Trans retro gamer (she / her), sometimes translator, and mostly dormant streamer over at https://www.twitch.tv/barleybap.
1. Enter Figaro
2. Meet Edgar
3. Immediately leave Figaro to listen to the world map theme for five minutes straight
4. Weep
"Most people just want to see you fail, but not me. I'm just letting you fail to teach you a lesson, see? Totally different."
Still above average, and I do think it's a problem more in the first half of the game than the second. And the great music and nice visuals mostly carry its weaker elements. But a shame the level design and pacing isn't quite as satisfying as the rest of the package.
Still above average, and I do think it's a problem more in the first half of the game than the second. And the great music and nice visuals carry its weaker elements. But a shame the level design and pacing isn't quite as satisfying as the rest of the package.
Yeah, it really is a bit too slow for its own good, with quite a few mellow stretches where you're just waiting for the screen to scroll to the next interesting part. And while that's good for an introductory shmup, as it was for me, it makes it a drag to replay parts when you're more experienced.
Hahaha, I haven't seen the original cover in so long now. It looks so wrong.
The final stage also isn't listed in the English manual at all. Don't know if it was intentionally hidden or just a mistake, but remember our morale tanking when we finally made it through Bellon and realised there was still another hurdle ahead. :'D
(To be fair, it was the first shmup we had ever played, the second to last stage, Bellon, is probably the hardest, and it was the first time he had ever made it through. Must have been brutal for a seven year old ;_;)
Yeah, Zero Wing is actually on the easier end of the spectrum as far as their output goes. Think it's one of the easier Mega Drive shmups in general, actually, though could just be the level of familiarity I have with it compared to some others. Was a good genre introduction, regardless.
(To be fair, it was the first shmup we had ever played, the second to last stage, Bellon, is probably the hardest, and it was the first time he had ever made it through. Must have been brutal for a seven year old ;_;)
Was also responsible for the biggest bust up my older brother and I ever had over games as kids. I accidentally kicked and reset the console when he was midway through the final stage for the first time. Cue him screaming at me, me crying, and my parents threatening to take the game away. :D
I don't think it's quite a top tier Mega Drive shmup myself, but it's definitely in the league just below, and it has some of the best tunes on the console. Arranged by Noriyuki Iwadare of Lunar / Grandia fame, and vastly superior to the arcade imo.
Haha, yours looks a lot nicer than mine. Though given how we treated our games as kids, it's done well to survive at all I guess.
Was specifically this little writeup in Sega Power that made us interested enough to buy it. Remember they only gave Hellfire four stars and Zero Wing five despite the last line, so we were always confused.
(I actually do think Hellfire is better now. Though Zero Wing's tunes are way better)
Can clearly remember showing it to friends who visited and having a good giggle (though we preferred "somebody set up us the bomb" to all your base as kids), so find it surreal even now that it took off the way it did. :'D
For years, the game's intro was a little private joke for my family. So we had the opposite experience to most, I think. Remember when my brother and I found a little newspaper column mentioning an online craze centered around "Zero Wing" in about 2000, we couldn't believe it was the same game.
Zero Wing was bizarrely only the fifth game we bought for our Mega Drive as kids. We picked it up discounted from a Woolworths on a trip to Oban, a little port town in the northwest of Scotland that is often used as a port of access to the Hebrides. Still have that ratty old childhood copy today.
Seeing Zero Wing in action is always a surreal experience. It's such a pillar of meme culture and gaming legend that it feels like it couldn't actually be a real thing and not just a parody.
I do agree with my childhood self that there's a big dip in quality in the second half as you start to exhaust the possibilities of some of the more interesting skills and the game runs out of fun little side character moments and private actions to throw at you. But still lots of fun to be had.
100% the definitive version of the game, and a really great remaster-come-remake. The handful of small things I didn't totally vibe with were completely offset by how many game changing tweaks it made to the original, and it really highlights how ahead of its time the original was in lots of ways.
Didn't expect to be replaying Star Ocean 2 in the year of our lord 2024, but that was really fun. Probably only the second time I've seen credits on the game even though I owned it as a kid and put in hundreds of hours. Brought back a lot of memories.
Heard Cher on the radio today, still asking people if they believed in live after love. Like babe, I know you wanted them to call it LiveLove!, but it's been over a decade. I think you need to move on.
Haven't played the game, but saw a lot of it through a friend and really want to give it a go sometime.
Some of the scenes where you return to see the girl in varying horrific states of transformation still haunt me. Some quality body horror right there.
Keir Starmer sings "you are the dancing king" when they play ABBA at weddings because he's scared the lads will think he's gay if he says queen.
Keir Starmer won't have bananas in his house becauase they 'intimidate' him
Oh look, finally a use for this horrifying thing.
So Utah, having passed a transphobic bathroom bill, has launched an online form for people to snitch on folks they think are in the "wrong" bathroom or locker room. Be a real shame if people on the Internet flooded it with fake reports: ut-sao-special-prod.web.app/sex_basis_co...
Be sure to check your kid's Halloween avocados. My kid found several wooden balls hidden inside.
I realise that this kind of implies that Jesus has become the gun rather than that he owns it. But fuck it, that's even more rad.
And I really hope BlueSky's "block early and move on" culture is something that becomes standard on social media over the coming decades. It's not just a healthier way to exist online, but far closer to the way we interact with other people offline. Not everyone deserves your attention.
Has been said a million times before, but yeah, as someone who bought into the internet's bizarre idea that "supporting free speech" means subjecting yourself to people you hate for way too long, I think about it a lot.
It's fucking weird, and what's weirder is that it's presented as some universal standard for interaction with other human beings rather than a seismic shift in the amount of emotional labour we're expected to shoulder in social interactions online versus off.
Growing up if someone was yelling ugly things in the street it was common sense to walk the fuck away and not give them attention, but now we're expected to keep hundreds of those people in the street in our pockets and periodically take them out to let them rant at us in the name of free speech.
This idea that we're supposed to engage with people who make us unhappy online is honestly something I bought into for way too long myself, though, refusing to unfriend a few acquaintances sliding down the alt-right rabbit hole on Facebook for like a year because something something echo chambers.
Didn't interact with this person and genuinely wouldn't have cared enough to hit block had I not seen this. Just cracks me up to see people straight up seething about the idea that every random stranger online might not want to listen to what they have to say. I will *always* take that bait.
Didn't interact with this person and genuinely wouldn't have cared enough to hit block had I not seen this. Just cracks me up to see people straight up seething about the idea that every random stranger online might not want to listen to what they have to say. I will *always* take that bait.
Didn't interact with this person and genuinely wouldn't have cared enough to hit block had I not seen this. Just cracks me to see people straight up seething about the idea that every random stranger online might not want to listen to what they have to say. I will *always* take that bait.
Need to go back and finish, though. Was really enjoying and played more or less to the end, but then Xenoblade was released and it kind of got lost. Keen to replay from the start sometime soon.
Arc Rise is so good. Feel like nobody ever talks about it in English beyond its dreadful dub, but it was pretty well received in Japan, and I think it's low key one of the best RPGs of its generation. Great music, really satisfying combat and difficulty, and a fun story and cast. Really fond of it.
Haha, aw, I'm honoured that you think of me when you see this stuff. So jealous you have so much coolness nearby! Rare to see anything retro here in the wild. Even PS1 is extremely unusual. :(
They're carrying on as if nothing has changed in the remake, but they can't trick me. I remembered to mentally change to disc two.
"Got it, I'll nix the occasional excellence and stick to only being good enough. Consistency is key, like you say."