What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Time Gal (Switch)

January 20th, 2024

Yesterday, I spilled a drink on my work computer, destroying it not ten minutes after I'd logged on for the day. It wasn't my best moment, but I got a new one within a few hours.

In that waiting period, though, I finished Time Gal! The last chunk of the game really spiked the difficulty, with some button presses needing done the split second they appeared on screen, making memorization a necessity. The final boss was really underwhelming, too! After fighting several dinosaurs, a cyberpunk bike gang, and a couple wars, a guy in a chair just didn't cut it. Still, the easier final encounter was a relief after the rest of the final stretch, and I was glad to see the game's end. For me, this was a pretty enjoyable laserdisc game, and I'm excited to tackle the other two in the Taito LD Game Collection.

Just to stay active, I played a short workout in Fitness Circuit again, without skipping the stretches like I had the day before. It was fine!

Then, before bed, I played another set of missions in Fashion Dreamer's Dramatic Fair. I'd planned to play slightly longer, but some new medicines knocked me on my butt, so I did not.

January 8th, 2024

It's been a dumb last couple of days! I just got back from another blood test, there's going to be a winter storm tonight, and it took me two hours to open the hood on my car and refill the antifreeze yesterday. Because of that, I spent my game time yesterday messing with 80s arcade games rather than playing anything seriously.

Time Gal was the first of my games yesterday, and if my car had been less of a struggle, I would have buckled down and cleared it. As it is, I might try that tonight, just to have the game done with before the new event in Fashion Dreamer this week.

Later on, before bed, I played Outrun for a while on the easiest setting possible, enjoying a little cruise with cheery scenery and nice music. It is the perfect game to unwind with, even without ever using it to challenge myself.

January 6th, 2024

Yesterday was not my favorite day, but I did get some games in. Yesterday was a work-from-home day, so during my last break, I snuck off to my room and played Time Gal a few minutes to try and wake up. It did not make me less sleepy, and my play was horrendous, but it was still fun.

Before bed, I also played a few rounds of Catlord, finally taking a look at the second stage and quickly unlocking the third, and final one. They were actually a little disappointing, maybe. The spooky theme is fine, but I felt like fighting skeletons and ghosts instead of just random animals, like at the game's start, lost a little charm. I just play this to fall asleep, though, so it's not a deal breaker.

January 3rd, 2024

It's time for another fast post today! I was exhausted yesterday, so most of my game time was spent scumming for upgrades in Catlord. It was boring, but I needed something mindless to play, and this was perfect!

I also played a couple of credits in Time Gal, and made it way further than I expected to on one credit! I felt powerful.

January 2nd, 2024

My time management was poor this morning, so this is going to be a short post. I kept going for another hour in Ninja JaJaMaru: The Ninja Skill Book, and learned a spell to turn enemies into riceballs. This is my new favorite RPG status effect.

I played five credits in Time Gal yesterday, and did a lot better than I expected. It's an enjoyable grind so far.

In the interest of clearing games, I also went back to Planetarian, since there's no easier clear than a visual novel with no choices to be made. It's interesting, but I'm still not totally sure what I think of it.

January 1st, 2024

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm excited to be doing my first post of the year, and I have some very arbitrary gaming goals for 2024. My plan is to beat one game a month in each of the following categories: RPG, Game Pass, and Other Stuff. The key to pulling this off, I think, is going to be trying for a better attention span when I start a game and cleaning up my backlog of enjoyable games I started and abandoned. I'm not sure I'll make it, but it'll be fun to try! (I'm also going to try for watching 100 movies, which I did manage last year, and reading 100 novels, both of which should be easier.)

Even though I'll be doing some dropped game cleanup, I wanted to start the year with an RPG I thought might be short, just to get off on the right foot. Naturally, I went with Ninja JaJaMaru: The Ninja Skill Book, a newly localized Famicom RPG I picked up in a Switch eShop sale. It seems like a pretty blatant Dragon Quest ripoff so far, but I'm not so bothered by that. I'm curious to see how this one goes!

I played another 3 continues in Time Gal, too, and am enjoying getting better at the game bit by bit. After getting the same opening scene a few times in a row, I was surprised to see that it was actually randomized, but that's not much of a hurdle.

I also built another not-Lego building, which was intended to be a Pepsi store. It didn't come with any decals, though, so I slapped on some Urusei Yatsura stickers my friend sent me and rebranded it as the Lum store. I don't know what the purpose of it is, but clearly, it's the cornerstone of this somewhat shady community.

December 31st, 2023

It's my last post of 2023, and I actually cleared a game last night! To be fair, it's not a very impressive one, but I turned on my PS4 to do a replay of Space Ace last night. I wanted to play it again just as a point of comparison to Time Gal, since the sci-fi trappings are superficially similar. The protagonist's laser gun lighting up when you have to shoot in each game is less superficially similar, but I'm not sure how else such a limited format could get that across.

For readers who have never played a laserdisc game, it's kind of like running through 15 minutes solid of quick time events superimposed over a cartoon. Modern ports have button prompts on the screen, which I think is particularly helpful with some of the direction/perspective issues in Space Ace specifically, but in their original formats, you had to watch super closely to see something flash on the screen, then push the corresponding button- either your attack button, or the direction of the flashing object.

I totally understand why these games are not held in high regard today. Especially in their original formats, they're pretty miserable to play, and as a home gamer, I can't imagine how mad I would have been spending actual quarters on them. While the modern button prompts help, they can make these games a little too easy, which I am fine with, but can also see as a problem. (Time Gal has an interesting way around this I'll talk about in a later post.)

Despite those pretty valid problems, I think laserdisc games are an extremely interesting way to make games feel more "cinematic" within the limitations of 1980s tech. Even in the 90s, I remember being amazed at the thought of "playing a cartoon" when I first played Dragon's Lair and Space Ace on the 3DO, even though I never saw past the second screen on either. This is not a thought I have ever gotten past, even in the midst of my most controller-throwing-rage at these games, so I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack.

All that aside, I've played Space Ace a few times before, always on an easier mode to preserve my sanity. That being surprised, I was really surprised I managed to clear it in one sitting last night! I think it's an aesthetically cool game, but it moves so fast that some of the button press timings come off feeling extremely unfair. My last playthrough, I used saves to scum through it over three nights, which was kind of what I expected to end up doing here. That didn't happen, though, so I felt somewhat good about myself. It helps that the final boss has somewhat generous timing compared to the rest of the game, but that's fine. I took a path where I didn't get to see the nifty rollerskating scene, though, so I might replay it again fairly soon.

I played Time Gal for a few credits, too, and am starting to get a feel for it.

After gaming time was over, I built a tiny LOZ sweets shop, too. Microblocks are a challenge, and this design was perhaps a bit overcomplicated, so the friend I was chatting with as I worked on this heard many complaints. It came out so cute, though! My tiny bootleg Lego city is coming along nicely.

For today, I am not sure what I'll do, but I do have another bootleg lego building half-finished on my craft table. Once I get that done, I'll figure everything else out!

December 30th, 2023

This is a little later than a standard Saturday post, but I had a very exciting morning paying bills, buying groceries, and setting this blog up for 2024. I knew that I hadn't done well clearing games over the past year, since I felt extremely down for most of it, but 16 still seemed super low! My thought is that I'll probably do better next year, but if I don't, that's okay.

As far as my actual gaming goes, I got the preorder I'd made for the Taito LD Game Collection in the mail and was really excited! It was kind of a splurge, but I think laserdisc games are really interesting and had wanted to play Time Gal for a long time. Last night, I tried it out and wasn't disappointed. So far, I do feel like it leans more on "running away" scenes than the sorts of setpieces that pop up in Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, but I'm not sure that's bad. I was also very pleased to see that this has the player-friendly button prompts that the more recent ports of the Don Bluth laserdisc games use. I first played those on 3D0, so I was totally prepared to rough it with Time Gal like I did with this sort of game back then. That being said, I'm pretty relieved I won't have to.

I'm really excited about old laserdisc games right now, so I'm definitely going to play Time Gal some more today! I'm also really tempted to turn my PS4 on for Dragon's Lair, just as a point of comparison, but I'm not sure about that yet.