Video games Baku Baku Animal [SAT; 1995, 1996] Fighters Megamix [SAT; 1996] Final Fantasy Ⅰ Pixel Remaster [PC; 1987, 2021] {05:07} Panzer Dragoon [SAT; 1995] Panzer Dragoon: Remake [PC; 1995, 2020] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate [Switch; 2018]
This is the game that I dumped the most time into. I looked into setting up a good shader, found some new fonts that I wanted to test out, and so awaaaay I went.
I spent quite a bit of time grinding, because I'm running RDM/WHM/BLM×2, which means that in the early game, they die to a stiff breeze.
Eventually though, I made it past Pravoka, beefed up in Elfheim, and decided to finally brave the Marsh Cave. Wrecked Astos' dumb face in, and went back to undergo Fetch Quest '87. After that, I arrived in Melmond, and although I've been hitting up the Hall of Giants in the Cavern of Earth, I haven't gone further than that.
Part of me wants to continue grinding levels, but part of me feels that I can take Lich right now, and beat his dumb face in. However, I am Team Squishy, so even if I guess right with each spell that he throws out, I'll still keel over if he looks at me wrong. Still, nothing ventured.
After messing around with reprogramming the Smash Box, I went to mess around with my new settings. (By the way, neat thing: You can attach the Wii Nunchuk if you so desire, and mess around with that.. It's pretty neat, although I question if my Nunchuk is still working well, haha. I messed around with it for Ultimate, and quickly decided it wasn't for me.)
While doing so, I realized that I am now way more trash than I originally was before. I mean, that's to be expected, but hoofa, I was stiffer than usual. So, until my interest fails me, I'm going to spend time in the lab, seeing what I can do to remedy that.
My character of choice is Sephiroth… and while I definitely do wish to take him online eventually, that isn't the reason that I picked him. No, it's because he has both angled tilts, as well as a multidirectional recovery.
Pivot Cancels are cool as hell, and definitely something that I want to add to my muscle memory… and I also never really bothered to learn how to use all of the modifiers to master my recovery.
It's a large part of the reason why I haven't played characters like Pikachu in years, despite loving them: because attempting to utilize all of those angles intimidates the fuck out of me.
So, I'm using Mr. Estuans Interius to step my game up for those reasons alone. Of course, there's a lot more that I need to learn—including proper out-of-shield options that are more than just "grab this bitch"—but I'm doing what I can to take it one day at a time.
I actually didn't play all that much of this. I wanted to play it using my Virtua Stick, but lol the damn game reads my stick as digital inputs, and thus my dragon won't go much of anywhere.
I messed around with Modern controls once I switched to my Switch Pro… buuut that felt a bit too weird for my brain to attempt to adapt to for the time being. So, I put the Pro Controller down for the day, and switched to…
You know, it's funny: Despite being basically the same game, the original and remake feel completely different in terms of art direction and atmosphere… and no, it isn't due to the graphics.
The first level of Remake looks livelier, which definitely isn't a bad thing… but the original's first level looks and feels more desolate, like you're visiting a place from eons past, out of time. I'm not bashing the remake at all, because I think that it's good overall… but man, the graphics on the Saturn just hit different.
Anyway, I wanted to test the Virtua Stick (and its built-in rapid fire)… and yeah, it felt pretty nice. Definitely a lot less cumbersome than the pre-packaged Saturn controllers. Being able to just move your fingers wherever without having to finagle them in odd directions is rad. (More on this later.)
Not that you really need to for this game… but still.
This really should go in between the Panzer Dragoon entries… but fuck it, that flows better, so this goes down here.
I found out something a mite curious while testing my Virtua Stick in Mednafen: Apparently, holding the stick right just didn't register while I was remapping the controls?
I know that I didn't have this issue before, so I mucked about with things to see what was the matter, and if my stick was now borked.
It turns out that if I use connect the Smash Box or Virtua Stick to the ports in front of my computer, I get Issues™. Things registering as controller two, not working buttons, noise like that.
Also, I kinda grew tired of using Mednafen on its own. It's a damn fine emulator in turns of accuracy… but man, that GUI (or lack thereof) is horrible. Games were also displaying at their native resolution, despite being full screen—not a bad thing, but I wanted more real estate.
Then I found out that Mednafen does have a core in RetroArch… but it's renamed "Beetle" for some reason. Odd. It didn't use to be like that, either; the devs of that emulator specifically requested for them to not have their cores listed as "Mednafen". Well, whatever; it's the same damn thing.
After messing around with Panzer Dragoon, I tried finding a working image of Off-World Interceptor Extreme, because I wanted to test that out. Strangely enough, though? All of the images that I tested just wouldn't run.
I reached down to my empty Saturn cases of my youth (my mom lost my games while I was at college, and claimed that she never moved anything ), so that I could dust off my oversized jewel case of Off-World Interceptor Extreme in preparation for it to house a game again.
It hadn't even been fifteen minutes since I clicked purchase, so the deal shouldn't go through… but if it does? Fuck it; it's only twelve dollars or so.
RetroArch has a nifty feature where you can choose to run a game straight from the CD, or rip it to create your own image. I did the latter, because my CD drive and I have some strange Issues™, and I didn't want to keep reinserting the game every time I wanted to play it.
I didn't play too much of this. I knew that I couldn't beat it, and my method of controls definitely didn't help. Still, I like the game, and it was fun to revisit.
You know, I was always kinda curious about this game because it had characters from Sonic the Fighters, as well as moves that would be in the then-upcoming Virtua Fighter 3. (I owned a copy of VF2 back in the day.) Still, never thought to give this a try before now.
I mean, a large part of it is because I'm trash at fighting games, but that doesn't mean that I have to play the main campaign. I figured that if it was anything like its non-crossover entry, that it would have a training mode for me to dick around with. Lo and behold, I was right.
(You know what's funny about that? Virtua Fighter 2doesn't have a training mode. I actually just used to set the timer and health to infinite, the ring to extra large, and just have a go. Whoops. Go go gadget faulty memory. )
Again, not used to using an arcade stick at all… but I could definitely tell the quality of the Virtua Stick from messing around in this mode. Pretty much every input I flubbed felt like it was my fault, and that was nice. I mean, a mite frustrating, but nice all the same.
Also, the training mode is neat. I wasn't expecting much, but it even had directional prompts and a checklist of the moves that you cleared, just like VF5 does.
Anyway, I messed around with a handful of characters here and there. First, Sarah, because I recall liking her back in VF2. Then, I wanted to try something different, so I hit up the FV character Candy for a bit.
Then, I figured, "Ya know what? I'm gonna get bold," and selected Akira.
For those unfamiliar with Virtua Fighter: Akira is the face of the series, and the face of a fighting game tends to be the most basic and easiest to learn.
Akira is the most difficult character to learn in the fucking series.
I keep coming back to him because I absolutely love his fighting game, but holy shit, that character is mad technical, and I am stupid trash with him. Still, I figured, "Hey, at least I have a move list to show me what's up. Between that, and the Virtua Stick, things are pretty rad."
And indeed they were, for the most part. I mean, I had several execution errors due to not knowing how to drive stick, but actually inputting the buttons were butter. Virtua Fighter has macros that you can set, but because of both the layout and responsiveness of the buttons, I didn't even feel the need to use them.
Then, I hit a wall: The game wanted me to perform one of Akira's combos.
Y'see, Akira has some really cool, but also really technically demanding combos. The inputs themselves aren't daunting, but the fact that you need to complete the next input before the first one's animation is over is.
It's a stone bitch to try and do consistently at all, to say nothing of being in the heat of battle. (There's a reason why people have described Virtua Fighter as being like actually learning a martial art.)
Video games
Baku Baku Animal [SAT; 1995, 1996]
Fighters Megamix [SAT; 1996]
Final Fantasy Ⅰ Pixel Remaster [PC; 1987, 2021] {05:07}
Panzer Dragoon [SAT; 1995]
Panzer Dragoon: Remake [PC; 1995, 2020]
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate [Switch; 2018]
ᴇɴᴅ ᴏғ ʟɪɴᴇ
Final Fantasy
This is the game that I dumped the most time into. I looked into setting up a good shader, found some new fonts that I wanted to test out, and so awaaaay I went.
I spent quite a bit of time grinding, because I'm running RDM/WHM/BLM×2, which means that in the early game, they die to a stiff breeze.
I actually did more than just bid on other people spectating. Go me.
I actually didn't play all that much of this. I wanted to play it using my Virtua Stick, but lol the damn game reads my stick as digital inputs, and thus my dragon won't go much of anywhere.
You know, it's funny: Despite being basically the same game, the original and remake feel completely different in terms of art direction and atmosphere… and no, it isn't due to the graphics.
So yeah, original game still holds up well. If you're into rail shooters, I recommend either or.
Not that you really need to for this game… but still.
This really should go in between the Panzer Dragoon entries… but fuck it, that flows better, so this goes down here.
I found out something a mite curious while testing my Virtua Stick in Mednafen: Apparently, holding the stick right just didn't register while I was remapping the controls?
It turns out that if I use connect the Smash Box or Virtua Stick to the ports in front of my computer, I get Issues™. Things registering as controller two, not working buttons, noise like that.
I guess the only controller I'm going to be connecting to the front of my computer is the 8BitDo adapter that I use with my Pro Controllers.\
"Hey, doesn't RetroArch have Saturn cores?"💥‿💥
"Hey look! The horizon is clear and moving!"Yeah, fuck that; not using that core anymore.
"Beetle"for some reason. Odd. It didn't use to be like that, either; the devs of that emulator specifically requested for them to not have their cores listed as"Mednafen". Well, whatever; it's the same damn thing.with blackjack and hookers. However, I needed an actual disc for that. To eBay!…and damn, the price of this little game has gone up. Well, whatever; I found one with the disc only, which wouldn't set me back much of anything.
Game CD:
"Sup G."SHIT ABORT ABORT ABORT
Oddly enough? That refused to run, too.
I didn't actually play any of it, though; I just wanted to see if it worked, and how it ran.
Baku Baku
Do you know how hard it is to control a puzzle game with a joystick?
And why in the bleeding hell do the pieces get so damn fast after the third level? Flipping rude, game.
Fighters Megamix
You know, I was always kinda curious about this game because it had characters from Sonic the Fighters, as well as moves that would be in the then-upcoming Virtua Fighter 3. (I owned a copy of VF2 back in the day.) Still, never thought to give this a try before now.
Then, I figured, "Ya know what? I'm gonna get bold," and selected Akira.
Akira is the most difficult character to learn in the fucking series.
Y'see, Akira has some really cool, but also really technically demanding combos. The inputs themselves aren't daunting, but the fact that you need to complete the next input before the first one's animation is over is.
Then, I see the escalation, notice that next input isn't quite coming out, and think to myself, "Oh… oh, this is one of those.
I manage to successfully perform that, and then I see this shit:
I'll come back to the combo eventually;. Just not right now.