Goemon: Shin Sedai Shuumei (PSX) playthrough log

Wow, the graphics in this are certainly a step up from the previous game... Wait a sec, these characters are completely different!

Except for Sasuke, these are all entirely new characters who have replaced the main cast. This game takes place in the future, and these are the new versions of the Mystical Ninja cast. Goemon 3 also took place in the future due to time travel, but I think that was a lot farther in the future than this is. The opening cutscene actually older classic Goemon, with a broken arm and his face partly obscured by shadow, talking to the newer Goemon... So I guess what's happening here is people are asking older Goemon to help fight the new villains that have invaded Japan, but Goemon is now old and past his prime, so Goemon Jr. is now taking his place, using the pipe passed down from his grandfather... I dunno I'm just making this up.

The kid who took Ebisumaru's place is a little girl named Ebisu. Yae is replaced by a blue haired girl named Yui... and I assume Sasuke is still the same Sasuke, or maybe this is a different one made by the wise man's ancestor, who knows.

The gameplay is the same old formula of 2D platforming stages with the map style of Goemon 2... but there's a lot of differences. For one, obviously it takes place in the modern era, so the whole fuedal Japan aesthetic is gone. Inns are now large hotels, shops now have a cash register, etc.. Almost all of the iconic themed stuff like fortune dolls and tanooki statues have been replaced by stuff that looks like it's from a Megaman game.

Kirby's Return to Dream Land - high playthrough part 1

A martian-looking dude crash lands in his flying boat in Dream Land, its parts/gears go flying everywhere, and he asks Kirby and his friends to go find all the parts and get them back for him.

Cookie Country
omg this game looks so awesome... the glass border around the screen gives it a really neat artistic flair...
Caves have snails and stuff shown underneath the ground, for aesthetic...

Ganbare Goemon: Ooedo Daikaiten (PSX) playthrough log

This is one of the last of the classic-styled 2D Goemon platformers. This game feels just like a carbon copy of SNES Goemon 2 and 4 and Goemon's Great Adventure... It doesn't try to do anything new at all, it's basically just more of the same, which is great. It's graphics are pretty good for a 2D PSX game with 3D polygons, but not quite not as good looking as the N64 games.

Each world follows the formula of 2 stages, then a town, then another stage, followed by a castle stage with a boss at the end, and every odd world has an Impact battle. Also the stages are timed, and there's no health pickups laying around or dropped from enemies. The difficulty is toned down a bit compared to GGA, and is more in the area of Goemon 2's difficulty level.

The towns all have guards blocking the exit, and you need to complete a menial NPC quest to get the pass needed to progress. Usually this just involves going into a certain house and completing a minigame or getting an item for a character in another house... it's just a pointless way to extend the length of the game which is already very short.

Bouken Jidai Katsugeki: Goemon (PS2) playthrough log

Ugh... this game is so boring. I could hardly get through it. I think it took like close to 10 hours to beat, and that's with ignoring all of the untranslated story.

This is the 3rd (and last) fully 3D Goemon game. Goemon is a teenager in this, and he doesn't yet have his trademark pipe weapon, instead he has various swords and magic spells that can be equipped.. The combat system is kinda like a worse version of Zelda OoT's combat, with lockon targetting and simple sword swing attacks, but there's no way to block or dodge. There's a leveling up system where you can choose which stats you want to focus on.. The platforming in this game is very awkward, ranging from easy to annoying.. Goemon has a double jump and can grab onto ledges, but the mechanics are very unpolished, sometimes it's very picky about when you can grab onto something.

It's basically a hacknslash action RPG with really poorly designed platforming and puzzle elements. At least graphics are nice, it kinda reminds me of Wind Waker with more of a Japanese look to it. The best thing about this game is the towns, they really nailed the whole fuedal Japan atmosphere here.. it's really too bad the game is untranslated, I think I really would have enjoyed exploring the towns and taking in the story. The game feels really barebones and empty without knowing what's going on.

The field areas in this game are just generic landscapes with enemies littered all over them. Some places have a teahouse where you can heal.. The overworld seems much bigger and more maze-like than Mystical Ninja 64's world, but it's not nearly as interesting.

Ganbare Goemon: Hoshizorashi Dynamites Arawaru!! (GB) playthrough log

This game is pretty basic, but good... It's gameplay is in the style of the SNES Goemon games, but the platforming is much simpler and more generic. It has an overworld map like SNES Goemon 2, and a few towns between levels to rest/save/shop.. the graphics are actually decent for a GBC game.

You only play as mostly Goemon and Ebisumaru in this. There's one section with Yae where you're swimming up a waterfall while shooting/avoiding incoming enemies, and another section with Sasuke where you fly and shoot horizontally, but the main game is only Goemon/Ebi.

The story starts off with Goemon and Ebisumaru separated, they both happened to be on a trip to different parts of the continent. Then, a cat-shaped UFO appears, and the villain Seikuushi Dynamite sends out his robot cat army to try and conquer Japan. You can choose to start with either Goemon or Ebisumaru and do their separate stages in a different order depending on which you choose, but you end up doing both of their stages anyway.. Ebisumaru's weapon in this game is a dust pan, but otherwise he controls exactly the same as Goemon.

Yae and Sasuke see the enemy attacking, but they don't do anything because Goemon isn't there... lmao so Goemon is like Goku now basically.

Goemon's Great Adventure (N64) playthrough log part 3/3

The 5th world, Floating Castle, has some really insanely cool looking levels. Took the bottom Sasuke-only path through Cloud Fortress, which lead to Sky Garden.. this stage has paths that twist around so much I have no idea which direction I'm going in most of the time.. Again I just kept to the bottom-most path with Sasuke, and found an underwater section that has tons of money pots. This is a great place to grind money for the last few passes or to stock up on lives. I dunno what else I'm missing with this level's other paths, but there's no alternate exit here anyway, only reason to go through other paths is to check out more of the level's scenery.

The other exit from Cloud Fortress leads to Wind Castle Wall. This stage involves going overtop of a castle wall, and has some windmill platforms that you can only land on while they're on a certain part of the Z axis. There's also a gold fortune doll near the end that Goemon can get, a convenient way to prepare for the last castle.

Then got to Floating World Town... That's a very silly name for a town. I like the music here... This is another huge town that's easy to get lost in. It has a really long circular outer path that borders the whole town and leads to a dead-end place with a tree.. and if you go there at night there's a ghost merchant who wants to sell his last item, a pass, so that he can move on from the earthly world.. Also there's a dumb sidequest where you have to deliver lunch to a speedy messenger guy who runs almost as fast as you.

Goemon's Great Adventure (N64) playthrough log part 2/3

This 3rd world... this is where I started having a lot of trouble with this game... The main thing that's causing me to get game over multiple times per stage is the new enemy introduced in this world, the lantern ghost.. These jerks start charging towards you as soon as they appear on the screen, and if you try and attack them like you normally would on reflex, they'll explode and damage you. It's the most unfair bullshit in this game so far. It seems the way you're supposed to deal with them is by jumping back out of the way to avoid their explosions.. But I usually get killed often enough by these things that I eventually memorize where they are and just shoot them from offscreen.

The 3rd town is "Spook Village", there's a cutscene with Wise Man.. he tells us about the great demon Dochuki who nearly destroyed the ghost world. Dochuki has been sealed for 300 years, and now Bismaru is trying to revive him. There's also a bunch of weird Iguana people in this town who give you a pass for doing a trading quest with them, and at night there's a fireworks minigame just like the one at the beginning of Goemon 3.

This world has 2 stage-based sidequests. One of them you're hunting roadside guardian statues and putting hats on them, but if you put a hat on a "fake" statue you'll lose. The "puzzle" to figure out which statues are fake is really dumb, but the main difficulty in this challenge is the time limit and the fact that enemies get in your way a lot here. The other sidequest involves hunting mushrooms in a stage with all enemies removed, and it's just a matter of figuring out the best route to take to get all of them in the time limit.

Ganbare Goemon: That other 3D platformer that isn't as good

The full title of this game is Ganbare Goemon: Kurunara Koi! Ayashige Ikka no Kuroi Kage

This is the 2nd 3D platformer in the series, after Mystical Ninja 64. This game pretty much pushes the PSX to its limits in order to try to look as good as the N64 game, but obviously fails and doesn't look anywhere near as good.


At least the opening looks really cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBRn4fq0ONg

Also the cutscenes also have full voice acting, and some of the music tracks are pretty good.

You can't instantly switch between characters any time in this, instead you have to go into a certain building in towns to switch characters. There's not much difference between each character anyway. They each have their main weapon attack plus a kick attack, and they can also learn individual combo moves later on (they are really hard to execute, I've only managed to do them by accident). Ebisumaru now has a frying pan as his weapon... I've noticed for a while now but I don't think I've mentioned it, it's kind of neat how Ebisumaru uses a different weapon every single game. He's a really indecisive ninja who can't decide on what weapon to use.

Goemon's Great Adventure (N64) playthrough log part 1/3

This is reminding me a lot of SNES Goemon 2, except it starts off a LOT harder. I'm getting game overs even in world 1. The movement is entirely 2D sidescrolling, but sometimes the 2D path twists and turns through the environment in 3D, which adds some depth to the stages.. I think the main thing that's making this harder than I'm used to is that the screen is way zoomed in, so I have to constantly take my time inching forward when I don't know what's coming up, otherwise I get ambushed by enemies and die right away. Also there seems to be some lag with your jumps and it's really easy to miss a jump and die.. It takes some getting used to this unforgiving difficulty, but it's very fun and each level is satisfying to beat.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion playthrough log

This is the Wii version of the DS game "Trauma Center: Under the Knife".

I think I prefer the Wiimote controls over touch screen controls, so I've started a playthrough of this version.

The first couple levels I did on every difficulty mode.. then I decided I would just stick with hard mode.

Got passed all of chapter 1, and unlocked the first Nozomi Weaver mission (the new content in the Wii version). It wasn't hard, just a different variation of the stuff you learned in chapter 1...

Then I tried 2-1... I tried several times but couldn't figure out how to beat it on hard. There's a lot of steps you need to keep repeating in a very short time, it's crazy.

2-4 was as far as I got when I played the DS version, and that one doesn't have difficulty modes.

6/03/2015

So after a few more tries at 2-1 hard mode, I decided it was bullshit and switched to normal mode. Actually, it's possible that you can use the "healing touch" power in other chapters where you're not supposed to use it, and maybe that's how you're meant to beat hard mode? regardless, that's bullshit, I've decided normal mode is good enough.

I got through all of chapter 2.. later it introduces the GUILT virus.. a man-made terrorist virus that lives inside organs and causes internal wounds. Dealing with these things feels like a boss battle.