this game is so cute! i never know if it's difficult or i am bad
what i'm playing recently is, finally, Earthbound! I laugh a lot and love the visuals.
Earthbound is such a vibe. I might switch to it in a sec, I hit a wall fifteen hours into Mother 3 and I'm thinking maybe I should play EB to completion first.
ATM I am playing Link's Awakening on Gameboy (mainly because I fixed my original screen). I'm still trash at this genre game but gradually getting the feel for it and not having to look at guides too much.
Summer is Gameboy weather because it's the only screen that looks good in the sun, so on my crystal purple color I'm playing a repro cart of Pokemon Yellow which I mainly got so I could trade and evolve my Gengar from Red. Yellow is really cute and cool as fuck, I love the lil anime references in the sprites and I had no idea you could get all the starters in gen 1 just walking around and talking to people!
On GBA I am playing Castlevania Aria of Sorrow, Julius Belmont run, mainly because he's hot. The game is pretty cool. The colour restoration rom hack in some ways does not look as fire as the original but it's cool in its own way.
On original DS I am playing The World Ends With You and Sonic Rush. TWEWY is genuinely so fascinating, great music, incredible combat system, I can see why it's so beloved. Sonic Rush is pretty cool too, I really like that it saves at boss encounters so you don't have to replay act 1 and 2 if you die on the boss. The music is also fucking iconic. Shoutouts 4 out of the 5 composers who are not creeps.
On PS2 I am playing through Lara Croft Tomb Raider Legend. It's genuinely exactly what I want out of a Tomb Raider game, it's campy, it's silly, it's lowkey kinda Brats coded. The platforming sections are hella fun, the puzzles are cool once you get the hang of what the developers are trying to do. It's brimming with vibes. I tried replaying 2013 when it ported to Switch and man it still feels exactly as wrong as when I tried at at launch, really slow, Lara is de-yassified in an attempt to make her more realistic but it's weirdly more sexist than the old games because she's constantly under the threat of sexual violence and there's like, no female characters for her to engage with? So it's really fun and suprising how good Legend holds up by comparison. There are loads of cool female characters, the game passes the Bechdel test in literally the opening cutscene -- her big motivation is the death of her mum not her father's research which feels super overplayed especially in the new movie -- and there's a female villain who's an absolute diva. This is kinda shaping up to be one of my favourite games of its era (sorry Legacy of Kain and JSRF). Would really recommend it if you've slept on it.
On PS1 I am playing the Dr Slump fantrans. It's really cool to see Toroyama's style so faithfully adapted into boxy 3D graphics. Fun lil game.
I was also playing through Sonic 3 and Knuckles recently but my cart wiped all my saves when I was more than half way through so I live in regret forever.
And on Steam Deck I'm playing MINA THE HOLLOWER! Hell yeah this game shreds. Great at teaching the mechanics through play (though I did have to use a guide before the third boss because there was a move I didn't know was possible and I ended up backtracking). So glad its out finally, it's really been worth the wait.
