Yoshi's Island high playthrough log part 2

2-5... this one took me so long to do while starting this high edible session... finally got 100 points on like the 5th try
normally I'd just move on but... in this case like I knew where to look for the missing flower, and the missing red coin was only because of a runaway flyguy I didn't expect... and the missing stars were only because of the bandit hidden in the bushes... so I knew I how to 100% this level already... but after I started getting good at killing the lakitus right away, I decided to explore a bit more for hidden star clouds, and found a couple hidden red switches that open up some invisible coins (and an invisible floor underneath the dirt bridge for some reason), a bonus room with coins and spinny 3d platforms, and a star mario bonus room... none of these things are required for 100% they're just cool secrets you can find to gain 1ups.

2-6... wow, that first part is just a vertical soft sand shaft, with various side sections that loop back around to the shaft. I very carefully crafted staircases with diagonal shots so that I could go back up and make sure I don't miss anything... and it's really easy to run out of ammo since the only egg generator is right near the end of the section.

this next section is very open ended... like I have no idea which way the "progress" section is... there's a seemingly hidden path to the upper level from the beginning, and several other ways up to the upper level and a midring up there... but then it also continues further right, past some rotating spikes... leading to yet another way up...

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 4

- Galleon Galaxy 1 -

First thing I noticed about this level is it's very heavy on the purple and blue... also it seems to be made up of a bunch of small islands with a ton of uninhabitable water that hurts you in between. This level definitely expects you to make use of your recently acquired flight ability.
Flying is a bit awkward in this game. I guess it's intentional though, because in exchange for being able to fly anywhere, they made controlling where you go with it more challenging.
By now, I've learned this game's rule about Trowzers always being in the most direct path from where you start the level. I found him right away this time, and got the sonar shield ability. It's like the wonderwing ability from BK, except it doesn't use up its own special collectible resource, instead it just uses up energy.
I like that I've never been low on quills throughout the entire game, so I've always been able to buy every available move as soon as I meet Trowzers.

This level has a lot of blue forcefields that get in your way, and the sonar shield is useful for getting passed them easily..
wtf, I found the transformation device, but Dr. Puzz is gone...
then I went up to the top of a glass tube lighthouse and activated the light, which enabled Dr. Puzz to find her way here. also that cutscene conveniently showed the location of this world's mollycool... this'll be the last transformation in the game I believe...

hmm... I found a room called "Lunar Lockup" where I need to activate 3 switches to unlock a pagie.. it gives you access to like every single temporary lizard gulp power... also the hungry ghost was in this room, and I finally figured out that you have to shoot a projectile at the hungry ghost in order to collect it. now I know how to get all of the ghost writers... I figured out my way to 2 of the switches in this room but the 3rd one has me stumped. there's a red thunder symbol on a pad and an unbreakable wall... but there's no way to get a thunder elemental as far as I know... maybe I have to come back here with the transformation.
...nope, that's not it.

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 3

- Moodymaze Marsh 1 -

it's some dark swamp/forest area, with some underwater passages and mushrooms everywhere..
I met several shopping cart characters... one of them challenges me to get through this death maze where a wall of electricity chases you... it's not hard at all especially because it restarts you right outside the maze if you die. another cart character wants me to find a way to destroy all of the mushrooms in the mushroom patch, they grow back if you do it the normal way so I dunno.

found Trowsers under a mushroom.. spent all the quills I had to get the tongue grapple move and sonar blast (a more powerful version of the sonar attack that can break windows)... that's before collecting most of the quills in this level though. figured out the sonar blast is how you destroy the mushroom patch..
still no invisibility huh...

wow, I climbed up to the top of the Pumping Plant building and found what looks like a mumbo token. Yooka says this is pirate treasure, and that there might be more to find in other worlds... hmm, is this like this game's stop n swap thing?

some of the water here is all muddy and going in it hurts you.. there's some log platforming over this muddy water.. the platforms sink if you stand on them too long... one of the shopping cart characters tells me how to activate the switches that clean the water and make it swimmable.. the tongue grapple platforming is kinda fun. it seemed a little unreliable at first, until I realized you can't use it while in the middle of a Laylee glide or spring jump.
Now there's a few more underwater sections available.. and some underwater thorns I don't know what to do with yet... found the mollycool underwater.
Dr. Puzz turns me into a shoal of fish, and I can finally attack the jellyfish enemies. I can also go through those underwater vines.. found a couple more pagies using that form, one of them was given by some sunken shopping cart.

Found some big box with a tongue grapple point on it, but I'm not strong enough to move the box at all.. do I need to find some weight element or something? I eventually managed to find the play coin in this world, and got the 2 rextro pagies.. then I went to another island area I hadn't been to before...

Yoshi's Island high playthrough log part 1

I've seen a bunch of speedruns of this game and playthroughs of the various Yoshi's Island hacks, but it's been so long since I actually played the original Yoshi's Island myself.

Got really high today and started replaying the GBA version of this.

I kinda like the look of the GBA version more honestly... this style of thick lines and bright colors seems to suit the small screen format better... and the sound quality is fine despite it being on inferior hardware. Some of it is actually improved, like the laggy cave entrance/exit noise doesn't sound as bad on this version for sure...

so far, I'm getting 100% on every level on the first try without any problem.
damn, I broke my perfect streak at 1-6... saw a weird 1up balloon thing after the end goal, and then a shyguy popped out of it and made me lose some stars.

I'm having such an easier time finding everything now compared to the last time I played this... after playing Wooly World and all the other Mario games, I have a much better understanding of how Nintendo designs their levels now, so I intuitively know where to go to look for hidden stuff.

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 2

- Glitterglaze Glacier 1 -

This place is also very confusing, like the 1st level.. except this level has several doorways that lead through some cave to an upper section of the level.. It feels very big and intimidating at first, but it's actually not that hard to find my way around once I spent a couple hours here... I can find the squid girl and trowzers very easily since they are at the bottom sections where the big lake is, and from there I can easily get to each of the upper sections and the various caves.

Found a minecart character named Kartos.. played his minigame for a pagie.. it's basically just a sidescrolling minecart section where you have to collect a certain number of gems and avoid enemies. you can also shoot bullets out of the cart.. the controls for this feel kinda sloppy and nowhere near as good as the DKC games. at least the music is good.

I got the spring jump move and a move that lets you slurp certain items to gain an elemental status.. so for example this one cold area, I needed to slurp some fire to become warm to get through it, and then light all the torches with my fire status to make the place warm. In the upper section after this part, I found that british skeleton girl and her boiling pot friend again.. and fought some more enemies to get a pagie from her.

The squid girl here transforms you into a snow plough once you find this level's mollycool. This form is only used to destroy certain piles of snow that have hat items underneath them, and they need to be returned to the various snowman characters around the level that are missing their hats. I managed to find and return all the hats to all the snowmen I could find, but didn't get anything for it.. I'm guessing there will be more of them in the expanded version.

Found an underwater cave that leads to a dark platforming section. you can use the glowy plants to make yourself glow for some extra visibility, but it's not really required. I found this section pretty easy, it's all about learning to control your speed in rolling mode so that you have enough precision to not fall off but also don't go slow enough to run out of energy.

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 1

Played for 3 hours so far... Went through some of the first level and some of the hub world, I got 11 pagies and 115 quills. I was kinda taking my time at first, just enjoying the music and getting used to the controls. I didn't bother expanding the 1st world yet. I'd rather come back to the expanded version of each world later after I've been to every world once.

General non-spoiler thoughts:
The first level of the game already feels more confusing than the early levels of Banjo-Tooie were. I'm finding it kinda hard to recognize where I've been in the level cuz there's not many unique landmarks to go off of.
Other than that, I really like the controls. I like how easy it is to control your speed while rolling, even though the physics of it don't make much sense. You can even stop while rolling up a slope.
The music and writing are great, just as good as Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie in those aspects. Maybe even better.
The graphics look really nice. Playing the superior PC version of course and turned the settings to max, and still getting super smooth framerate. The hub world looks really cool and I like all the little details in the environments, like the glass tubes with pieces of paper getting sucked in through them.

The hub world is fairly simple so far. I've found 3 of the ...10 pagies there are to find in the hub world just by exploring everywhere I can get to at this point.
Unlike in BK, it seems most of the pagies make you solve a puzzle or do a fetch quest in order to collect them. There aren't many that are just sitting out in the open.
Also unlike in BT, the worlds and hub don't have any warp pads. but I guess it doesn't matter much since your character moves a lot faster in this. Going from one side of the first world to the other doesn't take much time at all.
It seems at first like there's no fall damage in this game.. it's weird.. maybe there is but it's a lot more lenient with how much distance you can fall before you take damage.

Recap of my playthrough:

- Hivory Tower 1 -
I wandered around a bit before going to the snake character that teaches you the basic attack move. I was surprised that there's only one move to learn in the first area of the game. Normally in the Banjo games, the first area of the game is a big optional tutorial where you learn several moves and get to practice using them. This game's first area, there's nothing to do except get the attack move from Trowsers and then open the chests that are scattered around and grab a few quills, to open the way into Hivory Tower, where the magic book flew off to. It seems like there's probably more things to do in this first area later on, but I dunno.

Metroid Zero Mission high playthrough log part 1

- Brinstar 1 -
jeez this map system is way too informative, it's like easy mode metroid.
standing chozo show a dot on the map to where your next objective (the next standing chozo) is, very similar to how Fusion's handholdy map consoles worked. except here you need to go to a separate map room to get the map.
oh and I guess some of the standing chozo statues don't give you more map, but all of them point you to where you'll want to go next.
it's also as gated as Fusion's map was, at least early on... after getting the long beam from the midleft of the 1st column, you can go down to the bottom of the 2nd column and get a missile pack, but you can't go past there without the bombs.. can only go through the missile door from the midright of the 2nd column...
oh and this game's version of the metroid 1 enemies are easier than the original.. on normal mode they take way fewer hits to kill and don't do as much damage etc... but there are new enemies exclusive to this game...
after getting the first missile pak there was a giant worm battle, I didn't have enough missiles to kill it and it just ran away.
there's also tiny unkillable things that swarm you and slowly drain your health.. and enemies that infinitely respawn until you kill their spawning point..
after you get the bombs, this is where it actually opens up a little bit.. you can go to Norfair where the next objective marker is, or you can go down near the beginning to the Kraid elevator (just based on recollection)

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse playthrough log part 3/3

The last dungeon has Risky's Cannon. it lets you quadruple jump... This is the big endgame item right here. Now I'll be able to go through each island again and try to collect everything.

After I gained the map to the pirate master's island, Grave Island, I went there immediately, and I think I missed out on some extra dialog in scuttle town because of this...

Risky got captured by the pirate master (her old boss, who got revived thanks to Shantae losing her magic, or something).. and now when I go back to scuttle town, it is completely taken over. Everything is all dark, and nobody is in town except for the shops and Sky.

The palace is also completely different now. It's an actual dungeon. I used my new ability to go up through the palace, and it had a bunch of long platforming gauntlet rooms that made use of all my abilities and had a lot of 1 hit semi-kill spikes and shit...

At the end is the pirate master boss.. beat him and you get the bad ending.

Total Play Time: 09:02:50
Heart Squids Collected: 25/32
Dark Magic Collected: 17/20

In order to get the good ending, you have to collect all the dark magic and go back to Grave Island.

I didn't feel like just backtracking to every room I've been in, so I used a guide to find the rest of the stuff I was missing...

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse playthrough log part 2/3

That 4th island was great... Shantae got captured by the people in the pyramid who thought they were her princess.. and apparently they also captured Risky, Sky, and Rottytops too.. Shantae's cell is the only one that has an escape route. you have to do some easy stealth bits to get passed the guards, and then explore the pyramid to look for keys and rescue the other girls... The actual structure of this area is huge, I got lost in it for like a couple hours... Then finally after rescuing all of the captured girls, the real princess shows up, back from shopping, and we're let go.

The 5th island, Mud Bog... here's where we're getting a lot more lore. Apparently in the 2nd game when Risky took Shantae's magic and converted it into dark magic, and she thought she had destroyed it at the end, that dark magic actually just got scattered about... and now the pirate master is using this dark magic to control Risky's crew, cuz they are like genies now... something like that.

EarthBound high playthrough log part 7

Reading the guide for the Summers/Dalaam section now... it seems that I'm not yet finished the "6th melody" chapter of the game. I stopped at getting the rabbit key. I recall the enemies in the game are getting much harder now, and it expects you to use your teleport ability often in order to stock up on items from all the different shops.
Stopped at page 79 in the guide for now and resume playing

- Dalaam part 2 -

Now at level 51, 42, 42, and 36
Actually the enemies in this Dalaam cave aren't hard at all.. the franklin badge helps a lot, but even without that, the amount of healing capabilities that Ness and Poo have now, and the sheer power that my party has overall, makes these enemies a joke. I explored the whole cave, falling down all the holes...

6th sanctuary boss is quite appropriate... thunder and storm.. two demons interlocked in a yin yang. It was actually kinda tough.. but I managed to beat it in one try with everyone alive, by using good strategy. PSI Freeze is legit.

Sanctuary 6 is on a cloud, hanging on the edge of the floating island...
Ness had a short vision of seeing his mother when she was young. Ness's sound stone recorded the melody of the Pink Cloud.

I just intuitively guessed that the next place you're supposed to go from here is across the ocean, from the port town Toto.. an NPC in Summers earlier said:

Are you from Eagleland? If you like adventure, this isn't your kind of place. You should travel across the sea to Scaraba from Toto, the port town.

This one npc in Toto is acting like he's discovered the big revelation that "dinosaurs existed"...

This sprite zoom out is unexpected. I love this sailing music...

The captain gets seasick for a bit.. is