What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Robotech: The Macross Saga HD Edition (Switch)

January 20th, 2025

I was cleaning most of yesterday, so I did more game dabbling than anything. It was my last day with Raging Blasters for the week, before I swap out to something different, and I just played half an hour of caravan mode. I'd like to get over a million points, but I couldn't get through the three minutes without dying last night! I guess that's what I get for playing ridiculously late, though.

While thinking about what shmup to play next, I messed around with a couple I had on hand for a few minutes. I booted up my PSP to play a couple levels of KOF: Sky Stage, a King of Fighters themed bullet hell game. I played this quite a lot in the past, and my failures with this a decade ago are part of why I want to get better skills now. In the future, I'll play this more in-depth, so I ended up picking it up on XBox Arcade for slightly better convenience.

I gave Robotech: The Macross Saga: HD Edition another chance, too, but I just don't like this that well. The jet controls feel super slippery, and the mechs are extremely slow and clunky, though the Gerwalk form between the two is okay enough. It feels really unforgiving, too. I do want to see who the hidden characters are, so I'm not writing it off yet. It would be very fun if I could make Minmei hop in a Valkrie and start blasting away at the Zentradi, but the cast is good enough that almost no one would be a disappointment. I'm not excited for the gameplay itself, though.

In terms of normal stuff, I cleared another barista's run in Sweet Survivors while on my exercise bike last night. I've got five more runs I'd like to complete in this, a couple of which might be a bit tricky, and'll probably call it good from there.

While I was waiting for dessert, I played a bit of Water Sort Quest, too. It was lovely dessert, but the game has not gotten more exciting since I last played it.

September 4th, 2023

Yesterday was crazy, so I didn't play too much. To keep going with Super Mario Odyssey, I set myself the goal of grabbing one moon. On Saturday, I'd really frustrated myself with a simple "find three sheep and get them to their keeper" mission, so I thought it would be satisfying to knock that out. Last night, though, I found all three sheep in pretty short order, so I didn't end up playing for very long. I was tired, so that was fine.

This is maybe less easily defensible online, but I spent the last week devouring a directly pre-COVID set of Robotech comic trade paperbacks I had purchased and never read during lockdown. Yes, Robotech is a bastardization of better original anime series, but I find the way it continues to iterate upon itself after the three anime were initially smushed together, spiraling into something of its own, really fascinating. The comics I was reading were pretty interesting in and of themselves, too, using that messiness as a storytelling device, so I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon very excited about Robotech.

Because of that, and because I want to get vaguely competent at hori shooters before Macross: Shooting Insight comes out, I turned on Robotech: The Macross Saga HD Edition on my Switch. This is a port of an old GBA game, and I don't think it's bad, but I'm terrible at it and can't beat the first level. Part of this is my own fault. Even though I have at least tested all of the characters at this point and get slightly further with everyone other than Max, I gotta play as Max because I like him best. Even if it were just in terms of aesthetics, it would still be important to me to play as the character with glasses and the blue mech.

I only played for ten or so minutes yesterday, since I needed to go do something else, but in those few minutes, my pilot suffered countless firey deaths. Someday, I will get to level two.