I honestly don't remember the last time a single week was this overloaded with stuff that makes me go "Oooooooh!"
So we're going to kick off with the only thing that makes me go "ooooh" that is *not* on the Switch, because otherwise I'll forget about it and that is Sandland. The video game adaptation of the non Dragonball/Quest thing that Akira Toriyama was always really eager to make a whole big deal. And while I have the anime on my to watch backlog, I have made no efforts to make that dream of his come true. That's on me. And I really should work on fixing that as my understanding is "It's Mad Max but with Toriyama monsters and robots" and *BY GOD* there's no faster way to get to my heart short of caving in my chest.
Anyway... it's that thing I just said.
Anyway, speaking of things I should by all accounts love, we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wrath of the Mutants, a port of the *third* TMNT arcade game; the one that came out a few years ago and was based on the 2012 CG series that, honestly... I was kind of lukewarm on. It was *fine*, but, y'know... not enthralled. And, as in the tradition of the other home ports of arcade TMNT games, there's more levels and bosses than in the original.
My only exposure to this game was seeing it in the wild, but wedged between a Street Fighter 4 cabinet and a Guardians of the Galaxy pinball table so, honestly... my focus was elsewhere. But it's a TMNT arcade game so I feel confident in saying it's an attractive and fun, if not especially deep, beat-em-up.
And speaking of spirtual remakes of old game, which we are now; next we Lunar Lander Beyond. Which I at first throught was part of the Recharged line of gussied up Atari 2600 remakes, but it's not. It's MUCH gussier than those. While the original was a pretty rudimentary "Land this spaceship safely when the gravity is weird and the ground is lumpy" kind of deal, this here is a great deal more expansive with a bunch of unique pilots and ships and upgrades and weird planets full of Astro Catastrophes, jacked up gravity and good ol' fashioned Space Madness to thread the needle around.
And pivotting to games that are not technically remakes of classic games, but it's very, very clear that they're supposed to be and is released in open defiance of Konamis refusal to do anything with that series since, like, 2010, we have Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, which is only Not a New Suikoden Game because the title is under a copyright. You're a mite bit tired of living under the oppressive yoke of tyranny so you elect to RPG your way into building your own damn country made of 108 weirdos and freaks and deciding to overthrow someone elses government for a change. It's easily among the RPGs I've been most jazzed for this year, but apparently the Switch port has some really severe technical issues and that's what I want to play it on so... umm... might wait for a patch or two or at least some impressions, before taking a whack at it.
And heck, why not keep with the Old Games train, since we're riding these rails anyway; and you just KNOW that means we're talking about nothing less than The Epyx Collection; a compilation of no fewer than 6 Atari Lynx games; zoomed in to completely fill a modern TV screen! There's Blue Lightning (which, technically, isn't Afterburner), California Games (featuring about half-ish of the contents of the consoles and computer ports of California Games), Gates of Zenocon and Zarlor Mercenary (both shmups) and, more significantly, Electrocop (kind of a 3rd person maze exploration game? Pretty unique and hard to compare to anything else) and Todds Adventure in Slime World (arguably the best title in the Lynx library, a co-op Troid-em-up on a gross goo-world).
Todds Adventure alone justifies the asking price, honestly, even if the extreme zoom in makes half the games borderline unplayable.
And speaking of ports of handheld games, Class of Heroes 1 & 2 (also available individually) is also one of those! They're a pair of first person Dungeon Crawlers, of the Wizardry type! But two that were released after Etrian Odyssey reinvented that genre by making it much more accessible, and before Eliminage and Stranger of Sword City refined the Wizardry style to a brilliant sheen, so it just kind of... wasn't that great at either approach. But it IS a genre I love, so it has that going for it.
But then I saw some of the screenshots it was choosing to advertise itself with and I said "Oh... this... is not you putting your best foot forward, folks"
Our next New Game Posing as an Old Game is Wrath: Aeon of Ruin. Specifically, the game which it barely isn't, is Quake! And, honestly, while I never cared too much for Quake compared to its poppa, I can't look at the trailer for this and not start humming E1M1 so it clearly understands the assignment.
Become John Romero's illegitimate child because, while they are rage, brutal and without mercy. You will be worse. So why don't y'all get on down to the Ageless Seas and rip and tear, until it is done?
And speaking of... umm... navigating 3d puzzle labyrinths; Dadish 3D! A game where you are a dad who is a radish! In 3D!
Find your dang ol' missing kids, you Dadish!
Zau is next and it too is a platformer, but it's more specifically a project from the actor Abubakar Salim who said "Hey, why don't I make a Troid-em-up about Bantu folklore? And make it an emotional journey about dealing with traumatic loss!
And by god he did, and this is it! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
And if that's not enough psychological journies about trauma in the face of assured death, how about Insurmountable! A game where you're confronted by the awesome power... of the that radical rock, The Aggrocrag and figure "Well... I'mma climb that sucker." But unlike in, say, Celeste, where you'll eventually get to the top because that's the metaphor for overcoming obstacles it's going for... this is a roguelike mountain climbing game so y'all are going to leave a lot of real chilly corpses all up and down that mountain.
Choose your hill to die on, in Insurmountable!
On a vastly different psychological wavelength, next we have the *other* game I was most jazzed for in a week that is *pure jazz*; Megaton Musashi: Wired, which is a little bit of Armored Core except vastly less... commited to it's thin veneer of realism. It is to Armored Core as GoGaiGar was to Gundam. Well... maybe Getter Robo is a better point of comparison since... those characters are straight up in this.
Customize yourself a giant super robot and beat the holy crap out of an army of comparably giant evil robots because your hand burns with an awesome power that cries out to punch a space monster inside out.
And speaking of.... umm... crabby behaviour... Another Crabs Treasure is next and it looks Crabsolutely Crabulous! It's a Souls-em-up (Shells-em-up?) where you're a hermit crab tasked with tracking down your missing shell after it was repossessed... and also every other crustacean in the sea has gone a bit... Souls NPC-y because of Garbage Pollution frying their little crabby brains so you're going to have to dodge roll and parry to cleave new shells out of their cold dead crab-meat.
And finally, we're closing things out with SaGa Emerald Beyond, the first brand new SaGa game in... quite a while but I'm not sure how long. It seems to learn pretty hard on Scarlet Grace in terms of basic gameplay, however, it also seems to have understood my greatest complaint with that game in that the cast was woefully underserved in terms of letting me play as Cool Weirdos. This one is, like, Entirely Weirdos. "Two Kids in a Trench Coat, Taciturn Maid Who speaks in Death Metal, a Sailor Moon who equips Cats instead of Swords", that kind of weirdo.
So... obviously I'm on board.
Okay... that's everything I know about this week. I'm going to go start robbing stage coaches to repair the damage this threads done to my wallet..
So we're going to kick off with the only thing that makes me go "ooooh" that is *not* on the Switch, because otherwise I'll forget about it and that is Sandland. The video game adaptation of the non Dragonball/Quest thing that Akira Toriyama was always really eager to make a whole big deal. And while I have the anime on my to watch backlog, I have made no efforts to make that dream of his come true. That's on me. And I really should work on fixing that as my understanding is "It's Mad Max but with Toriyama monsters and robots" and *BY GOD* there's no faster way to get to my heart short of caving in my chest.
Anyway... it's that thing I just said.
Anyway, speaking of things I should by all accounts love, we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wrath of the Mutants, a port of the *third* TMNT arcade game; the one that came out a few years ago and was based on the 2012 CG series that, honestly... I was kind of lukewarm on. It was *fine*, but, y'know... not enthralled. And, as in the tradition of the other home ports of arcade TMNT games, there's more levels and bosses than in the original.
My only exposure to this game was seeing it in the wild, but wedged between a Street Fighter 4 cabinet and a Guardians of the Galaxy pinball table so, honestly... my focus was elsewhere. But it's a TMNT arcade game so I feel confident in saying it's an attractive and fun, if not especially deep, beat-em-up.
And speaking of spirtual remakes of old game, which we are now; next we Lunar Lander Beyond. Which I at first throught was part of the Recharged line of gussied up Atari 2600 remakes, but it's not. It's MUCH gussier than those. While the original was a pretty rudimentary "Land this spaceship safely when the gravity is weird and the ground is lumpy" kind of deal, this here is a great deal more expansive with a bunch of unique pilots and ships and upgrades and weird planets full of Astro Catastrophes, jacked up gravity and good ol' fashioned Space Madness to thread the needle around.
And pivotting to games that are not technically remakes of classic games, but it's very, very clear that they're supposed to be and is released in open defiance of Konamis refusal to do anything with that series since, like, 2010, we have Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, which is only Not a New Suikoden Game because the title is under a copyright. You're a mite bit tired of living under the oppressive yoke of tyranny so you elect to RPG your way into building your own damn country made of 108 weirdos and freaks and deciding to overthrow someone elses government for a change. It's easily among the RPGs I've been most jazzed for this year, but apparently the Switch port has some really severe technical issues and that's what I want to play it on so... umm... might wait for a patch or two or at least some impressions, before taking a whack at it.
And heck, why not keep with the Old Games train, since we're riding these rails anyway; and you just KNOW that means we're talking about nothing less than The Epyx Collection; a compilation of no fewer than 6 Atari Lynx games; zoomed in to completely fill a modern TV screen! There's Blue Lightning (which, technically, isn't Afterburner), California Games (featuring about half-ish of the contents of the consoles and computer ports of California Games), Gates of Zenocon and Zarlor Mercenary (both shmups) and, more significantly, Electrocop (kind of a 3rd person maze exploration game? Pretty unique and hard to compare to anything else) and Todds Adventure in Slime World (arguably the best title in the Lynx library, a co-op Troid-em-up on a gross goo-world).
Todds Adventure alone justifies the asking price, honestly, even if the extreme zoom in makes half the games borderline unplayable.
And speaking of ports of handheld games, Class of Heroes 1 & 2 (also available individually) is also one of those! They're a pair of first person Dungeon Crawlers, of the Wizardry type! But two that were released after Etrian Odyssey reinvented that genre by making it much more accessible, and before Eliminage and Stranger of Sword City refined the Wizardry style to a brilliant sheen, so it just kind of... wasn't that great at either approach. But it IS a genre I love, so it has that going for it.
But then I saw some of the screenshots it was choosing to advertise itself with and I said "Oh... this... is not you putting your best foot forward, folks"
Our next New Game Posing as an Old Game is Wrath: Aeon of Ruin. Specifically, the game which it barely isn't, is Quake! And, honestly, while I never cared too much for Quake compared to its poppa, I can't look at the trailer for this and not start humming E1M1 so it clearly understands the assignment.
Become John Romero's illegitimate child because, while they are rage, brutal and without mercy. You will be worse. So why don't y'all get on down to the Ageless Seas and rip and tear, until it is done?
And speaking of... umm... navigating 3d puzzle labyrinths; Dadish 3D! A game where you are a dad who is a radish! In 3D!
Find your dang ol' missing kids, you Dadish!
Zau is next and it too is a platformer, but it's more specifically a project from the actor Abubakar Salim who said "Hey, why don't I make a Troid-em-up about Bantu folklore? And make it an emotional journey about dealing with traumatic loss!
And by god he did, and this is it! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
And if that's not enough psychological journies about trauma in the face of assured death, how about Insurmountable! A game where you're confronted by the awesome power... of the that radical rock, The Aggrocrag and figure "Well... I'mma climb that sucker." But unlike in, say, Celeste, where you'll eventually get to the top because that's the metaphor for overcoming obstacles it's going for... this is a roguelike mountain climbing game so y'all are going to leave a lot of real chilly corpses all up and down that mountain.
Choose your hill to die on, in Insurmountable!
On a vastly different psychological wavelength, next we have the *other* game I was most jazzed for in a week that is *pure jazz*; Megaton Musashi: Wired, which is a little bit of Armored Core except vastly less... commited to it's thin veneer of realism. It is to Armored Core as GoGaiGar was to Gundam. Well... maybe Getter Robo is a better point of comparison since... those characters are straight up in this.
Customize yourself a giant super robot and beat the holy crap out of an army of comparably giant evil robots because your hand burns with an awesome power that cries out to punch a space monster inside out.
And speaking of.... umm... crabby behaviour... Another Crabs Treasure is next and it looks Crabsolutely Crabulous! It's a Souls-em-up (Shells-em-up?) where you're a hermit crab tasked with tracking down your missing shell after it was repossessed... and also every other crustacean in the sea has gone a bit... Souls NPC-y because of Garbage Pollution frying their little crabby brains so you're going to have to dodge roll and parry to cleave new shells out of their cold dead crab-meat.
And finally, we're closing things out with SaGa Emerald Beyond, the first brand new SaGa game in... quite a while but I'm not sure how long. It seems to learn pretty hard on Scarlet Grace in terms of basic gameplay, however, it also seems to have understood my greatest complaint with that game in that the cast was woefully underserved in terms of letting me play as Cool Weirdos. This one is, like, Entirely Weirdos. "Two Kids in a Trench Coat, Taciturn Maid Who speaks in Death Metal, a Sailor Moon who equips Cats instead of Swords", that kind of weirdo.
So... obviously I'm on board.
Okay... that's everything I know about this week. I'm going to go start robbing stage coaches to repair the damage this threads done to my wallet..
