workshop, but everything we skipped was essentially farming and repeating stuff we had already done. We still beat bosses and crafted ingredients legitimately.

Having beaten both Terraria and Minecraft, I'm solidly convinced that sandboxes and crafting/survival games are not my cup of tea. They're two of the most famous and popular games in the genre, and I'm walking away from them rather disappointed in all the time I spent doing what amounts to busy work.

In Terraria, the primary way you discover the game is through the Guide NPC, and later other NPCs, depending on the quest. Almost none of the game is clearly conveyed to you, and it reeks of a game that has organically grown in scope creep for ten years, just like Minecraft. You really can't make appreciable progress in games like this without a wiki. Discoverability is a huge part of games, especially for games with interacting systems or concurrent mechanics.

Additionally, it's not enough to have one or two primary crafting stations. In Terraria, there are dozens of them! If I were to redesign the game, it would be in its progression. I'm totally cool with bosses being the gates for world progress, but the crafting stations and whatnot would be a single crafting station, and a single chest that has tabs/pages you can unlock or purchase. The visual mess that you end up with by the endgame is overwhelming, even though you know what everything's supposed to do.

If I ever come back to Terraria, it will be to build random creations, just like Minecraft. Sad to say, the genre has an extreme amount of work to do in the accessibility and discoverability departments. I shouldn't need an online resource to grok your game.

August

I had picked it up a few weeks prior, but once I got into TMNT: Shredder's Revenge [Switch], I couldn't put it down for a good few days! It's the spiritual successor to Turtles in Time, right down to a lot of the bosses! It feels more complete, featuring bosses and enemies from both new and old TMNT, though the focus is mostly on the old style. I like that you can finally play as Master Splinter and April O'Neill; a first since Tournament Fighters, on the SNES!

There is at least one unlockable character that I won't spoil, which is nice, but it seems all additional content will be coming in DLC form. That's disappointing, because I bought the game in physical form with the expectation that a classic-styled sequel would have 100% of its content from launch day. The release of the DLC gives me some trepidation about buying new Turtles games, despite the quality gaming experience. I expected better from Dotemu, considering that Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap launched earlier in the Switch's life and had 100% of its content on day one. What happened, guys?

September

This month, I targeted some older games in the backlog, starting with BIT.TRIP RUNNER, the first in the BIT.TRIP series.

It was essentially a precursor to games like Harmoknight on the 3DS, but unlike Harmoknight, RUNNER will bump you back to the beginning of the level if you hit ANY obstacles! The variability in playing the game is mostly "how many of the gold bars did you get?" You unlock bonus levels by completing the normal levels while getting all of the gold bars.

Also, despite being a rhythm game, I didn't feel much like I was interacting with a beat or any particularly well-placed musical sounds. Mid-level checkpoints would go a long way to improving the game's accessibility.

Machinations

Later in the month, I tackled Cogs, a fun gear-based puzzle game that's also a sliding tile and PipeDream clone, all in one! I had got it as part of a Humble Bundle back in 2011 or so, and had barely played it. I was surprised at how well I adapted to coming back to this. It's still worth booting up just to study the puzzles a little. Glad to have come back to check it out. That said, I'm definitely more of a Move guy than a Time guy. I enjoy how the Challenge modes allow you to pick between time and moves as a way to challenge yourself and get easier stars. After 300 stars, you can unlock the credits, which is a level! It's one of the most complicated in the game, and it certainly tested my skill in sliding tile puzzles. Much like Box Pusher from last year, I think Cogs has burned me out on this style of game. It was a solid playthrough, but I'm kind of over it.

Escaping a cosmic jail

Toward the end of the month, I finished out Furi [Switch]. I had left off on the third boss, then over the course of the past week, butted my head against the wall of challenges that are this game's bosses.

Overall, I believe the game is an interesting blend of bullet hell and edge-of-your-seat reflex-oriented combat. Though every boss is meant to be an immense challenge, only one of them felt unrealistically unfair and tedious: a female sniper named The Burst.

She begins the boss fight by hiding, and can shoot you from across the arena, which is 3-4 screens wide and tall. This shot can take one of your three life stocks in a single hit. Living up to her name of Burst, this makes sense for a super or something; as a primary attack, it's bonkers! Her game of keep-away is what is most annoying, because the actual combat against her was fairly well done. The hide and seek phases and one-shot kills are what make this boss fight ridiculous. By contrast, the very next fight after her is more intense and imposing, and yet he does less damage than her auto-lock one-shotter.

As the credits rolled, I was blown away by the landscape in this peaceful realm. Discovering the true identity of The Stranger was crazy, and defeating the mothership was a satisfying end to the saga for me. I do wonder what would have happened if I chose the other option, but that's what Youtube is for.

This game sat around in my backlog for a solid five years. It's a relief to bring it to rest. I might some day play through just so I can fight the rest of the bosses. We'll see. The Burst is such a bitch that I really don't want to fight her again.

October

Angular Ownage

I'm on a roll at the end of the year now, aren't I? This month is off with a bang with Geometry Wars 3 [PS3]! I bought this game very shortly after getting a Playstation 3, back in 2015. I had played the OG at a friend's house on Xbox back in 2009 or so, and had Geometry Wars: Galaxies on both my DS and Wii at some point, so the third entry in the series was a must-own, naturally. Its gameplay is wonderful and the same it's always been, with the bonus of drone behaviors you can upgrade that isn't as grueling as Galaxies, but just as rewarding. I have to admit that I don't like the weird and warpy levels, because they're zoomed in too much. The biggest issue I have with this game is the frequency that enemies will end up spawning on top of you. The pillar of light that appears before a spawn is super helpful, but perhaps not quite enough warning. Overall, I'm still satisfied with this game even if it kicks my ass from time to time.

Liberating My Music

The next target was Symphony [Steam]! It's a Galaga-style shmup that is similar to Beat Hazard in that it analyzes your music and generates levels (in this case, enemy patterns) to play to. There's a story involved, but it's really just an excuse to play more levels.

Overall I felt it was okay, but it's much easier to earn Kudos than it is to acquire Inspiration, so I reached a point toward the end of the game's progression where I would have to farm songs on lower difficulties to get more dependable rates of inspiration. There are also rare items that I still haven't unlocked yet, despite seeing many multiples of other items that, if bought, cannot be converted into a resource, nor can kudos be exchanged for inspiration. As a result, I ended up with millions of kudos, but lacking the inspiration (by around 80%) to purchase all of the equipment upgrades that I wanted to.

It was okay but I think I'm done with music games. Between Guitar Hero, Hatsune Miku, Taiko Drum Master, Beat Hazard, and now Symphony, I've played so much of the genre that I don't think there's much left to explore.

Déjà Vu of the Night

Later in the month, I struggled my way through Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night [Switch]. To be honest with you, as a backer of the game at the $100 tier, I am somewhat disappointed in the game. Not because it's bad, per se, but because it has so many technical problems. I intend to write a more thorough review when I've had some time to refine and reflect on my thoughts.

I think this is one I'll be 100%ing, despite the difficulties that come with the Switch version. The nostalgia is strong for me, and the smooth framerates and responsiveness of Symphony of the Night all through Order of Ecclesia were all fantastic! That's what lets me down the most about Bloodstained; Igarashi's past games were all great in the technical department. His staff at Konami must've had more experience or something.

I may eventually pick Bloodstained up on Steam at a steep sale so I can experience the "proper" version, but thus far I will probably not be getting aboard another Igarashi project without some proof he has a capable and dedicated team that can churn out a minimum of a solid 30 frames per second, and no input problems. This is not an unreasonable standard, even back in the mid 2010s when it was being developed. Perhaps Inti Creates should've been contracted for the main game instead of just the two Curse of the Moon games.

There are all sorts of other weird things that happen to me on Switch too, like Great Swords auto-attacking a second time if you attack in the air with any buff that increases attack speed. If you strike an enemy with the air attack, it cannot hit with the attack that starts as soon as you land. This seems like a design error; either the sword shouldn't auto-attack when you land, or it should be able to hit both times.

This marks the twelfth game beaten this year! Hell yeah!

November

A Wond(er)ous Adventure

I received a copy of Super Mario Bros. Wonder [Switch] for my birthday, and once I started playing it, I couldn't put it down. It was a blast the whole way. I ended up 100%ing it in around 15 hours. Like many other games, I want to give it the attention it deserves in its own review. It's a great game, though, so if you have a Switch, you owe it to yourself to try Modern Mario. It's great!

Following that, Bloodstained's 100% completion wasn't too far away, so I finished that up just after 100%ing Mario! I've not felt like I was making progress like this in quite a while.

X Does NOT Mark the Spot

The next target in my continued onslaught is Castlevania: Dracula X, part of the Advance Collection on Switch. After having played through it now, it's definitely not as good as Rondo of Blood, and is straight confusing if you go from Dracula X to Symphony of the Night, due to the differences in story and, in some cases, total lack of certain characters or stages from Rondo.

The chief problem I have is the relationship between the clunky movement and the invulnerability from being hit. Too often in Dracula X, you get hit out of the air, only to get knocked into another hit that you have no control of, and can sometimes be juggled, with little recourse available to you. This is because your only special move is a backflip, and the landing lag prevents you from doing any evasive maneuvers. Richer lacks his attacking dash, his slide (and its dash), he can't run or spin his whip, he can't angle the direction of his whip... Honestly one of the weaker entries in the series.

That said, the music and graphics are both great. A mod of this game with a double-tap dash and some better movement options would turn it around completely. You can still have clunky movement without super-short invulnerability times and overly aggressive AI. It feels like it was meant to be an arcade game with its janky mechanics.

Not Quite Turtley Enough

I wanted to beat the Tournament Fighters games from the TMNT collection. I was quite let down by the lack of techniques available for each character, and the utterly unfair CPU opponents that I was up against. There's not much room for juggling, parrying, reversing or blocking a grab, etc. I appreciate how different each of the NES, SNES, and Genesis versions are, but because they're so different, I feel each one is missing some depth that it would have if perhaps there was a more unified vision for the final product.

They're okay for what they were, but definitely not a reason to buy the collection. All that's left for me on the collection now are the 2nd and 3rd GameBoy games, the latter of which I'm saving for last since it's a Metroidvania!

I knocked out TMNT 2: Back From the Sewers [GB] just in time for the end of the year!

That's it for 2023! I'll see you again in 2024!

12-in-12, 2022 Edition

2022-01-16T00:00:00-08:00

Hello once again, and welcome to another year of 12-in-12, the initiative to beat twelve games in twelve months and take out one's backlog! If you want a history lesson, check out my maiden post on the subject; then you'll get what's up here.

Just as before, here's the successful hit list for 2022:

Dadish [Switch]
A Short Hike [Switch]
ToeJam & Earl [Genesis]
Box Pusher [DSi]

That's it, unfortunately. Here's hoping for a better 2023! Read on for the details, as usual.

January

I was bored one day and decided to fire up Dadish [Switch], a cute platformer about a radish, who's a dad (get it...?) gathering up his children who've run off to play and gotten into trouble. The dialogue is silly and light-hearted, and the art style is fairly clean, if a bit simple. The platforming mechanics and bosses were somewhat disappointing for me, but I wasn't expecting a masterpiece in the first place. I just learned it has a sequel, too, but I think I've had my fill of it. It was still a fun little diversion, and I appreciate that it wasn't 20-30 hours of collecting crap.

February

I played way too much Minecraft. Nothing of importance accomplished.

March

I couldn't resist picking up A Short Hike [Switch] when it went on sale. I love the art style, the humorous writing, and the general chill tone that the game conveys. It lives up to its name, with roughly 4-5 hours of content to cover. You can even speedrun it! Goodness. I beat it in like two days, but those two days were quite lovely.

July

This month, my girlfriend and I finished our co-op playthrough of ToeJam & Earl [Genesis] on the Genesis Classics Collection on Switch. We ended up using the savestates between levels, and sometimes rewound to better handle obstacles.

I really dislike how many of the enemies just plain move faster than you. Dodging is not really a thing. Splitting up creates an animation, while re-uniting doesn't. Item mechanics while both characters are on-screen versus off-screen are somewhat interesting. It allows for better teamwork I guess. Overall, I feel like it's a game with better art than gameplay. Definitely a relic of the 1990s.

September

I finished a months-long project in tackling Box Pusher [DSi]. It was a big enough deal to write about it separately. Suffice to say, I will not miss Sokoban, but I enjoyed the adventure in automated solvers.

Conclusion

Sadly, progress in my backlog basically stopped after September. Box Pusher took so much out of me, I ended up playing classics the rest of the year. Here's hoping I can get more done in 2023!

Twelve Years of The After Years

2021-10-23T00:00:00-07:00

The year is 2009. Square Enix releases a digital sequel to the long-loved Final Fantasy 4, titled "The After Years". It concerns the story of Ceodore -- the son of FF4's protagonist, Cecil -- and his journey in saving the world from a mysterious moon that appears. The After Years pulls in all of the characters from the prior game, extends character development and story for a lot of characters, and introduces more; most of them simply the progeny of some main character from the prior game. Fan bait!

I had recently 100%ed Final Fantasy 4 Advance, back around 2008, so naturally I bought its sequel! However, it was not quite what I expected. While the new characters were welcome, a lot of the changes to gameplay negatively impacted my experience for the entire game, despite my initial interest in them. This article isn't a review, per se, but I will briefly discuss what I didn't like about the game, to add context.

The Moon Phase system turns the game's various damage types into its own form of Pokémon. Each phase makes one of the four types of damage stronger, and another weaker. This idea sounds cool on its surface, but changing the moon phase is done only by resting via Tent or Cottage, sleeping in a bed, or waiting long enough gameplay time for it to automatically advance. These mechanics turn the system into something tedious and unnecessarily annoying, forcing you to pad your inventory with Tents to have any sort of control over the phases.

Co-operative moves, called Bands, are another mechanic that seems interesting at first. The moves themselves are cool: they allow multiple characters to band together and pull off things like a team-wide heal or buff, a unique magic attack that neither character has on their own, etc. The catch is both characters get their turns tied up to perform the move (reasonable!) and the move itself takes about 3 times as long to cast as anything else. That translates to a good 7-10 seconds you have two characters sitting like ducks. You also don't know about what bands are available until you attempt to Band, and choose the correct menu option on the second character. As a result, there were a number of Bands I simply never acquired.

Next, the encounter rate was frustratingly inconsistent. The After Years was originally a mobile game, and sadly it shows. Most areas contain a higher leveled enemy ready to swoop and murder a member or two of your party, almost as if to add an arbitrary punishment to exploring. On a related note, the enemies you run into tend to be MUCH faster than you. I experienced this throughout the entire game, even after grinding at the end of the game.

Lastly, there are a bunch of items across the 8 or so episodes that are completely missable, and missing them blocks you from getting some of the best equipment in the game later. Yes, optional content is optional, but permanently missable things in an RPG leads to pointless replays.

So, with the character of the game established, I played it off and on for the first few years of having the game. Made it pretty far, about halfway through. However, the mechanics were really agitating me, and I was frustrated. Final Fantasy 4 was a great game; was I just not appreciating the design of its sequel? The characters weren't as well written as the prior game, either, but the story was still compelling enough to make me want to see the next scene.

It sat there, unplayed, for a good 5-6 years. Whenever I thought about playing it, I'd think about another classic JRPG I'd rather play, or a different game on my backlog that felt more rewarding. When I came back to it, I played through every episode until the last one, where it sat again for 1-2 years. I started the end of the game some time last year, in 2020, and finished it yesterday, 2021-10-12.

The After Years was a sort of "dark horse" game for my backlog. It's the game that I had the most trouble coming back to and advancing. Don't get me wrong, I've played through some bad games in the past, but none stayed in the backlog for twelve years. It's a ridiculous amount of time for a game to sit around unbeaten. Your mileage may vary, but there's my take on it.

Back in 2016, I started the vgstash project to manage my backlog; by that point I had more money than I did time, so the collection of unfinished games began to get bigger. The After Years was one of the first games to stick around long enough to consider tracking. I made the software to practice programming, and to optimizing my gaming time so I could catch up on my backlog.

In a weird sense, The After Years will be a special game for me going forward. Not because it was particularly well designed. It's not. (sorry, Matrix Software. This one was just a miss.) It's special because it was one of the stubborn games in my backlog. It motivated me to write code to solve my own problem. It helped me see why I was having a backlog problem, and how to solve it. Now that it's beaten, I can also say it gave me more patience. Not only for beating a game, but the greater lesson of waiting to buy a game until you have the space in your life for it.

Great deals happen all the time, even as much as 80%, and it happens on a yearly cycle. Since mainstream gaming is going digital (much to my dismay), the need to have a game right when it comes out is moot. Most games are published in unfinished form these days, and even if they are complete and just get DLC, there's always a "Definitive Edition" a few years later.

This lines up very closely to the "Patient Gamers" ideology of waiting to buy games so you don't get burned by preordering or other FOMO tactics. The idea is, if the game is good then people will talk about it, and eventually it will go on sale or even become good if it was released unfinished. It's a wise way to purchase in the chaotic world of games publishing.

In the twelve years since starting The After Years, I went through some of my own character growth and struggles, just as Cecil and the gang did. I started and ended a relationship, injured my back, reconnected with my dad, met and moved in with my current SO, became more active in libre software, lost my dad and cat, moved in with the SO's parents, endured the loss of her father with her family, and now today... one step closer to a clear backlog, and relieved to be done with such a long, flawed game that I wanted to like but ultimately didn't.

The lesson to learn from all of this is twofold: (a) don't buy games you aren't sure you'll like, especially if they're digital, and (b) it's okay to remove a game from your collection if you don't enjoy playing it. I chose to stick it out through The After Years because I really wanted to know the story and finish the game legitimately, but pride isn't exactly a good reason. :) At some point, you have to be conservative with your use of time or you'll feel like the time you do spend gaming is wasted. Games are entertainment, and you're supposed to have fun.

What games have taken you forever to beat? I'd love to hear about other games people have had trouble finishing. Hit me up at zlg+backlog@zlg.space.

-z

12-in-12, 2021 Edition

2021-01-08T00:00:00-08:00

Welcome to ZLG's quest to beat twelve games in 2021! My backlog has exploded to over 100 games, so it's time to burn through it!

A Brief History of 12-in-12

/r/12in12 was started on Reddit in 2018 to help people get through the list of games they want to beat, i.e. a backlog. I discovered it shortly after it was created, and have participated independently ever since. It's a good initiative for people to motivate and encourage each other to play through and enjoy their games more.

In 2023, the subreddit was shut down in protest of Reddit, Inc. charging for bulk access to their API. The original community was effectively killed. In late 2025, it was reopened by a random person claiming moderator status. The quality of the new community remains yet to be seen as of early 2026.

Some people choose 12 games to beat and try to stick to it, while people like me just try to focus on beating games at all and, if you hit 12, awesome! If not, that's fine, too. It's about putting in time to play and enjoying what you paid for.

My 12-in-12

With that out of the way in my maiden post on the subject...

Here's the successful hit list for this year:

Painkiller: Hell & Damnation [Steam]
Super Hexagon [Steam]
Koi-Koi Japan [Steam]
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD [WiiU]
Unravel TWO [Switch]
Minecraft [Switch]
Mighty Gunvolt Burst [Switch]
Final Fantasy 4: The After Years [Wii]
Strikey Sisters [Switch]
Golf Peaks [Switch]
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva MegaMix [Switch]
Metroid Dread [Switch]
Risk of Rain 2 [Switch]
Street Fighter [ARC]
Street Fighter II [ARC]
Hammerwatch [Switch]

For a whopping SIXTEEN games beaten in 2021!

January

My chosen game was The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD [WiiU].

Unfortunately, I did not beat it. Maybe I'll catch it in a month where I beat a game easily.

February

No game was chosen, but I ended up beating Painkiller: Hell & Damnation! It's a game that a friend and I had gotten in a Humble Bundle once upon a time. It has pretty wicked art and music direction, and pretty good shooting mechanics. You tend to get caught on the geometry really easily, though, so it's not mechanically refined enough to get me to come back. It was a decent romp, but not something that'll be staying on the hard drive. Still good for the price I paid.

March

I realized I had beaten Super Hexagon already, and had the hyper levels unlocked. Nice.

I defeated every contestant in Koi-Koi Japan's Postcard mode, marking it as beaten! I'm beginning to get a more intuitive feel for hanafuda now, though it's still easy for me to mix up the flower species. Koi-Koi is fun!

-- I forget this file exists --

August

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD [WiiU] is finally beaten! I went through the whole damn game without the red sail, though, because after I got the piece of heart from the night-time auction, I thought that was it for the rewards. Whoops.

September

This month, I left a job that was killing me slowly with stress and switched to part time for a while. It was much needed rest.

My girlfriend and I played through Unravel TWO, a cute co-op game about two yarn people and their search to relight a lighthouse. It follows the story of two children and their escape from various dangerous situations, but it's told visually. It was a decent game, but I ended up carrying us (players can merge) in the last level.

October

I had first played this on PC, back in 2011, but I picked up Minecraft [Switch] back in February and played it off and on. By June, I wanted to actually beat the game, so I set out to learn how to get to The End. The game is so much different today compared to what it used to be. I really wish they'd finish up development, but it doesn't look to be stopping yet.

Only a few days later, I finished up Mighty Gunvolt Burst [Switch]! I was literally two levels away from the end of the game when I left off back in 2017 or whenever it was...

The mother lode happened this month too: Final Fantasy 4: The After Years [Wii] could be considered the "dark horse" of my backlog; it sat unbeaten for 12 years! It was such a pain to finish that I wrote about it.

Next up is Strikey Sisters [Switch], a cheesy Breakout clone with magic, enemies, and bosses. It even has co-op! My girlfriend tried it but didn't care for it. It was surprisingly shorter than I anticipated, but it seems about the right length for a Breakout clone. If they make a sequel, I'd like to see the voice acting toned down and some more control options, like dashes, shield/parry buttons, or being able to move forward and backwards. Still, a fun distraction!

At the end of the month, I pulled Golf Peaks [Switch] out of my butt. It's a cute puzzle game about getting a golf ball into a hole. The catch? You have a limited number of moves that tell you how the ball will move, and you need to use the correct combination to complete the level. It feels pretty Zen.

-- I remember this file exists and fill in the details. --

November

I've spent a little less time on games this month so far, but I managed to finish playing through all the songs in Hatsune Miku: Project Diva MegaMix [Switch]! It's hard to pin down when you've really "beaten" a rhythm game, so I set the goal of unlocking and completing every song. Seems legit.

I cleaned out the CPU heatsink on my desktop machine, and now temps are safe enough to game with, so I can catch up on some games while I wait on hardware prices to lower. :)

I beat Metroid Dread [Switch] in the middle of the month. It was a fantastic experience, and I look forward to clearing Hard Mode and learning how to speedrun it.

Next up is Risk of Rain 2 [Switch], which I cleared with a friend, but ended up carrying at the end. Hopoo Games really outdid themselves in the jump to 3-D, but part of me feels like the resources provided by Gearbox were a big part of its success. Regardless, RoR2 has gotten a spot among my favorite third person shooters ever, and I'm nowhere near done with it!

Toward the end of the month, I was able to play some Diablo II: Resurrected [Bnet] and finished it, but I beat the original as well, so it doesn't really count. :P

At the end of the month, I gnashed my teeth through Street Fighter [ARC]. I must say that the mechanic of not performing a special move until the button is released is one of the clunkiest and least fun control schemes I've ever had to deal with. The utterly unfair AI that can kill you in 3 hits is also problematic. The fact that it was popular enough to get sequels is surprising, because plenty of other games from that time were playable AND fun.

Street Fighter II [ARC] was much closer to what we know as traditional fighters. However, some characters like Vega have way too many abilities compared to the rest of the cast, and M. Bison himself has crazy hitboxes. I played as Ryu, and he feels like playing Mario or Pichu in Smash Bros. Just... incredibly small hitboxes. I ended up playing footsies to get in, but there wasn't much to punish with.

In beating these games, I'm realizing that I don't like fighting games as a genre. Even with rather simple inputs, the game's difficulty comes from consistency in executing your moves and imbalanced fighters or movesets; NOT from genuinely good AI or strong mechanics. Movement and defensive options suck. Throws are inconsistent to execute, and the SF 30th Anniversary version doesn't show OR tell you how to do a throw. This leads the player to getting bodied repeatedly, until they take advantage of spacing and use their longest move to get in, and MAYBE pull off a nice combo.

I plan to beat 3rd Strike and the Alphas, too, but so far this series makes me glad I got into fighting games with Smash Bros and Soul Calibur. In both of those games, you have actual movement options, actual defensive options, and a clear system of what beats what. It's a shame the cool characters of Street Fighter are limited to such a clunky genre...

December

It turns out I was most of the way done with Hammerwatch [Switch], though I got the bad ending because I didn't have all of the bridge planks! Oops. A bad ending is still an ending! It was fun and I look forward to trying the other characters and modes.

Hammerwatch was the last game beaten for 2021! See you in 2022!

Gaming Data and Update Treadmills

2020-01-04T00:00:00-08:00

Nintendo recently launched a year-in-review tool on their site that will show you your play statistics in 2019. Some may see this as a cool little feature, but this is exactly what I saw happening when I came home with my Switch on day one and realized it showed my play time over the network.

At the bottom of the page are buttons you can use to get fun little images for your stats. So, I guess badges to feel proud of being a commercial data faucet. Curiously missing from the page are links to download the raw data used to come up with the numbers, options to NOT track play statistics, or options to delete the data they've presented. Even after disabling my adblocking and tracking protection, the download links for the images didn't work.

Nintendo's game save analytics

Nintendo officials have confirmed their use of analytics, especially in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. During its first year, Nintendo released two DLC packs, the first of which enabled what's called "Hero's Path Mode". It allows you to press X on the map to have a complete history of your path through Hyrule, complete with warps and even deaths.

In order for the DLC to have this information to show on launch, it had to be gathered from the very beginning of the game. This means that the DLC was meant to be a base part of the game, players paid extra to receive this, and their data was used to create a heat map of Hyrule so Nintendo could attempt to measure the effectiveness of their game design. There's no way to receive a copy of this data from your Switch, or even via Nintendo. There's no option to turn this off, and with Cloud Saves enabled it ensures Nintendo gets a copy of your save.

On one hand, this can show some neat little numbers and give you a mild dopamine hit. Hero's Path absolutely solves the problem of knowing where you've been and where you haven't -- up to 200 hours or so of gameplay. But is it worth handing over the details of your playing, and the technical dependencies that need to be in place in order to carry such schemes out? Couldn't the game have been a little more explicit in what you've done so the player didn't need assistive technology to poorly solve a technically simple problem? It's technically impressive, sure, but the privacy implications are worrisome.

Why an update treadmill?

Perhaps I'm old-fashioned by modern standards, but I generally don't like these games that launch unfinished and go through many iterations before they become a high quality game. It's a hassle, waiting to get what you paid for.

As a player, it's another piece of software to babysit. If it has any online component, you'll have little choice but to play the latest version. If you haven't played in a while, you'll have to wait for it to download and install the update before you can play. Meanwhile, you pop in a GameBoy Advance cartridge and it boots the ROM immediately. The "time to gameplay" (TTG) is embarrassing on modern platforms.

When you finally do play, the game has probably changed or it has new bugs. Menus are different, strategies that worked before are less effective or removed altogether, there's usually brand new content to chew through, and so on. This design is deliberate.

Rent-seeking and Planned Obsolescence

Throughout the games industry is a collective dislike for the second-hand market. There's been continuous push in the industry to digital distribution and DRM, to snuff out collectors and other second-hand markets where they aren't getting a piece of the pie. Some platforms like Stadia want to eliminate the idea of game ownership entirely. However, in doing so the lasting value of their games diminishes. The game I played on launch day is different a year later.

Sometimes, games that are legitimately paid for will stop working. Disney failed to renew their SecuROM subscription, thereby retroactively bricking Tron: Evolution for PC. These are legitimate copies being disabled long after the transaction has been negotiated. This should be considered fraud.

The goal of industry in doing this is to follow the greater trend going on in markets -- that of rent-seeking. Instead of paying once for a game and bringing it home to play, you now have DLC, micro-transactions, and the Big Fish for them: online subscriptions. They want to put players on a proverbial money treadmill in order to continue playing their games, to get them to think of games as a service instead of a product.

Subscriptions are an effective way to bring in revenue because people tend to leave them on auto-pay or care too much about playing with their friends to let the subscription lapse. However, it devalues the product and turns entertainment into a monthly budgeting decision instead of an a la carte purchase. "Have we paid the monthly Xbox bill? Our Disney+ is due soon and the PSN bill's coming around too." Sure, you can argue that realistically any family dealing with so many bills would do auto-pay, but what happens when one of those companies with a direct line to your bank account takes too much? They and the bank or credit union will both drag their feet in getting that money back to you. Data breaches are a thing, too; what will someone else, attacking your bank or game "service" provider, gets access to your account? This is a marked increase in risk, just to play a game.

I don't want to add another bill to my budget in order to play games. I don't want my playing to be spied on so companies can treat art like science and optimize design for addiction. Video games are interactive art, and they deserve better than the surveillance technology being peddled as innovative game features. As I often say, business corrupts every endeavor it touches and robs it of its humanity and splendor. After gaming hit the mainstream with the rise of the Wii and mobile phones, it was only a matter of time before the market became a shithole. I've been talking about it for years and here it is.

Without ways to opt out of data mining, receive a copy of the data I generated (i.e. the fruit of my labor or activity; as the one who generated the data, I deserve to be the owner of it, as intellectual property), or delete the data that's being kept, I feel that I am treated like a resource to exploit instead of a customer who values their product and is rewarding them for a job well done. I do not want to participate in such a market. The games that are sold are not held to any release standards, the games change and morph as the game's design is democratized, and the update treadmills render physical games moot.

Where are the game makers who care about getting release right? Where are the game makers who hire game testers and focus groups instead of the shameless cash-grab that is Early Access? When a publisher can apply some release standards and show some understanding of the player experience, I might buy more again.

In the mean time, if I want a stable gaming experience I need to wait until a game stops receiving updates before I make a decision on it, or wait for the inevitable DeFiNiTiVe VeRsIoN. I've been burned too many times by updates that prevented me from playing at all, or with my partner, and I have too little time to waste on troubleshooting it. It sucks, but you do what you gotta.

Some Demographic Info from Yours Truly

Here are some facts that Nintendo might find actually relevant:

I am in my 30s, one of your biggest and most spendy audiences.

I grew up playing and more or less stuck with you, and have bought your games for younger family members. I am an influential person in my social circles when it comes to games, and my advice changes purchasing decisions.

I made more money in 2019 than any other year in my adult life.
I spent the least money on games in 2019 than I have since the last time I was unemployed.

Kinda proud of that, actually. :)

From your own stats, I only played 300 hours of games throughout the year. That's down from 2017 and 2018.

Excusing the obvious full-time employment, my play-time has indeed gone down, even compared to past times where I had FTE.

I didn't buy a single digital game full price, and I looked for physical first.

I waited until I received gift cards and then waited on a sale. Digital simply doesn't provide lasting value and I can't trust that it won't be remotely disabled later on. A binary on digital storage is not worth $60. It costs nearly nothing to distribute digitally, and prices should show that.

I was forced to buy some games digitally due to artificial scarcity in the physical market. With over 50 million Switches sold since launch, I'm sure you can negotiate with your cartridge manufacturer on wholesale pricing for publishers. Dark Souls Remastered would have been a good buy if Bandai-Namco hadn't cheaped out on cartridges. Mega Man X Collection 1 and 2 should've been on a single cartridge instead of one cartridge and a download. Same for Resident Evil: Revelations 1 and 2. Same for Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy and Spyro Re-ignited Trilogy. We're looking at over $200 in games by three different companies that I probably would have bought, but I didn't because of the insistence on devaluing my purchase and delivering a poor experience.

And I'm just one person. How many others felt the same way after word got out? How many other games fall into this same trap, when high-profile studios are given free passes on it? It sets an uncomfortable norm.

Deliver a high quality, as-the-developers-intended Day-1 experience on a physical medium that doesn't need patches to be complete and you will get my business. I don't ask for anything except some pride in your work and respect for my resources. I'm tired of babysitting games, phoning home, data aggregation, and so on.

Continual game patching doesn't tell me that you're working on the game. It tells me that you didn't get it right on release due to some shitty decision-making and I, the player, get to deal with the result of the developer-publisher dysfunctional relationship: a cartridge that is worthless and a game that isn't finished. I'm not going to reward that garbage, and you shouldn't, either.

I don't preorder any more since you're allowing publishers to release unfinished games at full price.

I cannot stand games that are not complete without some tag-along digital download for the rest of the game. This has happened since the WiiU days. Because of this, I cannot be sure that the pre-ordered game will be complete with only its cartridge. Digital games, by contrast, are not scarce at all and pre-purchasing increases bandwidth usage near launch, meaning that a pre-ordered digital game might not be usable and playable until after the initial wave of pre-orders and/or downloads. "Pre-loading" is a thing, but it's a band-aid that poses some ethical questions: should it be legal for a company to sell you a piece of software that is locked prior to a certain date? If they can lock it prior to a date, they can lock it after a date, too. Should it be legal for a company to be able to disable access to your legitimate purchases, years after purchase? Should the concept of an invalidated purchase without refund be allowed in society?

I do not think any of those should be legal. They reward behavior that disrespects and insults legitimate transactions, and it damages trust in the market, thereby risking a retread of the Crash of 1983.

Am I out of touch, or is the market and play experience really just worse? People that I've spoken with about the topic in person seem to agree that games used to be released in better shape and it was nicer to not need updates. Let me know what you think.

Teaching Without Tutorials

2018-01-11T00:00:00-08:00

Video games that teach without tuturials are superior and do more to engage and/or inspire the player. The first hour of a video game is often the most important; it's where the player learns how to interact with the machine, explore the rules and mechanics, and form an understanding of the game world. Games that effectively communicate this lead to a better-informed player that isn't slowed down or interrupted by verbose tutorials. The flow of the game remains smooth, and the player feels a sense of accomplishment or skill because they figured it out on their own, with the design of the game as their guide.

Despite games being far more advanced today, many of them rely on clunky tutorials to communicate the intricacies of their mechanics. Sometimes this is necessary, like the optional tutorials in Fire Emblem that teach you the finer points of the weapon triangle or other mechanics. Other games really hold your hand and guide you through each major mechanic as you come across it, like Kirby Superstar or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Sometimes, this process isn't bad. A lot of games let you skip it, but some stick to it and don't let the player out.

There are other games out there that don't bother with a tutorial at all, but still communicate the rules of their world and provide a sufficient level of freedom for the player to learn. This aspect is one of the core parts of game design; if the player is waiting on text or some side-show tutorial before they can play the game, then it's what I call a game's "lead time". Games like Golden Sun try to integrate this with the game, by throwing some real gameplay and combat into it. Some complain that this makes speedrunning a pain and lowers a game's replay value. Indeed, most Golden Sun players will tell you they'd rather skip the hour-long lead time, straight to leaving Vale for the first time and meeting Flint. That's where the real game begins, after all.

Golden Sun is just one example. The Legend of Zelda's later entries are known for their protracted lead time. A Link to the Past was the first in the series to provide a tutorial level (the first Hyrule Castle sequence), which was directly tied into the story and mostly stayed out of the way. However, the game didn't keep track of whether or not you'd seen an item before. Even at the end of A Link to the Past, a chest with 3 bombs in it will tell you how to use them. Later games push lead time out even further, with Skyward Sword's lead time being the highest (even if you skip cutscenes).

The reader can probably come up with a few games they've played that held their hand too much. But which games integrate their mechanics and design so well that the tutorial is invisible or seamless? What sets them apart, and how can game designers tackle this age-old design problem?

Case Study 1: Mega Man

Mega Man 2 is one of the toughest and beloved games in the series. Despite its trial-and-error gameplay with regard to obstacles, the mechanics themselves are communicated rather well. The first time you come across the disappearing blocks, there is a solid floor underneath you so you can learn what you need to do: observe the pattern of blocks, and carefully time your jumps accordingly.

In Gyro Man's stage (Mega Man 5), you are introduced to a flying enemy that drops when you walk under it, and blocks that fall when you jump on them. However, they're introduced individually, and in a safe manner, first. Later in the stage, the enemies and dropping blocks appear together, and the two simple situations you played through are combined into a more complex gameplay situation. This is very similar to the "multiplicative gameplay" approach of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where multiple gameplay mechanics are combined to create emergent complexity.

This is explored in the first Mega Man, as well, with Elec Man's stage. You literally cannot leave the first screen until you understand how the floor-zooming enemies work and successfully jump up to the ladder. With no other obstacles on this screen, it allows the player to experiment, where they'll learn that the enemies move faster when Mega Man is at the same elevation, and they can be stopped by shooting them; all without some trite textbox or voice-over telling them how to push a button or use their eyes.

Case Study 2: Mega Man X

This fan favorite has a design muscle of its own to flex! Egoraptor's Sequelitis, though over-the-top, is spot-on with the analysis of gameplay. The first level teaches you everything you need to know about the game to excel: walking, jumping, wall-jumping, enemy weak points, and what a scripted loss looks like (hint: no enemy life bar or hint of progress). It also gives you a goal: to become as powerful as Zero.

MMX's intrigue goes a little further, too, by playing on your intuition:

Boomerang Cutter will slice off Launch Octopus's tentacles and Flame Mammoth's trunk;
Chill Penguin is weak to fire;
Homing Missile can hit Boomer Kuwanger even if he's invisible;
Armored Armadillo's metal armor can be shed by shocking him;
Spark Mandrill is completely frozen if you hit him with ice.

In short, the game world is believable because it conveys its rules subtly and builds on intuition that you've already built around the physical world. This forms a more solid connection between the game and the player.

Case Study 3: Super Mario Bros.

Senior Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto needs no introduction. His Donkey Kong game put Nintendo squarely into the video game business, and Super Mario Bros -- alongside the NES -- are attributed as single-handedly reviving the industry after the Crash of 1983. Though the company's practices have been a little too shrewd at times, it's hard to deny that their focus on quality and licensing improved game design and restored consumer faith in the industry, leading to the games of today.

Miyamoto and other senior designers have confirmed the first level of Super Mario Bros was actually the last level completed; The iconic first level covers all but two mechanics in the game (ascending vines and warping). In an interview, Miyamoto details how the blocks were designed in a way to practically force the player to get the first mushroom, so they can understand that mushrooms help Mario. Likewise, the Goomba teaches the player that Mario's primary way to attack is by jumping onto enemies. The "?" blocks teach the player that there are goodies hidden away in them. Later, the player learns that the A button must be held to get a longer jump, how fire flowers and stars work, the existence of hidden blocks, and how running jumps can help Mario cross chasms.

In terms of game design, the first level is truly a work of art, covering every major mechanic of the game without a hint of tutorial. The enemies present are mostly Goombas, and one learns very quickly how to dispatch them, so the level doesn't feel threatening to new players. The bright blue background was also a large departure from arcade games at the time, which used mostly black backgrounds. This lighter color makes the game appear more vibrant and inviting. Each part of SMB's first level has a purpose, and it's that sort of game design that creates the perfect "tutorial level"; the player doesn't realize that they're being taught. They're too busy enjoying the game. :)

Case Study 4: Super Metroid

Oh the volumes I could write on this game's design. Made by Deer Force (later known as Intelligent Systems, creators of Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, and others), Super Metroid is oozing with solid game design. The lead-up to Samus's landing on Zebes is, in effect, a minor playground. There are no enemies, and there's enough platform navigation to get the player used to jumping. During the sequence with Ridley, Samus can't actually die; Ridley triggers the escape sequence when Samus hits 29 energy or less. This gives the player an opportunity to understand what combat is like without dealing with the frustration of reloading a save continuously just to get to "the real game".

Once Samus lands on planet Zebes, the average player will likely go to the right, where they encounter a wall of blocks in their way. This teaches players who've only played platformers that they don't have to go to the right all the time.

Later, the player encounters narrow tunnels that Samus can't (yet) fit into and magenta doors that won't open. These aspects teach the player that they must find power-ups so they can explore more of the planet and gain firepower. In the sequence leading up to the Morph Ball and Morph Ball Bombs, the player learns the value of power-ups and ammo conservation; two mechanics that are central to early-game Metroid. When they come back up to Crateria and the Space Pirates are present, the place they traversed is now covered in enemies, teaching them that the actions or events in one area can influence another. This is important to understand what must be done when the player reaches the Wrecked Ship.

Super Metroid continues to teach new mechanics by exposing the player to them as a part of exploration. Nothing is really "staged" except the first room after a power-up, such as the Grappling Beam; the player must figure out how to use it (or be good at wall-jumping) to advance.

Speaking of wall-jumps, Super Metroid also teaches the player through wildlife; in two key points, there are Etecoons (small monkey-like beings) and a Dachora (large ostrich-like bird) that move around near Samus and show her a move. This is where the game actively shows the player what they should be doing without taking control of the game from the player. An observant player will learn how those mechanics work, which will lead them to more power-ups and ammo.

These lessons continue throughout the game, with different colored doors, one-way gates, super-heated rooms, breakable blocks that look like normal blocks, hollow blocks that Samus can walk through, and so on. For much of these mechanics, the game presents at least one or two situations where the player won't (easily) die from making a mistake.

One exception is something I think is expected; when Samus picks up an item, the game displays a brief one-liner of how to use that item. It's displayed during the item-get jingle, so the "tutorial" is more a part of the interface instead a part of the gameplay itself.

Case Study 5: Demon's Souls

The Souls series is a brutally fair series of games made by From Software. They are often set in a low-fantasy setting, with extremely classic gameplay conventions to complement it.

The game teaches the player entirely through optional text messages strewn about the game world. If playing online, a player can read the messages of others; some of which are misleading and lead to certain death.

The tutorial level is really just another stage. There's nothing special to it aside from the sparse enemies. Highly skilled players can fight the boss at the end and get some extra Souls (the game's currency), which is useful toward getting early level ups.

The rest of the game's details are communicated through conversations with NPCs or item descriptions. The mechanics themselves are deceptively simple: you have a standard and strong attack that you can use with either hand; a parry; magic; and some basic dodging. That's pretty much it. The rest comes from the challenge of reading your enemy and being aware of your surroundings.

The series even takes it a step further (at least, on PS3). There isn't a real pause button in the game, so the player must always be careful of where they leave their controller, since the shoulder buttons are the attack buttons. In a sense, the developers influence the player's actions by forcing them to treat the controller itself as a weapon; if you accidentally hit or kill an NPC, it saves the game at the time of their death and there's no way to undo it!

Some may find the Souls games to be lacking in high-quality design. For a hardcore gamer who's after a game that won't hold their hand, the Souls series is a stern, fair grandpa waiting for you to git gud. It expects you to figure out the world around you by checking out your inventory and talking to people.

In Demon's Souls at least, after felling the first demon, you can explore the other 5 regions of the game. This is a huge deal, because it allows an intrepid (or suicidal) player to venture out to get the good gear, like the Talisman of God in world 4-1 (important for casting healing spells, aka "miracles"). Designing things in an open, discoverable way encourages the player to find new pathways through the game, and new strategies for other classes. All without explicitly teaching you anything except the basic controls, which never have to be examined!

Closing

The above list is just a sample of games that do a great job of teaching the player without an overt tutorial. Beneath these mechanics, I think there are a few key concepts to take away from analyzing these games:

Use the game world as an interface for learning;
If you must include a tutorial, make it optional and engaging;
Limit the player in creative ways to influence their actions, so they learn the mechanics you need them to in order to present tougher challenges later;
Don't be afraid to hide a mechanic or two and leave hints -- show rather than tell;
Leverage the player's existing understanding of the world and surprise them with their own intuition. Implement mechanics that make sense intuitively.

Thanks for reading! If you'd like to send feedback please e-mail me, or reply on your own phlog or website! I'd love to read about more games that teach the player with creative design.

Palette Customization with Mednafen

2017-09-22T00:00:00-07:00

I received Metroid: Samus Returns in the mail this week, which is a 3DS remake of the original Metroid II: Return of Samus for the GameBoy. Before I started playing Samus Returns, I wanted to take another romp through the original, so I hopped on OBS and recorded myself on a casual run. This morning, I watched Emptyeye's great single-segment 100% run of Metroid II, which inspired me to record another run. Before that, though, I wanted to see what I could do to make the game pop a little bit, so it looks and feels good to watch. Here's the end result:

Verdant Miasma - a palette for Metroid 2: Return of Samus, by zlg

Setup

The first issue I had was figuring out Mednafen's palette format. Mednafen's documentation is rather terse on this, but a brief chat with someone in #mednafen on Freenode set things straight for me.

Here's what you need to know about palettes, at least for the gb plugin (for original GameBoy games):

Colors are in descending brightness, starting with the brightest
The brick GB and Pocket can only do four colors
Super GameBoy can do eight colors; one set of four for sprites, and another for tiles
Mednafen supports up to twelve colors, but Metroid II only uses the first ten.

Here's a quick rundown of the colors for Metroid II:

Tile highlight color
Tile mid-range color
Tile shading color
Background color

I set the first three colors very deliberately. I needed colors that would add to the mood of SR388 without looking too cartoony. However, each shade is used in different ways in different areas, so I needed a set of three colors that wouldn't clash when mixed, but had enough of a hue shift to be useful in multiple contexts.

The colors I settled with are a faded beige, semi-gray green, and a subdued purple. I felt that they represented SR388 well, and the purple really adds to the immersion with the way the acid and some backgrounds look. Unfortunately, the game is rather monochrome to begin with, so there wasn't much I could do to combat that.

That's it for the original GameBoy palette. If you're playing via Super GameBoy, there are four more colors:

Samus' yellow portion
Samus' red portion
Samus' outline
Pause/transition/extra detail color

The eighth color (4th in this set) is interesting, because it shows up in a few random places. For instance, it's used to create the shadowy look of the pause screen, Samus' silhouette when making room transitions, and appears as part of the environment from time to time. On Super GameBoy, I believe the 8th color is set to match color 4, so Samus's sprite is never visible during transitions. So in practice, Super GameBoy only offers about six or seven colors.

The colors chosen are pretty obvious: Samus's suit needs to be some shade of yellow, and the accent needs to be red. Her outline was kind of a toss-up: Dark red looks good, but bleeds into the yellow a bit much. I opted for a desaturated medium brown, which makes a good accent color and dithers well due to being a neutral color. The transition color is a steel blue, to add a hint of hue shifting to any environments that use the color (like the starting area).

Remember that I mentioned Mednafen supports up to twelve colors? Metroid II supports up to ten total:

being struck/item highlight
being struck/item shade
unused
unused

Colors 9 and 10 are used when you or an enemy flashes upon being struck, and for item pickups that flash, such as missiles or Power Suit upgrades. Originally, I was going to go for light and medium gray, similar to Super Metroid's look for missiles. It looked a little too plain. I could've went with another Super Metroid look (bright yellow and magenta), but I felt like the game has enough yellow as it is; why add more?

The bright teal colors for 9 and 10 worked out fantastically, as they aid readability and are different enough from the rest of the game's colors to pop out to the viewer. Once I had this nailed down, I knew I had found the right palette for the game.

The Palette

So the actual colors are as follows:

#BED287
#3A882B
#3F2E50
#000000
#D2CF72
#AE1919
#4B320C
#354C53
#6AECFF
#2493A4

Plug those into a color previewer or just about anything else, and you'll see them:

Hex Values Ahoy!

Next, I had to come back to Mednafen and figure out how to pull this together. As I mentioned earlier, Mednafen's documentation didn't cover much. It just said it supported 4, 8, or 12 color triplets in RGB format. I later learned that this is in binary, not plain-text, so I needed a hex editor. Thankfully, Gentoo has app-editors/hexedit. Most other GNU/Linux distros should have some sort of hex editor available, too. ¹ Once you've gotten a hex editor, you'll need to enter the hex values, one after the other, in the list above. The result should look something like this:

00000000   BE D2 87 3A  88 2B 3F 2E  50 00 00 00  D2 CF 72 AE  19 19 4B 32  0C 35 4C 53     ...:.+?.P.....r...K2.5LS
00000018   6A EC FF 24  93 A4 62 79  20 7A 6C 67                                            j..$..by zlg

You'll need to make sure it's exactly like the above, in a hex editor, or it won't work. Since Metroid II doesn't use the last two colors, I had 6 extra bytes to work with, so I added a by-line, because why not?

Putting it All Together

If you don't have a hex editor or aren't savvy enough to figure one out for yourself, here's a link to the resulting .pal file:

Verdant Miasma: a Metroid II: Return of Samus palette by zlg (it's up at the top of this article, too)

You'll want to save it with a .pal extension, under $HOME/.mednafen/palettes, with the same name as the ROM. For example: "$HOME/.mednafen/palettes/Metroid 2 - Return of Samus.pal". Windows and OS X users will need to replace $HOME/.mednafen with the path where their Mednafen configuration is saved.

The next time you run the game, it should greet you with a nice, colorized palette!

It was fun putting this palette together. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Vim has a binary editing mode (-b on the command line), but it was adding an extraneous byte, causing Mednafen to complain at the file size mismatch for the palette. ↩

RPGs are for story? Since when?

2016-08-06T00:00:00-07:00

Across the Internet and even in person, I find a lot of people claiming that RPGs are meant to be story-heavy and that's the main draw. Part of me wonders where that idea came from.

The original RPG could be considered Dungeons & Dragons or any similar paper-and-pencil games where you adopt a persona and go on an adventure, with a DM at the reins to guide you and your friends along. The core of those games is not story, however; it's about interacting with your friends in a made-up world. The story, while being in the lime-light, is nothing compared to the feeling of cooperating with your friends and vanquishing foes or telling ridiculous stories because your bard is drunk as shit.

D&D and other paper-and-pencil RPGs have a huge focus on the battle system. Each race has strengths and weaknesses. Ditto for classes. Each class has skills, which have use inside and outside of battle. There are feats. If the game was not meant to have a deep level of combat or world interaction, none of that would be there! You'd just toss a few dice to decide damage and trade blows with no-name mooks.

Even the original RPGs had battle systems, with depth and intrigue.

So let's spin this and put it into the intended medium (video games).

Some of the first RPGs, while possessing plenty of story, had a lot of combat to fill up the game with things to do. Fetch quests and puzzles also added to the longevity. The story helped compel you to go further, but most of the games that became renowned (The Elder Scrolls, Ultima, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc) did so because their combat was fun and the world was interesting. In a traditional turn-based RPG, you're going to be spending a good portion of your time in combat. In series such as Golden Sun, there's plenty of story -- some even complain at the amount of dialogue -- but mostly you're exploring, solving puzzles, customizing your party, diving into dungeons, and fighting monsters.

This misconception of "RPG == story-heavy" is flat-out wrong. Some games such as Crystalis are rather light on story. Castlevania 2 is another example. Zelda 2 as well. Others, like The Elder Scrolls, can go either way because there is tons of story, but most of it's optional. The few games that are mostly story-based have super-easy gameplay, or they're reclassified as another genre, ranging from interactive fiction to point-and-click adventure to puzzle.

I think people need to really sit down and ask themselves how important the story is to RPGs as a genre. A quality RPG won't need a story to be fun.

If one wants story, they should play a visual novel, point-and-click adventure, or text adventure. MUSHs are a good place to do role-playing that is expected to be in-universe, while MUDs are for the battle- or adventure-oriented. Some even have PvP aspects, which is a nice touch.

Can Digital Distribution and Game Ownership Coexist?

2013-04-24T11:49:00-07:00

In the past decade, the video game industry has introduced three things that change the way consumers interact with publishers and distributors to get access to the content they consume. Each of these brings with them a wave of change that, to many people that are part of the "old school" generation, encroach on various aspects of consumer rights and are turning games into services instead of objects that you can buy copies of. The three things that have brought this change are downloadable content, digital distribution, and DRM.

Downloadable Content: the new, diluted "expansion pack"

Downloadable content (DLC) began as a way to supplement disc-based games with hard-drive bound content that added new things to the game. In essence, DLC began as expansion packs to existing games. Oftentimes, they were additional chapters in the single player portion of a game, or additional maps and character skins for the multiplayer portion of a game. They were often priced competitively ($3-10 USD on average), and were not available on the game disc itself. This allowed avid fans of games to get additional content and show their support for the game with smaller transactions over time, creating a trickle in profit for the developer and publisher. Because the content wasn't on the disc, it allowed developers time to create more DLC that was better made.

Today, a good portion of video games are released with the DLC already on the game disc, but locked away unless you pay the additional fee associated with it. So instead of getting access to all the information on the disc at a premium $60 price tag, the gamer who wants access to this must pay $60 to get the disc and then an additional $5-20 to access the rest of the information on the disc (the full game). This is a dishonest and greedy way to do business, and an attempt to nickel-and-dime the consumer.

Prior to the advent of DLC, most additional content was found on PC games, and they released tons of content on a brand new game disc. In essence, it was a full game's worth of content, for about half the price of the original game. It was a great bargain, and many gamers clamored for such expansions, because they brought depth and replayability to their favorite games. Most DLC in today's era does not fit that description. Instead, they're small additions that do very little to add to the gameplay and should have been part of the final product. At worst, the DLC is already on the disc and gamers are charged an additional fee to get access. Despite the logistics issue of manufacturing the discs and distributing them, expansion packs from the 1990s and 2000s were a better deal and enriched the value of a game by at least an order of magnitude compared to modern DLC.

Today's developers should take a page out of history's playbook and not be afraid to spend a long time on large, slightly more pricey DLC that, for example, brings an entirely new storyline to their game, or expands the skill system, or adds characters that enrich the game world. Games that did the expansion pack system properly are games like Diablo 2, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, and Half-Life, among many many others. A modern, upcoming example of good DLC is New Super Luigi U, which remixes every single level in the game and tunes it specifically for Luigi, effectively doubling the size of the game. If a developer that's criticized for being "behind the times" is creating DLC that adds so much value to their games, is it unreasonable to expect "the big guns" to add real, lasting value to theirs?

Digital Distribution: convenient or subvertive?

Digital distribution is a way that consumers can get access to a game immediately by downloading the game data instead of purchasing a disc. It brings a great deal of convenience to consumers by alleviating the need to go to the store and buy a disc, then maintain the disc and keep it clean. However, it also brings a few disadvantages: you can't lend it to a friend, play it on another person's machine (depending on the platform), or sell it to someone when you've lost interest in it years later.

These limitations of digital distribution aren't found everywhere. Good Old Games.com distributes games that don't have any restrictions on what you can do with them. You can archive your own copy of it or even lend a copy to a friend. Humble Bundle offers a similar service, but even these great examples fail to offer a means to sell your games to a friend. There's more to this than just digital distribution, though.

Digital Rights Management: "you don't own anything!"

DRM is a system of protecting game content from being copied and shared, to secure profit for the publisher. In the 1990s and early 2000s, DRM was mostly algorithm-based and did a fairly good job at protecting the games without inconveniencing gamers or encroaching on the right to sell their copy. When you wanted to sell your game, you simply included the authentication key along with it, so your friend could prove the legitimacy of the copy as well. This system found itself prone to abuse due to the poor algorithms that were chosen to generate and authenticate keys, so publishers moved to systems that were more invasive, and lawyers began drafting EULAs that limited the purchase of the game copy to simply a "license to play" that could be revoked by the publisher at any time, for any reason.

This shift in the industry made it clear that publishers did not care about the first-sale doctrine, or the troubles that legitimate consumers would face as DRM became more restrictive and cumbersome, while piracy remained at a constant level. Many publishers claimed that piracy was to blame for lower sales numbers, despite a changing economic climate and a change in the way gamers felt about systems that did not consider them legitimate customers without proof.

In a stroke of irony, piracy may have increased for some games because pirates were able to crack the DRM in some games and provide a less buggy or faster version of the games, unencumbered by the DRM. Even some legitimate owners turned to pirated copies of the games they owned because the DRM systems disabled their legitimate key, or arbitrary limitations (such as the number of times the game can be installed) were reached. Despite their desire to support the developer and publisher, the DRM systems betrayed their purchase and refused them access to the game, so they turned to piracy to get an unencumbered experience.

Due to this change in legalities, some game developers attempted to limit the reselling of their games by including single-use codes with the game, designed to be validated and installed only once. In their eyes, it ensured that only one person would be able to enjoy a single copy and, if their friends wanted to borrow it, they had to instead buy a copy. For various reasons, this resulted in either lower sales or higher rates of piracy since it stifles the social aspect of gaming.

All together now!

Today, we have DLC, digital distribution, and DRM all tied together in complete systems, such as Microsoft's Xbox Live, Sony's Playstation Network, Nintendo's eShop, EA's Origin, and Valve's Steam. Each brings with it a set of limitations and encumberments that are designed to protect the ~~greed~~ assets of the publisher, while limiting the rights of the customer. Some of these platforms, such as Steam, do things fairly well for a DRM scheme:

Steam allows you to play offline; you only need to be online to purchase and install the game.
Steam ties all purchases to your account, so if you lose your game data, you can simply login, connect, and redownload it
Steam adds value to their platform with a social network, game save backups, and periodic sales
Steam allows you to purchase a game as a gift and give it to another user.

The one key thing missing from this feature set that would make Steam (or other platforms) a great choice is allowing people to transfer or sell their copy to another person. As it currently stands, every platform has something wrong with it in the way it treats its users. Digital distribution is a great idea, but is limited by technology that enables the greed of publishers. If these platforms allowed people to sell or transfer games to others, it would create a virtual equivalent to the real world and go a long way to respect consumers and foster a sense of trust, while still protecting developer assets from being stolen. Why Valve hasn't taken advantage of this opportunity is beyond me. Perhaps the corporate interest of greed and money has blinded them to the civil side of their platform.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the technology behind DLC, DRM, and digital distribution is here to stay. However, there are many things left to iron out before these platforms are a suitable analog to owning a physical copy of a game. Until these platforms mature and begin respecting consumer rights, they will prevent themselves from captivating the entire "old school" market that got them where they are today. Gamers that have been playing since the 1970s to the 1990s understand the social value that game ownership has, and we took advantage of these things before the Internet became ubiquitous. Word of mouth and try-before-you-buy are incredible ways to increase sales and spread the image of great games. If game publishers continue to step on the toes of gamers by limiting what they can do with their games and nickel-and-dime them to death with DLC, we will simply exit the market or turn to independent developers, who are breathing new life into the industry at a fraction of the cost.

As for me, I own 4 Humble Indie Bundles and look forward to more high-quality, independently developed games that I can share with others and purchase without breaking the piggy bank. While I have a Steam account, I have no plans to invest a significant amount of money until I have the right to sell or transfer ownership to another Steam user.

Y u hate me, RNG?

2012-11-29T16:05:00-08:00

I recently finished acquiring all of the ship parts in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Getting the Power, Courage, and Wisdom Gems was no big deal. Look around, try new things, and you'll find them. Ship parts? They're randomly acquired. You get them from shops (whose stock changes every day), treasure maps (which can be scummed to get the same type of part), treasure chests, and minigames. The problem is that it's controlled by the RNG. There are 64 parts to collect, but thanks to our friend Mr. Statistics and Probability, you will likely acquire over 200 ship parts before you get all 64 unique ship parts.

This design idea is ridiculous. I realize I'm picking on an old game, but I still see it in many other games. Even Zelda: Skyward Sword is guilty of this with its random drops from enemies. When will game developers and designers stop relying on random elements to add artificial difficulty or length to a game? Give gamers well-defined means of getting specific things. Continuing my Phantom Hourglass story, imagine if you had to look far and wide for the 64 ship parts. Each one would be new to your collection, so it wouldn't get (that) old, and the life upgrade on the ship is plenty reason to continue looking for parts. But no; ship parts got demoted to "random drop" status. Spirit Tracks committed this sin with treasure, which you redeem to Linebeck the Third in order to get your train parts. I can't tell you how many times I saved that freakin' Goron in the Ocean Realm, praying to get the 7 Mystic Jades I needed for the last of my train parts!

This goes far beyond just Zelda, though. RPGs (which Zelda is not) have been doing it since their inception. Kill a monster, and you might get lucky with a new item! Except that item will be outclassed in a dungeon or two...

Don't get me wrong; Zelda isn't the only offender. It's fairly light on RNG elements in the grand scheme of things. Other games with excessive RNG are below:

post-SotN Castlevania (items, souls, glyphs, subweapons (Portrait))
Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Pokémon, et al (item drops, weapon drops, Poké Ball captures, monster encounters, you name it!)
Zelda: Spirit Tracks (treasure)
Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (ship parts)
Zelda: Skyward Sword (treasure)
Diablo series (loot odds)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (tripping, Smash Balls, Assist Trophies, Poké Balls, etc)
Animal Crossing (pick a mechanic, any mechanic!)
Fire Emblem (level up stat amounts; there's an entire gameplay style revolving around this!)
Golden Sun (encounters, drops, whether a Djinni will run from you, etc)

Note: If you really want me to go on, I can. But we'll be here all night...

Here's a better idea; follow in the vein of Metroid, Zelda, or Cave Story — where you have to find your power-ups — or use a system similar to Etrian Odyssey 3's: kill an enemy in a particular way, and you might get a specific, much better item. Except don't screw it up like Atlus did; give the item to the player either every time or only once. This will make players look for each secret kill item, and they might even appreciate the experience if the secret items are really good. That design idea rewards creative play! Random items and drops do not. All randomness does to a game is force the player to play for longer in order to reach their goals.

Can we please reserve randomness to something like AI, which could actually do with a smidge more randomness? I'd love to see more games (especially RPGs) that reward creativity in combat and exploration of the game world instead of forcing gamers to spend mindless hours waiting for the magic number on the roulette wheel.

Disclaimer: The games listed above are not necessarily bad, they just have mechanics that seriously hamper the experience if you're after 100% completion.

Why Zelda is not an RPG

2009-10-28T08:41:21-07:00

Over the past 15 years or so, the gaming industry has seen the decline of platforming games and the rise of RPGs and FPS games. Some gamers who grew up during this rise of the RPG genre began to identify themselves as "role playing gamers" as a quick way of summing up their taste in video games. This has sadly led to many people tacking the RPG genre onto any game that vaguely resembles an RPG. Such victims include Metroid, Castlevania, and -- you guessed it -- the Legend of Zelda series.

I've been the audience and a performer in many arguments regarding the attribution of role-playing to non-RPGs. Specifically with the Zelda games. Before anyone fires away at me and mentions Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: yes, I am aware that Zelda 2 is indeed an RPG. It's a pretty good one if you like challenge and action, too. With that out of the way, let's begin with a logical starting point: the definition of RPG...

You call that an RPG? Where are the pencils and paper?

Ah, yes. Anyone who grew up in the 70s probably recalls Dungeons and Dragons, one of the first true RPGs; and it took the definition literally. You created a character and fleshed out their backstory, personality, class, and statistics. Then you proceeded to go on quests with your fellow tabletop gamers with one goal in mind: play the role of your character as well as you could and avoid death. Purists will tell you that every video game that's dubbed an RPG is a misnomer. To a degree, they're right! Tabletop style RPGs were the first, so logically they created the definition.

However, language has a way of evolving. As the popularity of tabletop RPGs waned in favor of video games, so too did the definition of RPG. In video game form, RPGs lost the connection between player and character. The statistics systems translated very well, however, and hundreds of different systems, now dubbed "battle systems", came into the picture. They became the "hook" that got you into an RPG and kept you there. The storylines, while not very dynamic, also served as a means to keep the player interested.

Today, the RPG genre has branched out into many different styles. Strategy RPG, Japanese-styled RPG, Western RPG, MMORPG, and Action RPG are the primary styles. All of them offer wildly different types of gameplay, but have some core traits in common that set them apart from other genres.

A quick note before I begin: if we take "role playing" too literally, we find ourselves labeling everything an RPG. I've heard people argue the case "In Halo, you're playing the role of Master Chief so it has to be an RPG!" Let's not stoop to such ignorance.

Enough of the history lesson, pops...

Genres, as a general rule, exist to categorize things. In movies we see drama, comedy, action, chick-flick, "indie"-style, etc. In music we see rap, hip-hop, country, metal, classical, chiptune, and myriad other labels. So naturally, we will see a natural division of video game types: a few of the big-players include Action, Adventure, Shooter, Fighting, RPG, Simulation, Puzzle, and Sports. Just like with genres in other media, there is further categorization, as witnessed a few paragraphs ago with RPGs. Among all of this separation, however, is the intrinsic knowledge that everything is similar and grouped together (how Taoist of me :P). What this means with our definition of RPG is that we need to make a set of criteria that sets RPGs apart from other genres while still including a wide variety of games that are considered RPGs such as Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, Kingdom Hearts, World of Warcraft, etc.

Okay, what makes an RPG?

I managed to sum it up in one sentence: RPGs are games that have a (very) strong focus on visible, buildable statistics, and use battle as the primary means of stat building. Think about it for a moment and you'll agree. Take your favorite RPG and analyze the way it plays. Are there levels? Skills? Are there ratings on your skill mastery? How do you become stronger? Can you see the stats? Which has more influence over beating the enemy; stats or player skill? Do you control more than one character? The list of questions could go on for quite a while... The more you end up answering "yes" or "stats", the closer the game is to an RPG.

So what about Zelda?

I'll sum this up with a list of answers to typical questions you might ask yourself about Zelda's status as an RPG:

There are no (visible) stats; everything is represented as ammo, hearts, and a magic meter.
There are no experience points; fighting more monsters does not make you stronger.
There are skills (in some of them), but they do not improve with use.
The games can be beaten without upgrading anything; player skill trumps raw numbers (hearts, ammo, etc)
You only control one character at a time.
Status improvements (such as the Blue and Red Rings, Iron Boots, etc) are acquired through storyline, puzzles, or quests instead of battle.
There are no random equipment drops (only hearts, rupees, ammo, and in later installments, bottle-ables).

Given these 7 answers to common questions, we can safely say that while the Zelda games do have a few features commonly attributed to RPGs (NPC interaction, quests, a fantasy setting), it does not fit into the definition because its gameplay is too different. Zelda is an Action/Adventure game series, while Zelda 2 is Action/RPG.