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Post by Apollo Chungus on Apr 10, 2024 18:50:32 GMT -5
Clive 'N' Wrench (Switch; First Time)
I've been meaning to check this one out for a while, ever since I first heard about it a good few years ago as a one-man passion project inspired by old-school 3D platformers where you travel to different time periods and find the usual batch of collectibles. The video I saw showed off a "tiny guy in a gigantic house" along the lines of Toy Story 2, and while I never kept tabs on it, I was pleasantly surprised to find it finally came out last year. Stumbled across it in a second-hand shop for €12, which sounded a heckuva lot more enticing than the 30 it normally goes for on the eShop, and while I think it's a bit cringe to evaluate games by whatever price you get them for, I reckon that's a fair enough price considering that the game is large but ultimately just decent.
It set out to be a tribute to classic late 90s 3D platformers, but I think it ended up more successfully emulating the lesser-known, well-intentioned imitators of their day. Undeniably has a personality and a sense of playfulness about itself, plenty of big levels full of stuff to do, even plays moderately okay. But stages are perhaps a bit bloated in spots, combat's workable yet busted, and the music just doesn't quite work out. It's less Banjo-Kazooie & Spyro and more Stuart Little 2 & Kao the Kangaroo (sorry to fans of the latter two lol). I can definitely understand why this is a game that is either merely liked or strongly disliked according to whatever reviews/write-ups I've stumbled across.
Still, that's an equally worthwhile result in its own right, especially considering this thing was in the works for a decade. It's a miracle this even exists in the first place, and that it's a pretty alright game too. I can't say I've got a whole lot of affection for it, though I enjoyed exploring levels a fair bit. It scratched an itch I had for that style of collectathon many of those aforementioned imitators often excelled at in spite of everything, and maybe I can recommend it on that account.
As an aside, I don't know if there's major differences the Switch version has from the other versions, apart from the introduction of some heavy fog in a couple of the more open stages. However, I actually think that fits the whole deliberately old-school vibe really well, reminiscent of early 3D worlds so big the game couldn't present it all for your viewing. The Greek-inspired stage in particular reminded me of The Elder Scrolls: Redguard and other 90s action-adventure games, and that pleased me to no end.
Doctor Hauzer (3DO; First Time; 1 hour 5 minutes)
A fully 3D adventure game developed by the folks at Riverhillsoft (who later developed the rad PS1 title Overblood), where you explore a seemingly abandoned but booby-trapped mansion and solve lil environmental puzzles as you try to figure out what's been going on. It's another title I've been dead curious to try out, albeit more as a fan of Overblood than someone delving into the history of 90s survival horror games. It's also my first time playing a 3DO game, and hopefully I'll be doing more of that in the future now that I've got the 4DO emulator.
The game's quite cool, though it's funny how short it is. I always assumed people were sorta exaggerating when talking about its length, but no, it's a really brisk game you can beat in an hour. Admittedly, that's also something of a feather in its cap since you don't have to invest so much time into it, whether on your first go or upon replays. It's got a variety of neat tactile puzzles where you examine the environment and use items you pick up to solve problems; I'm a sucker for those kinds of puzzles in adventure games, which is partially why I gravitate more towards the fully 3D style of 90s adventure gaming where this sort of thing was fairly common.
The only thing I don't really like is that the base framerate is maddeningly slow. I normally don't care about slow framerate, especially in games that are already sedate to begin with. But depending on the room you're in, the game can chug so hard that it makes trying to turn or move around an absolute arseache. I had to resort to overclocking the CPU after a few minutes just so I wasn't getting frustrated at the slog. On a more positive note, playing this helped me to appreciate how Overblood basically carried over a lot of what this game was doing (even down to the different camera types you can switch between to better navigate places), and expanded on those ideas with the dual-character setup, a more in-depth plot, scenarios where you have to respond in time, and combat encounters.
It's a cool little adventure game, and one I'm chuffed to have finally gotten round to. : )
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Post by personman on Apr 11, 2024 0:35:33 GMT -5
Mega Man X Dive Offline (Linux/Steam Deck, first time, 16 hours)
When I first got wind of this I immediately dismissed it of course. The only mobile game I ever played was Pokemon Go and I was even falling off that by the time this came around in 2020. However when this offline version popped up a youtuber who mostly talks about Megaman (J's Reviews) made a case for it and it was on sale around Christmas last year so I thought the heck with it and grabbed it. Was about that time that news on the fan game MMX Corruption was getting a lot of steam so hype swayed me and put me in the Megaman mood I'm still in, this is all JKB's fault. Put it on my Steam Deck and the thing has been a decent time filler at work. My feelings have been mixed because much as every bone in my body tells me to deny it I did have an okay time with this thing and had no problem sticking with it till the end of the campaign; on the other hand it's content isn't well, good to be frank. It pretty much doesn't know what level design is and the whole game's structure is built to be fucking whale bait.
It like everything I liked about the game always has a counterpoint that nags at me non stop. For one they actually put effort forth to 'de-mobile' game with removal of the gacha bullshit or any time gating garbage but you can still see the tracks and they can be ugly sometimes. For instance it seems to me there are some bosses that had a decimal placed in order to be a roadblock for you to keep spending money to get better stuff so you can finally pass them; especially towards the end. Flip side of that is so many characters just flat out break the game in two or are obscenely strong and thus so long as you can find out who to bring and power up you'll be able to nuke them easily. But flip side of THAT is once you do get those guys unlocked and upgraded the game is a joke now (more than it already was) and its like why use anyone else? All these tons of characters and like 90% just don't seem worth it anymore since I guess it was originally intended that folks like Super Bass or Shadow Armor X (who seriously is just invincible once maxed out) were supposed to be ultra rare rewards or something.
However flip side of that is its kinda nice they just generously opened the game up and said 'hey go ahead and have fun here's a mountain of currency to buy whatever' (once you unlock it with story progress). But again other side of that is while rewards are generous they aren't so much so that you can just get anything you want and keeping on top of weapon levels, armor upgrades, card builds and other shit that's is all a remnant of the game's former nickel and diming ways that I personally felt very discouraged from raising anyone else up beyond the small handful of work horses I found. I practically went through 70% of the story mode as Third Armor X and while you can earn characters for free by completing challenges for each chapter they'll still be underpowered. It seems like farther you go the rewards just keep ballooning and it was already starting to snowball once I got to the end but still I just wish there wasn't such a huge (in game)money dump into getting someone ready enough so they're worth a damn. Not that I see a good amount of them really being viable since the stages more and more just start to smother you with numbers or sloppy hit detection and the bosses often telegraph very poorly so you almost need to have one of the tanky characters to just brute force through it.
That all being said I thought I was forcing myself to go through this but as I kept going it felt like it does improve a decent amount as it goes. The first few chapters are pretty bad and are just flat boring levels with roadblocks locking you into an area till you fight off enough enemies kinda like X8 was fond of doing. But as it goes some of the bosses get decent recreations and its tries to mimic and pay homage to many stages in the series history. None of these are particularly fantastic but it just came off to me like there was some genuine effort put into them and I appreciated the hustle; hell Magma Dragoon is an exception and actually has a better fight in this game than in the original. Much of the enemies are recreated from various points in the series and most are recognizable and look pretty good, though I'm also pretty sure there are a lot of assets ripped straight from Maverick Hunter X just a bit cleaned up. The playable characters all look pretty nice too and come with beautiful art and fun little animations too; it was when I sat down and really looked through the roster and watched their intros that I got the sense there were some people behind this game that really do love the series for you can find all sorts of neat things that'll stick out to you if you've been a hardcore fan. You can get Dr. Light in his Ryu cosplay doing Street Fighter moves because of course, if you're a fan of Bass like every single version of him is present from his original form to his .EXE variants and hell you can even get 'bad' Megaman from Legends and yes his main attack is to kick soda cans at people. There's also the orignal characters they made with one being a literal Bob & George recolor of Zero and the others being completely out of place and flat out repugnant. But, they get over shadowed by the rest and you can skip the stupid story dialogue thankfully lol. Anyways its a huge fun shot of nostalgia and goofy fun with the series stars and even a lot of faces show up you wouldn't expect like folks from Command Mission and such. It made me smile.
Or you know, they're exploiting like the one or two true fans on the team to make this stuff to nostalgia bait people into spending more money, at the time of course. Guess it depends on how you look at it.
I don't know, like again every bone in my body says to hate this thing. It's stages and general gameplay is pretty poor but when most mobile games I've seen have been shitty tower defense crap or brainless building games this seems pretty decent for what it is; helps that you have options to make it more like a traditional game and toggle off things like the auto aim and charge assist. The stuff left over from its time as a wallet vampire are annoying, especially its interface but can be bypassed for the most part if you know who to get first which is easy enough to look up online. Ultimately I believe we all sometimes just like to have that game where we can just kinda turn our mind off and wind down with for a few minutes and this serves that purpose perfectly. I got much the same relaxing feeling with this pretty often as when I grind to fill out the item books and stuff in Castlevania games and the like. Sure plenty of older games can do the same thing and have more substance but doesn't change the fact this managed to scratch the itch as well and with little quick events to do to get a crap ton of resources, some kinda tower climb thing with special bosses and stuff and even a race mode there is a lot of content on offer if you want to pursue it, light as it is.
Very conflicted on this. At the end of the day I think I've come to a begrudging respect for it. While what it has on offer isn't great and there are some bad bumps in the road to get to the end of the story it still feels like there is some heart behind it. I believe at least a few people on the dev team really loved the series and tried to celebrate it here, and scam you out of money too but that's just how this fallen world is these days. I'm not going to call it a good game and I would ONLY recommend it on two conditions: One of course is being a die hard fan and two is if its on a deep sale. I think its normal price is thirty USD which is insane but when I got it for like twelve I felt it was alright. Its a very specific novelty and frankly not for most people but I feel like this has its place.
Rating-4
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Post by dsparil on Apr 11, 2024 7:50:23 GMT -5
Splatterhouse (Turbografx-16, Replay)
It's Splatterhouse but on TG16.
I finished in 00:32:44.
Rating: 7
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Post by personman on Apr 11, 2024 14:41:14 GMT -5
How Fish is Made (Linux/Steam Deck, 40 minutes, first time)
So I'll leave it to you to decided to count this or not dsparil since it's not much a game really. I got wind of this in a podcast and decided to give it a go since it has that whole creepy PS1 style that is so popular these days. If you're familiar with the Dread X collection series it gives the impression of being much like one of those but personally I don't think its horror at all just kind weird and off putting. Thing is basically a walking sim since all you do is flop around as a sardine and talk to npcs who ask you to ponder about which direction to go in this weird machine organic hybrid thing you're stuck in. The conversations are really on the nose and straight forward and hell one of them even blurts out the whole things controlling idea of convictions and why we hold onto them. Some may think that's kind of lame but I just had the feeling the point of the project wasn't really trying to supply an answer about the question and more just get you to think about it which I think is fair enough. I'd rather it be straight forward than try and be overly cryptic and pretentious. Then there is a song and dance number performed by a tongue-eating louse that has shades of humorous nilhism in it just for the hell of it. Oh, they also just through in a hallway full of lotus pods for no reason to trigger people with trypophobia which they warn of but seemed a little mean.
Then there is another little 'expansion' that got recently added called The last one and then another one. It flat out is Katamari Damacy where you roll around with your fish in some glue ball gathering up other fish bits and grabbing NPCs who either want to join you or want to be bigger than you in same shape or form. This one tries to lean a bit more into the horror with a lot more gore and creepy assets but is still so tongue and cheek about it I don't think it'll scare anyone. It really doesn't have much to say either, it's just about greed really. The most notable thing about it is this all ends up being an advertisement about the teams upcoming true game titled Mouthwashing which that same louse pretty much nags you into wish listing and shoves an in game link to the store page in your face. Pfft, you know what? Fine I will, I respect the audacity lol.
I wont rate it or anything since I don't think its really a game but more like a goofy little art piece if anything. Nothing too deep or anything but I don't think its trying to be really. Who knows you can maybe even read it as a statement against those kinds of things maybe. Either way the thing is free on Steam so its not like you're losing anything but a half an hour or so. Kinda falls in line with one of those things like Paratopic, just a tiny little artsy thing to kill a little time with and never touch again lol. I'm interested in seeing what they do next.
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Post by dsparil on Apr 14, 2024 6:11:34 GMT -5
Cosmic Fantasy — Adventure Boy Yu (TurboGrafx-CD/Switch, First Time)
Will this be my limit for mostly generic DQ clones for this year?
Rating: 6
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Post by Woody Alien 2 on Apr 15, 2024 7:56:33 GMT -5
Two more titles:
Toziuha Night: Dracula's Revenge (Steam, first time, around 3.5 hours)
GBA Castlevania homage/imitation made by a lone Nicaraguan (!) developer named Danny Garay. Played it years ago but left it behind because I was stuck near the end, I know the Castlevania games have a reputation for being hard but this one is unnecessarily so, with an absurd knockback and nasty enemy placement, so I'm not afraid to say that I completed it this time by inputting the code for easy mode. I guess some people have a skewed perception of how hard 8 and 16-bit games actually were (see also: Infernax) and I ultimately play games to have fun and enjoy myself and not to "prove" how good I am or whatever, otherwise I would have tried to become an e-sports player.
Anyway, as far as these kinds of games go, this homage is nicely made, imitating it well without descending into plagiarism, it plays well and doesn't have visible problems, you have to enjoy the "gothic anime" kind of style that was so popular in the mid-late 2000s though I guess this is part of the homage too. And it also has the hilarious plot twist that Dracula is actually... Nosferatu, who in this setting is one of the titular Toziuha, demons that make pacts with humans. Danny Garay is also working on a sequel that is more of a metroidvania a la SOTN rather than just an action platformer, and it will be appropriately inspired by the 32-bit Castlevania titles and the ones on DS, I played a bit of the demo and it seems interesting and well-made so far. 7/10
Bread around bread around bread around bread (Steam, first time, about 20 minutes)
The bizarre title of this very short VN makes sense when you understand it's a sort-of parody of Russian surreal psychological horror VN Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk and its sequel (helping an old blind man buy bread instead of helping a young woman buy milk), and also of the surreal but less horror and slightly more comedic VN/dating sim spoof REFLEXIA which I described in the Indie Games topic last year. Without knowing this, it's just a nonsense horror VN with a few dumb jumpscares but also a couple genuinely weird and creepy moments, so it's not the "funny" kind of parody. It does nail fairly well the styles of both the parodied games, and it's kind of amusing for a while, but despite its very low price I don't really recommend it to anyone who's not already into this kind of stuff. 6/10
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Post by personman on Apr 16, 2024 16:52:37 GMT -5
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X (PSP, emulated on Steam Deck, replay)
Going through Dive recently got me nostalgic for this one since it lifts a lot of assets from it. I was super excited for this and it was one of the driving motivations for me wanting a PSP so badly back in the day, a remake of X1 and original Mega? Sweet, ports of the Legends games (which wound up stuck over there)on top of some other cool games and I was pretty hyped to get my own PSP. Once I got my hands on a system I was content enough with Wipeout Pure for a time but was a little worried buying the thing wasn't justified (I didn't hear of that really nice Gradius Collection yet) but thankfully once this released I felt justified. That of course was a long time ago so now I need to think on how well it aged and personally I think it still holds up alright.
It's decently faithful to the original with its level layouts but there are a bunch of tiny little differences you either may not notice or will only really bug you if you're used to doing speed run type stuff. Like there's no longer any getting around the Boomerang Cutter requirement to get the heart in Spark Mandrill's stage for instance. There are however some changes that were made that kinda come off as an attempt to screw with veterans like the first fight with Vile you technically have to win now, the armor parts have all traded spots and the final gauntlet have all new stages as well as having a shuffled order of boss rematches. Most of these changes are fine but I preferred the old end game stages as they were far more tailored made to test your knowledge of how the charged weapons work and here they just aren't as important. Speaking of the weapons I remember them being a lot better than they are here. It may be because I went straight to hard mode which of course has spongier enemies but seems like everything hit like a water gun besides Fire Wave and Storm Tornado, in fact they seem even stronger than before which is ludicrous. Even the buster upgrade takes a fair bit longer to charge and doesn't hit nearly as hard making charging in general not really worth it which is a bummer. Though again one weird quirk it felt like they threw in to mess with people is the capsule upgrade is weaksauce but if you want to get it to the level it used to be you need to wait till the scene with Zero which is clear in the second to last end game stage now so... wait till the game is nearly over? That's rather lame. Also not a fan of how aggressive enemies respawn, like this pink copter head things are a non stop nuisance with any scene they're involved in and its so bad you'll nuke one and it'll come right back because the screen barely moved a micro inch, combine this with some new spots with small platforms and a really annoying huge knock back you suffer with any hit and some later areas are way more annoying than anything the original had. All that being said though it all still holds up, just some of the changes feel a little haphazard.
One really cool thing is you unlock Vile after your first run of the game and I like him quite a bit. You get a load out to choose before each stage with typical buster like weapons, different shots for his shoulder cannon thing and explosives to toss and flamethrowers. Much of these have funky behaviors and leave you open so he's probably one of the most technical characters in the series requiring timing and position to be carefully considered; well to get through the stages anyways. Most of the bosses really just don't know what to do with him and once you get the ball rolling with some of the stronger weapons and learn to abuse the air time using his circle and triangle moves they're a bit of a joke; like Boomer Kuwanger seriously just involves climbing a wall and dropping bombs down on him while he just sits there barely does anything. There is also this limit on weapons you can equip that expands as you beat more bosses and it is literally possible beat someone early on and practically get nothing from them since you can't use their stuff yet. Just feels kinda bad and they probably needed to give his system another pass. Also a bit annoying how he's made out of paper until you beat Chill Penguin who is actually one of the tougher bosses this time around but again I played on hard mode so it may be fine, once you get past that hurdle things start to snowball as usual.
Otherwise it sounds nice enough even if some of the remixes don't do much for me. The game's presentation is nice but the actual visuals are a pretty mixed bag, like the background in Storm Eagle's stage looks particularly cheap these days. The character models all look a little too squat for my tastes like X's head is way too big for his body and some of the updated character designs are worse than they were like Sting Chameleon. But again it has a much more dramatic flair to it and I think it's pretty nice with some taunting banter for each boss and little cutscenes that don't get in the way but flesh things out just enough to make things a bit more interesting. Most of the voices seem pretty well cast and I have to make a special mention of the voice for X done by Mark Gatha who I think fits him perfectly but also just over does it so much its hilarious. The way he bellicosely spews 'MAVERICK' at damn near everyone makes it almost sound like a fucking slur. Vile's characterization makes him out to pretty much just be this spin off's version of Bass now and he's such a petulant little whiny teenager it never failed to make me laugh. Not a fan of how they treat Spark Mandrill through and I bet you can't really get away with a 'Daaaaaaaaaaaaw okeh" kinda character anymore thank goodness.
Oh, there's also a little 20 minute anime episode you unlock after a game clear as well and I thought it was pretty neat. The animation seems solid for what it is and line readings decently done though of course some of them are written a little weird but that's just kind of what games got back then. It made me want to see a proper Megaman X anime series and maybe its just bias on my part since I grew up with it but I honestly think there could be a lot of fun to be had with the cyber punk-ish setting the X series has and I've always wanted to see it fleshed out more so I was happy to be reminded this existed. Always kinda thought it was weird that Battle Network was the series that exploded into a big multi media thing with a show and a manga that ran strong till the game series ended; I mean it has a cool setting too its just handled in such a dumb way lol. I know X had some manga stuff I remember seeing in my early internet days, bet some of those have been translated by now.
Anyways this game has its flaws for certain and its is no where near a replacement for the original; not even anywhere close. But for what it is I think it still holds up pretty well and is worth checking out. I seem to remember reading that Inafune wanted to continue with this format at least up to X3 but this and Powered Up didn't do well so that never came to be. Shame, I would have liked to see what they did with that.
Rating-7
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Post by excelsior on Apr 17, 2024 9:20:30 GMT -5
personman - Almost a shame Mega Man write ups weren't their own thread. Thanks for keeping it going.
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Post by personman on Apr 17, 2024 16:25:41 GMT -5
Ha, I was a little worried perhaps people were getting sick of me talking about them since participation seems low this year. Though I suppose it's been a little quieter in general around here lately. Feel like if I were to make a thread I'd definitely have to put more thought into these and track down some more out there stuff I'm not sure I'm willing to suffer... for instance:
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Post by spanky on Apr 17, 2024 18:55:51 GMT -5
I actually had Mega Man for the DOS...I'm not going to call it enjoyable but when you're a kid you can sometimes trick yourself into liking crappy games!
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Post by Digitalnametag on Apr 17, 2024 18:56:35 GMT -5
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X (PSP, emulated on Steam Deck, replay) Going through Dive recently got me nostalgic for this one since it lifts a lot of assets from it. I was super excited for this and it was one of the driving motivations for me wanting a PSP so badly back in the day, a remake of X1 and original Mega? Hmmmmm? Did someone say Mega Man Powered Up? *Subtly points at avatar* These were the reasons I bought a PSP too. Well Mega Man and a reasonably priced version of Valkyrie Profile. I'll add that I enjoy reading these posts. The Mega Man Dive review was interesting and reading a modern perspective on the later X games is neat. I don't comment a whole lot anymore but I usually check the site every day or two.
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Post by excelsior on Apr 18, 2024 1:49:43 GMT -5
Ha, I was a little worried perhaps people were getting sick of me talking about them since participation seems low this year. Though I suppose it's been a little quieter in general around here lately. Feel like if I were to make a thread I'd definitely have to put more thought into these and track down some more out there stuff I'm not sure I'm willing to suffer... for instance: There are worse things to suffer than Mega Man's MS Paint Adventures.
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Post by dsparil on Apr 18, 2024 7:59:31 GMT -5
Ha, I was a little worried perhaps people were getting sick of me talking about them since participation seems low this year. Though I suppose it's been a little quieter in general around here lately. Feel like if I were to make a thread I'd definitely have to put more thought into these and track down some more out there stuff I'm not sure I'm willing to suffer... for instance: There are worse things to suffer than Mega Man's MS Paint Adventures. I don't think anyone should suffer through the official DOS Mega Man. Hi-Tech Expressions couldn't even manage to get six main levels into that thing.
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Post by dsparil on Apr 18, 2024 8:15:47 GMT -5
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX/Switch, First Time)
As everyone should know by now, Metal Gear Solid is 3D Metal Gear 2. The jump from the first game to 2 is much greater than 2 to Solid. The radar/evasion system originated here with enemies having an (invisible) view cone rather than a single straight pixel. Crawling and hiding spots got added in, and the wacky bosses started here too. It still feels a bit like a big Zelda dungeon, but the expanded dialogue helps give it more of its own character. This version also uses the Solid-like portraits introduced in the 2004 mobile port which gives it greater consistency. I did like this more this time around than when I originally played the fan translation decades ago. I'm not entirely sure if I even got past the opening which is absolutely the most annoying part of the game. I reloaded more there than anywhere else. Once you get past that, it's mostly fine although there is some weirdness like having to hatch an owl from an egg to make a guard think it's night time.
I finished in about 5h with a timer of something like 03:47.
Rating: 7
Edit:
and one more sneaking in here
Shanghai II (TurboGrafx-CD, First Time)
Shanghai but with more layouts! Finished each of the layers in the default mode and arcade for good measure.
I finished in 03:34:34.
Rating: 7
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Post by excelsior on Apr 18, 2024 11:15:47 GMT -5
There are worse things to suffer than Mega Man's MS Paint Adventures. I don't think anyone should suffer through the official DOS Mega Man. Hi-Tech Expressions couldn't even manage to get six main levels into that thing. Brevity is it's friend.
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