02/25/24 UDPATE: After a weekend binge of beating NES/SNES games (short arcade loops, fighters/brawlers, as well as adding in some stuff I beat as a kid that I forgot to enter), I have now achieved my goal of the
Triple Retro Hundo, 100 beaten games on each of the NES/SNES/Genesis. I believe I can officially put the Nintendo consoles to bed now, but I will likely never stop playing my one true love, the Sega Genesis, even if it's mostly just replaying stuff for fun at this point.
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2023 was an amazing year of Retro Redemption. A total of
25 games were rescued from the
pile, including a dozen JRPG's that I left unfinished a couple decades ago. I'm extremely proud of how everything went, and so now it's time for new experiences in 2024, retro and otherwise:
The Nintendo DS: If there's one popular library out there I've never really explored much of, it's this one. I'm looking to dive in and play a bunch of games on it this year. What's cool too is things should generally be nice-looking 2D pixel art instead of aged early 3D. The GBA seems to be mined out already, so I'm ready to move on to its successor. Also...
Wait, MORE retro RPG's??: Well, see, now that I've finished all the ones I dropped before, now it's time to play some more PSX RPG's that I've never tried at all. I've identified another dozen (not that I'll probably beat them all this year of course) and am going to attempt to play them without guides, as I don't feel that they'll be cryptic enough on a casual playthrough. And, they should also be nice 2D pixel art! Which, speaking of....
You're *still* playing the NES/Genesis/SNES?: I mean, yeah! Actually a long term goal I will slowly pick away at is to get to 100 NES and SNES games beaten (I got the 100 Genesis in 2023), to complete the Triple Retro Hundo. Then, I'll be done....maybe....possibly. I can pretty much always do a Sega Fun Run of any one of several dozen titles on the Genesis, as it *is* my favorite system after all. Speaking of replay value:
You're *STILL* playing the Z3R/SMZ3 randomizers?!: Yes, and there's still some new challenges with the Crosskeys and SMZ3 Hard logic settings, but I just like playing it anyway. Put another way, eventually the tournaments, races, and community as a whole will dry up someday (though probably not anytime soon), so I'd like to be engaged while it's still around. But don't worry:
PS5 Game Catalog Subscription: I still play new games! Even though Sony raised the price, I feel that the subscription represents a great value, because if you play more than 2 full-priced games a year then it's paid for itself. Most new games are one-and-done experiences for me so it works out, and there will always be more games on there than I would ever have time to finish.
So that's the plan for 2024! I will try to avoid nulling too much.
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2023 RPG Rankings:
1) Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster
2) Shining Force 1 & 2 (tie)
4) Final Fantasy 3 Pixel Remaster
5) Star Ocean 2
6) Final Fantasy 5 Pixel Remaster
7) Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
8) Final Fantasy 2 (GBA)
9) Golden Sun: The Lost Age
10) Final Fantasy 8
11) The Legend of Dragoon
.
.
.
.
.
12) Chrono Cross
That said I will share this bit about the Spider-Man games I saw in an article a few days ago as the last bit gave me some thoughts.
"The first Spider-Man title sold over 22 million units, while Miles Morales sold 10-15MM. Early sales declines suggest Spider-Man 2 may fall short of both of its predecessors. And according to some reports, Insomniac has considered splitting up Spider-Man 3 into two $50 parts in order to address its $385MM budget."
Craziness.
EDIT: I've caught none of it but congrats on your LttP tourney life still continuing, I'm sure your mentor is proud if they are still a thing?
EDIT #2: Congrats on completing Spider-man 2 (and doing fairly solid in the LttP tourney as well). I will give the game credit, they went much further with the whole Venom deal than I anticipated.
DS EDIT: I did not have the year of DS starting off worse than the year of retro jrpgs, maybe the issue is combining the two (it's 15 years old, that might count as retro) >_>
DS EDIT #2: Aww, Kirby Canvas Curse was one of my fave DS games too. FWIW I don't recall there being any wild stylus requirements, it was more just drawing paths and such.
I'm not sure anything requiring the DS mic ever worked all that well aside from the most basic things, but I also don't remember it being that frequently used.
I just looked up said boss fights and can see the issues. Oddly enough reading it I was thinking "that sounds like a bad version of Rocket Slime's boss fights" but... nope, completely different.
FINAL EDIT: Sure you can beat 100 games on all those consoles yet the one time I suggest you a SNES game you drop it within a half hour
15 years seems impossibly long (I think I left my account mostly vacant the first couple years), but here's to 15 more~
FINALLER EDIT: Curious what you end up thinking of Disco Elysium, it's on my list to get to... eventually.