Super Metroid high playthrough log part 3

Brinstar part 3

okay so I'm in norfair... everything is pinked out and I'm pretty sure there's nothing left to explore her for now... so back through the only elevator out of Norfair, leading back to Brinstar...

found the X-Ray scope at that one blue sidepath in Brinstar with the fireflies lighting up a dark room... spent a while trying to get across here by just using frozen enemies as platforms earlier... but now I can easily get across with the grapple beam... found the x-ray visor, which you needed to use right away to find the path leading out of here...

and yeah a lot of other stuff to get in Brinstar too, including a side path near that one missile in a pinked-out area that I needed the grapple beam for... it's entirely unmapped... since this game doesn't show any indication of doors in the map's room outlines either, this path was really well hidden... wouldn't have found it without the x-ray visor. it lead to a power bomb expansion.

and that path below where I think you got the first power bomb... a watery hallway that you need the gravity suit to get through.

Chameleon Twist (N64) high playthrough log

the high scores on the practice mode are insane wtf... was this my old save file from when I played 11 years ago?
stage 1, beat it in 13 minutes with 22/25 crowns... I was pretty sure I got every crown but I guess I missed some secrets...
kinda hard to get used to the terrible depth perception in this game, especially when doing the tongue rotation move to get to tricky platforms... but no sweat so far.
I have the Nintendo Power guide for this game open, but haven't been using it other than just getting a quick preview of the first level...

level 2, ant land, that's where I started having some trouble... those infinite respawning enemies are such a nuisance.. and there's this one really hard crown to get near the end where it seems like the only way to make the jump is to pole vault from a weird angle... I've gotten game over so many times now trying to get this (and luckily there is no punishment for a gameover other time/points)... oh, but then I found out you can very easily just normal jump there... lmao.. actually I guess that's how you're supposed to avoid the onslaught of ants here... managed to get 25/25 crowns there, and 22 minutes (ranked 5th)... that queen ant boss was easy up until the last phase... her spinning around was so easy to avoid it was laughable, but in the last phase she summons so many ants that it's really hard to get a clear path to trip her with the tongue rotation.

stage 3, bomb land... the most annoying stage by far...

Mega Man X high playthrough log part 1/2

Currently reading the manual... I've played this game a lot but never actually read the manual before... wow the story is actually a lot better than I thought. Dr. Cain found Dr. Light's abandoned laboratory, where a capsule containing the code to create self-aware robots like X was stored and self-maintained... Cain used this to create a bunch of "reploids" meant to help serve humans... but then some of these reploids went maverick and started attacking humans. Eventually even Sigma, the leader of the maverick hunter team that Cain set up, eventually betrayed him and joined the mavericks... X, angry with the current events, starts going out to hunt the mavericks himself...

the rest of the manual doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know.. but I can really appreciate now how good a job it does at describing the game's features using in-game lore... stuff like an "escape unit" made by Dr. Light that lets X escape from levels, but only the ones that he's fully been through before... also it brings up how the new convenient weapon-switching system using L and R is a thing that wasn't possible using the older technology of the first MM generation...

also I love how ironic it is that the "X" button is the only button that doesn't do anything in a game starring a character named "X". (although I'm aware you can change the controls, the manual doesn't mention this button at all though)