aw, yeah. my choice to pick up Henry hatsworth for $4 at half-price books is paying Dividends! my distinct memory is that it's one of the few DS games I've played that made me want to shut off the audio because it was so grating, and I usually can't stand turning the audio to a game off.
My costume Shantae mode reviews are still pending. I have it downloaded on my Wii U, I just have to hook it back up.
see, Greg... the dancing felt less cumbersome in the GBC game in particular because that game especially was less about having action-y platforming segments and being more about being this explorative Metroidvania title with a proper, interconnected world. it felt very inspired by Majora's Mask's mask switching or playing songs on the ocarina back then, whereas now it's constant pauses to this more action oriented platformer.
it KILLS me to be harsh on Half-genie hero too. this is one of my favorite franchises, and it's.. in the end, Half-genie hero is an all right game. I probably only rank it higher than Risky's Revenge because RR is such a content-lite game that it feels like it ends before it ever really gets going. I also feel like Shovel Knight kinda spoiled me as far as these games with DLC character expansions, though... as they're willing to get Jake kauffman to do new music, and shake things up in far more significant ways for the other campaigns, where this is literally the same level design, but with grapple points for bolo to swing on or switch blocks for Shantae's Patricia Wagon cosplay to Switch-force it up with!
"The Gadget bloke" is NOT how I'd describe Bolo. he's more of a moron that doesn't get enough air to his brain, but somehow still gets trusted with doing things.
He's kinda the Jon Lindemann of Shantae's world, if Jon had a full head of hair and threw spiked balls at things.
The complete Sonic 3 and Knuckles experience is something that people covet and cherish as incredible and profound games. Sonic and Knuckles is pretty much what would be a DLC Expansion for a game nowdays, because they couldn't fit all the content they wanted to put in Sonic 3 onto one cartridge.
if you're just playing the solo Sonic and Knuckles experience, you start at mushroom hill,w hich in the complete experience is the half-way mark through the game. obviously they had to rebalance some of the Sonic 3 levels when you have the carts locked together so that the jump from Launch Base to Mushroom Hill isn't as jarring.
Some of S&K's music is a classic. Flying Battery (even if I don't like the zone myself), Lava Reef, Sky Sanctuary, Death egg zone are all incredible musical pieces. yeah, Mushroom hill seems a little offputting when you compare it to Sonic 3's Angel Island as an opening zone, but Gui is seriously throwing the baby out with the bathwater on this one by just basing the soundtrack on that one song.
Knuckles is actually really elegant in his design. sure he can glide and climb up walls, but the things that actually define his character are some of his weaknesses. he actually has a lower jump height than Sonic or Tails, and there are basically bits of level design that were woven into the Sonic 3 Stages (which you could not play as knuckles without S&K) that are behind breakable walls only Knuckles could get behind, or that you'd have to use the debug tool in Sonic 3 to get to with sonic or tails. We talked about Wayforward literally just adding some context sensitive intractable objects to levels to make them completable by the other characters, but Sonic 3 & Knuckles seamlessly weaves completely new level design into the base level design and it is friggin' masterful in it's execution.
the funny thing though? the thing of "Flying through space trying to catch up to the final boss" thing you're describing? that's "The Doomsday Zone" which... is a stage in Sonic and Knuckles, NOT Sonic 3. Sonic 3 ends with you fighting this robot called the big arms as Dr. Eggman is trying to launch the Death Egg off of Angel Island.
Really, though. Sega literally employs people that made their name on the internet by pirating and reverse engineering their games from the 90's and purposefully doesn't go after people for legal wrongdoing. If you wanted to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles, you should just get Sonic 3 Complete.
http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_3_Complete < So much care has been taken to make this the definative version of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, from being able to toggle music settings, cutscene fixes to fix continuity that got broken in Sonic and Knuckles, alternative sprites, the option to use soundtrack based on the weird PC Version of Sonic 3 and Knuckles, what version of the debug code you'd prefer to use, The Easy Mode from Sonic Jam on the Saturn, numerous bug fixes...
I know that before Sonic Mania, Christian 'Taxman' Whitehead and Simon 'Steath' Thomley did pitch a Sonic 3 and Knuckles port in their retro engine with 16:9 and various revamped things and Sega turned them down. they actually reused the tech they used to make the Blue Spheres Mini-game in their Proof of Concept to add it into Sonic Mania.
I also would like to pint out that I have actually played a SegaSonic the Hedgehog arcade machine. Even with a track ball, it controls like ass because it is an isometric platformer controlled with a damned Trackball. @___@;; Still excited for Mighty and Ray, though. sounds like they may do some work with the level design because Ray's flight might actually be cheesier than Tails' flight, but I'm getting off track.
I call bullshit on 5th gen console stuff not holding up, because some of it really does! maybe not visually, but gameplay wise, yes. the best stuff from the era is probably games that mixed polygonal environments with 2D characters (Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy Tactics, Paper Mario, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, Xenogears, the Suikoden stuff, etc.), but there's still stuff like Brave Fencer Musashi, the Crash and Spyro stuff, the Final Fantasy 9, Legend of Dragoon, and even the Megaman Legends stuff hold up pretty nicely visually. I still prefer the first generation of Armored Core titles over the later games too.
On N64? there's PLENTY of stuff that gets overlooked that's appealing visually. the Bomberman stuff, the Goemon stuff... heck, I'd even put Chameleon Twist on the 'visually appealing 3D platformer' list to an extent!
It's stuff that tried to pull off realism and din't stylize enough where the Jaggies and such are the most painful to look at. and yeah, maybe there was some growing pain, but to just throw an entire generation of gaming under the bus is such a reductionist excercise that it makes my head spin.
it's not really even the online NES stuff that I'm all that upset about with the pricing structure, it's the cloud save stuff. I still have to listen in to the rest to really get into that, but i've run out of time, as i have to show my parenntal unit some form of reverence on this holiday that your podcast has gone up on. I will listen to the rest later.