So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

Been playing a lot of Lemmings lately and really enjoying it. The game gets vicious in the taxing difficulty but I'm on level 27 of 30 so nearly there. I can just imagine how much worse the 30 Mayhem levels are going to get. It really is a classic.

I've been using the Lemmix player which makes the PC DOS version playable in a modern OS and supports all the official lemmings games and mission packs. It also has a frameskip function which speeds the game up a good bit.

And I've finished Lemmings. I was worried it would get stupid hard in the later levels but other than 2 or 3 levels it never really got mean and some of the level solutions were quite fiendish. It really is an all time classic.

Not sure about the areas, but the combat is turn based but SMT games also have one of the best turn based battle systems for a RPG that far eclipses the likes of FF.

Atlus have absolutely perfected the turn based combat since SMT3. The Press Turn system and all it's iterations since have been an absolute revelation. Every fight is a challenge or else managing your sparse resources between save points but also the fights are relatively quick. It's like every battle has the potential to either badly damage or wipe the party but you also have the tools to get out of the party without taking a hit or relatively little damage if you play it right. I've not played a rpg with a real time combat system that comes close to what Atlus are doing.

I'm still holding out for that SMTV PC version that was in the Nvidia leak which has so far been 100% on the money.

Yep it gets more complex as the game goes on and there's some incredible boss battles throughout. I love how the game actually makes use of the 2.5D graphics, it's not just for fancy camera angles.

I beat the game tonight as well as the bastard hard extra vision. Wonderful game. Even the story gets quite dark with a bittersweet ending . It's nothing amazing but took me by surprise.

Not sure why you would be, it's a class game.

True but we aren't that bad here :D we like new games as well!

That's 1 less than 6/10 which makes me almost as good as the greatest megadrive game ever made so I'll take it.

Started Aconcagua tonight. I'd forgotten that it's a pure point and click game. I'm really enjoying it. Each area is like a little micro point and click puzzle. Production values are very high, the soundtrack in particular is gorgeous and very john williams-esque. The wobbly script and suspect voice acting are the only really parts that let it down.

Started and finished Ninja Gaiden on the Game Gear last night.

The series is so weird. Everyone knows the NES games but it actually started as a double dragon style beat em up in the arcades. When Sega got the license they had to program their own games due to Nintendo's licensing rules and instead of copying the NES game they made brand new Master System and Game Gear versions. The Master System version is one of the best 8-bit games ever made but the Game Gear game isn't the scaled down master system port as you'd imagine, it's a totally different game. It came before the MS Ninja Gaiden and is a worse game. It actually plays really nicely, fast and responsive although you have very little i-frames on hit and can end up stun locked and lose all your health. It looks quite nice as well with loads of colour. Ninja Gaiden is famous for it's cinematic cutscenes and they try to replicate them here but they're not as impressive as the NES game. The main issue is that the game is so short. Skipping the cutscenes the game is about 10 minutes long. There's 5 stages but one of the stages is a gimmicky short auto scroller and another is just a boss battle. Frustratingly if you die to a boss it's back to the beginning of the level.

It's level not game, made a typo. It's certainly not unplayable, more frustrating and an obvious cheap way to extend an already very short game.

It's not always a bad thing but sometimes a checkpoint would be a nicer option.

No amount of lives or lack of lives will make the original Crash Bandicoot good.

I usually don't use save states but sometimes, the odd time, I have to break that habit. Ninja Gaiden was one. Having one chance at the last boss before being sent back 4 stages is insanity (4 of the hardest stages ever made). It meant you'd spent 15 minutes working up to the last boss, get there, panic and **** up and back to the start. There was no time for you to learn a pattern and perfect it so I save stated to learn how to take the boss on.

And I'm about to break save state rules again with Fire Emblem 6 because losing a character and having to repeat a 45 minute long stage has been infuriating.

Played some Baroque last night. Absolutely adore this game so far. It's only my second dive into the neuro tower after the first dive.

Anyway last night Baroque reminded me that it's a roguelike. I was doing fine in the dungeon. I was managing my buffs and equipment well and got to BF11. I had a weird item for a long time that 'inverted HP/VT of everything in the room' so I threw it at an enemy.

Inverted means it takes your current HP and VT away from your max HP/VT and that's your new HP/VT. Great when you are in trouble. A complete disaster when you are near full health and VY.

So my HP drops to near 0 and my VT dropped to 5. So I scrabbled around looking for food to get my VT up. No luck. VT ran out which started to eat into my HP and I basically died of starvation.

And yet I still love this game.

Yeah. They are good and seem to keep the same story from the PS1 with the same progression and rogue-like elements but the third person mode isn't as immersive as first person so it doesn't feel as good. Worse still is the soundtrack has been changed. The gorgeous original ambient electronica is replaced by heavier guitar lead industrial music and while good it really changes the atmosphere of the game.