For game club this month, Gibbon suggested this overlooked Sega title. Like other off-topic Sonic Team games like Ristar or Nights, the Sonic influence can be felt but it builds heavily around a central gameplay gimmick, to create an experience quite unlike anything else.
The Spyrocalypse continues with the first of the GBA “trilogy” by Digital Eclipse. It’s a good attempt at a faithful Spyro game but understandably limited by the platform.
This was the year that was. What did I spend my time playing and doing in 2018?
Heroines of streaming 2018 part 2, low-res pixel style!
I stream weekly at https://www.twitch.tv/miloscatter, and this year my theme was games starring female characters. Here are the many fun folks I got to play as in the second half of the year. The first half can be seen here. I’ll link the archived video of each stream after the character’s name below.
Row 1: Licensed games. Kayley (Quest for Camelot); Alice (Alice in Wonderland); Tiana and Merida (The Princess and the Frog & Brave) Rey (Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens); JC (Danger Girl)
Row 2: Rucia (Psychic World and Dream World); Putty (Rainbow Islands: Putty’s Party); from the showcase of 80s games starring not-conventionally-attractive women: Mrs. Mopp (Mrs. Mopp), Nina Nightnurse (Mad Nurse), and Myrtle (Mermaid Madness); Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark GBC)
Row 3: Crystal and Twilight Sparkle (Crystal’s Pony Tale & Adventure Ponies); Freddi (Freddi Fish 3)
Row 4: Robots (and cyborgs). From the Rockman fangames showcase: Ciel (Project RCL), Roll (Rockmen R: Dr. Wily’s Counterattack), and Rokko (Rokko Chan and Rokko Chan 3D); Heavy (Hard ‘n’ Heavy); Marina Liteyears (Mischief Makers)
Row 5: Spooky games. Yazz (Disney’s Haunted Mansion GBA); Nikita (Inner Worlds); Jennifer (Clock Tower SNES); from the spooky creatures indie showcase: Medusa (Medusa: Wrath of the Queen and Get ‘Em Hard), Mimi (Mimi’s Delivery Dash), and Yuki (Yuki’s Vacation)
Row 6: Namco and related. Momo and Jo (Wonder Momo & Kendo Rage); Ms. Pac-Man (Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness); Toby “Kissy” Masuyo (Baraduke); Hiromi Tengenji and Nokko (Burning Force & Attack Animal Gakuen)
Row 7: From the 80s Mother Animals showcase: Katy (Kangaroo), Mama Pig (Pooyan), Flicky (Flicky), the mother bird (Bird Mother), the mother cat (Onyanko Town), the mother llama (Mama Llama)
Happy Christmas and/or other holidays, if applicable. Here is a link to my collection of illustrations from the official Club Nintendo magazine of Germany that show Nintendo (and related) characters celebrating at Christmas parties. Enjoy!
As a detour from Spyro games, I picked up on another game starring a dragon that Amaze (developer of Shadow Legacy and the first two Legend games on DS) made for handhelds.
Might as well round out the trilogy! With a new developer and Cynder having proper deuteragonist status, could it be that the third game is the best one? Maybe! Kinda!
I must confess that when seeing that the second instalment of the Spyro reboot trilogy on DS had 3D graphics, I hoped that it might be closer to the original games. I should have known better.
After playing Shadow Legacy, it seemed natural to try out Amaze’s take on the Spyro reboot. In development terms it’s a direct follow-up, but skews many things differently and like the whole Legend of Spyro continuity in general, it ends up being unsatisfying.
Classic Doctor Who, low-res pixel style!
Doctor Who is back and I couldn’t be happier. But let’s have a look back at the pre-2005 era. Here’s all the (official) Doctors over the years from 1963 to 2005, with the ever-present Tardis (it doesn’t change very much) and a selection of five companions. Some Doctors had too many, especially from the black-and-white era, so I had to leave some out sorry! Others had few, so they’ve been filled out with non-televised companions from novels, audio, or comics. Some Doctors share companions! These I’ve assigned to the Doctor they’re most strongly associated with.
First Doctor (William Hartnell): Susan, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Vicki Pallister, Steven Taylor
Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton): Jamie McCrimmon, Ben Jackson, Polly Wright, Victoria Waterfield, Zoe Heriot
Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee): Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Jo Grant, Liz Shaw, John Benton, Mike Yates
Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker): Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, Leela, K-9, Romana
Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison): Tegan Jovanka, Adric, Nyssa, Vislor Turlough, (Kamelion disguised as?) Erimem
Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker): Peri Brown, Frobisher, Evelyn Smythe, Henry Gordon Jago, George Lightfoot
Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy): Ace McShane, Mel Bush, Bernice Summerfield, Chris Cwej, Hex
Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann): Grace Holloway, Charley Pollard, Sam Jones, Fitz Kreiner, Izzy SInclair
Enter the Dragonfly was the first console Spyro game after Insomniac finished the original trilogy. Unlike the later Hero’s Tail which chose to shake up the gameplay and expand the character cast, this one hews very, very closely to the formula established by Insomniac. Some see this as a weakness but the authenticity of the classic gameplay hit the spot for me, and I enjoyed the game despite its flaws.
Another short manga translation. This one comes from a Famicom Manga pack-in booklet included with the May 1987 Ninensei edition of Shogakukan’s Shogaku Gakushu Zasshi magazines. The raw scans come from Ragey; he also cleaned these up before I got to them! I took these and translated them into English with the help of Horseypope.
The comic is printed in a striking red-and-green two-colour style. It’s read Japanese-style, right-to-left, and was done by Shigeto Ikehara, who I know for his work on the Rockman manga in Comic Bombom. This shares his signature cute style, and looks great. It’s a sort of tutorial for the game, teaching you things about how to play it through a light choose-your-own-adventure/puzzle format. It’s pretty simple, as it’s aimed at 8-year-olds.
My other scanlations are in this folder or the blog’s tag
Now that everyone’s excited about Spyro again (because of the remakes, blog readers of the future), I thought it would be an opportune time to follow up on my playthrough of Spyro 2 from… LAST NOVEMBER?? I am now a skeleton, who loves dragons.
This is a good, if short, example of a Katamari game. It’s rehashy and the microtransactions are bad but it’s essentially fun.
My playthrough of Inti’s Mega Man successors led into this, since it was also released recently and features Gunvolt as a guest character (although I didn’t use him). Lacking in experience with the series though I am, it seems a successful reboot of what was good about the original game.
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