Eltigro

Oh I'm definitely not trying to 100% the RetroAchievments. They always have stuff in there like, "Beat X Boss with no weapons, no health, and damageless." I'll never get those. Too frustrating for me. If it's part of just playing the game, fine. If it's a bit tedious, but easy, fine. If it's tedious and hard, nope. And the only monster I think is missable is the one I mentioned, that mudman. Now, on that save, the only two I don't have are... um... the last two bosses (spoilers!). And the rare drops is in the tedious but easy category. Just gotta farm 'em. And with the Ring of Varda and a Crissaegrim, there's not much that is difficult to kill quickly. I have not 100%ed any game on RA. lol

Same here... need to make sure I keep track all week... started late, but here's what I did record... PC Forza Horizon 5 (299 min) - Been doing rivals with a friend. We've been going back and forth beating each other... sometimes adjusting current cars, sometimes resorting to finding new ones. Most of our times are in the top 1% of rivals, so we're doing okay. lol The game itself, solo, is meh. But doing this with friends and challenging each other is pretty addicting.

I've gotta get better at recording my times... I forgot until about half way through the week, and I'm terrible at guessing, so... I'm just going with what I got... Playstation Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (449min) - Still working on RetroAchievements for this. There's one that is to fill in the "Enemys" list from the Librarian, and there's apparently one enemy on the list (the Mudman) that is missable. The only time it appears is if it is summoned by a boss the first time you meet him. That same boss appears as an enemy later in the game, but it doesn't summon it then. The game I was working on didn't have Mudman... I had missed him. Luckily, I had several game saves, and one of them had him. So now I'm using that save. Another achievement, the one I'm working on now, is to get all the rare drops from every enemy. That one's gonna take a while...

I'M BACK! At least I'm gonna try to be back... been away from AA for a while. No particular reason, I just go through ups and downs of being on here I guess. So anyway... Playstation Castlevania Symphony of the Night: 776 min (I started playing through this again and I'm working on the achievement set on RetroAchievements. Because of that, there's been more grinding and farming and stuff... I doubt I will get all the achievements, some are just too much for me... I'm just not one to work THAT hard at it. Once it becomes a chore or gets too hard or frustrating, it just isn't fun anymore and I'll stop. So I'm not pushing myself to do all of them.) Final Fantasy VII - 277 min (Let me start by saying, that I haven't had disc 2 and 3 for this game in over 20 years. I gave a bunch of PS1 games to a friend to borrow when I got my PS2. And that friend lost them. Fast forward to a few weeks ago... ...sometimes when I'm streaming, I do this "Goodwill Window Shopping" thing where I just browse Goodwill's online auction site and look at stuff and talk about it. Well, during one of these, I saw a copy of FF7 with the printing flaw on the back (the "i" in "masterpiece" is wonky on some copies). I put in a couple bids and was immediately outbid. I gave up. Kept going and found a copy of FF7... greatest hits version... no manual... no disc 1... just the case and disc 2 and 3. I figured, what the heck and put in a bid. And won. So I finally have all three discs (still need a manual). So I stared playing disc 1 while waiting for the other discs to come in... and this week, I switched from disc 1 to disc 2 in FF7 for the first time in over 20 years.) GameBoy Color Turok 2: Seeds of Evil - 15 min (Was watching a friend play this and they were complaining about how bad it was, so I had to try it. I mean... not the worst... but I've def played more fun games. I didn't bother with it long. lol) Sega Genesis Truxton - 10 min (Just messing about a bit. I'm terrible at it, but like to try it every once in a while.)

I'm gonna try my best to be a regular in this thread again. I don't think I participated much last year. It was a crazy year for me. Hopefully 2023 will a little more normal.

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.)

Just one modern game for me this week... GameBoy Advance Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - 180 min (Guessing a little on this one... played some on my actual GBA, but then gave up and emulated so I'd have a screen that these old eyes could see.)

Played some TurboGrafx this week... used emulation because I was too lazy to hook up my system, but still... These were all during the same stream. I didn't have a particular game I wanted to play so I just did some random TG games. TurboGrafx-16 Blazing Lazers - 60 min (Got to the final stage, but didn't make it to the final boss. One day I'll beat this on stream, but that day was not today.) Gradius - 8 min (It didn't take me long to figure out how much I sucked at this one...) The Legendary Axe - 15 min (I beat this once back in the day, but can't even get back to the final boss now. I started having trouble in the waterfall area and quit. lol I wonder if it was a timing thing? Lag from emulation? Dunno.) Military Madness - 60 min (Got to level 4 and lost. Moved on. I've gotten much farther in the past, but wasn't feeling like moving on.) Parodius Da! - 20 min (I can never get past that Las Vegas showgirl thing... as far as I can tell, you can't "kill" her... you just have to survive as she moves back and forth. I always get stepped on...) Shanghai - 15 min (Cleared a table and stopped. I think the dragon you see after you clear the board is kinda meh. The one on the Master System is better.) Parasol Stars - 20 min (Never played much of this one, but I'm not that good at these games. Simple as they are, I just don't seem to get far. Guess it's one of those things I just need to practice more with.) P-47 - 2 min (lol, every time I try this one, I'm reminded of how bad I am at it. It only took me 2 min to get to a "continue?" prompt.) Magical Chase - 15 min (Another game I'm terrible at! Imagine that! This game is one of those super expensive games that I'll never be able to afford, so of course I'm emulating it. Side scrolling cute-em-up with a shop like Fantasy Zone or whatever... ) Bonk's Adventure - 60 min (Did a run of Bonk's Adventure before ending the stream. Beat it. Didn't time it, though. Just a casual run.)

Dirt 5 Just wasn't feeling it. Some of the cars were really difficult to control and I just wasn't interested enough to practice enough to "git gud". I liked that it had James and Nolan from Donut (YT car channel), but after a bit, I was skipping past their dialog, too. Oh well.

YES! I don't know how many times I've gotten run off the road and out of a checkpoint by a teammate. I yell at the screen, "WE'RE ON THE SAME TEAM!"