So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

The Sega episode 1 racer was great as well but loses a lot without the post racer cabinet.

I'm up to stage 7 in Kirby's adventure. Not played it a whole lot until now. Always wanted it as a kid as it was one of the few nintendo games that Nintendo did a massive advertising campaign for in Europe and it looks incredible. Its a huge amount of fun and really impressive for a NES game.

I've noticed online a lot of revisionist history going on about how amazing the N64 was but it really wasn't that great. There's some really amazing titles on it but the library is very small and there just isn't the range of experiences on the system like the PS1 had. What it had over the PS1 was the 4 controller ports which made it a breeze to set up multiplayer and most games supported that in a way. On the PS1 it was hard to find decent 4 player games and don't get me started on the crash team racing is better than mario kart brigade.

All I'll say is don't sleep on Sin and Punishment which is the secret best N64 game.

Hint, if you have a US model N64 you can just cut some buts of plastic out of the cart slot and make it a us and jap NTSC machine.

You should probably have a NTSC machine anyway PAL games really suffer badly on the N64 and it locks you out of doing a RGB mod.

I can't even think of a PAL exclusive worth playing. Genuinely there's usually something weird like the Firemen or Alien Soldier but nothing comes to mind with the N64.

Felt like playing a PS2 game. Originally was going to make another attempt at Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter until I realised I've only the PAL version on the hard disk which was absolutely ruined by the changes they made to it.

Decided instead on Steambot Chronicles. It's an irem developed open world sandbox game featuring petrol powered mechs that have tank controls. And when I say tank controls I'm mean real tank controls, think Katamari. The first thing to get over is the controls. It's one of those annoying game that doesn't let you invert the axis in a menu. I'm one of gods chosen that inverts the y-axis so I'm ok there but it's one of those Japanese games that inverts the X axis. It's not as bad as it seems since this only applies to walking around, the mech controls better.

The mechs are also tough to get used to but you'll give it time and it's second nature.

When I say that steambot chronicles is an open world sandbox, I mean it more like an actual sandbox game and not something like GTA. You are locked into a path at first but the game eventually opens up and you can go anywhere and take part in a variety of minigames and subquests, most of which is where the main charm of the game lies. It's a game you just relax and get lost in its charming world. Theres multiple decisions for you to make that dictate the outcome of the story. It's got a lot more in common with Shenmue than modern open world games. There's a lot of emphasis on music. The main group you hang around with are a touring band and you can play a variety of musical instruments, each one with its own rhythm minigame.

That game kind of doesn't have the budget to keep up with all ideas the game has. I find it looked very charming even if not cutting edge. There are some glaring graphical problems, like an inconsistent framerates, polygon tearing and screen tearing. I think it's worth putting up with though just experience the world. Sometimes it will even surprise you with the scale of some of the enemies and bosses

Anyway I'm looking forward to travelling through this world while busking with a group of mech riding musicians.

The sequel was in development for PS3 but was cancelled when item closed down. Granzella seem to have picked up the rights to most item properties and even made Disaster Report 4, another game that was cancelled when item closed. The director of the company was the producer of the game and has said he would love to do a sequel or remake but there's been no word on it for a while and he is worried it wouldn't sell. There's some tgs footage of the game which looked well into development and also really good.

How are you getting on with faselei!? I never managed to get past I think the 3rd mission which is the first proper challenging one. I think I needed to grind a little more and I kept running out of ammo. Kimimi had a great write up on it recently and I want to get back into it and I've quite enjoyed Sacnoths other games.

They really fucked up Dragon Quarter in PAL regions. It's a rogue like game but got hammered in the US as the genre wasn't understood. So they changed the game for the worst. You can't carry stuff over from a failed run of the game and even worse is they totally fucked up the save system. In the original you had to spend save tokens at save points to save, like the ribbons in Resi. It wasn't a big deal. However you could make a temporary save anywhere which was deleted on loading the game. This is pretty much essential as it can be 1-2 hours between save points.

So what did they do in the PAL version, they start you with 10 save tokens and removed the quick save meaning you have to play for ages to save. It ruins the game.

Anyway if you do try it gets the NTSC version. It's a wonderful game and once you get the third character the battle system becomes incredible. Wonderful Hitoshi Sakamoto soundtrack as well, it's more electronic than his other stuff, so more Gradius V than FF Tactics.