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1401

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 309: James vs The Gaping Dragon

« on: October 08, 2012, 10:45:55 PM »

Eeeeeeeeeee, Dr. Metts stuttered out my name and dream Kirby game concept! ~<3


*ahems* In all seriousness, though, great show! I have wanted to try Demon's Souls and Dark Souls as someone who's a big fan of some of From Software's other titles like the Armored Core franchise, Lost Kingdoms, and 3D Dot Game Heroes. Hearing about James getting crushed in a tug-of war of risk/reward was just music to my ears!

Yes, I had Meta Knightmare mode on Nightmare in Dreamland and appreciate it for both being a mono-power challenge of sorts and being a time attack where your actions have to be especially premeditated since there are a few things to Meta Knight's animations and the way he funcitons that make it so you have to push buttons a bit earlier then you want things to happen or make sure you aren't too close for a sword swipe because Meta Knight takes a step forward when he swings his sword for some incredibly dumb reason that has gotten me killed more times than I can count. XD

I will continue giving my well wishes to John and hope everything in his family is okay. I will also hope that he didn't decide to buy any games to add to the museum while he doesn't have a chance to play them.

1402

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Details North American 3DS Virtual Console Releases for the Remainder of 2012

« on: October 04, 2012, 04:58:42 PM »

... Eeeeeeew, Castlevania the Adventure. X____X

Jolly good show for the rest of them, even Super Mario Bros. 2 because it'll be an official release of that game that people can beat thanks to Save State!

1403

TalkBack / Re: La-Mulana Review

« on: October 03, 2012, 05:12:34 AM »

Silver Shield actually blocks projectiles. there IS a different item that works for halving damage.

Faeries come in 4 different varieties, and thier spawn points have a 3 minute cool-off after you have summoned one.

Pink Faeries [which have a summoning animation that looks like 2 stars spiraling towards each other] gradually heal you as you go around, which as you can imagine is incredibly handy if you don't want to interrupt exploration with a hot springs trip

Blue Faeries [which look like 2 stars spiraling in a diamond pattern towards each other for the summoning animation] are Weapon Faeries, and will use the sub weapon you have equipped without using ammo. as useful as this sounds, these are probably the worst because you will be punished for any objects they hit that trigger the eye of divine retribution.

Green Faeries [which have a summoning animation where the stars kinda move in a damond pattern against each other] are Luck Faeries, which make enemies and destructable objects just GUSH coins. there's a room in chamber of extinction with boxes that respawn every time you go off screen and are right by the edge of the screen, and then the game will suddenly become La Moolahna! [see what I did there?]

Yellow Faeries [which have a similar summoning animation ot the weapon fairy but with 4 stars instead of 2] is used to open up super secrets... This can actually lead you to finding some of the most powerful programs in the game or even allows for a rather large sequence break where you can get to an area that's VERY late in the game FAR earlier.

Why am I telling you about the animations they use to spawn? well, quite simply, if you toucha  fairy spot and then go off screenb efore the fairy actually appears, it wont' spawn the fairy and it'll instantly recharge the fairy spot. this will let you abuse the RNG instead of having to wait until much later in teh game where you get the software that allows for controlled Fairy spawning.


As for trying to venture fourth into the Backside areas , you actually have a few options available to you to get back there if you'd like me to detail some of them for you if you really do get stumped, I'd be glad to do that.

1404

Podcast Discussion / Re: RetroActive #24: Kirby & The Amazing Mirror

« on: October 02, 2012, 03:35:43 PM »

How are people progressing through the game?


I'm sitting at about 80% complete, with only one shard missing. Unlike the people above, I'm kind of excited to find the last piece of mirror and see what happens. There are two key areas left to explore: levels 7 and 8. Haven't found the maps for either, so that's kind of my sticking point right now. I think that level 8 should be easy enough since I know how to get into the level easy enough... but getting to level 7 isn't as clear to me yet.


Just wanted to chime in that I also found the Smash Bros tie-in to be very interesting, and I'm not even a Smash Bros fan. Probably my favorite boss so far, with maybe the four-fisted Iron Knight being my second favorite.

The path to the boss of Radish ruins is pretty much a straight shot to the left for the most part until you come toa  room with a bunch of cannons to shoot out of. you want to go for the lower path through this route and it'll lead you to the boss.

As for the route to the Peppermint Palace boss,  it's also quite far to the left of the path. if you're just entering Peppermint Palace from the leftmost of the two entrances that are in Carrot Castle, you'll stumble upon the shortcut switch that leads back to the mirror hub room, and beyond that if you just keep going left, until you'll eventually hit a room with a platform with some rope you can cut. you dont' want to go to the path that cutting the rope will lead you on, but rather the path that leads you up into a big open room with the giant rockys and such. there's a one-way door in the upper left that will take you to the room with the boss.

1405

TalkBack / Re: La-Mulana Review

« on: October 02, 2012, 03:10:21 PM »

Silver Shield in the Graveyard of the Giants is what I was referring to in the last post to help with Ellmac. also, if you've gotten the Isis Pendant , there's a pretty awesome way to cap out your money in about 2 minutes. Also, when you do buy the pistol for the first time, it comes with a magazine in it a,lready, so that's a bit of a saving grace.

I actually did a speed run of this version of La Mulana this morning, got my 100% speed run down to about 6 hours now. which is really a testament to how beefy the game is even if you do know what you're doing and know the solutions to puzzles before you could possibly know them fairly. they really do jam in hints to all the puzzles, even if they're small things like a mural depicting an Ankh on a wall and a skeleton who mentions that he died by tripping and falling off an invsible bridge that he's laying under. ... yeah, immediatley after you buy the hand scanner, Xelpud does inform you that some of the skeletons have messages if you use the Hand Scanner on them!

1406

TalkBack / Re: La-Mulana Review

« on: October 02, 2012, 12:08:53 PM »

Another biiiig help with elmac is to come in with a full stock of Shuriken and just figure out the rythm to his attacks. another item that helps is the... ugh, I still don't know how you do the spoiler text thing that you do, Pixelated Pixel. ;_; otherwise I'd gladly share my strategy with you!

Another thing that this remake does that's interesting is that if the bosses are indeed giving you too much guff, there is a Pistol you can buy at the very beginning of the game that is stupidly powerful. one bullet is about the equivalent of hitting something with about 15 shuriken or 7 hits of the leather whip. the thing about the gun is though that the ammo is stupidly expensive. 400 coins for 1 magazine in the beginning! X_X;;

1407

Podcast Discussion / Re: RetroActive #24: Kirby & The Amazing Mirror

« on: October 02, 2012, 04:35:34 AM »

Hrm....I now have all but two of the shards, and to tell you the truth, I really feel no motivation to go back and finish the game. I spent about 40 minutes last night just looking around, and while it wasn't un-enjoyable, I still don't feel the need to track down the last two parts at this point. There are lots of other games I want to play, and I really don't feel like I get much out of just blindly exploring the game for long stretches of time. So yeah, I've enjoyed it, but I don't really love it. I certainly don't regret spending the hours that I spent with it, though. Anyone else feel a lack of motivation to finish?

I hear you. it can kinda be draggy trying to find a couple of the bosses, particularly the Olive Ocean  and Cabbage Caverns ones. Olive Ocean is especially outrageous in this regard because It's a very long and drawn out water level with lots one one-ways. outside of hammer, Sword, and Parasol, it's VERY hard to retain copy abilities for extended periods of time when you're constantly under water, and indeed, you need to bring abilities to get to certain treasures.they also enjoy VERY annoying placement of Mr. Blipper AI variants that behave like Super Mario World's Rip Van Fish.  there also happens to be very annoyingly placed Glunks  in ares where there's lots of spikes to put you right in the line of fire.  Losing your copy ability you need to open a path doesn't make it hard, it makes it kinda tedious.

I also feel like dumping spoiler text, so uh... that's what this next paragraph or two is going to be, kids!



There's a couple of really, REALLY interesting bits about this game that intrigue me quite a bit! I believe that Kirby and the amazing Mirror was the first kirby game not to have King Dedede show up in some way, shape or form! I could be wrong about this because maybe the baseball game doesn't have Dedede, but It's just kinda odd. what's cool though and I really wish they would have ran with more was things like King Golem, who is obviously an alternate universe version of Wispy Woods with how he's pretty much a reskin of that boss. They didn't do this with Kracko, and I'm not really counting evil greyscale Meta Knight because he's a pallete swap of Meta Knight. Speaking of Meta Knight, I really like that they let you drag his Galaxia Sword around wherever once you've beaten the game and use it as a way to solve almost any puzzle in the game. it even has what would become Meta Knight's side+B move going on there to butter through the opposition! Another really weird thing is the whole Smash Bros. Tie-in by having Master Hand as a sub-boss and Crazy hand as an actual boss. if you go back to my babbling about alternate universe enmies in the mirror world, I suppose you can look at Master Hand and Crazy hand being alternate universe versions of Wham Bam Rock? I'unno.

I still like this game and think it's cool for incentivizing copy ability retention and thus careful play, and I like having a Kirby game that isn't just a straight shot to the goal. with false sorts of goals ready to hinder you in a very misleading way.

Still want a Milky Way Wishes full featured game where you have to either regain the right to copy certain enemies, or that you have a certain energy bar to the copy aiblity that after you take X number of hits, it gets locked off until you find an energy restoring item? I dunno, I just really liked being able to reach in and use Kirby Super Star copy abilities in a toolbox style fashion, even if I didn't like being able to spawn infinite partners.

1408

Nintendo Gaming / Re: La Mulana is F***ed up!

« on: October 01, 2012, 09:31:27 PM »

Oh man, I smell me some La Mulanas!  Gather 'round children. It's time for auntie Clex to tell y'all about the birth of civilization!

... okay, maybe I won't go that deep into it, but I am a HUGE fan of this game, and am MORE than willing to be more helpful then Elder Xelpud, who has a very specific kind of love/hate relationship with Professor Kosugi.

Anyhow, I was a fan of this game's 2006 Freeware release, which many describe as a love letter to the MSX home PC systems in Japan. This bad boy Microsoft made PC system that never really broke out in the USA is where Konami made many of their early hits like Parodius, Snatcher, Metal Gear, Knightmare 2: The Maze of Galleous, and Antarctic adventure. The scrolling on the MSX was incredibly choppy and the sprites often time would be mono-colored. it's a distinct look and I think the NES looks a bit better. The original game had several references to these Konami made classics, even had a konami-like logo on the title screen, and had a Parodius and Snatcher mini-game you could play on the MSX compatable laptop Lemeza carried around with him.

That being said, you're going to really be floored when I tell you that much of the Puzzle design was DUMBED DOWN FOR THIS REMAKE!!! there's one particular one I can think of in the area that Pixelated Pixel mentioned that in the oiriginal was this really piss annoying math logic puzzle but now it's just a room where you jump on some switches to rotate a mural on a wall. It's also worth mentioning that in the original Up and Jump were the same thing, which is why Lemeza can't jump off of ladders as you'll probably discover later.  there's also been tweaks made to his jump. yeah, it used to be stiffer, and his attack speed was certainly slower. also, you could only save by having a computer program that you have to buy at the begining of the game, and Elder Xelpud could only save your game and not the special tablets you've been using to save instead.

The trade-off in this remake is that the traps are far more deadly and the Mini-bosses are actually major threats that sap your life bar pretty darned quickly, which was a rather rude awakening for me having come off of the original. there are changes they put in this remake just to screw with their established fanbase, including one particularly... confusing area that had it's puzzles completley changed for the sole purpose of messing with people who had played the original.

what you ARE going to discover is that La Mulana when mastered is a metroidvania that allows a ton of leaniency in how you go about conquering the ruins. your first couple of items will always be collected in the same order, but the game becomes incredibly freeform and you can have about 7 or 8 different things you could be doing to advancing towards clearing areas.

If you want my advice, DO NOT FIGHT BOSSES UNTIL YOU ABSOLUTLEY NEED TO! Bosses are not only very tough, but also a money sink due to how they are often impossible to get close to and require sub weapons to even have a prayer at beating them. you cwanna collect as much stuff as you can before you go at any of the bosses, especially sacred orbs and items that will improve your ability to move around.

As for a place to go for help... http://lamulana-remake.wikia.com/wiki/La-Mulana_Remake_Wiki Here's the La Mulana Wiki for the Remake... keep in mind they're still trying to get high res captures of the rooms uploaded and such, but this should be pretty helpful, although they will start spoiling some of the names of the various areas and such, so... yeah.

One last note for people on the fence on this one! http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=lamulana Here's a download for the Freeware version! and uh... http://lamulana.wikia.com/wiki/Getting_Started here's some tips on getting going in the freeware version! there are some minor compatability issues with WIndows 7, I believe, so if you have trouble with that, just post and I'll see what I can do since uh... the page on how to fix those issues on the La Mulana Wiki is kinda down since most of the wiki got pulled down. D:

1409

TalkBack / Re: La-Mulana Review

« on: October 01, 2012, 08:24:07 PM »

I -LOVE- this game. it is CRAZY good. it was crazy good in it's original form where the only place to save was in Elder Xelpud's tent on the surface. Yes, Nigoro did design this game with a sort of Comical sadism developed form years and years and years of playing games like Knightmare 2: The Maze of Galleous and the MSX version of Castlevania. 

Yes, this is a tough one to review because as Johnny Metts said on Radio Free Nintendo this past sunday that you kinda gotta get a grasp on some of the basic things this game wants yolu to do before you really dig into the meat of the game's 18 areas, filled with all sorts of just... crazy puzzles that show a very sharp attention to detail in the way unto which they are created.

I REALLY do highly recommend  this one, but I also HIGHLY recommend if you're going to take on this game that you locate the La Mulana Wiki to start telling you some of the real ins and outs of this one. First playthroughs generally tend to run around the 15 hour marker [longer if you try the optional Hell Temple area, which will probably make you want to bash yourself with a hammer or play Cave Story's Sanctuary over and over by comparison] and then there's just... a LOT of replay value in that there's a TON of flexibility on how you can tackle La Mulana, which isn't something you often see in Metroidvania.

1410

Podcast Discussion / Re: RetroActive #24: Kirby & The Amazing Mirror

« on: October 01, 2012, 11:30:53 AM »

@ClexYoshi
 
This was designed as a fleshed out The Great Cave Offensive? That explains alot about my feelings towards this game. Which is to say my ambivalence.

Well, think about it... Great Cave Offensive was a connected and persistent super area  where you used certain copy abilities to open up paths to get useless bits of McGuffin. Kirby and the Amazing Mirror was a connected and persistent super area where you hit annoying dead-ends  that eject you to the beginning of the maze while sometimes giving you a chest with slightly more functional McGuffin. That being said, that isn't nearly as infuriating of a design because of your abilities to open up all those shortcut branches to the beginning of the maze that makes it easier to backtrack then in Great Cave offensive, where if you miss a treasure you're hiking all the way through half of the game to go into a nook you might have missed your first time through that's on a completely off-beat path.

P.S.  I know it's sorta kinda premature to be asking, but here's hoping for some La Mulana in the next Retro-active poll Because I'm kinda sadistic like that and I kinda giggled in glee hearing about Johnny's epic struggle with the first 10 minutes of the game... that, and the original Freeware verison of the game came out in 2006 and it's been out for a while in Japan! C'mon, you -KNOW- you wanna!

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Podcast Discussion / Re: RetroActive #24: Kirby & The Amazing Mirror

« on: October 01, 2012, 09:40:43 AM »

Well! this is it; the Retro-active that convinced me to finally stop lurking around here. For a brief and quick history, I had only stumbled upon NWR a short bit after Craig Harris left IGN, so that's how long I've been quietly listening in, enjoying me some Radio Free Nintendo and to that extent, the opinions of others doing this whole Retro-active thing!

Fair warning, I miiiiight get a bit spoiler-y in the upcoming ramble, as I'm crazy tired and generally run my mouth on subjects like these without really thinking about what I'm saying first, which is really a silly statement considering I'm typing all this.

Kirby and the Amazing Mirror! This game is pretty sweet, and I was super jazzed when back in the day I heard it was going to be The Great Cave Offensive (THe treasure hunting open world section of Kirby Super Star and my second favorite game in that collection next to Milky Way Wishes) fleshed out into a full game, complete with 4 player exploration  independent of one another AND the return of some Irby's Adventure Powers that had been absent from the series like UFO and the terribly, TERRIBLY broken Tornado! I did convince my friends to get this beast back in the day, but I think I was probably the only one who was super enthusiastic about this one though; they were all busy with their Four Swords. : <

Regardless, I liked this game quite a lot and it spent many a hour in my GBA before it got ripped off by petty thugs at my high school! ... yyyyeah. oh well, I played it to 100% completion and even did some fun things like mono-copy ability boss rushes and such. I was more than excited when I heard this was going to be one of the ambassador games and I actually ended up knocking this and Wario Land 4 out before moving on to the GBA Port of my favorite game of all time and Fire Emblem 8.

The complaints about the map are VERY valid, especially when you start getting into some of the more complex levels like Peppermint Palace and Carrot Castle. The folks at Hal and Flagship [who I can't remember, but I THINK they MIGHT have been a shell company between Hal and DiMPS of the Sonic Advance/Sonic the Hedgehog 4 fame] tend to in some areas purposefully set it up so you pass through a big room on two separate routes that aren't interconnected at all, and when there's multiple one-way doors to take, this can get hyper confusing at times. When I played through the first time and didn't know about the map, I actually relied a lot on the system of the doors having that glow above them and the little star doors meaning that that route happens to be a one-way.

If you REALLY want a good way to go about getting treasure sand finding the nooks and crannies, there's a special copy ability that you can get that will let you butter through any puzzle with ease, although the Smash ability is also good for that [as well as a hilarious little nod to Kirby's SSBM move set!] Other abilities I suggest are Tornado because it  may be a little hard to control, but it gives you craaaaaaaaazy amounts of invincibility frames and cheeses all the bosses so super hard [it even cheeses the final boss harder than the aforementioned super secret copy ability does!], Bomb for being able to deal with timed switch puzzles without relying on the AI being complete dummies, Throw because it does damage like spitting out a cluster of enemies does, and Sword because for no reason at all, they made Sword stupid versatile in this game compared to other games.

I'd also like to address those few situations where they put the giant stone blocks in the way, because I believe those are examples of very bad use of iterative game design. in the opening tutorial path, the game purposefully shows you one of those blocks and shows you that the 4 kirbies can inhale these, but then when these blocks are presented later, they're in REALLY frustrating spots to try and perform this technique. however, repeatedly spamming stone will shake the ground and nudge the block over ever so slightly until it falls through a crack or something.

Anyhow, I could yammer on and on and ON AND ON about how cool I like the Kirby's adventure forest remix that they use for Cabbage Caverns, or the Boss from Candy Constellation  or the fun little mini-games and such, but the feature I kinda strangely liked even if it is a cosmetic one were the sprays you could find to change Kirby's color before you'd jump into the game. I'd always be excited to play as a different color every time I'd boot up the game!

That being said... I still want my Full-featured Milky Way Wishes style game. ;_; Seriously, it'd be awesome! Like Mega Man... but with Kirby abilities!~