Wario Land II - high replay log

Captain Syrup's henchmen broke into Wario's castle, stole some of his money, then flooded the place.

- instead of dying/shrinking from getting hit or dying from falling in pits, you can't die at all in this. getting hit only makes you lose coins, and falling in a pit always leads you to another area that you can return from.

- instead of powerups that you keep until you get hit or find a different powerup... you have stuff like
"being on fire until you touch water"
"being flattened and gliding through the air like paper, until a bat unflattens you"
"being a fatass that crushes certain blocks and makes certain platforms fall, until you walk off the extra fat"
"being a zombie and can't jump until you walk into light"

- instead of collecting treasures as a main goal, and coins as secondary... you're just collecting as many coins as possible while finding the one indistinguishable door that leads to a minigame (that costs coins) to win the treasure of that level... as well as post-level minigames to win pieces of a map...

- there's no level select... and there doesn't seem to be a way back into a previous level if to get a treasure/map piece that you missed...

- the enemies respawn, so it's always possible to grind for coins to meet the requirement for the next treasure/map...

Chapter 1: One Noisy Morning

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 - high replay log

Instruction manual summary:

Wario can turn 10 coins into a weapon to throw... I forgot all about that. Some doors need a 10-coin weapon to open them.
- Small Wario: same as when Mario defeated derp Wario at the end of SML2.
Jet Pot: Jet Wario - Peach's glide combined with body slam
Bull Pot: Bull Wario - stronger body slam, can stick to ceilings
Dragon Pot: Dragon Wario - destroy things with fire instead of body slam
- any pot or garlic changes Small Wario to normal Wario, then to Jet, then Bull, then Dragon
- hearts are now like coins, 1up for every 100 of them, contrasting SML's heart=1up and 100coin=1up... now coins are for the game's ending cutscenes
- keys, skull doors leading to treasure rooms. treasure also goes toward the ending cutscenes
- all the world names of Pirate Island are named after food...
- there are harmless enemies that are basically like coin bags for Wario

high playthrough summary:

Rice Lake... stage 3 is the only one with treasure somewhere.. stage 5, enemies already getting harder now. this boss is probably a good/easy way to grind coins

Mt. Teapot
course 8 has a secret exit leading to Sherbet Land

Virtual Boy Wario Land - high playthrough log

Starting this playthrough during high session. I've never played this before.

14 levels... apparently there's a hidden treasure to find in each, except for the boss levels...

Intro cutscene... Wario notices some masked monsters taking treasure into a cave behind a waterfall... the door closes... 10 paintings in the wall pop out and scatter...

I'm missing the treasure from stage 3... I was sure I used fire on every wall and bumped every ceiling I could... this might be harder to 100% than I thought.

wow... I can't figure out the timing to hit this first boss... sometimes got lucky, but not lucky enough to hit him 3 times. actually, couldn't I go back to an earlier level, grab a dragon powerup, backtrack to the elevator, then kill this boss easily? of he's vulnerable to fire, that is... Wario Land bosses usually only have one way to hit them.

at a game over... a bat takes one of your treasures away so you have to go back and get it again.

Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 100% playthrough comments

On my 2nd playthrough of this GBA port, I played through every level with Luigi, and getting the "white mushroom house" secret in each world. The GBA version actually puts a coin counter on the level with the mushroom house secret (only after you beat the game), so you can see how close you are to getting it.

wow... I actually found a secret passage in 5-1 that I never knew about before... you have to use a star to kill the chain chomps, then fly up with the tail at the beginning to get to a pipe... after that point I explored more found a bunch more bonus rooms in this level that I either never knew about or forgot...

Then I started playing through all the e-Reader levels, called "World e", using a save that had all of them unlocked. This save even included the Japan-only e-reader levels... 36 levels in total.

These levels are surprisingly good...

Super Mario Advance 100% playthrough comments

Got high and went through every single level with Mario and used no warps...
lol I used to be so bad at this game when I was a kid, and thought it was way too hard to beat without cheating... I actually find this game easy now. Only got game over twice at 5-3. I think I got about 65% of the "A" coins along the way...

Super Mario Bros. DX 100% playthrough comments

I just 100% completed Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for the first time.

I'm now convinced that DX is definitively the best version of this game. It has so many different varieties of goals to complete besides just "beating the game", making you see this game in a whole different light than what you are normally used to when you just focus on surviving till the end or getting to the end as fast as possible with warp points.

The Challenge Mode is all of the individual levels of the main game with extra goals added, including finding the hidden Yoshi Egg and 5 red coins that were added to each level. There's also the individual level high score goals. These target scores aren't insanely unreasonable or anything, but they really require you to practice the level and gain a much more in-depth understanding of the level's construction than you would normally get from just beating the level normally. You need to figure out all the ways you can combo enemies and collect the coins and hidden 1ups/powerups for extra points while still beating the level quickly for the timer bonus. It makes you think "hmm, would it be better to take this vine/pipe to a shortcut area with coins, or would it be better to take the normal route and kill all the enemies along the way?"... stuff that you would never think of when playing the game normally on the NES version...

Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga high playthrough log part 3/4

Woohoo Hooniversity

This place is on a little islet on the ocean. It looks like a run down laboratory... A bunch of bean people start running out in terror... someone says Cackletta turned all the professors into monsters...
Further in, it's an area with electric barriers everywhere, and the walls and floor all have a starry sky texture.

Some really cool enemies here...Laser snifits that shoot a laser ring to jump through... Yo-bros... Mecha-chomp... Dr. Mario virus enemies that change color each time you hit them, and they die when you turn all of them the same color...

lol this one room has descriptions of the blocks from the different Mario games...

And then there's the different minigame blocks that are in this game... Bros blocks are easy... Rally blocks get faster and faster the more you hit them... The Random block is just an easy game of simon says.

The solution to the Sun Door puzzle is written on a message on the wall, gotta write it down on paper or have a really good memory... When the Sun Door opens it creates a beam of light that gets reflected off the mirrors and travels to other rooms...

A

Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga high playthrough log part 2/4

Chateau de Chucklehuck

Chateau de Chucklehuck, to the southwest, is the only other area you have access to for now... This house has a bunch of statues of barrels and fruit, with instructions on how to make chuckola cola... Part of the recipe is you need to tell funny jokes to the fruit mixture until it laughs... The quaity of the fruit + the quality of the jokes affects the quality of the chuckola cola... it starts bubbling...

There's also a statue of "Father of Chuckola Cola, First Generation Chateau Owner - Bubbles"

A barrel maze, kinda reminiscent of the inner polygon maze in Super Mario RPG's sunken ship...

Right after exiting the maze M&L met the thief Popple, and his rookie disciple, amnesiac Bowser wearing a thief mask. This is an easy miniboss battle. Bowser lobs hammers at you VERY slowly...

For some reason, fighting you guys... Makes my gut flare up something fierce...

Suddenly he remembers he can breathe fire... lol so that's how he gets that ability.

Rookie! You bloated idiot! Who took you in when you were dazed and lost on the mountain? Me! You worthless vermin!

Popple and Bowser run away and try to go

Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga high playthrough log part 1/4

Prologue - Mushroom Kingdom

Some ambassadors from the Beanbean Kingdom came to the Mushroom Kingdom and stole Peach's voice and replaced it with explosives... now she makes things explode whenever she talks. After a really silly scene where Toad comes to get the Mario bros... they go to see Peach, and Bowser is there... Tutorial fight... It turns out Bowser doesn't even want to kidnap her anymore because of her explosive voice. He hires Mario and Luigi as minions to help get Peach's voice back so he can then go back to kidnapping her...

This Castle garden area serves as a movement tutorial to get you used to moving/jumping around with both characters, and there's some useful stuff to collect before moving on past the point of no return... Boarded Bowser's airship, and his minions give you some more tutorials on how to battle and stuff... They also took Mario+Luigi's photos for their passports... oh wow, your passport photo pose you used shows up in the save screen for the whole game...

Bowser's fleet goes after Cackletta. Cackletta's minion Fawful... has a way with words...

First battle against the jetpack helmet wearing poet villain, Fawful... Then

Wind Waker HD Hero Mode playthrough

Just finished this game on Hero mode. I didn't go for 100% completion, but I did all of the major sidequests and stuff without ever opening a walkthrough.

Here's some spoiler-filled screenshots that I took throughout my playthrough

http://www.flickr.com/photos/113754103@N04/11827047776/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/113754103@N04/11826714504/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/113754103@N04/11827302606/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/113754103@N04/11915174604/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/113754103@N04/12002670566/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/113754103@N04/12001911405/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/113754103@N04/12002995696/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/113754103@N04/12003910796/

man... my love of this game is totally renewed. I always seem to forget exactly how great this game is until I go and replay it again.