If it comes off that I've not blogged before, there's a reason for that. But I have loads of free time at the moment and some large backlogs of games to get thru, so why not catalogue the adventure? Publicly even!

Super Mario Brothers 2

Parts 1 & 2

Any gamer worth his weight in gray plastic NES cartridges knows this bad boy was originally released under a different name. In fact, there weren't any female characters in the game at all! Thank goodness for Americanized porting! Princess got a chance to shine in action, and she did not disappoint.

The game is about as far away from the original SMB as you can get, with jumping, the odd turtle shell, and the super star being about the only similarities. Instead of jumping to destroy bricks, you pull up vegetables (at verying speeds based on which of the four characters you chose to play a level with) and huck 'em at bad guys. There's more to it, of course, but that's the gist - and the tactic for most boss fights.

Starting the game with that first big fall brought back all sorts of memories. It wasn't long before I remembered how certain areas let you go off screen and appear on the other side (a useful tactic for my last boss fight). I had nearly forgotten about the red potions and the mirror world, but I got a few mushrooms early on to boost my health (you start with 2 bits of health and can increase it by one for every mushroom you pick up in mirror world).

Making my way thru 1-1 I completely skipped about half the level without knowing it. It wasn't until later, while consulting a map on gamefaqs, that I saw how much I bypassed by being a skilled bomb dropper in the first cave. So much aerial adventuring I coulda had! Oh well, one Birdo down.

The end of 1-2 surprised me, as it was also Birdo. Nothing new or difficult, just... Birdo. Cheers. This gonna be a recurring theme? I can't quite remember.

1-3 held a final boss battle that was a little trickier. Running thru with Luigi was going well till the end when Mouser showed up. He chucks three bombs in quick succession and you have to toss one back at him that blows up when he's nearby. Only a few tries until he goes to that big rat trap in the sky.

Upon getting to world 2 and finding a vase to climb down, I am confronted with the music I've been dying to hear since I started this game up:



Awww yeah. Not sure why that needs almost two minutes of a youtube, but what the hell? Jumping snakes and digging, and... Birdo. Goddamnit! Followed by more of the same, but at least Birdo randomly shoots a fireball in the mix of eggs. 2-3 finishes strong with an encounter starring Tryclyde. So many heads, so many fireballs, so many mushroom blocks. At least, that's what I found out they're called. I always just thought they were some random bricks you could throw. Either way, two tries for Tryclyde left me feeling short-changed and underwhelmed as you didn't have to vary your strategy much to deal with him.

World 3 is kinda missing a coherent theme. Starts off in the clouds, ends up underground with another Mouser fight. I won't lie: I skipped the boss battle as I was getting frustrated with some of the platform jumping mid 3-3. Stopped playing for the day here, actually.

Picked up in World 4 the next day by use of warp points. Them red potions came in handy if you knew where to place 'em, given that there was no save method, and I was not playing by emulator. Certainly coulda skipped ahead to start with, but I'm trying to cheat as little as possible.

World 4 brings us to a coherent set of stages - the ice stages. Absolutely one of my least favorite gimmicks in games, slipperiness is. But with ****ty mechanics come awesome rewards: the mother****ing rocket ship! Hell yeah!! A fast-paced limbo thru 4-2 and another Birdo and it's boss stage time. Some Phanto action in this stage (remember those eerie smiling masks that floated around when you'd pick up keys?) and apparently an almost entirely skipable stage. May go back to see if it's true. Fryguy ends up being nearly as easy as Tryclyde. Get a lucky break after he splits apart and kill 3 out of 4 of mini-fires in one swift mushroom block drop. Bwamp! The final one is easy to lure between two blocks and squash, thus securing my victory with no deaths.

On to... World 5!

Or maybe tomorrow. 5-1 has this god awful section where you have to jump from one jumping fish's head to the next, and I did not pick the right character for that action. Princess, you're up!

Side note - does anyone know the insane logic behind the slot machine payouts at the end of each level? I understand getting three turnips or shyguys gives a 1 up, but so apparently does 1 shyguy, 1 cherry, and 1 star. Very odd combos giving me extra lives.

Enjoying the game so far, if not frustrating at some points. Think I'm a hair more than half done, so maybe can knock out the rest in the next few days or something.

Yessssssssssssssssssssss

I spent a lot of hours playing that game as a kid, good stuff Low Key thanks for the trip down memory lane.

You are going to enjoy the surprise toward the end of 7-2

Ashley - the ending? I've played the game through before. When I was a kid and children would have pizza parties and go swimming and poke sticks in each other's wieners at camp. Thankfully I never went camping. But we did kill this game at a pool and pizza party. So I know what happens at the end. Unless you meant some other sort of surprise that I may have missed before.

Sidetrack

This will happen a lot because I have no attention span and constantly move from one game to another. Well... when I'm not playing WoW at least. Which I'm not anymore. Hence me finding time to do things like eating throughout the day.

Chrono Trigger

Day One

Gizmo quite excited that I started playing this one. Made a new, non-plus save file. Going sans-badass gear for now. Want to try to work for everything and get stuff as early as possible.

Beat up the robot and got a few good race bets in. Forgot your silver points are only good for dolls via minigame and trading for G. (Gizmo says G is for Gil, I say it is for Gold) Calculated that I'd need about 54 victories against the robot to get the Lode Sword, which was 4k G. Decided against it, as that doesn't take into account health potions or whatever they're called that I'd have to purchase.

In AD 600, found a bronze mail that I had never got in the castle. Woo! Why had I never gone up that side? Meticulously made my way through the cathedral and found the Magus statue room that I had also not seen before. Goddamn! I thought I knew this game! Kicked Yakra's butt with little effort, gogo x-strike! Lucca even got some good shots off.

At this point I should mention names. I nearly went with some creative names, but then I remembered how many damn characters there were in this game and decided against it. True story: Giz's last play through she named all the characters after bbv4l posters. Sucks that you can only use 5 letters. What kind of restriction is that? You could do 5 letters on NES, no? Isn't that how the auto-warp to world two in Zelda worked? Or did you put in a four letter name?

Anyhow, missed a freaking power tab on my way back to AD 1k castle, ****! Not gonna be back there for a while. In jail and, uh, apparently you don't have to piss off the guards. In fact, if you chill out, then you get to have Lucca gain xp while you escape. Never. Freaking. Knew. Got my Lode Sword finally after crawling down a hole, just in time to *something witty* the dragon-mo-tron.

AD 2.3k or so. Dd you now if you hang out on the over world map for a while, your health starts to drain? Stops at 1 hp, not that I got there, but still never knew about that either. REVEAL YOUR SECRETS TO ME.

Ended in something or rather dome just before the race. Saved some coin not upgrading Marle's weapon since there was a bow in a box on the way, woot!

Excited to play more, but I have to wait for Giz to be around cuz she loves watching. (Not like that, perv!)

I don't know why it's such a compulsion, but I really like, on subsequent plays through, to make sure I have every possible upgrade available to me. Make sure I'm not missing anything, ya know? Like that damn power tab that I MUST remember to get. Rabble.

Second last scene from 7-2 with the hawk door thing

can i play chrono trigger with you

I think I know what you mean, and I was wondering when that would happen. Thought maybe it was mid game but I guess that explains why it hasn't happened yet.
I'm not sure how that would work, it being a single player game and all. Did like Secret of Mana have multiplayer?

You can use the controller and I will pretend to be magus and be sort of like a disembodied voice and tell you the wrong things to do

That would be weird. I hear disembodied voices in this house enough without doing it on purpose, thank you very much.

Chrono Trigger

Day Two

So many new secrets. Well, two or so. Three if you count the race log I didn't get before or after kicking Johnny's butt.

The boss fights seem to have more control aspects in them than I ever realized. After getting magic and working through the, err, cave of magic, the final boss - Hekran, who normally was a bit of a healing strain, was a lot easier now that I was actively looking for his counter-attack pose. Didn't get a single water wall or whatever it was called. Worried an aura whirl might've triggered one at one point, but it did not. Surprisingly easy fight without that mechanic to deal with.

Trekked back to Guardia forest and got that power tab I'd missed. Don't have to keep reminding myself about it all day long anymore, woo! Oh, and you can use shelters on the over world map? Woulda been good to know.

Got the silver earring and, uh, the other silver thing. Necklace? Rock? The ones that increase hp 25% & reduce mp use by 50%. Not that I'll ever use the hp one. Masa & Mune was a good fight. Got them combined pretty quickly, maybe two rounds? They seemed to x strike counterattack anyone who hit them, but only attacked one person if you dual-teched them. Woo! Their combined form was, as always, harder, but again with the new secrets! Never thought much of them using slash on me. But when I used it during his "storing tornado power," well, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he got interrupted. Made the whole encounter much easier.

One thing this game does pretty well is giving you a reason to use new magics after you discover them. Like the whole cave of magic thing right after you first learn magic. And it makes sense given the part of the world you're on, near the mystics and all. So it works from a mechanics and story point of view. Very well done imo.

Also, took Spekkio down at 15. Marle bit the dust early, so it was just Crono and Lucca, but they managed to pull it out. Helped that Lucca had on the Taban vest for reduced fire damage.

Looking forward to finding all the secrets of 65MM bc. Gonna go Nu hunting imo.

All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my belief! ...At least for now.

What's the best chocolaty drink in the chronoverse?

after you beat lavos it turns out that lavos is your psychiatrist and the police find you and marle had stockholm syndrome the entire time.

lol

Come on LK, you gotta let him play now!

That's not really "playing," in the traditional sense, afaik.

I think my iPod is dying. It keeps showing Alice in Chains' Dirt album art for every album. Weird.

Chrono Trigger

Day Three

From 65MM BC to 65MM BC. What a journey!

No really, holy crap, talk about all the surprises I've missed in this goddamn game. I knew this game had Nus, but finding them where I did was quite new to me. I think I'd always been in the wrong area looking for the "rare" monsters during rain, but it never rained. Clearly because I wasn't in the right goddamn place. Funny how being in the appropriate zone can change their spawn rate to > 0.

After figuring out there's only 3 spawn points and they don't respawn until you leave, started getting Ayla some tech points quick like. Got Charm and found a Nu for Crono's worst weapon in the game: the mop. Awesome! I gotta use it at some point just to see the animation.

Each Nu drops 3 of each the horn, petal, banana peel, and dinosaur diaper or whatever the other two currencies are. Had about 80 of each after grinding, bought one of every item to see how much they vendored for, and then walked away about 40 minutes later about 150k G more wealthy. Sadly, I did this who,e process at exactly the wrong time, given that the vendor has the upgraded weapons (that you can charm off mobs in the volcano area shortly) a little later on in the game. Coulda made sooo much more. Oh well. Gil doesn't seem in short supply. Hell, I blew 10k G on jerky just to see the King flip out on Marle. Money well spent.

Oh, the secrets. The weevils that burrow holes in the volcano or mountain or whatever? Didn't know you could interact with them while they were digging and make them dig somewhere else. Quite helpful! I'm sure the boss here had some gimmick that I never knew about, but I'm on the ipad and it's been wiping the reply box clean if I browse tabs so I won't risk swapping to see what his name was or what his gimmick was. Probably lightning related. Seems to be the thing for dino-fellas.

Anyhow, red rock acquired, Melchior confused, Masamune restored!

Magus's lair was fairly straightforward. Did slash first for the sword, but it was worse than the aeon blade I'd charmed off a what's it so meh. Accidentally took in two water characters and couldn't swap, so the big fight took quite a while. New things in here: you can stand still on the platformer areas and not engage the rolling mobs. Won't give away huge end game spoilers, but I'll just say thanks Magus, for summoning Lavos and sucking us back in time. Appreciate it. At least I'll get Ayla back soon. She's one of my faves if I didn't already mention it.

Up next, Tyranno Lair...

Update?

I never finished this game but it's fantastic. A "retro" I recommend next for PS1 is FF8. An underrated and misunderstood title.

Currently I am going through all the 360 games I missed during the last several years due to being broke. On Mass Effect 2, about 12 hours in.

Wow - for someone who has never blogged, you sure type a lot.

I think Giz has demanded that I do Chrono Cross next since I've never played it before and she has a copy. Dunno when I'll get around to it though, we've got our wedding soon and will be out of state for that.

Chrono Trigger

Days Four thru Finale

Not much that hasn't already been covered, really. Decided against doing the black Omen 3-4 times for maximum xp gain (wholly unnecessary as Lavos was dead before he could rez his other arm twice anyway). Just more stuff that was surprisingly easier when you knew what to expect/more logic in the battle than I would have thought possible for the time.

Which is impressive in its own right. One of my fave oldies which seems ripe for this sort of thing, Earthbound, had about 2 boss fights with mechanics afaik. One was to paralyze the boss, the other was to throw fly honey at the boss and paralyze him. Some of the later ones have cool stuff with the shields, but that seems about the long and the short of it.

Ayla sure got me loads of crap in that last stretch. Finished the game with something like 9 Gold Studs, and coulda got at least 4 more.

If I mentioned using the Nu drops to buy stuff, that happened a few more times later when there was better gear. Ended the game with a bit over 1 million G, which was a touch higher than Giz's 60k G, though her final characters were of a higher level than mine.

Really don't know what to do next. Always love a run thru Super Mario RPG, but there's also some old RPGs I never got thru, like Secret of Mana. Majora's Mask might be a good one, and I know Giz is psyched up for wanting a Wii U now that they announced a WindWaker HD rerelease.

One of the funnest runs of an older game i ever did was finishing Ocarina of Time with 3 hearts, no shield, a broken giant's sword and no bottle usage. Fights require an insane amount of strategy, particularly the fire temple boss and shadow temple.

LK do FF3 next. Or perhaps 7th Saga.