Metroid Zero Mission high playthrough log part 3 (post-game)

- Chozodia 2 -

Going backwards through Chozodia now.. so far I'm having no luck finding any stuff I've missed. No idea how to get to that one little gray area near the top.

II re-explored the entire pirate ship section, and back at the outside of the pirate ship, at the bottom right green area where I first started this section suitless.
Maybe I'll have better luck finding the way to those gray areas from the west green area (the "Chozo Ruins part of Chozodia, he blue part I guess is the inside of the pirate ship)
... yep, as soon as I went to that western green area, I realized I just had to use power bomb on that tube to get outside, and from there I could easily get back to Crateria.

I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to get through that one speed booster wall in the upper right shaft of Chozo Ruins.. then I realized you can jump while in a shinespark charge if you do a running jump. It's still really hard though.. like the hardest shine spark puzzle yet so far.

Metroid Zero Mission high playthrough log part 2

Lower Norfair has some weird plant-like tentacles I gotta blast through with missiles... usually seeing this kind of thing means... yep miniboss time

this thing is so easy wtf... it only has one attack, doesn't shoot nearly fast enough that you can't just dodge all its shots easily. plus you can destroy its shots with a single uncharged wave beam and get health/ammo. there's almost like no point to this boss. I wonder if he is much harder on hard mode.

Ridley's ship has landed...

- Ridley's Lair -

Can't destroy this thing with my wave beam, need super missiles to get passed the first door... damn I guess I missed something.

Fantasy Zone playthrough log

There's a lot of different ports of this game... from the comments in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n8JtWOixwE I gathered that the 3DS version is the definitive port. it's exactly like the original arcade version, but with stereoscopic 3d.

Damn this is hard... the enemies get really numerous very quickly... I can't even figure out how to kill the first boss before he crushes me.

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 7 (99.3% completed)

- Capital Cashino 2 -
Nothing special about any of these expanded sections, just busywork... found all the remaining pagies and ghosts easily... wow, these were all easy to find and took no time at all...
At least, that's what I thought... After going through all of the obvious expanded sections and then exchanging my tokens for pagies, I found there's still 6 pagies worth of tokes left in this level that I haven't found yet, somehow... and there's still that health extender I haven't found yet...
oh, there is that one area I still couldn't figure out how to get into. I need to find a bomb plant somewhere to destroy the blocks in the way, but I haven't seen one...
this is crazy. I'm already resorting to a guide for the last 6 pagies... found out you need to use the helicopter to break those blocks, and also use it to break all of the "out of order" slot machines to steal the tokens inside them... and also the health extender is hidden way up above the central fountain, below the chandelier.

breaking into the bank using invisibility, and deflecting the lasers to open doors, this part is pretty cool...
while flying around destroying all the slot machines, I managed to find the last 6 tokens I needed.

but getting into here is kind of tricky. it's another one of those laser switch puzzles.. at first I was running out of energy before being able to hit all the switches in time, but then I learned how to do it quickly by facing away from the switch when turning invisible, and then come out of invisibility until the next switch to preserve energy.
wait, what... oh no! that was only 5 tokens. I'm still missing exactly 1 token. nooooooo!

luckily, the only 1 that I missed was this

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 6

- Moodymaze Marsh 2 -
most of the new stuff that opened up is some tricky platforming with tongue lash (hookshot), but it can be completely trivialized by the flight ability. although there's this one rolling platforming race section that flying doesn't help with, it's kinda challenging.
that british skeleton girl is back now, and this time is actually not captured and being cooked, and instead wants us to get a gem for her. uh... this is a REALLY pointless section. it's just a foggy room with nothing in it except ice cubes you have to break with the sonar splosion.. and at the end is the gem. pretty easy so far...

aaaaaaaah! wtf
this gardening minigame.. this is undoubtedly the hardest part of the entire game. you have to push some round seeds into the soft dirt holes. it's REALLY finicky and hard to control.. it's also on a timer, and if the time runs out you gotta go back and get a new seed and start over. it's also REALLY easy to get the seed stuck on the side or corner of a fence or something. also there are thorny plants that not only hurt if you run into them but if the seed runs into them it gets destroyed and you have to start over... at least the camera is fixed to an overhead view so it's easy to see everything.
the first 2 seeds took me a few tries, and I thought that was it but there's actually a 3rd seed and hole, and this one is a BITCH. look at this shit

...
wind? did they really need to add WIND to this? this is madness... this is incredibly frustrating. it's like, purposefully designed to be as frustrating as possible. it requires a ton of precision to get the seed through this obstacle

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 5

I found one other place I haven't been to yet in Hivory Towers.. that one toxic sludge tunnel where you need protection from the air to get through it. That's probably one of the last things I need to do in the hub world still... but I haven't figured it out yet. I have all the moves already, so there must be something I'm missing...

- Tribalstack Tropics 2 -
Finally expanded this first level. now I can try and 100% complete it. got the hungry ghost and shy ghost that I missed earlier...

Inside the Monument... omg this place is so frustrating... it's a confusing maze filled with laser turret enemies all over the place, and some of them are on slopes... it's really easy to run out of energy and start getting clobbered by lasers... it wasn't too hard though, beat it on the 2nd try. After that it plops me out on a higher part of this tower... it's like the tallest monument in the level... now I'm exploring around this tower not really knowing where I'm going... found the last ghost, the pink one... I must say having flight power makes navigating this world so much easier... I don't have to worry about falling off and having to remember out how I got up to the high places anymore.

Found Nimbo, the giant cloud. He says he can make water appear in the level, but he needs help releasing it.. it's stupidly easy, you just gotta grab a water plant and shoot water at him. then he pours water out and creates a waterfall and rainbow and fills up the river down below, the one you raised the small cloud guy on before...

On the roof of where the snake is, there's a character named planker that wants me to clean up all the rubbish flying around through the air... okay this is silly... there's just a bunch of pieces of paper flying around in the wind, but only one of them is a pagie that you need to collect. I actually went and collected all of them just to see what would happen. he just says "About time. I suppose you did an alright job. Try not to take as long next month, ok?"

Explored the outside of the monument tower... this place is really confusing.. a bunch of doors that plop you out at a random other part of the tower..

Mother 3 high playthrough part 1: The Funshine Sorest is on tire!

Starting a high playthrough of Mother 3 Fan Translation v1.2
The first time I played this was like 10 years ago, back when the translation patch first came out... I don't remember much at all except for the major story details.. I've really been looking forward to replaying this.

The naming screen animation is so cute.
Went with all the default character names of course... and fav food noodles and fav thing weed... and grape window color

- Prologue -
- Mt. Oriander 1 -

I'm at the home of Alec, Hinawa's father, where Hinawa and her kids Lucas and Claus are visiting...
Claus knocking on the door, telling Lucas to get up so they can go see the dragos.. his mom tells him to go change out of pajamas before leaving

So far the exact same gameplay stuff is happening as the Earthbound intro, except with a totally different story/context.
Unlike Earthbound, there are sometimes some unique looking things in houses that you can examine for a bit of flavor text.

Hinawa's dad is outside... both of him and his mom called him sleepyhead...
Alec: "Well, today's the day you head back home."

left pig:

What the pig next to me says worries me...

right pig:

Don't worry about it.

cow:

All cows, no matter what they're thinking, go Moo. It'd be handy to remember that.

Yoshi's Island high playthrough log part 3

4-1 is an easy outdoor level with nothing new going on... just a lot more koopa enemies than usual

4-2 is a lakitu cave level.. it's really easy to get hit when there's a bunch of these around.. it's mostly linear, but has a lot of vertical dropoffs and wide open spaces. this introduces the pow block that turns all enemies into stars, and also this one vertical falling section where you have to hover to collect coins, there's a really useful hint here that tells you what the magnifying glass is used for... it makes all red coins visibly red

4-3 is a very big wide open outdoor area... has limited step platforms and balloon platforms that take you up higher... a lot of verticality in this level... although later on I think the lower section is just a death pit.. it's getting to the point now where I'm getting ambushed a lot if I move forward too quickly... pretty tough... but so far I've gotten 100 pts on every stage in world 4

got the roulette wheel minigame for the first time... lol I'm at like 150 lives so far... lives are pretty useless in this game

EarthBound high playthrough log part 9 (ending)

I basically have unlimited money now, so I bought a bunch of Horn of Life from Saturn Village and Brain food lunch from Dalaam to prepare...

- Onett part 2 -

This place has become dark and creepy... everyone is locked indoors and you can't go inside any of the buildings anymore... you can go south to Twoson and everything is still normal there. I think Onett has a giant UFO hovering above it. A bunch of really strong alien enemies are running around near Ness's house... Ghost of Starman's PSI Starstorm attack can almost beat everybody but Ness in one hit, and Evil Eye will always give most of your party an annoying status unless you get lucky with Jeff and manage to PSI-block him.

Ness's mom is trying to act fearless, and gives Ness some of weed to relax... Ness's dog says

At this point, you guys just might be the strongest force in the world, don't you think?

I had to go all out on PSI powers to make it through to where the meteorite landed... when I checked the meteorite, I found a meteorite piece... fortunately Ness's new Teleport beta power lets you teleport with only a small circle of space around you...

levels are now 82 / 72 / 71 / 68

Went to Deep Darkness to buy some Multi bottle rockets for Jeff.. Phase Distorter completed... now it's the point of no return...
The Phase Distorter took me to that floating land mass at the Lost Underworld I couldn't get to...

- Giygas -

That tornado riding guy showed up again, and Poo was able to instantly learn Starstorm beta

Some bad guy kidnapped a Mr. Saturn and brought him here with a different phase distorter that has crash landed... Suddenly, Andonuts and Apple Kid get here with a 2nd phase distorter and rescue the kidnapped Saturn...

EarthBound high playthrough log part 8

Reading the Scaraba/Deep Darkness part of the guide now... lol I really like how the first section introducing Scaraba highlights all of the things Ness's party does there in the form of newspaper headlines...

Some thieves raided the pyramid and stole the rare and mysterious Hawk Eye.. A group of traveler were seen running through the desert at extremely high speed, before vanishing... a man-shaped tower came to life and was seen heading south...

The guide suggests a snake bag from Scaraba is useful, but I never found it to be that useful at all. it just does weak damage.. The Deep Darkness introduction page has some minor spoilers on what's happening behind the scenes during this part of the game... The map of this place shows where all the hidden truffles are... I decided to walk back through Deep Darkness using the guide and stocked up on truffles and leveled up a bit... this place becomes so easy once Poo is back on your team.

Bought the Combat Yo-Yo for Ness here to replace the terrible inaccurate bat he had before...
lol oh yeah, I never used that "Monkey's love" item yet, should try it out...

The Stonehenge Cave was now ridiculously easy compared to the first time I tried it. of course having a decent weapon on Ness helped a lot... it turns out I didn't even need all those magic truffles and bottle rockets I saved up. Even the Starman DX was a piece of cake... I guess those few extra levels helped a lot, or I was just playing badly last time. I noticed how if you stand still when the starman enemies warp over to where you are, you'll likely get a first-attack on them. also it's really easy to take advantage of the invisibility frames to get first attacks on enemies that would normally be hard to sneak up on.
By the time I got to the end of this my levels were at 70 / 63 / 62 / 58