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Digital Down-Low for 04/20/2024: Never Stop the ~Hustle

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Congratulations to everyone who drank a full liter of water yesterday. Everyone else; I’m personally disappointed in you.

This week isn’t especially leaden with new stuff worthy of hammering on about (though there’s an Indie Direct scheduled for tomorrow), and that’s okay because next week is going to be wallet obliterating. So let’s enjoy just a tiny financial reprieve. That being said, the first game is one that makes me go “Oh, hmm… OKAY!; Dream Tactics! Which is leading off by ticking several of the key trigger phrases for catching my interest; it’s an SRPG with Deckbuilding mechanics. You’re an aspiring witch who’s just too ’eepy to learn how to do magic and that works out great because it’s the friggin’ snoozy world that’s in peril from evil pillow monsters. So SRPG your way through the Dream World and beat the stuffing out of them.

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Grounded is a game from Microsoft Studios, makers of such wonderful programs as Windows ‘95, and Encarta! But this, however, instead of being an operating system, is a crafting style adventure game based on Honey I Shrunk the Kids. You’ve got a bunch of kids who went from Teens to Teensy and now have to survive and thrive in the backyard amidst the now enormous bugs and Kaiju-birds while building weapons and suppled out of dirt and sticks.

Fortcraft your way through Large Bees!


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Now, do you wish to solve your personal problems with violence, but more specifically with the dignified kind of violence that makes people say “Why, I *never*!” and causes monocles to pop out? Well, good news, because The Rose & Camellia Collection is here for everyone interested in Pride with Extreme Prejudice. It’s Punch Out except with stuffy Victorian Aristocrats to slap the holy bajeezus out of instead of broad ethnic stereotypes.

It includes the four mainline games as well as Rose & Camille vs. La Mulana, which is assuredly the crossover event everyone was clamoring for.

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Speaking of Crossover revivals nobody ever possible predicted, we have Ikki Unite! The eShop makes no bones about being as surprised by this news as anyone is. Ikki is remembered for (if its remembered at all, at least) being a pretty early kusage Famicom that… honestly wasn’t that bad when it was part of a 30-in-1 multi cart. I mean, it was terrible in any other context, but that specific one, it was fine enough. Granted, it was no Battle City, but it was certainly better than Circus Charlie. It was also the basis of one of the levels in Blaster Master Zero 2.

In this case, it’s a Vampire Survivors knockoff, with 16-player co-op which, honestly, not *that* far off from the original game. Just… y’know… almost certainly more playable.

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Arc Runner is a rogue-y style pew-pew em up that looks like it’s leaning on Risk of Rain, except if everyone looked like a Daft Punk, and you were in space, trying to blow up a giant cyber-eyeball.

Hate to blame the victim, but I think, at this point, you should know not to build a super computer that looks like a giant Cyber-Eyeball. They never work right.

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Now how about some old games. You want to hear about them, well HA! I tricked ya! Because Corn Kidz 64 ain’t one! Even though it has those two numbers in its title that oh-so-eloquently imply that a video game came out between 1996 and 2001. But this was deliberate trickery on behalf of the developerr, so don’t blame me! It also has a kind of French Comic Strip comic style. Can’t say any specific examples of which artist, but my heart feels like saying this is a true statement, and I can’t argue with that.

Anyway, it’s a 3D platformer where everything looks all Banjo Kazooie-y.

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Now a more faithful example of a port of an old video game you likely ain’t played before is EGG Console Hydlide 2! It doens’t look appreciably different from Hydlide 1, and from what the eShop tells me it’s “Hydlide but more of it” and a plot described as “The protagonist is chosen by God for their pure heart to embark on an adventure to seal away evil consciousness”. Which I believe was also the plot of Ultima 4, but I’ll mame an educated guess that it doesn’t work quite as elaborately in this instance.

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And finally, why, we have 3 new Super Nintendo games on the NSO! Two of which you’ve likely never payed before and one which you may have and, if so… well, I can understand why you wouldn’t be jazzed. Super R-Type is kiiiiiiinda a mush-mash of R-Type 1 and 2 that really works best as a showcase for what the SNES lacked by not having Blast Processing, Sugoi Hebereke is a weird Power Stone/Mega Man Soccer type of dealy starring the peeps from Ufouria which has to be the weirdest explanatory sentence I’ve ever written and Wrecking Crew ‘98 is the long awaited sequel to Wrecking Crew that expanded the original games ”Rampage, Except With Mario Instead of King Kong” gameplay in ways that I don’t know what are because I didn’t play this yet.


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MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
From my attempt at dabbling with Wrecking Crew '98 a few years back, I think they basically turned it into a competitive puzzle game with color/tile-matching. Tetris and Puyo Puyo did things to people's brains and everybody wanted to make the next big thing. Especially Nintendo.
 
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