The Adventures of Lolo 3

The Sunshine Blogger Award #5

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 9 Comments

I receive a whole hell of lot of these for someone who hates sunlight :p

This time I was nominated by Extra Life Reviews who does just that.  He gives out extra lives and reviews.  Wait…maybe it’s just that his reviews give extra life to all those who read them.  You won’t know which one it is unless you check his blog out, now will you?  I always appreciate every nomination I receive, and I can only apologize for how long it’s taken me to get to this one.  So without further ado, here are the questions I was asked to answer.

1. In which cases would you deem the manga superior to the anime on which it’s based?

Hm, I’ve fallen quite far behind in my anime viewing, not for lack of desire, just lack of time.  It’s been a while since I’ve watched any, and lining up something that I’ve both watched the anime of and read the manga is a bit difficult.  I’ll say that the Chobits manga was more detailed than I remember the anime being (though I watched it a long time ago), although there were things in both media representations that were way ickier to my more 2019 sensibilities.

Continue reading →

Games Alive: 1980-2017

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 15 Comments

The Well-Red Mage asks: “What’s your favorite game every year you’ve been alive?”  I’m one of the last to answer, because I’m always late to these types of parties.  I’ve seen plenty of “Favorite Game” posts, but never one quite like this, and it was both challenging and enjoying to put together over the last two months.  I’m one of the oldest people to respond, meaning I have quite a lot of years to go through, so without further ado…

1980 – Pac-Man

This one was more difficult than I’d like to admit, but there weren’t too many games I could draw from at this point in time, which led me to this classic among classics.  I wasn’t very good at this game, but if you stick your finger in your ear and wiggle it around, I think you’ll hear something familiar 😀

1981 – Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong game coverBack when Mario was merely Jump Man and Pauline was a kidnapping victim, long before she was the mayor of New Donk City, there was this arcade classic.  I was better at this than Pac-Man; I’ve always been better at platforming than avoiding random enemies.

Continue reading →

30 Day Video Game Challenge: Day 13

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 14 Comments

Day 1

<–Day 12                                                                                                                Day 14–>

Day 13: A game you’ve played more than five times.

For the Final Fantasies, Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI.  I’ve only actually attempted to play through FFVII twice, ironic as that is.  I’ve seen the ending numerous times, but each time I tried to play myself I got stuck.  Then I became embroiled in the symbolism and theory behind the game, and oddly enough, I spent time I could’ve been playing it again doing that hehe.  Now I’m quite excited to get to it, because I’m armed with far more knowledge than I had during my initial (partial) playthroughs, so I can imagine I’ll find more VII revelations when I do.

I’ve played Super Mario World more times than I can count, The Adventures of Lolo 3, SMB3, and a slew of games on older systems.  I’m going to assume this questions means “beaten” more than five times, though that really doesn’t count for Coleco/Atari games as they typically had no “end.”

However you’d like to define it, what game have you played more than five times?

<–Day 12                                                                                                                Day 14–>

30 Day Video Game Challenge: Day 10

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 18 Comments

Day 1

<–Day 9                                                                                                                   Day 11–>

Day 10: Best gameplay.

I might have to break this down into genres since the question of good gameplay is really contingent on that.

This might sound weird, but for RPGs, I love Final Fantasy VIII’s gameplay.  I don’t know how to explain it, but VIII just seems so neat and organized to me, just like you’d expect a military organization to be hehe.  Instead of fighting monsters for gil, you receive a paycheck at regular intervals based on your SeeD rank.  You can also take tests to raise that at any time, and in my head Squall and co have some sort of smartphone device that they use to receive such information, and gil is more than likely not in electronic form.  It all just feels very sleek and modern, and unlike many, I loved the Junction system once I understood how it worked.  While it might take a while to “set up,” as in you had to expend time drawing different kinds of magic, once that was done, you were pretty much invincible.  I think World of Final Fantasy borrowed heavily from VIII in terms of having monsters/creatures give you your stats instead of shuffling around weapons and armor.

For puzzle games I have to go old school and talk about The Adventures of Lolo 3. 

Such simple controls, such challenging puzzles.  You only had one “action” button, which was used to fire shots.  The rest was all about maneuvering and your wits.  I’m using the third game in the series, because this was the one I started with.  I’ve played the first and second now, but Lolo 3 will always be my favorite.

In the same vein of simplicity, I have to mention Journey.  You only have two actions: jump and signal, and the rest is just you moving the Traveler through the wasteland, and that’s all your need.

The ease of access yet beautiful, profound story put this at the top of my Gameplay list.

I guess this would’ve been a great answer to “simplest” gameplay save for FFVIII, which is a bit complicated.

What game do you think of when you hear the phrase “best gameplay?”

<–Day 9                                                                                                                   Day 11–>

Save

Save