Death by Degrees

 For the past few weeks, I've either been catching a cold from the excessive air conditioning at work, or baking at home from the lack thereof.  On top of that, my wifi has crapped out on most of my devices resulting in many sporadic connections.  Because it's too hot or cold for anything else, I've been playing games I planned to talk about here but never do.  Until now.

For this post, I'm trying out a new, shorter format with fewer pics so that I don't take too long publishing entries.

Front Mission 3: Remake--Demo (Switch)

After trying out the first 2 remakes, I jumped on the demo for the 3rd entry to get my fill of it while waiting for an eShop sale.  Featuring footage from the original Playstation game, it's your typical top-down, grid-based strategy RPG with the option of customizing your very own mech as much as in-game money and weight limitations allow.  Of course this just being the demo, you don't get to do much besides follow the story.  But what's interesting about that is that the choices you make while interacting with NPC's sets the tone of the rest of the game in one of 2 scenarios.  I enjoyed the ride while it lasted, but it'll be so long till I start the full game that I won't even use the save data.

Front Mission (Super Famicom)

The very first game in the Front Mission series, this version never saw an American release except through ports.  Luckily, after digging through multiple copies of the same ROM on my R36S console, I've found a near-perfect English translation.  Like the mainline games that would come after, your team builds and rebuilds their 'Wazner' combat units to fight across vast isometric battlefields.  I was breezing through the game until I started the 5th mission.  I've sold most of the tech won in past mission, blown all my money on new stuff, switched up my loadout and tried different tactics and I've still hit a wall.  After a while, I moved on to the next game to hopefully go back to FM with a clear head . . .

Sabrina: The Animated Series--Zapped (Game Boy Color)

Inspired by the cartoon of the same name and developed by WayForward, the team behind Shantae (one of my faves), this action platformer gets a new lease on life after getting repackaged and released for the ModRetro Chromatic.  To see if it's worth picking up, I tried out Sabrina on my R36S, expecting the addictive gameplay of Shantae.  What I got, though, was not exactly Shantae.

As the teenage witch herself, you've turned the student body into wild animals during a school talent show.  Now you must scour the school and beyond to find and change them all back.  While Sabrina navigates each level to do just that, you switch to her pet cat, Salem, to enter tight spots and clear obstacles.  While a neat mechanic on paper, it gets tedious after a while, on top of looking for every animal you have to change back to clear each level.  And then there's this password system--consisting not of letters or numbers, but teeny-weeny profile pics of the characters--where you can pick up where you've left off.  At the end of the day, I think I'll sit this one out; either that or I'll buy an original cartridge for cheap.

Pocket Bomberman GBC

Speaking of passwords, I've kept them taped to this cartridge for years, on the small chance that I'd start playing again.  And this was a good a time as any.  Much like with Sabrina, you wipe out enemies on different platforms in order to advance to the next level.  But unlike with Sabrina, I'm having a harder time putting this down.

Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior's Dreams (GBC)

Next up is an obscure port of a popular game I've must've played more often than anyone else.  It's visual presentation is probably the weakest I've seen in a Street Fighter game, and all the moves take half a beat to perform.  But I'm pulling off more Shoryukens on this than I ever did on the arcade games.

I said this blog would be brief, so that about does it.  I've cracked open some toys for the next blog, but a new item had just arrived that I'm dying to check out.  Come see what I decide on my neverending journey to the Top of the Heap.