What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Sonic the Fighters (PS3)

August 26th, 2022

My work had an employee appreciation day yesterday, which was actually pretty good. I got to bowl a few games with my coworkers, and though I did a terrible job, it was fun. Plus, I got free food.

On the games front, I did my last playthrough of Sonic the Fighters, finishing up with Honey the Cat. I saved her for last because I thought she had a cute character design and I liked the Fighting Vipers crossover, but she was a good note to end on. I felt like I could pull off some really good combos, and whether that's because I had finally gotten good at the game, or because Honey was a good character, it's fine. Sonic the Fighters was fun to check in on every day, and I'm definitely going to keep fighting games in my rotation.

I'm at 2 of 10 games cleared now! It's not bad progress!

From there, though, I was still dead tired, so I just kept going in Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance. The story continues to be bafflingly dumb and cheaply patched together, but I was enjoying all of the super vertically oriented layouts I hit last night.

August 24th, 2022

It was my next to the last character playthrough in Sonic the Fighters last night, and it was truly infuriating! I used Fang the Sniper, who I think would be extremely useful and fun to use against a real person, but was borderline useless against the AI. Since he's projectile based, being the only character with a gun, his attack and defense seemed lower, and he definitely had less attacks that could break opponent barriers. That meant that, even in the early levels, I couldn't get any damage in and then got KO'd from what felt like two kicks to the face. It did get a little easier as I went, but I found the playthrough to be so frustrating it was physically painful at times. It was an accomplishment to clear the arcade mode, though, that was for sure!

From there, I picked up my Switch to play a cheap casual mahjong solitaire game, Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance. That title may seem quite direct, but it has no romance of note so far. Anyway, I started this one maybe two and a half years ago, after picking it up for a dollar or two on the eShop, and just picked it back up last night. The theming in these games doesn't matter to me- it has that mid '10s PC casual game vibe so hard I expect to see a Big Fish branded advertisement between each level, and it's proficient enough at throwing a mahjong board on screen that I can happily match tiles until I pass out. I would not say it's good, but it does exactly what I need it to do.

August 23rd, 2022

Yesterday was my second day back to work after vacation, and I got stuck with a late call again already. That is okay. I did a playthrough on Sonic the Fighters to get out some mild aggression, with Tails being the evening's victor. He wasn't anything notable to play as, but so cute! I only have two characters left in this game.

After that, in a fit of smart assery, I played Jelly Boy on the SNES app on Nintendo Switch Online. It had lovely music, charming graphics, and I didn't vibe with it at all. The wide open levels with sadistic traps right from the get go were not my favorite things that can appear in a game. That doesn't mean Jelly Boy is bad! It is just not for me.

August 22nd, 2022

It was a big day for headkicking games yesterday. I did another arcade mode playthrough in Sonic the Fighters, with Knuckles this time. It was mildly frustrating, because he can get attacked while gearing up for a "spin dash" in a way that other characters I've used with this ability cannot. Overall, though, it was fine.

In the interest of having another fighter lined up when I'm through with all the characters in Sonic the Fighters, I booted up TV Animation X: Unmei no Sentaku last night, too, feeling like a licensed fighter where you get to fly around and shoot people with your psychic powers would be a good follow up. I hadn't played this since I was in Japan, and only cleared it as one character then, but was able to pick it back up pretty quickly. The play feel is a little weird, but the full 360 degree movement in all directions and projectiles are neat, and it looks really cool for a PS1 game, too. I probably will go with this one directly following the Sonic one, I enjoyed myself and the gallery unlocks mean I get to feel good about clicking a lot of meaningless buttons as I go.

August 21st, 2022

Today's post will be a little long, since a mix of good free time and dicey focus meant I played a lot of different things yesterday.

As the most important game of this post, I'm going to go slightly out of order and start with Lydia, a game I pulled from my Switch digital library figuring it would be a quick and easy clear. I got it through one of those weird "if you own this game, you can get 5 free!" promotions that Qubic Games used to do, which I think is against the Switch eShop rules now. I was right in that it was a quick game, at about 40 minutes. It was also an extremely heavy game about familial abuse and the cycle of alcoholism. Considering the other free stuff I'd gotten from Qubic Games, I was slightly blindsided. It was interesting, well made, and dovetailed surprisingly nicely with my reading for last week, though. I will never play this again, but I'm glad I played it once.

The reason why I was playing Lydia in the first place, though, was that I hit a point in Double Switch: 25th Anniversary Edition where I sat, silently stared at the game over screen, and decided that I did not need it in my life. By the time it had me figuring out where an opposing character has set other traps, which you must go disarm within a split second, it had become so frustrating that I could barely stand it. As far as things go, though, I like all the different display options this port gives you. I'd been using the "modern" layout before, but switching to the PC layout made it easier to play, with a better readout on what's going on with your armed traps, and it just looked cooler, too. If I pick this up again, I'll probably stick with this layout.

Later in the night, I went back to my PS3 and did a couple more arcade mode playthroughs on Sonic the Fighters. Sonic was a little too easy to play through as, though that is in part because I was being a cheap jerk to the AI, but Bark the "Polerbear" was slightly miserable to play as. I don't tend to like the slow but powerful characters in fighting games, though, so using Bark last night was kind of a "let's get this over with" move.

After that, I booted up Fighting Vipers and got absolutely destroyed, because it's a bad idea to pick up a game I haven't played for years and select a character I've never used after 1am.

I then closed out the night playing a level and a couple of boss fights in Sonic Adventure, where I'm still catching up to my progress in the PC version of the game. I feel like I'm making decent progress with it!

With that, I'm off to a lovely and peaceful Sunday! I don't know what I'll do today, but I'm sure it'll be a decent time.

August 20th, 2022

It's finally done! I got every game I've written about so far on its own page, which feels like a decent accomplishment. Certainly, it'll make things easier going forward, especially in regards to Pikmin Bloom. I've still got quite a few things I want to do to better organize past posts and the game index, though, so I'll keep considering those.

It was my first day back at work after vacation yesterday, but it actually wasn't too bad. A couple of coworkers said things that boiled down to "oh, hi, we missed your very particular form of terrible, chatty BS," and I felt honored indeed.

With the full list of games for the Sega Genesis Mini 2 announced, though, I got off work all excited about FMV games, which is more normal than it should be. Thinking about what I had on hand and hadn't played yet, I landed on Double Switch: 25th Anniversary Edition, which I picked up a while back at a massive discount in the Switch eShop. Redownloading it took ages, but when I finally got it going, I felt like it was both better than I expected and howlingly frustrating. Between my "I can't believe I got a game over for that!" swearing and "I can't believe I'm just gonna sit here and let Corey Haim berate me" self loathing, I pulled up a walkthrough, lost several more times, and made it to the first save point.

I am, with some trepidation, going to give the second chunk of a game a shot today. I tried the second part last night, lost because an entire indie band got hacked up by a scimitar, and, with a mix of frustration that this could happen and sheer delight that it was filmed and included, decided that it was worth moving forward.

I did another playthrough of Sonic the Fighters, too, hoping to clear it as every character. Last night, after my previous failure, I tried with Espio again and won, thanks to the merits of being a cheap, miserable rat (or chameleon, as it were). It was a delight to spin around and absolutely destroy Metal Sonic.

August 19th, 2022

I still didn't play much yesterday. My apartment maintenance caused me a small, but disproportionately agitating headache that threw my whole day off. At night, though, I ended up doing a playthrough of Sonic the Fighters, with Bean being the night's character of choice. I really think every fighting game needs a cute little duck that throws bombs at stuff, it really spices things up. Despite my choice of screenshot for the night, it all went super smoothly. I just have this image because I think it's neat that you fight Metal Sonic on a stage so blue-screen-of-death-esque.

August 1st, 2022

It's the start of a new month, and I have very little to share today, which is okay! Last night, I half-heartedly played Sonic the Fighters for a few minutes. I didn't clear the game, but I played some as Espio, realized I wasn't feeling it, and quit for the night. The Aurora Snowfield level is really pretty, though. I'll have to see if I can snap a sharper photo of it sometime.

July 31st, 2022

It's the last day of July, and I got five more game specific pages set up today! I've already been to Bed, Bath and Beyond this morning, too. I'm unstoppable.

Last night, for important reasons, I got my old PS3 out, cleaned up, and ready to play, with a stop at the console's Playstation Store. I had never had so much trouble getting a company to let me give them a stack of money. I had to set up an app-specific password through my phone to log into the console at all, which gave me dreadful work flashbacks, then, in order to add funds to my Playstation wallet, I had to get a digital PS Store gift card on Amazon and then add it to my account externally. It was all such a hassle that after getting the new set of games downloaded, I went back in and backed up all prior PS3 purchases, effectively turning my PS3 into a very specifically targeted version of a preloaded classics console.

From there, though, I took a hard turn from what I'd intended getting the system out and dug into Sonic the Fighters, which is a really excellent game because it lets you make the Sonic characters pummel each other. Actually, I do really like this game! It plays well, especially for a 1996 3D fighter, the smooth polygons are really cool looking, and I like how much personality it has, both in terms of characters and stage backdrops. I played through Amy's arcade mode last night, because it's fun to use the squeaky hammer.

My one point of bafflement, though, is that in one playthrough and another quick trophy scum, I got 100% of the trophies for this game! No doubt it made me feel powerful, but I felt like it was kind of lazy to make every trophy such an easy target as "Beat Stage 1," "Beat Stage 2." I'm still going to play it more, but I was surprised at that.

Speaking of trophy scumming, I also played Parappa the Rapper Remastered some more last night. I grabbed the easy mode trophy quickly, then got the basic game clear one, too. I do enjoy playing this, but going back to it now, it feels more like Dragon's Lair, or just an FMV game in general, than a normal music game. The buttons matching up to syllables and words on the player end gives it a weird feel that, at least for me, makes it hard to get back on rhythm when I got thrown off. It's still fun, and this won't be the last I play of it, but it's a much stranger game than I remembered it being.

Alas, I must go to Wal-Mart now. If I become lost in the aisles, please let my affection for obsolete games with cute animal friends stand as my final testament.