Eltigro

Yeah, just throws off the accuracy of things at year end like "We played the most minutes the week of..." And usually wouldn't be much difference, but that was over 24 hours. lol

I hate when I miss a week. If it matters any, Fallen Order was all a 6/12-18 and Octopath was all 6/19-25. PC Octopath Traveler - 800 min (Playing Octopath finally. Interesting setup, reminds me of SaGa Frontier or something. Pretty fun so far, the characters are mostly interesting. Not sure how long it will take, but so far I have about 6 out of the 8 starting characters "1st Chapters" complete. Might take a while depending on how many chapters there are. I'm not a fan of the blur that they put in the backgrounds/foregrounds. I'd rather it all be clear. The blur makes me feel like I need to clean my screen or something.) Jedi Fallen Order - 1468 min (I played this almost every day last week and beat it. Not 100%, though. After a while I started getting to where I no longer cared about the different crates and "secrets" and such. The crates rarely do anything other than give different cosmetic upgrades, which didn't really matter to me. The end battle/sequence was really cool. I won't spoil it in case someone hasn't played it, but I was pretty happy with how it played out. The part after the last battle, meh.)

Just one game again... PC Eiyuden Chronicle Rising - 439 (So... I had like 11 hours or something in the game last week. I wanted to stream it, but start a new game for the stream. And then have one save for the stream and one for off stream. Well, I accidentally saved over my 11 hour game save. So started from scratch, but because I knew better what to do and where to go and stuff, I got back to where I was and a little further in half the time.)

Just one for me again... PC Eiyuden Chronicle Rising - 687 min (Really enjoying this more than I thought I would. I gave to the kickstarter for the full game, Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes, but this was a stretch goal prequel type thing or something? While 100 heroes is going to be a more traditional turn based JRPG type affair, Rising is a action RPG that reminds me a bit of Dragon's Crown as far as gameplay goes... There's three different characters you can switch between, which is done by pressing their own action/attack button. Chaining the different attack buttons during an attack creates combo attacks where one will attack then the other comes in with an add on. Anyway, it's pretty fun and hasn't been too challenging so it's been a nice relaxing game for the most part. There's a lot of fetch quest kind of side quests that haven't gotten too tiring yet. I've been in and out of dungeons several times, collecting things as I go, so often when someone says they need, say, 10 heavy stones, I've already got them. There are some items taht only appear once the quest has been given though, so sometimes you'll have to go back no matter what you've already collected. Anyway, I plan on playing more this week, so it'll be in the tracker again soon.)

Modern gaming this week... GameBoy Advance Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - 90 min (Thought I got the "bad" ending last week, but this week I got a worse ending. Then I did a little research and got the good ending. There's also apparently a "boss rush" mode that unlocks at some point... after one of the endings... and played through the "easy" version of that, which is the only option at the first. I guess the harder versions unlock after doing the easy one. Overall, fun game. Very much like SotN. The Castle is more confusing with the different warps and such, but it was still fun. The one area where you race a ball to get through a room before it does is really a difficulty spike and made me quit the game years back, but other than that, pretty easy game.) Castlevania Circle of the Moon - 210 min (This is already turning into a tougher game. The jumping is rough. HoD is damn near "floaty" in comparison. So that takes some getting used to. I've already died several times on bosses and had trouble figuring out where to go. The fact that I had played and quit HoD was a driving factor in me finishing that game, and I don't have that on this one. So we'll see if I get frustrated or bored with it.)

Well, I've got the GBA down again for this week, so there's only 9 left...

Beat Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance for the GBA today. I had gotten what I thought was the "bad" ending last week, but today found out that was the middle (?) ending because I got the real bad ending today. Looked up some things and tried again and got the good ending.

Only one game for me again this week... GameBoy Advance Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance - 350 min (Well... I did get an ending, but not the good one. So I went back to a save and kept going. I should finish it this week. I had a couple rooms that I wasn't sure how to get in to, but could see them on the map. I think that should get me all of Dracula's parts and then, maybe the real ending.)

Yeah, the Richardson FreePlay is the closest to where I live, so that's the only one I've really been to. The National Videogame Museum has a nice arcade, but if you're just wanting to go to an arcade, it's not recommended... costs too much just to go to an arcade AND uses tokens instead of freeplay.

There's another one further north called something like Arcade92. I want to check it out, too.

Freeplay Arcade in Richardson, Texas. It's pretty nice. I've been there a couple times before. It's like $12 or something to get in and all the machines are set to free play.

Modern games played this week... GameBoy Advance Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - 680 min (Back in the day, playing this on an actual GBA, there was a part that I couldn't get past. There's this room where you have to race a rolling ball through a room and get to an opening before it blocks it. It pissed me off and I kinda rage quit the game. Put it down and didn't bother playing it again for years. Anyway, got to that part during the stream this week, and nailed it first try. Great, right? Well, turns out there's two of them. I got past the first and easy one first try. Then I found the other one in the second castle. And this is the real one that stopped me back in the day. Well, I still got past it, but it took me many tries and curse words. Anyway, victory was eventually mine. So I played on. And just like last week, got to a point in the game where I couldn't figure out where to go next.) Arcade Iron Maiden Pinball - 5 min (I tried looking this up to see how old it was. I think there's one that came out in 1982, but pretty sure this one is new from 2018 or so. I remember playing it at PRGE in 2018 and it was supposed to be new then, so that's the date I'm going with. I suck at pinball, so I didn't really do very well, but it's fun to try and seems to be a good table. Stern knows how to make 'em.) TMNT Pinball - 10 min (Again, not sure exactly when this was made, but it certainly looked new with graphics and cartoons on the backglass and a four player mode... on a pinball table! Anyway, I think when I came up to it, someone had started a 4 player game, then walked away. So I was actually playing for 4 players... I was pretty confused until I figured that out. So it spent four times as long on it as I might have. lol)

Classic games for me this week... NES Castlevania - 30 min (Was just messing about with it while watching a stream of someone playing it. It's one of those games that, when I'm watching someone else play, it makes me want to play.) Went to the arcade and played several games, but only a couple really had much time on them... Arcade Ms Pac Man - 10 min (I tried many times, but never got the high score this time around. Kept making stupid mistakes, so about my usual performance.) Knights of the Round - 8 min (I've had fun playing this on MAME, so it was nice to get to play it on the real thing.)

Just one game again... GameBoy Advance Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - 280 min (Started a new game for stream... and then got stuck. Couldn't figure out where to go next. Then after stream found it. lol Will continue next week.)