Life

It’s been fifteen days since my last update so you probably know by now if you’re stopping in regularly that this may not be updated too frequently just yet. Why is that? Life is still in the way.

My oldest son got a surprise that he is heading to boot camp for the Navy next Wednesday. Originally he was supposed to go in July but the date kept getting pushed back and we thought it was going to be September. His clearances weren’t getting done, etc. Government stuff. Suddenly, out of the blue about a week and a half ago now they said July 29th. Now that has changed to July 24th! Sigh. Needless to say, that has caused a rush of activity for everyone to say their goodbyes and for me to prepare for him to leave.

I am not prepared. I thought I was, but I’m probably not. I’ll kinda leave it at that.

Anyway, it’s kind of taken me away from gaming for blogs or streams at the moment and that’s totally ok for me, but it hasn’t lessened my desire to produce some fun things for people to see. I had about eight good years in the industry as a freelance writer and I think I’ve always had a ton of knowledge of the history of videogames and can relate lots of cool things in either text, vocal or video form so that will happen! Bear with me as I go through this one big huge life change and there will be gaming to come.

Real quick, I have continued playing a lot of Samurai Shodown and well, I absolutely love it. It has so much of the flavor of the original two games in the series. They are my favorites, so I appreciate that. One small gripe I have is when playing online the music is always the track from the character you play as instead of being from your opponent or a stage. I’d like to have the option to change that. Street Fighter V offers that to the player and this game should too. It’s a minor gripe though because the music is good and I play Earthquake who has one of the better music tracks in the game.

It’s easy to pick that up and play it for short periods of time so it’s been perfect for me lately. Outside of that, I did get in a little retro with Elemental Master on Genesis. You can read about that at RGB. Until next time…

Sega Ages

Last Friday I picked up the Sega Ages: Virtua Racing release on Nintendo Switch. If you haven’t seen the games in this series, you really ought to check them out! So far, Sega has given us…

• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Lightening Force
• Phantasy Star
• Out Run
• Gain Ground
• Alex Kidd in Miracle World
• Virtua Racing
• Wonder Boy in Monster Land
  

They’ve also released Space Harrier and Puyo Puyo (Arcade) in Japan. Expect Space Harrier soon over here as well. Every one of these I’ve purchased so far has been a gem. They are given the best possible treatment by M2, a Japanese company that’s spent a lot of time remastering games from Sega’s (and other companies’) catalog. It’s emulation or porting on a level you just don’t get much outside of Japan.

All of them have leaderboards and enhancements while still retaining the original experience. For example, Phantasy Star has an automapping function you can use in the dungeons and it also has altered encounter rates and loot drops to speed it up a bit. The tinkering in most of the games is minimal, but just enough to make the games feel that much better in 2019.

I’d already purchased Sonic, Lightening Force, Phantasy Star, and Out Run before Friday and now I’ve added Virtua Racing. At $7.99, this is a fantastic way to bring that arcade game home. It looks better than it ever has and it plays well on the Switch. It does point out that my Pro Controller is a little shaky in the analog stick department these days, but beyond that quibble with hardware, it really couldn’t be better. It supports leaderboards and online play against another opponent but even just pounding around the three circuits shooting for better completion times has eaten up a couple hours for me already. It’s a game I loved in arcades and it still holds up really well today thanks to Sega’s developers testing the hell out of it to make the experience tight.

If $7.99 seems like a lot, they’ve been putting these games on sale for $5.99 occasionally too. I used those sales for a couple on my list and will eventually pick up the others I’m missing at the next opportunity. These are all classics from their catalog that sit nicely next to the Arcade Archives series that’s been bringing Neo Geo and other arcade favorites to Switch for quite awhile now. The Sega Ages releases are highly recommended for quick bursts of arcade or old school console gameplay that feels totally timeless both at home and on the go. They really go the extra mile to respectfully celebrate some of Sega’s amazing history.

Samurai Shodown

Blogs are best for a stream of consciousness type thing, so here’s my early take on Samurai Shodown from SNK and publisher Athlon Games.

It is effing fantastic and any fighting game fan should play it!

Actually, even if you’ve only got a passing interest in the genre, this might be the fighting game for you. No, you won’t find some long drawn out story mode that features all sorts of hats and weird costume customizations to tick the box of constant pleasure through being given free things. What you will find is an incredibly solid fighting engine with tense combat, low reliance on combo play, and high demand for spacing, blocking, and quick strategic thinking. Execution is very important too, but even if you never pulled off a fireball in your life in Street Fighter, you’ve got a chance to win in Samurai Shodown.

Much like the original game and its sequels, very specifically Samurai Shodown II, this one emphasizes the back and forth of blocks, parries and thrusts to make every decision important. Samurai Shodown 2019 has a four button scheme of Light, Medium and Hard slashes as well as a Kick button. Combinations of those buttons have some unique effects. The in game tutorial does a fine job explaining those functions and they can be invaluable additions to your game. The details are easily located on the web so I won’t go into detail, but know that this game has a really solid and well considered fighting system at its core. The Light/Medium button combo used specifically to dodge is a very cool part of this system.

What really struck me about the game right from the start last night is that this is a sort of perfectly realized modern take on the 1990’s fighting game. It’s got a stellar graphics engine with some excellent 3D modeling and art that takes you to a unique place. The soundtrack sets an appropriate mood with lots of nice throwbacks to the series roots. The arcade-style single player character driven path to the (amazing) final boss is very much in line with those days of old. I didn’t tinker with the Dojo yet and its ghost fighters, but that along with more standard training modes will do fine to prepare me for online play. Local versus play is slick although load times are a little long, but once you’re fighting, that all fades away. The gameplay is great.

Finally, online is Ranked or Casual and yeah, the casual room is messy. It needs work. It’s designed for friend play and not just random next man up stuff, but that seems to be a constant failing of Japanese fighting games in recent history. *sigh* What I was very happy with was the online game performance. No lagging or stuttering in any game I played last night. I set it to 3 bars and up for connection rate, too.

So why would this appeal to someone who’s not just into fighting games? I think its bright, beautiful, and colorful characters and settings alongside a really easy to grasp fighting system make it a perfect starter for anyone who has a casual interest. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has so many characters and a platform-action design that is fun for anyone, but the mechanics of that game take a lot of time to learn. I think players of that underestimate the difficulty some people have with recovery when getting knocked off stage specifically. Samurai Shodown is so damn simple and man, everyone knows you don’t want to get hit with a sword! Hard slashes hurt in this game and you can really feel every blow, just like the original I played in an arcade way back in 1993. I remember when I first saw it… the glowing background from the fire pit on Gen-an’s stage (who is missing from this roster, btw) and the quiet, barely there music… it was a sight and sound to behold, incredibly unique for its time. When the swords clashed and the hits came, the original put me over the edge toward Neo Geo ownership.

There’s a taut desperation in every match of Samurai Shodown. I think it comes from the graphic and sound design as much as the swordplay and it’s unique in the fighting game genre. It’s been there from the beginning of the series and this 2019 edition seems to have it in spades.

Holy hell! This still exists!

It’s ten years later and I’m still here! My third of three sons just graduated from high school a little over two weeks ago and I’m freeeeeee! Ok, maybe not exactly free… I’m still a Dad… a GAMERDAD if you will, and it feels good.

The world has changed considerably but maybe a blog would be kind of fun again? Maybe it’s just retro enough for me to revive? I have a Twitch channel I could use to play some games on, and have in the past couple years. That’s mainly been used for Fortnite and some Apex Legends. Apex is my comfort game of choice lately. It’s the Titanfall experience in battle royale form with slightly degraded movement possibilities (and no Titans!) but still just enough of the prior games to make it completely awesome.

Beyond Apex Legends, I’ve been playing a lot of retro games and just messing about with other free games or things I already own. Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII is damn good and I still play that a lot. I wonder what 2009 me would say about me playing that? Crazy… I’m still blown away it’s been that long.

So I dunno what’s coming here, if anything again ever, but it’s pretty amazing to go spelunking through my Internet past. I found my old site One Gamer’s Voice in the Wayback Machine. That’s pretty awesome. I also finally located the Crispy Gamer output in there too. Apparently a lot of my Computer Games Mag stuff is there but the domain is parked so I’ll mess with that later. Maybe get some updated links on this place?

Anyway, whoever you might be stumbling onto this, check the About page for who I was in 2009. LOL! Back soon with more… maybe… 🙂

–D

Rooting Around

In about eight hours I’ll be getting my tooth drilled for a root canal. Not looking forward to that. Hopefully all goes well, but I’m really tired of having dentists beat the crap out of my mouth.

Not much gaming related to talk about, and I’m not thinking too much about that stuff anyway given the dental work. I also have an appointment to get my hair cut tomorrow night. I think I’m going short again. It’s time for a change.

If you have an iPhone, check out SlotZ Racer. It’s a great little slot car game that just recently got a nice little update to it. It amazes me that iPhone developers can sell games for $4.99 and then pass along free updates like that. What’s wrong with the rest of the industry that we’re paying $59.99 for half a game and then getting another $50 in downloads available later?

Everyone better watch out, because if these iPhone things ever get cheap enough… hoo boy.