Welcome to my Nest, make yourself comfy

 Greetings everyone!

My name is Ishambard and welcome to my Nest!
Would you like a cup of tea and some cakes? I am sure I can rustle up something for you.

So, a little bit about me:

I'm a British Gamer, I have been playing video games as far back as I can remember, in fact some of my earliest memories were being sat in front of a Super Nintendo and playing Super Mario World. Besides Gaming I have a passion for anything that is vaguely creative, it's all good, creating things no matter what it is or what materials you use; paint, clay, fabric, wood, metal, code or words, it's all something you should be incredibly proud of.
For instance, my Wife has written a book and it has been published and being part of that, even if it was right at the end for the book launch, remains one of those moments I am super proud of, especially of her.

Other things about me, I studied Japanese language at University and have a... Grasp on it all still. Very rusty, but I know enough to convince the average person I know a lot. Japan as a whole is a weird thing for me, my Nan on my Mum's side was Japanese, she left the country after the 2nd World War, which must of been a challenging time to leave, let alone leaving it to marry a British Soldier. So besides my love for the media and culture of Japan, it all runs quite close to my heart. Though I have no idea what my Nan would have thought had I told her I was going to study Japanese at University!

So what is this blog all about?
Well that will probably evolve with time, but for the time being I want to use this as a platform to decompress my thoughts on games I have been playing, talking about things I liked and disliked, a commentary on it. It will be an extension of my posts on Mastodon, but a little more unfiltered and less condensed, which is somewhat of a concern as I am prone to the odd ramble. I wouldn't say it will be anything like a serious review, more of a reflection on the experience and a chance to showcase some of the things I have been playing.
A lot of what I have been playing have been Retro Games, games dating back to the NES era and up to Gamecube, basically anything that is supported by RetroAchievements.org as I will have to give them massive props for putting me on this journey.

I should clarify, what is RetroAchievements.org
It is a website where users can create achievements for Retro Games. These achievements can be obtained by creating an account and syncing said account with an Emulator that supports it. For myself, I use EmuDeck/RetroArch on my SteamDeck which has allowed me to start reliving these games with a twist. It has also giving me impetus to play some games from my Childhood I never finished, two examples of games I completed quite early on were Alien 3 for the SNES and the Sega Megadrive/Genesis version of RoboCop Vs Terminator. Since then it has been a bit of a ride of discovery and rediscovery and I wanted to share this with more people.

 My hope is that through this blog I can increase people's awareness to some games, whether they be Retro or Indie, as I have a tendency to play some of those too. In fact, I also record Let's Plays on my YouTube Channel where I just want to share in the gaming experience. Essentially what I want to do is share a passion with people, and you can feel free to disagree with my sentiments on things, as we are all entitled to our own opinion, my hope is that I might inspire people to either check out some of the games I have spoken about or even join me in dabbling RetroAchievements.org. It's a fun time, honest!

For anything that is an extension on the Mastodon toots, I will also drop relevant links to those as they do function quite well as a TL;DR on the games I have been playing.

Hope you enjoy your stay here!

Radia Senki: Reimei Hen (NES) – Chronicle of the Radia War – A must-look for curious JRPG Fans

Radia Senki Toot 

So this comes with a decent amount of shame and I will be totally honest, when it comes to JRPGs, especially those on the original NES, I am sadly quite ignorant. Beyond Final Fantasy, I draw a bit of a blank. Actually, if I am in the process of honesty, as much as I say that I enjoy JRPGs, I have a shocking lack of them in my gaming repertoire. Now, perhaps I could be forgiven because when it comes to Retro games, I didn’t quite have the luxury of picking up games that would have caught my interest, mostly because I was 2 years old when the SNES was released in the UK. 8-bit and 16-bit JRPGs would have be beyond my comprehension, possibly outside the realms of my patience as well. This latter point is actually important, trust me.

So enough about myself and let’s actually talk a little bit about the game. Radia Senki is a JRPG that was released in Japan only, in November 1991, a full year after the SNES was released in Japan, and a few months after it was released in North America. Apparently a prototype was apparently made for an English release, but I can imagine that it would probably have been quite a gamble to try to release a JRPG on a console on the previous generation when the focus probably would have been to get push SNES games and sales. That being said, I am shocked how many games were still being released on the NES after the release of SNES. Despite not being released outside of Japan, there exists a fan translation for the game, so it is fully playable in English. I will say right off the bat, this one is worth giving a look at as it, especially for JRPG Fans.

Radia Senki follows the adventure of a player-named protagonist, who awakes in strange world. They seem to have been struck down with a well-trodden case of amnesia! He is found by Darus, a wondering mage. They witness something crashing in the mountains nearby, upon investigating they discover the crashed… Plane? (The technology is a little weird in this game), inside the plane is Princess Lefis. Graciously, she doesn’t have amnesia, and she sets out the plot for the player. Her step-brother is looking to take over the world by collecting macguffins to open the sacred Radia Tower. So your quest is to stop him and save the world, hopefully regaining your lost memories along the way. It is quite funny though, you get to name your character, with a 4 character limit, and Lefis comments that the player inputted name means “Guardian of Light”. Anyway, a long the way, you recruit a mismatch group of party members and go on a globetrotting journey to stop a megalomaniac from doing something stupid. I don’t want to get into too many details about the plot as I think it is worth experiencing.

But, do you know what is worth going into some details about, the combat. For an NES game, I am surprised that they went with a real-time combat system. The best way for me to explain how it works, is that when you have a random encounter, the gameplay becomes reminiscent of Zelda. You control the protagonist and can move freely, in four directions, and attack with a sword. Your allies are controlled by the computer and will act in accordance to 4 different strategies you can set. Fight, Rush, Defend and Move. Fight sets them to move around and attack whatever enemy they please, whilst Rush lets you set a target and they focus on that enemy. Defend sets them to avoid getting range of enemy attacks. Move allows you set a tile for them to move to. Most of the times you will keep them set to Fight and let them get on with things, because what I will say about the battles in this game, they can be incredibly slow, everyone moves around the battlefield as if they are hip deep in water. That’s quite hyperbolic, I didn’t find that the encounters in the game that bad, but the encounter rate? Oh, that’s a different matter. There are times when you can make a decent distance across a map, whilst other times you will barely move a space before being dragged into another battle, usually one with the same encounter composition. That composition point is important, trust me.

Beyond running around the battlefield swinging a sword or letting your allies attack, you also have spells. Well, the player character doesn’t your party members do. Spells are learnt by finding scrolls in chests and other environmental items, like bookcases, pots, etc. My advice is, bump into every object in the game, as you will want those scrolls. Spells operate on a “per rest” basis, similar to Final Fantasy 1, graciously, any bed you see in the game can be used to rest, heal and save, so you don’t even need to find an Inn to rest up in. Heck, even the inns don’t charge you to sleep in a bed. So, here is the rub though with the spells. Beyond a few, Healus, Swapra and Escapus, you will have NO clue what the spells actually do, a lot of them do damage, but the game doesn’t really give any feedback on the damage your spells are doing. The worst part is, you can’t use spells against bosses! Except Healus. Healus is an amazing spell, as it will heal your entire party to full health. Beyond the spells and beds to heal, you do get potions and herbs… Or you can just eat meat you get as a reward for killing some enemies. Considering that meat restores 8 HP, and late game your HP caps at about 255, trying to heal using meat would be a potentially traumatic experience for the person needing healing, it makes me think of some of those Skyrim or Zelda jokes about pausing time and huffing down kilos of food.

Talking about the meat situation actually does brings me ‘neatly’ into inventory in this game, first of all, inventory is neatly organised into 3 different sections, medic, tool and prize, medic holding all your healing items, tool being usable items and key items and prize are items that are dropped by enemies, either meat, tusks or bones. Now, tool items suffer from the same issue that spells do, you have no real idea what the items do, I assume they are explained in the game’s instruction manual. What is odd though, the prize items do give you a tool tip for what they do. Meat, heals as mentions, tusks do something I forgot about and bones cause enemies to flee, for some reason. What is annoying is that nothing else has these tool tips and you’ll either have to experiment with things, this is particularly frustrating when dealing with the tool items, as there are some incredibly useful items, like the orb of life, which fully heals and restores all magic points, but the game doesn’t tell you that. Another annoying inventory quirk, prize items stack up to 99 (Except the Gadora Thorns, where you can only have three of those), medical items stack to 9, and tools aren’t stackable, but you can have 18 items in total in that section of your inventory. But, you might be asking, where does your gear go? Well each party member has an inventory of 6 gear items, so weapons, armours, accessories. Sometimes knowing what people can wear is obvious and some need a bit of trial and error, annoyingly, if you have a weapon equipped, you need to unequip it to equip the newer one. It’s a little clunky, and for some of the accessories it is guess work to know which slot that accessory might be in.

All in all, Radia Senki is actually quite an enjoyable game, whilst it has some pinch points and the combat can feel a little slow at times, but the forced engagement that the real time battles do bring about can keep you on your toes. Mostly because unless you are in an area where you are overlevelled, the player character will be the most competent fighter. Whilst your allies do fight and will do an admirable job, they lack the aggression that the player character will have. Don’t expect your companions to spam their attacks like you would. It should also be noted, that there is no indication of how much damage is done, no little numbers or anything. This means it is somewhat difficult to feel your characters get stronger, unless you are counting the hits you have done on certain enemies. Likewise, for enemies, it can be hard to know how hard they are hitting you and your party, and some enemies hit for A LOT of damage. Late game, the game likes to throw these heavy hitters at you in large numbers. As mentioned earlier, the encounter rate can mean that you fight the same set of enemies multiple times in one area, meaning you might have to deal with some of those incredibly threatening enemies in a series of endurance waves.

Honestly though, I think if JRPGs are your cup of tea, and you can get past some of the quirks, this is actually a really fun game to play. This is the kind of game that I feel deserves some kind of modern day revival, a few Quality of Life fixes would do wonders for this game because as it stands it really is a bit of a gem of a JRPG on the NES.

 

Kingsley’s Adventure (PS1) – Kingsley stumbled so Tunic could dodge roll

Kingsley's Adventure Toot 

Occasionally, I am going through the lists of games on RetroAchievements and something will catch my attention, whether it be the name like Kowai Shashin (Scary Photograph), or the small little thumbnail they use for the game, that thumbnail is also used as the icon that gets added to your games mastered section of your profile. It is the latter that drew me into this game. The little mastery image features a fox in a blue tunic with a sword, it has a fox in it! How could I say no! Especially since the last fox-based game, I played was Star Fox Assault and I really need a palette cleanser for vulpine adventures. Kingsley’s Adventure is brought to us by Psygonsis, which is a name and logo I recognise, but for the life of me I can’t think of what game from my past I saw it plastered on.

Kinglsey’s Adventure follows the… Adventure…. Of Kingsley. Hmmm, usually that starter to a game gets the ball rolling. The game is set in the Fruit Kingdom and the Kingdom’s book of magic has been stolen by Bad Custard. Yep, that’s the villain’s name, he’s not called Custard who just happens to have gone bad, his name is Bad Custard which sets him up for a path of villainy, doesn’t it? It’s like Victor Von Doom from Marvel, with a name like Von Doom, what are you going to do with your life, besides run a campaign of evil and become a dictator of a micronation? Anyway, Bad Custard has stolen the kingdom’s book of magic and has used it to corrupt the Royal Knights and is trying to take over the Fruit Kingdom. Rise sir Kingsley! A knight in training who vows to stop Bad Custard and save the kingdom. Kingsley travels to different towns to put right the wrongs and gather the items required to become a true knight.

So, with all that, let’s begin and you’ll immediately notice that the game utilises tank style controls, like Croc: Legend of the Gobos. Granted this game was released in 1996, and the gold standard for 3D platformer controls may have not been established. It doesn’t take too long to get used to the way the game controls, and you’ll find yourself going through a training area where we learn, what is probably the most frustrating part of this game, jumping. The platforming in Kinglsey’s Adventure isn’t some cardinal sin, it is just somewhat frustrating, I found myself struggling to gauge distances, this isn’t an issue in the tutorial, but the jumping can get problematic later. Especially when moving or teeny tiny platforms above instant death pits are concerned. I suppose we should be grateful that we are made aware of this problem during the tutorial, it really helps set the tone for the adventure.

Besides jumping, we learn everything we need to know about combat. I feel spoilt by playing games like Ocarina of Time, where the combat, whilst relatively simple in that but feels good. Kinglsey’s combat is fine for the most part, you approach things, raise your shield to block an incoming attack, and follow up with a counter, hoping the enemy hasn’t gone into their blocking stance. By and large you will just stand there and exchange blows like that until they fall. There is nothing fancy going on with melee enemies, as you can block all their attacks. Again, Zelda spoilt me. You can also sidestep, which is useful during the boss encounters, but it is a slow movement, almost as if it was more designed to help you line up jumps. There is a back flip! It’s fun to do! It adds some panache to your fight but the distance you get on that is just not suitable for anything. Also, in the tutorial you will get a crossbow, which can go into a first person view to shoot or just shoot from the hip. An annoying thing about the crossbow is that you can hold a maximum of 10 shots, restocking your bolts can only be done at respawning pick-ups, at specific locations, usually locations where it is required to use the crossbow. The pick-up also only respawns when you have run out of ammo. It’s a little strange, I found myself wasting shots just to restock back to full to use later. So, now that you have learnt all of that and are equipped for the game, what happens after you finish the tutorial? Well, all that gear is taken away from you. You won’t get the crossbow back for a while.

So, when we begin our adventure properly, we are told to go to a town and help the people there. Helping the people there is all about locating the person you need to speak to gain access to the “dungeon” of the area. In fact, some of the town areas are quite large and open, sadly beyond rather humourous dialogue with some of the locals, there is next to nothing going on in the towns. You might find some chests that have coins in there and you might think you can buy stuff, maybe potions, weapons, armour… No. Once you get enough coins you gain an extra life, yes, this game has a rather arbitrary lives system. Why do I say the lives system is arbitrary, well, you game overs will send you back to the start of a dungeon, unless you reach the boss, which where game overs will put you right before the boss fight. That being said, one of the dungeons I had to re-do because I game overed half-way through it. So maybe less arbitrary than I believe. But back to the towns for a moment, it does feel that the game is a little undercooked, like there was going to be more to do, little side quests and stuff. There is some fetch questing going on, but it is all mandatory stuff.

You do get equipment in this game, as you start with a dagger and gain an axe and sword and you can switch between these weapons, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason not to use the most recently acquired weapon as there are no benefits to using certain weapons against certain enemies, and whilst I didn’t really notice it, the damage and range probably increases as you. The Knights armour and shield you get, do change your appearance, but also don’t seem to do anything to improve your defences, so the entire weapon selection seems a little pointless, though as mentioned previously, the game feels a little underbaked, perhaps there were some more mechanics that were planned to be added. To add to this, there was apparently a magic system that was planned for the game but ultimately scrapped.

The game isn’t terribly long, you can get through it in a day and admittedly a lot of my play time was trying to get the damageless boss achievements. Besides some frustrating platforming requiring you to jump as late as possible moments above instant death pits, the game is quite enjoyable it is a silly little jaunt that I think is worth giving it a play, but I wouldn’t rush out to give this game a try.

 

Magical Quest 3 starring Mickey and Donald (SNES, GBA) – The final dress up!

 Magical Quest 3 Toot 

So, we’re back, one last time in the realms of the Magical Quest. This time we have a couple of major shake-ups, no longer is this a perilous quest for Mickey and Minnie. Donald has decided to muck in. Donald’s nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie are the ones in danger this time as they find an enchanted book and get transported to Storybook land, which has been conquered by the evil King Pete. Now, my understanding of titles for rulers is a bit hazy at best. But I think Pete had it best in the first game where he was Emperor. Either way, it is up to Mickey and Donald to not only save Storybook land but also their world by stopping King Pete.

Something that I really appreciate about the Magical Quest games is that there is some kind of progression in their delivery. From the first and the second game they added co-op and now between the second and third game they have made the two playable characters unique. Whilst they both get the same outfits; the outfits have their own style and quirks. The outfits we have this time are the Armour, Climber and Magician outfits. The armour outfit is probably the one you will use the most, as this is your primary attack and defence outfit. For Mickey gets a suit of knight’s armour, a shield and a lance, giving him a decently ranged melee attack. However, as this is a full suit of armour, if he falls into water he was immediately sink. Donald on the other hand, it looks like he gets the short end of the stick. His armour is a wooden barrel and pot helmet, attacking with a short-range squishy hammer. He can hide in the barrel as his defensive action which makes certain bosses and mini-bosses incredibly easy. Also, because he is in a hollow barrel, Donald will float in the water. The Armour outfit’s attack passively charges up, once the bar reaches the top it does the most damage and can also stun nearby enemies. The climber outfit is probably the one that isn’t that different between the two characters, much like previous outfits of a similar nature, it is more for utility and traversal. It does have an attack, Mickey’s having more reach than Donald’s, the attack can be used to grab and immediately throw enemies. The new climbing mechanic for this outfit does take getting used to, you can jump onto certain trees or other appropriately round columns and shimmy up them. You are not defensively as you climb, as you can swap sides of the pole like object you are climbing and as you swing around to the other side, you are in an attacking state. It took me a while before I understood I could do that and is incredibly useful to know. The Magician outfit is the most interesting, in that the projectiles it fires has different effects on different things. Mickey shoots out two doves that travel is an low arc, if the projectiles hit enemies, projectiles or certain platforms they will transform slightly. For example, using it on a scorpion enemy will remove the stinger from the tail, allowing you to jump on them. Some bosses have strategies that involve using the magic attack on their projectiles to damage them. Donald’s magic outfit has him holding a lamp, that he needs to charge to unleash a ball of magic energy. I will be honest, outside of the mandatory moments that require the Magician and Climber outfits, I stuck mostly to the armour outfit, as it is the most effective one for fighting most of the bosses.

Much like Great Circus Mystery, dying in a stage will allow you to respawn and continue immediately where you died. This game however, instead of just appearing on the edge of a platform or where you died, you appear in a balloon and have a few seconds to move yourself to a location on the screen before the pops and you rejoin the action. This game has probably some of the trickiest platforming in the series, so this method of respawning is probably there to aid in the instance of failed jumps or putting yourself in the safest location you can see. Regarding extra lives, this game loves to throw them at you, within the first world it is quite easy to max out your lives, and that is before we even talk about the bonus rooms.

Each world has a bonus room, that functions as a mini game where you pick one of four cards, depending on what card you draw, you will get prizes, ranging from points, to coins, lives or heart potions. If you get four heart potions that gives you an extra heart for your life bar. The mini game continues until you pick a Pete card, and you are sent back to the stage. However, it should be noted that once you leave a bonus you can go back to it and try again. This allows you to grind coins, lives and potentially hearts. Though the heart potions seemed to be the rarest items in my experience. The ease of being able to grind coins makes getting all the upgrades significantly easier in this game, but like Great Circus Mystery getting a game over means you lose all your coins.

Something I had failed to mention. Magical Quest 3 on the SNES was never released outside of Japan. This is a bit of a shame, as with Great Circus Mystery, this would have been a fine game to play with friends and family. Graciously, you don’t really need to understand any Japanese to play the game, and honestly, you’re not missing that much. As with all versions of this game, I can’t really recommend the GBA version, just because of that annoying screen crunch and because if you want to do the co-op mode, you’ll need a link cable. Though, if you do play co-op, I highly encourage you to try and pick Donald as your playable character, in my opinion he is significantly better than Mickey, as he can make some parts trivial.

I probably beat this game about five times in total. Across both platforms, which I feel would bring my total amount of completions of the Magical Quest games close to fifteen times in total, no wonder I am experiencing burn out on these games. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t play them again in a couple of years’ time, all three of them can be a great time offering gameplay that isn’t too taxing, but still quite enjoyable. The games at the time of release were criticised for their length, but in the modern day, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Shorter gaming experiences have value. I have a great fondness for this series and would encourage people to play them, they can feel a little bit samey if you play them back-to-back, so it might be worth you space them out a little bit.

The Great Circus Mystery/Magical Quest 2 (SNES, Genesis, GBA) – Dressing up with friends!

 

Great Circus Mystery Toot 

 So, I wouldn’t have realised that this game was a sequel to Magical Quest if I didn’t see the GBA listing on RetroAchievements. I say sequel, it is a sequel in the sense that it uses a similar gameplay style to the first game, jumping, grabbing blocks, changing clothes, etc. The plot this time, Mickey and Minnie are on their way to a circus on the edge of town, but when they get there Goofy tells them that everyone has disappeared, including Pluto and Donald! So, Mickey and Minnie go to investigate. It turns out that the circus was attacked by Baron Pete! That’s a big step down from being an Emperor, isn’t it? Anyway, it is done to the duo to defeat Pete, again and save the circus.

So, let’s touch on one of the biggest new elements for this game, that I haven’t been able to experience. This game has two player co-op, where one player plays as Mickey and the other plays as Minnie. For this purpose, there are some additional changes to how the game plays. When you lose a life in this game, you respawn and carry on from where you died. Falling into a pit will have you spawn in a safe location. This was probably done with the co-op mode in mind, it keeps the action going for both players however it does make the game significantly easier to brute force. In a similar vein to the original one, getting a game over doesn’t set you back, usually just to the start of the last area you entered. The game is enjoyable as a single player experience, but I can imagine it could be elevated by the co-op. Much like the GBA version of Magical Quest, both Mickey and Minnie play the exact same, they are merely an aesthetic change, so there is no reason to get yourself into too many arguments over who you play.

Right, but what about the outfits in this game? They’re… Okay at best, I won’t lie. I mean, like the original game there is one outfit you will probably use most of the time, which is the cowboy one. The cowboy outfit is the replacement Magician outfit, in that you use a cork gun to fire a projectile which would be perfectly fine if it wasn’t for the hobby horse that comes with the outfit. The cowboy outfit changes your movement slightly as you don’t walk but bounce along. You can only jump when you are on the floor, and not mid-move bounce. This is a minor thing, but it can be annoying until you get used to it. As an outfit, it is the most functionally useful one. Second, we have the cleaner outfit, which gives you a vacuum cleaner which can be used to pull blocks towards you or suck up enemies, turning them into coins. It’s not a particularly useful outfit; I used it to farm coins at certain points in the game and defeat a specific boss. Unlike the original, getting a game over means you also lose all your coins, making getting all the upgrades, potentially, frustrating. It is much easier to die in this game than in the original and extra lives aren’t all too common in this game. Lastly, we have the explorer outfit, used to climb walls, slide down vines and swing from certain blocks. Unlike the first game, it doesn’t come with an attack of enemy kind. You only “need” it for the world you get the outfit on, and there might be a couple of fringe cases where this one is useful.

Compared to the original, this game also came out on the Genesis as well as the SNES. These two versions have a couple of minor differences in graphics with a unique area in each game, the Genesis version has an area where you are in a collapsing room and need to carefully platform and make use of the charge ability of the cowboy outfit to dash between platforms above an instant death pit. It’s an awful time and I still struggle with the positioning you need to not overshoot the platforms. The SNES version has a rotating room where you hang on platforms in the explorer outfit. Come to think of it, it reminds me of a certain part of Super Castlevania. Capcom seem to be recycling their ideas. Other than that, the only major difference is the controls. In the SNES version you can use the L and R buttons to cycle outfits and another button to switch. The Genesis version is a little more clunky in terms of costume switching. The GBA version is the same as the SNES, but with the same screen crunch issues as the first GBA game. Honestly, I would still play this game on the SNES, just for the ease of controls and because you wouldn’t be missing anything by not playing the Genesis version.

Much like the first game, playing this for RetroAchievements meant that I had to do about 6 or 7 full clears of the game, with a mixture of unique challenges per version. The SNES version has a set of challenges where you just use the default Mickey/Minnie outfit against bosses and mini-bosses, whilst the Genesis version had a speed run challenge. The stage-based speed runs were ridiculously tight in places, but the full game in 35 minutes wasn’t unmanageable. It did provide me an additional three Masteries for my “Master of the Mouse” Challenge, but I will admit that fatigue for the series was starting to kick in, and there is still a third one on the horizon.

If you enjoyed the original Magical Quest, then you are in for more of the same, and that is not necessarily a bad thing as the games are competently made and offer a fun challenge. The fact that this game added co-op is a great new feature and I am surprised this game has never been on my radar until I started my RetroAchievements journey. If I had this game as a kid, I probably would have loved it and hated it in equal measure, sometimes playing games cooperatively with a younger sibling can be an annoying experience, but it would have been one heck of an experience!