What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

SNK Gals' Fighters (Switch)

February 28th, 2025

Today is quite a challenging Friday, so I am posting now as to better collapse later. I finished SNK Gals' Fighter last night, though! The unlockable boss character, Miss X, is just Iori from King of Fighters in a delinquent schoolgirl outfit. The joke isn't as funny to me now as I thought it was in the old days, but that's not a bad thing at all. I don't really like playing as Iori, though, so for me, that perhaps was a bad thing.

After my playthrough, I realized I had never seen the "special" ending before, so I think I may have accidentally had this game as a playthrough in progress for 23 years! There's hope for my other games yet! This was fun, though. It's cheerful and cute, and extremely playable. Maybe it is not the greatest game of all time, as it was in my memories, but it was still a lot of fun

Other than that, I started Skycat last night. As an arcade shooter, the stages are a bit long and the hitbox is confusing. As a game with a cat in it, though, it does have a cat, so I'm stickin' with it. I'll talk more about it when I'm less pressed for time!

February 27th, 2025

I'm getting a lunch break post done today, which is going to be nice later tonight! I actually did play a decent amount of stuff yesterday, though. I did a second playthrough as Shermie in SNK Gals' Fighter, finally getting my last character unlocked. I'll hopefully get this game finished off tonight.

I also tried out some stuff in pursuit of clearing my self-inflicted "finish some of what you've already got, dingbat!" bingo cards. There's spaces on two of them to play something on my Mac, so I tried out Luck Be a Landlord. It was fun, and I liked getting stuff I added to the slot machine to interact properly. The pixel art was really cute, too! Somewhat bizarrely, though, I lost mouse control during my third run. I have no idea why, but it made reading the symbol descriptions kind of a hassle. Hopefully, it's back the next time I play.

It's been a while since I last touched it, but I picked Puzzle Quest back up, too, to see if that might be a good candidate to clear. It's a bit boring, at least in the spot I'm at, so I don't know that I'll keep up with this right now. It's not a bad match-3 at its base, but I wish the battles had a little bit more tension.

February 26th, 2025

I'm posting way too late again, after another day of SNK Gals' Fighter. I cleared the game as Whip last night, which was a lot of fun. I've never been that great at using her, but it's such a joy to be a cheap brat and attack from across the screen, or fly up in the air and land behind my opponent. Having fun in a game is more important than being good at it, so I had a great time playing as her while also racking up my most continues of revisiting this game.

From there, it was time to grind for the last unlockable character, so I did another playthrough as Mai. I breezed through it and felt very powerful, but still didn't get my unlock.

Aside from my fighting game playthroughs, I made myself some video game bingo cards to help myself decide what to play. There's plenty of room on them for fighters and hidden cat games, but maybe it will make me less paralyzed about what to play next. Both cards have 25 spots for games, and one is a bit more genre-focused, while the other is more platform-focused. I'll see how it goes!

February 25th, 2025

It still feels super hard to get it together tonight, but I made it to blogging a bit sooner than I did yesterday! Last night, though, I just did an arcade playthrough of SNK Gals' Fighter. Akari was the last of the standard characters I needed to do a playthrough as in this game, since I'd saved her for last. Her moves are a little goofy, but she's fun to play as! I struggled a bit last night out of sleepiness, but would have as anyone.

I'm almost done with this game, with only two unlockable characters left in arcade mode. I know I got one of them last night, but the other might take a bit of grinding. It's fun, though, so that's fine.

February 23rd, 2025

I spent most of my weekend visiting family in Chicago, eating amazing food, shopping, and learning quite a lot about portable spin-offs of convoluted RPG franchises. It was a lot of fun! When I got home, though, I had to get back to practical life, so I had to make dinner and pay bills before I could get back around to good stuff.

I had my Switch with while I hung out last night, so I did a few arcade playthroughs in Neo Geo Pocket Color games. I started with Shiki in SNK Gals' Fighter, doing so poorly I feared I'd lost my touch! It was tougher than usual for me to get hits in, and I was losing to the computer more often than usual.

For my next playthrough, though, I stuck with SNK Gals' Fighter, switching to Leona. It turned out I just kind of sucked at playing as Shiki, which is fair. I did try to use Shiki quite a lot in Neo Geo Battle Coliseum, since I like her character design, so it's not for lack of familiarity. Sometimes characters just don't suit me well, and that is okay. Leona, at any rate, does suit me well, and it's neat that she can explode things.

I also gave SNK vs Capcom: Match of the Millenium a try, and had a great time. By playthrough 26, maybe I'll be sick of the little story scenes in arcade mode, but last night, I found them charming. Kyo was a good, solid first choice to play as, too. He's not too fancy or too boring, so I felt like I was getting a good feel for the game. It'll be fun to dive into this a bit more!

February 19th, 2025

I went back to SNK Gals' Fighter last night, because it is still remarkably cold and my Switch was the least effort to turn on. Last night's playthrough was with Yuki, the usually non-playable girlfriend of Kyo from King of Fighters. The game plays up her being a normal schoolgirl, so her moves are taking dives at people and hitting them with her schoolbag. Back when I first had this, I remember her feeling difficult to use and somewhat worthless, but I thought she was somewhat unstoppable last night. She could attack effectively without being right up close to her opponent, but isn't a ranged fighter, either, so I thought it was an interesting balance.

July 20th, 2024

I feel super scrambled this weekend, but, even if it is because of doctor's appointments, I have a three day weekend ahead and am planning to enjoy it!

Last night, I was remarkably fried after work, so I decided to try Disney Illusion Island just thinking it looked cute and relaxing. It is, and in the first hour or so, has some "My First Metroidvania" vibes, which is fine! The jumps feel really good, and I'm looking forward to some more laid back exploring.

I did another playthrough on SNK Gals Fighters, too, with Athena being last night's competitor. I usually like Athena quite a lot, but in this, I feel like she's weighed down with gimmick moves that make her fiddly to play as. They're all pretty cute- I especially like her using Kensou as a shield and then throwing him- but it does leave her feeling "off" here to me. It's cool to have different takes on characters and their playstyles for different games, though, so I kind of appreciate that.

June 23rd, 2024

This will be a pretty quick post today, because malls and sushi lay ahead for me! Last night, though, I got to play some versus matches in SNK Gals' Fighter, with one joycon per player and the Switch standing up on a couch, just as Nintendo's commercials prophesied! The joycons are too tiny to be ideal controllers individually, but for a two-button game, they were good enough. I'd always wanted to play the Neo Geo Pocket fighters against someone back in the day, but no one else around had one. The Switch ports of these have made that tiny dream come true.

Right after doing my post yesterday, I also played about 20 minutes of Fitness Boxing 2. Stretching before a 4 hour drive was a decent idea, and one that I shall have to remember for the future.

June 21th, 2024

Last night, I did two playthroughs on SNK Gals' Fighters, because it was fun and I wanted to. I'm just running through the characters by column on the character select screen, so I tackled Yuri's arcade mode first. I like Yuri as a character- I think she's funny, and she has a nice, classic, not too overboard design- so I try to use her in a lot of games. This invariably ends in me getting wrecked, because for whatever reason, her moveset and capabilities just don't click with me. Last night was no exception. I did get through to her ending, though, so I felt a little accomplished.

Shermie was next, and as a high schooler, these Neo Geo Pocket fighters were the first time I'd seen her. King of Fighters '99 was my first SNK fighter, so I initially missed the Orochi saga games entirely. Back then, I didn't like her because her name was weird, she was slow, and she wasn't cute. As an adult, however, I understand that being able to confidently throw someone across the room is much more important than being cute. Shermie is actually great.

Past that, I did some good ol' utility gaming. Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star led me into another regular length daily workout, and I zoned out through most of it, forgetting the start of a workout by the time I hit the end. I got through it, though, and that's what counts!

I also got a little overexcited playing fighting games late at night, so I turned on Love Colors to go to sleep. I was out after two screens. Doctors should know about the powers of this game.

June 20th, 2024

Yesterday, I pretty much stayed on the same game path I'd been on the day before. In SNK Gals' Fighters, I ran the arcade mode as Nakoruru, which was fun. I've played as Mai in piles of games for hundreds of rounds through the years, so last night, I was kind of able to sleepwalk through her playthrough. It's not like I've never played Samurai Shodown, but I've used Nakoruru infrequently enough that I didn't feel on such sure footing when I started last night. Getting her combos down and figuring out her speed and range gave me a better chance to explore what the game is offering, and it was still extremely zippy and fun.

I also had the energy to go back to Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star last night, but after looking at the daily missions, I ended up just doing a regular length daily workout set to clear them. Even if the gameplay is the same as plain Fitness Boxing for something like that, I like having different vibes to pick from when I'm pretending to punch for the day.

June 19th, 2024

After some errands a bit late last night, I built the first Lego I'd done for a while, and it was an honest-to-God brand name one, too. I'd been at Target to pick up a lawn chair for an outdoor concert next week and picked up the little five dollar Animal Crossing set, Maple's Pumpkin Garden. It's really cute, and I love the little villager minifig! It was less than 30 pieces, though, so it did seem very small for the cost. Still, it looks great up with all my little storefronts!

From there, I wanted to start a new, relatively quick game before bed, so I decided to do an all-characters run in SNK Gals' Fighter. I played this on original hardware maybe 20 years ago, and the Switch controls aren't as good at all as the Neo Geo Pocket Color joystick, but that's pretty forgivable, considering how good the NGPC was. This is still super fun. I started with Mai, and should unlock all the "secret" characters naturally as I go. I'm looking forward to this journey of headkicking!

For my daily workout game, I just did another daily workout in Fitness Boxing 2 to keep things simple. Poor Karen hasn't gotten to change her outfit in days, but her tracksuit at least looks comfy.