Metroid Fusion high playthrough log part 1

This intro story is really good...
Samus was sent a research mission to SR388, where she first met that hatchling, along with some federation people... she got attacked by a thing that turned out to be the "X parasite".. it made her unconscious and her ship crash-landed in an asteroid belt.. the federation people found her and tried to save her, but the parasite started merging her suit with her body, and they had to perform surgery just to get some parts of the suit off her...

finally they came up with a cure, injected her with a Metroid cell so that those cells could fight off the X parasite... now her power suit has become a part of her body called the Fusion suit... she also has a new ship now, cuz I guess the old one got destroyed in the crash.

Super Metroid high playthrough log part 5

just about at 6 hours of game time now... I tried Ridley again and beat him on one try while coming up on edibles. He's not that hard once you get into a good rhythm. I used up all my missiles first, usually only shooting 2 or 3 at a time... then I switched to super missiles, hoping to finish him off with these during his harder phases.. but ran out just when he was red... you really have to focus on making every super missile count... then I beat him with a few more charge beam shots after that. during his last phase, he gets really mad and mostly just stays near the bottom shooting and whacking you with his tail, not even trying to dodge you anymore...

Found an energy tank hiding in the empty room after Ridley... the path leading out of the Ridley part of Norfair, with another one of those fake walls you can't see with the Xray visor, followed by a bunch more xray visor puzzles.. the transition back to normal Norfair is very gradual... finally made it all the way back to the Brinstar elevator... that one blue area left in Brinstar where I needed the gravity suit, is the only other missing thing I can easily find before Tourian... there's another energy tank there...

I now have 12/14 energy tanks, 160 missiles, 40 super missiles, and 40 power bombs... the other stuff I'm missing, I have no idea where to look. I'd seriously have to use a guide or otherwise just literally scour the entire game looking for doors or xray paths I might've missed.

EarthBound high playthrough log part 1

I've played through this once before, but I was kinda just rushing through it back then, and a lot of the details never stuck with me. Now that I've done a playthrough of Mother 1 while high and I'm a lot more into the story of this series, I'm gonna do a full high replay of this game.

First of all, to get fully immersed in the game, first I gotta read through the intro part of the player's guide.
http://earthbound.nintendo.com/playersguide

lol this guide is great... even the description of the controls have a lot of charm and flavor to it...
the R button's only function in the entire game is ringing the bell when you're on your bicycle. the only use of the Start button is to start the game... the only use of Select/B is to cancel out of menus (also it shows your HP/PP/money when you're out of the menu)... L is the shortcut button for talking and checking... A is the open menu/confirm button... L also works as the confirm button, and since R is unnecessary and Select can be used instead of B, that means you can basically play this game with one hand... although you do need the A button if you want to access items/PSI powers outside of battle.

The 4 playable characters:
Ness, the balanced one with mysterious psychic abilities.
Paula, the famous psychic whose mother is a preschool teacher.
Jeff, the son of a famous scientist, a mechanical genius who can repair/use items that nobody else can use.
Poo, the prince from the east, very mentally, physically, and spiritually strong and has his own unique psychic powers and unknown weapon/equipment preferences.

oh cool, there's a chart showing all of the default name/fav entries for when you pick "I don't care"

Your "Guts" level is like "Luck" in other RPGs, it affects the frequency of critical hits
"Vitality" and "IQ" are kind of like Pokemon EVs... affect how much your HP/PP increase with each level
"Luck" is your accuracy. the rest of the stats are self explanatory...

Evil people can be distinguished because their faces will be blue... and the people/animals you defeat don't actually die, they become "normal" again and leave.

It also explains how the battle command menu is different for each character...
Paula has the unique "Pray" command, it has mysterious unknown effects.
Jeff has a "Spy" command that tells you what PSI powers enemies are vulnerable to, if any... Jeff is not very strong and has no PSI command, but he's the best person to use items with and there are some battle items that only he can use.
Poo has a "Mirror" command that is like Ditto's transform...

Phones, ATM, Colds and medicine.. these all work just like in Mother 1.. although there are now pay phones that charge money.
Also in addition to just calling Dad to save the game, now you can also call Mom or Ness's sister Tracy... Tracy works for a delivery company, and you can get items delivered or picked up from wherever you are, instead of having to going all the way back home...
Doctors and Healers are the only way to recover from certain status conditions... Nurses are the only way to revive unconscious characters...
Hint Stands are like fortune teller shops in Zelda games...

Sometimes you can find butterflies out in a field or cave, that restores 20 of everyone's PP.. they're basically like the equivalent of healing houses that you'd randomly find out in the fields in Mother 1...

omg I love this player's guide

Wonder Boy in Monster World playthrough log

The 3rd game in the Monster World series, and the 5th game in the Wonder Boy series... This starts off very similar to Wonder Boy in Monster Land. It's the same starting area with the tree stump houses and everything... there's an old man in the first house that tells you about the town up ahead that is being attacked... you can buy faster boots at a shop... like in the 2nd Monster World game, the monsters give infinite money if you just keep respawning them, and in this game they respawn much faster so it takes no time at all to buy everything in every shop that you come across.

The next screen has a castle wall with the door blocked by guards... passed that is the familiar water platforming section... then you get to the first town which has mushroom monsters roaming around everywhere and all the villagers are hiding in their houses. The girls of this village all seem to have fairy wings, and one of them tells you to press UP in between the two fairy statues to go to where the fairy queen character is...

The fairy gives you a helper fairy named Priscilla, but you can only use it as long as you stay in this village. It doesn't seem to do much except sometimes make hearts appear when you kill enemies... One of the villagers says that the cave where the monsters come from have doors that are sealed by music, and she lost the ocarina in that cave... you can find it easily as soon as you go in there... then you bring the ocarina back to that person and she teaches you 3 songs that you have to memorize in order to open up all of the cave doors.

At the end of the cave is the first boss, a giant mushroom monster who jumps around and spawns little mushroom monsters.. it was really hard, because he jumps right on you and your current boots aren't fast enough to dodge him usually. I barely managed to beat it using the spear after using both my elixer and potion. I don't think there was any reason to go with the weaker sword and shield for more defense instead, since the spear can kill him that much faster.

After you defeat the mushroom boss, the village becomes safe again and all the villagers now have different dialog.. if you go back to the fairy queen's place, there's now a passage opened up in a hollow tree, and that somehow leads to an underground sewer passage... this game's geography makes no sense at all but whatever...

Wario: Master of Disguise playthrough log

I played this for the first time today... got through the first 2 stages in about 1.5 hours..

The gameplay itself isn't bad... but holy shit this game has WAY too much talking. I just want to explore and move on, but the game keeps on interrupting me with lengthy dialog scenes... and it's not like in a Paper Mario game where the dialog is actually entertaining. here it's just a really mediocre story about Wario creating a device that lets him go into a TV show and steal the spotlight from a thief character.. he steals the thief's magic wand that lets him transform, and then uses it to look for treasure. also the wand is a character who accompanies Wario and gives you tutorials on pretty much everything.

It's basically just a Metroidvania style puzzle platformer, with the world divided into several stages where you explore and collect treasure while finding your way to the main objective... Each treasure chest has a random minigame that you have to complete in order to open it. These are kinda like Mario Party minigames that use the touch screen, and they only take 30 seconds or so to complete. Some of the treasures you find will give you a new disguise power. You have to switch between disguises by drawing a shape ontop of Wario, which seems really pointless, it could've just been done with a pause menu.

Each disguise has its own ability that lets you get to places you couldn't before. The main thief disguise lets you jump high and tackle. The astronaut disguise lets you shoot lasers and have low floaty jumps... I hate the artist disguise, it makes Wario stand still in front of a canvas and lets you draw a block anywhere on the screen to use as a stepping stone. This ability is used a lot in stage 2 and it gets REALLY tedious when you are backtracking trying to find out where to go. There are also upgrades for each disguise that you supposedly unlock by collecting enough gems, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

Even ignoring the annoying boring cutscenes, this game is nowhere near as good as the Wario Land games. The puzzles are very simple and just more of a time sink than an actual challenge.

Super Metroid high playthrough log part 4

Maridia part 2

The big middle sections of Maridia has some wall-jumpable skips... actually feels like these paths were intended by the developers...
holy shit that epic discovery... while wall jumping up some part (I'm a lot better at that now btw), I saw a crab enemy walk into an invisible morphball sized path that I wouldn't have even thought to look with the xray scope otherwise... they totally placed that enemy there on purpose. found super missile upgrade.

huh... there's a one-way shortcut back to Brinstar (the east Crateria exit) at an unmapped path at the northwest...

I'm actually really impressed with the design of this place... it just hits so many if my "amazing level design" things. The hidden paths are well hidden, but aren't unreasonable to find at all with all of the tools given to you at the point in the game that the developers expect you to be at...

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)

Super Metroid high playthrough log part 2

Brinstar/Norfair part 2

So yeah... next I'm going back through Norfair, to Brinstar, while looking for unmapped sidepaths and stuff that I needed speed for.

well yeah there's that right path near the beginning for one... it leads to an unmapped place where you need the ice beam to platform over lava with the morph ball... and a side path with the ice beam. oh wow, and that whole room was to introduce enemies that you can't kill and can only freeze... some genius level design...

Back to the bottom right of Brinstar... oh wow, there's the Spazer beam in a small upper ceiling path that I could've gotten before. I can now easily get back up that east Brinstar shaft I fell down, and go further up to more blue map...about to go up through to the 3rd Crateria elevator, but first there's an unmapped path with the Power Bombs... now do I go up or go back down for all the extra Power Bomb stuff including the Maridia tunnel? obviously...

lol just noticed the door back down where you came is yellow, so it locks you on into new path until you get the power bombs, but they still are possible to miss... also wtf that side area just before the Brinstar elevator, just a trap room that locks you out with a grey door until you defeat all the killable enemies? if you power bomb the floor here there are spikes and unkillable plant monsters with serpent tongues that grab at you... like no reason to be here at all looks like...