VideoGame_Discussion

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

I'm sorry about that. I've been in a similar spot with pets quite a few times, and it's always hard. Stay strong, man--things will get better. Do whatever you need to take your mind off the pain.

#27

New Super Mario Bros via

As my replay of the Mario 2D sidescrolling games continue, I have now finished the 2006 entry and man I guess I'm just getting too old for this stuff because I do not remember this game being as challenging as it was in some parts back when I was playing it years ago. But nevertheless it's still a damn fun time. I think the controls feel a bit too slippery though because I could have sworn my timing was correct in some parts but it didn't register on my DS. Maybe my DS is just old like me hah. Anyways, next stop, New Super Mario Bros. 2!

Thanks for the kind words.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Aww I’m sorry. I lost my mainecoon at age 13 to cancer. I did everything I could for him. At the end it was just about comfort. I was close to him too. Might have been the best friend I ever had. Pet or human. That was a few years back. Time heals wounds but you’ll never forget. Now I’ve got a silly sweet Siamese boy and a playmate.

Thanks. It’s still pretty weird, as I work from home a fair bit, and she usually would sit in my lap or hang out right by me.

ErickRPG wrote:

Number: 22
Full Title: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Platform Played: PlayStation 5
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: PlayStation 5
Original Platforms: PlayStation 5
Badge: Level Up! (1/2)

I spent nearly every free moment I had at home playing through Rebirth, prioritizing the story and the main quest and skipping most of the side content. This is completely different from how I usually approach a Final Fantasy game (though admittedly, my playthrough of FF16 was pretty similar) - especially one of such nostalgic significance - but I've spent the past two months chased by spoilers and didn't want to ruin the core of my experience because of some YouTube trolls. The end result? I finished the game in roughly 45 days with a playtime of 57:22, compared to Remake's 61 hours in as many days.

In the end, the game was at its best when the party was crawling a dungeon. The mini games and action sequences take a step back, the unhindered party is at your disposal, and you get a healthy mix of combat and exploration. The "open world" region segments are a lot like this as well, but the map is usually too sparse and too difficult to navigate (especially the late game zones) to be as enjoyable.

In a way, Square did fans a disservice by releasing Final Fantasy XVI first. FFXVI was polished, dark, and unique among modern Final Fantasy games. Rebirth feels rushed, recycled, and somewhat convoluted with its barrage of colorful, saccharine minigames and graphics that seem locked to "Texture Quality: Medium" for some unexplained reason.

During the first few hours, I was extremely excited about seeing a bigger chunk of FF7's story fleshed out with modern tech. The battle system, on the other hand, felt over-engineered with a whole bunch of new synergy concepts piled on top of Remake's battle system. As time went on, those opinions reversed. Embracing multi-character tactics is the secret to the game's biggest spectacles and most satisfying combat. Unsatisfying, however, was how Nomura treated some of my favorite moments from the original game. The somber revelation at the end of the Cave of the Gi was ruined by some ridiculous Michael Bay-style cinematography, and the infamous climax at the end of Forgotten Capital was too confusing and overloaded to elicit any substantial emotional impact.

With the main campaign in the rear view, I considered going back and finishing the side content that I skipped as I ran away from spoilers. Without the incentive of getting closer to the finale, however, the frustrating zone designs make it harder to play the game for more than just a few minutes without taking a break. And then, I find a big fiend, get into a great battle, and find the urge to stay in Gaia a little bit longer.

The game will inevitably get a PC and Steam Deck release, so I'm excited about potentially doing a more traditional playthrough where I complete side content as I progress instead of saving it all for the post game. Until then, I think I'll mostly set the game aside and figure out how to deal with the odd, sudden desire to play through Remake again.

As I did with Remake, I've picked back up the original Final Fantasy VII - this time, the original PlayStation version and not one of the more recent ports - with the goal of retracing Rebirth's footsteps, all the way to the end of Disc 1. It's my first time in decades seeing the game on a real CRT with a real PlayStation controller, and my nostalgia engine are firing on all cylinders. On the portable front, I've been exploring the PlayStation release of Pac-Man World on my Vita. It's a charming game, but the early 3D platforming gotchas - coupled with some serious early gut check levels - have made progress slow. Maybe next month's game(s) will be a smoother experience.

My #31 is Kingdom Rush Origins

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Bmy8XHrgj1qszMrM9

I beat Uno on the xbox1 and Doritos Crash Course on the xbox 360

Beat Unicorn Overlord (PS5) tonight. Now just trophy cleanup.

#30 down: Wordtris on Super Nintendo. I would like to count this toward the Brain Teaser badge. This is basically Tetris, but, instead of shapes fitting into lines, you spell words to clear those blocks and occasionally get bombs and dynamite to take out other blocks. It gets tough by the end, especially since, when you beat a level, the blocks that were there when you beat it remain into the next level.

#31: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (PS4). I would like to count this toward the Girl Power badge. I’m still processing what all happened in this game. It’s pretty wild. As everyone else seems to recommend, it’s worth playing with headphones to get the full effect of the voices in your character’s head. (The voice acting in general is really well done.). The game starts out slow and has some annoying puzzles, but it got more interesting (and genuinely disturbing at times) the further in I went. It has some pretty impressive parts (like the sea of corpses and the stuff with Fenrir). It was not “fun” in the traditional sense, but I’m glad I played it. It was thought-provoking, and I’m looking forward to the sequel coming out on Game Pass soon.

I beat Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X .
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I’m much more of a classic MM fan than an MMX fan. I liked this overall, but the Sigma stages are kinda obnoxious. I eventually broke down and returned to previous stages for health upgrades, though it felt like a chore to do.

I’ve been borrowing this game for over a year, and now I can finally return it. It was a good call buying MM: Powered Up and skipping on this one—Powered Up speaks to me a lot more.

I’ve now earned the Heavy Machine Gun badge (MMX8, Maverick Hunter X).

Sorry to hear about the departure of your cat, @Bleed_DukeBlue and @ErickRPG
Today marks 1 month since saying goodbye to my buddy of nearly 16 years, still miss him. Even though we have 2 others, it just feels different with him gone. Sarna's not wrong that time helps heal those wounds but it still just flat out sucks.

Thank you. Mine was 3 years ago now. I lost him, took me a year to even consider kittens. And mine are nearly 2 years now I think. They are bonded which is really sweet.

Thanks man! I'm sorry about your cat. I had mine for almost 16 years too. As sad as it is, I'm glad I got more time with her than expected. They actually thought she wouldn't make it 7 years ago, but we put her on some intense steroids, and that gave her another 7 years of good-quality life.

Slickriven wrote:

6th in April, 25th overall, 7th on
Guns Gore & Cannoli 2
Badge - Earns me Heavy Machine Gunner along with Bot Vice

My focus on PC games and Steam specifically continues with this game. I got both GG&C titles last year and beat the first then. Opted not to jump into 2 right away as I think it annoyed me a little, but this sequel was a pretty easy jaunt. I got into in the other night pretty late and actually ended up beating right around 50% of it apparently. Then today I jumped back in and wrapped it up. Steam says the first game took me close to 4 hours while this one only took me a bit over 3. Since I only died like 3-4 times total and just once to the final boss, that made it faster, as I think the final boss in the first game gave me trouble and I recall dying a bit more than I would've preferred in the first game, <shrug>

7th in April, 26th overall, 5th on
SuperHot Mind, Control, Delete

After rather enjoying the original title in 2 sessions earlier this month then seeing that this game came on GP, I decided to give it a shot. SH-MCD is around 3x longer and I've earned the very rare achievement (only 1.01% of players have it) for beating the game by deleting it - which is an interesting way how the game ends. Apparently most of the 8th set of levels/nodes are basically optional since after you reach the 4th floor and beat the first level in the 8th set, you can get to the final floor and do some levels that result in you beating the game. At this point you delete the game and then if you keep doing some things you can trigger a sequence to recover the now deleted game. This takes legit 2.5 hours (used to take 8 apparently) and after a min or so the credits basically roll in reverse, since you're reconstructing the game. So technically I beat the game and once this process is complete, then I'll earn the final (of 14) achievement which even fewer have earned (0.71%). I'll also likely look to try more of the afore mentioned 8th set of nodes. I beat 1 already, but dang they're challenging with a full 15 random arenas to complete with only 2 hit points to take, if you go with one of the alternative cores, vs. the default one that gives 3 hits. Some mods optionally selected can earn you some health back but they're not guaranteed so the goal is to avoid taking any damage. I used the recall core once I got it as that allowed you to recall a thrown Katana blade to you and that could go through multiple foes. It also gave you that sword to start each arena with, which was a big help.

Game was no joke, I had to restart nodes several times b/c I died. Was crazy annoying to progress say 5, 7, or more arenas in a node while taking zero hits only to get sort of screwed and take 2 or 3 in one arena and be dead just that quick. Note that most nodes only require 5-7 arenas, it's not until later that they start to get to 10, 12 with 15 seemingly only being for the 8th set. When the game is flowing it was a good bit of fun, but with your enemies generating basically zero sound and you randomly spawning into the arena, I sometimes didn't know an enemy entered the arena behind me and that sucked a bit too often. I ended up resorting to trying to find a corner or spot where I could prevent enemies from hitting me from behind and generally staying near one of the several doors foes could come in from, since they wouldn't if you remained close.
There are 2 types of endless modes, 1 being endless random arenas where you need to take out the standard 6-10 or so foes, and the other you pick a single arena and see how many kills you can earn before dying. I didn't bother much with mode 1, but tried mode 2 and did really well IMO - I got 186 kills in the lab level which I thought was really good. I don't think I'll bother to pay the other arenas for that mode and really just focus on beating the few remaining things on that 4th floor that I skipped.

Interesting tid-bit, this is my 99th completed game from GamePass since I joined in '19 - I might have missed a game as well and did count TMNT: Shredder's Revenge twice b/c I beat that in '22 and '23 for this thread, which is why I tracked my completions so much. Makes me feel like paying for GPU, especially after taking advantage of the Gold -> GPU conversion deal, is worth it since many of those games I would've either wanted to buy or not really ever bothered with. Granted a number of more indie GP games seem to become Epic and/or Amazon Games giveaways eventually, so some I could've got to some via those services, but nearly beating 100 games on GPU (so including some EAplay and PC games) feels pretty good.

EDIT - got the final achievement for reinstalling/recovering the game after 2.5 hours. That also added around 5-6 new nodes of which I tried one and it was fun. I did the one on floor 4 and it consisted of like 8 arenas but you needed to kill 25+ foes which I didn't know at first and thought after killing well above the normal 8-10 that it was going to be different. Good news was that most enemies only had a melee weapon with very few guns. It was fun slicing through them all and I even made sure to destroy any guns with my katana. I also did one of the remaining 8th nodes - that sucked b/c I got to the 14th or 15th arena with 2 health and died on the one attempt which made me pretty mad. But then I got it on the next attempt. I will certainly look to play the remaining new nodes as they were cool (assuming the others are similar)... and still push through those 8th set nodes even though they suck.

I'm almost completely done with SH-MCD. I was hoping to enjoy those other new levels but dang they all sucked. 1 had every foe starting with a shotgun, another they were all the exploding type and a third was all guys with only 1 red (weak) body part - so you need to hit that one leg, arm or their torso. I tried all nodes a few times but just couldn't get through any of them. Came closest on the exploding foes one, but 15 arenas was just too much.
So I went back to the 8th set and at least got 2 more knocked out. I only have one left I believe and I unlocked a 100 arena node that I tried and got through 25 arenas before finally dying. Will not be replaying that either. Game is generally fun when it's not absurd like these last few nodes and I want to move on before they sour the whole game for me.

I beat Mega Man 6 (originally NES).
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I raced a friend at it and lost, so I owed him ice cream. But by that late hour, any ice cream shop was closed. We tried Wendy's, but that location was entirely out of Frosty mix. So we just bought actual food there and called it good. It was fun.

Oh yeah, and Mega Man 6 is pretty good, aside from Plant Man's stage.

#32 down: Dead Island 2: Haus DLC. I would like to count this toward the BFFL badge, as I played it entirely in co-op. If you like the game, this is more of the same. The storyline was somewhat interesting, but it's mostly just an excuse to kill a bunch of zombies in over-the-top fashion. I'm glad I played this with someone else, because the end got pretty tough. We barely pulled out the win.

My #32 is Rain on Your Parade.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/fvSw3X1d21i95zGe8

Cute game about being a rain cloud and causing all types of mischief. Similar gameplay to Donut County.

Game #21 of 2024

Affected: The Manor on PSVR2
This will go towards Guybrush Threepwood badge as I think it counts as a walking sim, since the entire point of the game is basically walking through a haunted house.


Badge suggestion for next year - "Grow A Pear" for completing two farming sims. Or has that joke been done already?

#28

New Super Mario Bros 2

My 2D Mario-A-Thon is almost over as I round the corner at watching the credits roll for this one and no real complaints here on this revisit other than it being far too generous in lives, coins and power ups which is not necessarily a bad thing. Although I watched a DYKG video the other day that explicitly said the sequel to NSMB was going to have a focus on coin collecting so that makes sense here why it has such a heavy focus on coins. Overall though it felt like it wanted to emulate Super Mario World in almost every sense outside of having Yoshi in it which was fine by me! Next stop the U Deluxe!

April has officially behind us. We had a good turnout this month, I think--let's run down the numbers.
-We beat 60 games/DLC this month.That's the lowest number so far, but hardly a bad count. @Bleed_DukeBlue beat the most games/DLC this month, with a whopping 16! Well done, mate!
-We cleared 12 new consoles this month. Nothing will top January, of course, since just about every game someone plays tht month counts as their first for that system. Still a respectable number.
-We earned 16 badges this month, trumping our best record so far. Bleed_DukeBlue once again dominated, taking home five of those bad boys. You're well on your way to nabbing every badge!
( @PizzaTheHutt , your farming sim badge idea is being considered. Feel free to play more of them in the meantime, if you want.)
- @Frank , play a game. That's an order from your senior officer.
-Thanks for hanging in there the past few weeks. I was totally swamped with intern work in the second half of April, so I couldn't update this thread. I'm not usually assigned this many projects all at once, but I'm popular with the company heads because of my generally quick turnaround time. But I finished that suite of projects, so I hope things calm down for a bit.

SupremeSarna wrote:

I'm still playing FF7 Rebirth

1st in May, 27th overall, 8th on
Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony
Badge: 1st towards Destroy the Core

I got this on Steam a LONG time ago, not 100% sure exactly how but back in Nov '12 I played it some, and I recall doing so - to a degree. I found the game alright back then but stopped playing for whatever reason. Been on a little SHMUP kick - mainly looking for good games to try and some YT vid had this listed in their top X number of games, which of course reminded me of it so I immediately installed it. Apparently not playing it for 11.5 years means I didn't have a save to use, likely was 3 PCs ago, so not surprised. Game is alright and tough to finish. Only had 5 levels but in a lame manner if you opt to beat 1-3 on 'normal' you're then prevented from accessing 4 until you beat 1-3 all on 'Difficult' first. So I replayed 1-3 on difficult and it wasn't bad. Then after beating 4 (on its lowest challenge of 'Difficult') I was blocked from 5 until I beat 1-4 on 'Legendary'. Kind of BS, but I did 1-4 on legendary and got to the 5th level.
The 5th was crappy. Thus far, all levels were wide open, you could move freely to take out foes and avoid their fire, while like a vertical SHMUP the screen slowly scrolled up. But in level 5 you're locked into a narrower corridor-like setting with barriers that your shots might destroy OR might not OR you can't fly over, but can shoot through and be shot through. Some move and some have spikes and the there are a lot of enemy spawn points that you can destroy and clearly want to to stop more foes. It was a chaotic level that I wasn't a fan of and I died a number of times before even reaching the boss. Then when I finally got to him, I only had 1-2 hits to take and died several times including once with him having like 5% health remaining. So I kept trying and finally got him... only for him to have a 2nd phase. Shock... I died on that phase a few times too. I eventually got better at phase 1 and didn't take any hits and on my 3rd attempt at the 2nd phase I got it and credits. Overall the game isn't terrible, but that 5th level sucks. There are some challenges I could do, did a few already, but I'm not sure I'll bother with the rest.

I don't know why I'm on a SHMUP kick right now, I'm okay at them, but am no pro and can get frustrated easily. But according to Steam, I hadn't beat the 5th level 11+ years ago, so I'm glad to have done so after all this time.

It’s about time I continued my journey through the Shantae series. I bought all the currently-released games in December with a plan to play them all, but I’ve only just now touched the next game. Fortunately, I’ve now beaten it.

Shantae: Risky’s Revenge - Director’s Cut
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This former DSiware came after a cancelled GBA game, making it Shantae’s first appearance in eight years. Though it’s short like any DSiware game, it’s an adequate length for the price—as you can see, I got nearly six hours out of it. The game is a step up from the first in virtually every way. The graphics are gorgeous, the audio’s improved, and characters appear as expressive character portraits.

RR has an overworld map, which makes travel so much smoother. The timed button presses for animal transformations have been removed, streamlining the mechanic to glorious results! Holding the X Button for one second to turn into a monkey feels so snappy! Additionally, warping between locations no longer requires collectibles and more timed button presses; you just find a warp point to activate it, then warp between them. Sure, you can’t do that from just anywhere, but it’s not as cumbersome as before.

The characters and writing are better. Zombies keep their humanity by drinking coffee, a general buys the deed to Scuttle Town and renames it Ammo Town, and a squid misgenders you to humorous effect. (Shantae takes that opportunity to express that she’s okay murdering people who wrong her.) There’s a whole scene between Shantae and Sky regarding a bird egg that Shantae allowed to rot, and it’s hilariously savage! But then the ending… it’s not funny, rather, it leaves you with some tough feelings. Didn’t expect that.

I have a few nitpicks. It would be nice to have more than two full dungeons, since the GBC game had four. You only get one life, like the first game; but unlike that game, any death here undoes all your progress since the last save point. Yeah, the 2002 game was surprisingly more modern in terms of forgivingness than this 2010 sequel. There’s also two grayed-out areas of the map that never get filled in, which really threw me off.

Beyond those things, this game gets a hearty recommendation from me! Looking WayForward to Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse! The Switch version contains a WarioWare microgame, apparently, complete with the trademark Wario bomb.

My #33 is South Park The Fractured But Whole

https://photos.app.goo.gl/cJxCfbuswW8F4p898

While not as well written as The Stick of Truth, it has it's moments.

2nd in May, 28th overall, 2nd on
Top Gear
Badge: Earns me Race Drivin' along with Inertial Drift

Loved this as a kid, especially the music and general feel. Recommended it for the RTT GotM pick, it finished 2nd but Ren2k made it the bonus, so I had to play it. There are 3 tiers of challenge: Amateur, Professional and Championship. I did the 4 race per region times 8 regions overall series on Amateur for this. Such good memories. I'll likely play the Pro and Champ series over the rest of May.
It's been so long that I don't fully recall if I beat all 3 as a kid. I know I got Amateur and very likely Pro, not sure about Champ. I think I traded away my childhood cart and then picked up another in my 20's from eBay (maybe I'm thinking of another SNES cart), so while I did this via a ROM, I don't know if I dug out my copy if my save would be there, highly unlikely since I never replaced the batteries in my carts.
White car FTW, loved how it was better on fuel and how it drove in general.

#33 down: HappyFunland on PSVR2. I would like to count this toward the Bear & Bird badge, as it is a collect-a-thon. You spend a lot of the game searching for 80 gold squirrels to break. I thought I went through pretty methodically, but, somehow, I missed at least one, and I'm debating whether or not I'm up for going back through the game to find the other ones. There's also one other trophy for activating a rocket ride that I can't figure out.

This game is pretty trippy. It uses Unreal engine rather than Unity, so it has some decent details, although the graphics aren't incredible or anything. The atmosphere and sense of scale are good though, and, while there are stretches that are so-so, there are some really impressive moments too. The scene where you're hallucinating in a bathroom is pretty visually striking. There's also a scene with a ferris wheel that was impressive as well. For such a small dev team, this was a solid outing. It's not a very long game, but it's worth trying out.

#18
Odin Sphere -

image

Second time beating this game. Really an action RPG masterpiece. I sold my OLED vita many years ago but rebought one last year I think. It was a nice minty one with the OLED screen. This is definitely one game that was on my list to play for Vita. Even though I've already beaten it once. And while I do know it's available on couple of other systems. Playing it on the small OLED screen of the OG Vita is pure joy.

I beat Rhythm Heaven Fever again after wanting to do it for over a year. It's a lot shorter than I remembered, probably because I'm better now than in 2022.
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This game easily has one of the best soundtracks in gaming, top five at least. All the weird stuff you do, from bacterial synchronized swimming to library cheerleading, is done to a fantastic beat. This is perhaps the best example of a game you can play, watch, or listen to and still have the same wonderful experience.

Some games are harder and/or better than others, and it's lame that the game expects you to get perfect scores for 100% completion. Even so, they also won't give you the perfect rewards unless that particular game was highlighted with a "Go for perfect!" message when you played it. That's a bit annoying.

Still, you really should experience this game at least once. So go listen to the soundtrack, or watch an LP on YouTube, or find a way to play it unexpectedly. Either way, have fun!

OP updated! Ra-ra-sis-boom-ba-boom, let's go play a bunch of games, yeah!

I finished Killer Frequency and Desolatium on Switch.

Game #22 of 2024

Bugsnax on
Would this count towards Bear & Bird? There's a bunch of optional bugs to collect, not all are needed for the main story.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I suppose I can count it as that.

Game #23 of 2024

Crisis VRigade 2 or Crisis Brigade 2 Reloaded on PSVR2

The PS5 home menu has the game's name as Crisis VRigade 2, but the game's thumbnail on the home menu calls it Crisis Brigade 2 Reloaded. You can mark it down as whichever you want.

This'll go towards the 2nd Amendment badge.

#34 down: Ancient Dungeon on PSVR2. With my previous clear of Yakuza 0, this should get me the Hyrulian Hero badge.

This game was an impulse buy, and it turned out to be great. Imagine that you're inside Minecraft, going through dungeons hacking and slashing at things with a sword and throwing a throwing knife that you can retrieve with a trigger pull. Everything you hit explodes into blocks, and the monsters you fight bleed in blocks. There are a ton of surprises. I kept running into unexpected things, and each level has its own unique characteristics and enemies. As you play more, you encounter new, more difficult enemy variants in each level. You eventually also unlock a crossbow and knife combo, but I found that less fun. This is a roguelike, and it's quite challenging. It took me 40 runs to finally win, and the permanent unlocks are not very powerful. What really ended up working for me was just practice and getting better at the game. My first run where I got to the final boss, I was lucky and got powerups that let me throw my knife for tons of damage, and it would catch things (and monsters) on fire, could be thrown without gravity or physics affecting it (a powerup that lets you throw it basically as far as you can see) and was super fast (another powerup). I was wrecking everything until I got to the final boss, didn't know what was going to happen, and got blindsided, because one of the power-ups I had for extra damage limits you to two hearts (like in Zelda for your life). When I finally won (the second time I made it to the final boss), I actually didn't have a very strong build. However, I had bought some protection hearts (extra hearts that disappear permanently when you're damaged) and had an extra heart container I found along the way. I didn't do much damage, but I did pick up a powerup that makes your sword grow really big and then get really small after you hit something before getting big again. When it's big, it does like 2 1/2 times the normal damage, but, when small, it does less and is more like a little dagger. By being really careful with that, I could one-shot a lot of enemies. It also turned out to be really useful for the last phase of the final boss in a way I didn't anticipate (but won't spoil). I beat this with one heart remaining, out of breath, and lucky to have made it. It was pretty thrilling.

3rd in May, 29th overall, 2nd on
The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition
Badge - Fittingly earns me the Guybrush Threepwood along with Return to Grace

Been on my 'list' for a long while, voted for it for Ren2k's RTT GotM and was happy for a final push to just play it. Enjoyed the graphics and voice acting of the Special Edition. I certainly took liberties with some hints and online help, but I didn't want to struggle through some of the puzzles as I just don't have the time.

4th in May, 30th overall, 1st on
Microsoft Jewel 2

I've been playing this for months just about every day via the Xbox app. M$ was giving 30 Bing Rewards points for beating a level each day until around a month or so ago, now it's just 5 points but I still generally do it every day while listening in on blah work meetings or whatever. It's technically unbeatable, but on a board of 64 gems you need to first clear enough to fill a bar as new gems drop in, replacing your matched ones. Then the board fully fills and you get a new target to clear a certain number (or more) gems before the next level, with no new ones added. You get a score for how many total gems you clear and especially how well you clear the board is at the end. Each level increases the number of gems required to clear before moving on. By level 13 it's 48, as they go up 4 each level. Level 16 is 60 gems and I've only done that once. 17 is also 60 as it really can't go higher. It's pretty tough with the special gems that get added to the mix and accumulate in later levels. My top score is also pretty high at 92 million - suffice to say, I think I've played plenty of boards to claim this.

As part of my rabbit hole tumbling into retro MIDI music, I found a copy of Jones in the Fast Lane that works with my retro PC setup.

Number: 23
Full Title: Jones in the Fast Lane
Platform Played: PC
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: PC
Original Platforms: PC
Badge: Chance Time (1/2)

Jones has lived rent free in my head since it was a feature on the old IBM PC in my fifth grade classroom. Framed as a board game of sorts for 1-4 people (plus Jones, the AI opponent), you start the game by picking an avatar and a set of goals, and you spend the game trying to reach those goals through work, study, hobbies, and many other mundane life needfuls. Everything you do takes time, and you have a fixed amount of time each week/turn before you're unceremoniously shoved back home to your apartment to rest. Reach your goals by landing a specific job, amassing enough money and knowledge, and staying relatively happy, and you win the game.

This sounds like the most mundane of mundane games - like The Game of Life if it was developed by a CPA - but even ignoring the nostalgia factor and my memories as one in a huddle of tweens surrounding a beige PC, it's surprisingly fun and addicting. The fixed time per week is diabolical for driving that "just one more turn" feedback loop, and the "set your own goals" mechanic make the game feel like a nice balance between endless life simulators like The Sims or SimCity and traditional games with an objective end. In fact, in terms of feel, SimCity is probably the Jones' closest relative with its contemporary MIDI soundtrack, funny one-liners, and random world-shaking disasters that force you to pivot your approach.

I was terrible at managing the game's limited time when I was younger and naturally made a number of terrible life choices during my playthroughs: staying with my job at the fast foot restaurant and never attempting a promotion (bonus points for eating nothing but fries every week), buying a TV for my rent-controlled apartment just to have it stolen a week later, walking around with a massive multi-thousand dollar nest egg only to be pickpocketed, etc. As a result, throughout the years, I've had these moments where I remember the game, look back on it fondly, and then suddenly think of a strategy that my tiny ten-year-old mind wouldn't have thought up on its own. "One day," I'd think, "I'll boot that game back up and give it a try."

Well, that day finally game. After an extremely frustrating odyssey of corrupt disk images and literal Divide By Zero errors, I got the game running on my retro PC and pumping out music through my mt-32 pi. My first attempt at success failed miserably when a sour job market and flash of inflation caused me to lose my job, my cash, and my clothes (which are necessary for any sort of employment... The game will eventually take pity on you and gift you a new set, but I never knew this.) I fared better with my second attempt. I split my time between work and study, putting myself in line for a big promotion fairly early on, which meant a theft-proof apartment, fancy clothes, and the latest in discounted A/V hardware for chill time; all without having to stand naked in the unemployment line.

For those of you that just had their memory jogged, or want to check the game out for yourself, you can play the game in your browser at https://jonesinthefastlane.com/. You can beat the game with almost zero strategy if you set all of your goals as low as possible, but you'll need a solid strategy to win at the default settings; doubly so if you increase them to the maximum.

I'm still working on retracing Rebirth's steps with the original Final Fantasy VII, and I'm approaching the end of Disc 1 (and all the gravity that entails). My originally plan was to set the game aside to be finished after the third game in the Remake trilogy is released, but I'm enjoying myself so much that I'm not sure that will happen. At the very least, I'll take a break to play through The Secret of Monkey Island for the Retro Talkshop Thread and knock out a Psygnosis game for the annual challenge. Then, I'll have to decide if I'm going to finish OG FF7 or finally start Diablo IV, which has been stewing in my Steam library for quite some time now.

Jones in the fast lane is amazing. Probably the best PC "board game" ever created. Wish there was anything else even close to that cool.