16 Bit Warriors

Breath of Fire: Bourgeois Boogie

2013-01-14T21:44:00.000-08:00

I have been kind to a woman and dog man who wanted to wed. I have befriended a robot with a heart literally as big as a house who died for that couple. I have faced injustice and became a damn dragon man. And now I enter a seaside rich town and just because of my looks...I am thrown in jail!

I'm innocent, goddammit!

So, treated like a punk, I did nothing but act like a punk through this entire town.

Got this sly ass dude to break me out of prison everytime I got caught...Which happened...

...frequently...

So whatever. I stole everyone's money. I bought shiny new equipment, plus a SUPER expensive G.Bar, which I hope to find a use for later. Then I found a ship, but the captain said it belongs to the rich guy, Ross. So I went to Ross's place to mess with his shit.

Turns out he'll just give me the ship if I help his daughter. She's stuck in a safe. Sure, no problem.

Fuck.

Well, moving on. I hear from a woman in town that her son is kidnapped by fairies in the fairy woods. So I head back through the northern cave. Or as I like to call it the EveryFiveStepsYouFight Cave. I saved the dude, and he swore to stop chopping up the fairies trees.

The lady gave me even more money as a reward and I soon realized that I wasn't getting anywhere in this town, except jail. But it occurred to me to play:

Ask the NPCs:

Nope

Interesting...but nope. I'll take note of that.

Also interesting, but doesn't help now.

AH, bingo! Gotta find this Bleak!

My only guess is a cave to the west. But it sure beats jail all the time. Plus, I bet a thief could help me break into Ross's vault. I betcha!

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: MINI/IMPORTANT POST

2013-01-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

Ok, so the moment I have been waiting for has finally happened. And even though I was still reeling from the Gremlin boss fight and the death of GAR, I still managed to accomplish something awesome. This will make boss battles much easier in the near future.

Upon arriving to the new world I found a mini temple. The words of villagers from Tantar/Tuntar suddenly reminded me that this has been set up for a while "If ever you find a temple, make sure to pay your respect". I kept thinking they meant the save points in each town, but then I found that little point below the lava river.

Entering it I came across an old man. Goosebumps went up my arm.

Ok, you got that much beer?

So he sends Ryu in alone, and I get a chance to grab an Herb from a chest and heal up at the fountain. And then...I fight the dragon ghost thing in the middle. BY MYSELF!

I quickly realized my attacks weren't doing enough damage to keep up with him so I just hit him with E.Key as much as I could and then healed up with a Herb when he got me to about 50 health. This pattern worked out but took quite a while. Before long I had him and he didn't even do the typical "Almost dead but just kidding I'm actually twice as strong for about ten more turns" thing. And baboom. Test passed:

So what does this training mean? Well ladies and gentlemen...it means I CAN BE A MOFUCKIN DRAGON!

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Right in the Feels

2013-01-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

Progression is slow going in Breath of Fire, but the storytelling is pretty brilliant. It takes round-about routes to get to certain points, but there's quite a bit of payoff once it happens.

I piddled about Tantar and Tuntar until I finally thought to talk to the chief again, d'oye. And he was like "Ryu, we need a proper wedding ring thingy, so go get it while we prep for the interspecies wedding"

Ok.

So he opened up a trap door, as usual, and I got...yes...another key. So I go back north to the cave by my big robot friend and find on the inside that the water level has been lowered because of the damn being broken. So I traverse this dungeon like all the rest with little incident and receive the ring.

The fact that this chest kinda resembles a Boss Key chest from Zelda became slightly foreboding to me.

Went back to town and found that they had arranged the wedding *gasp* just in time for me to bring the ring!

Don't mind me, ladies, errand boy coming through.

And we commenced with the inappropriate marriage of dog and woman. No offense, Bo.

So we were thanked and let go. I took a nap at the inn and proceeded to leave. We were supposedly gonna take the robot over the river...but...

That dickbag had better ideas I guess. And like a classic cartoon villain he had it perfectly timed. So while we were all in this town celebrating a wedding...

The neighboring town went 'splodey. But before the General could do the same to us, the Robot inexplicably shuts down...weird right? So we go in to stop the bad guy.

I thought this was gonna be an easy fight, but was I ever wrong, wow!

Ok, who fed the General after midnight?

He turned into a Gremlin and proceeded to pound me to a pulp. In order to win this fight I had to have Nina casting Atk Up on Ryu and Bo as well as Fort to keep Bo's shitty defenses up. After that, essentially, Nina was healing on every round while Bo and Ryu slowly chipped away at this dude's health. Once he was at a sliver of health, he did the boss thing and became tougher. Every turn he was blowing fire worth 15-20 damage at the whole team. Nina had to keep on her toes and heal the lowest health dude for like a millenia before Bo finally shot him down.

After this, the Robot moved:

We got to the southern part where the broken bridge was. Then the saddest thing in the world happened. I was too sad to take a screenshot, but essentially, GAR hopped into the volcano and died so that he wouldn't hurt anyone ever again.

This was me

With the GAR's noble sacrifice came the eruption of the volcano which filled the southern river and hardened into stone so we could cross.

From here on I will fight for GAR and everything he stood for...

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Adventures of GIANT ASS ROBOT

2013-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

I'm getting to that point where I'm addicted to playing this game now. And I have to give it props that despite its lack of subtle hints, it still give you things to look forward to. For a while now I've been waiting to do something with this GIANT ASS ROBOT. It was confusing me because I thought my E.Key would activate it for some reason. I dunno...Earth Key....giant stone robot....requires a key....can you see my line of reasoning?

Regardless. I now made the trek up to see my friend the GAR (an acronym, but as bonus knowledge, Gar is also the name of a character in Breath of Fire 3).

I'm gonna be in you.

So I wound my way around the littler desert patch or whatever and entered via it's foot. Up the leg I go, seeign all the creepy wires and stuff, then found its heart.

It's HEART is being ATTACKED! FOR REAL!

I couldn't let this injustice stand, so I went after the madman and his flunkies. They went down like bowling pins with my recently power-leveled heroes letting loose into them.

So after taking down the General AGAIN, we activated the robot with the new key we got from
Bruce Springsteen and then it started to walk.

It walked all the way to the giant damn and then:

BZZZZAAAPKABLOOEY! (That's a technical term)

And then the damn was loose and our giant friend stood proudly beside the free flowing river. Thinking that my job was done I wanted to head south but then discovered again that my road was blocked. A bridge was broken. Frustrated I went BACK to the twin towns, who now seemed very happy, and heard why I couldn't progress from this guy:

Ask the NPCs: The Reckoning

So looks like I gotta solve some more stuff around here before I go. Maybe I can solve this guy's mental health problem....

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Actually Agua This Time, We Swear

2013-01-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning to see that Capcom's early RPGs are lacking a little tiny thing called "subtlety".

As often as I like to complain that its hard to remember what you're doing while playing long-stretch games like Breath of Fire or the Final Fantasy's, its clear to me now that the minigame I told you all about in my last post called "Ask the NPCs" is not a joke. It's a real thing and sometimes...sometimes its painful. But it goes much further. Allow me to show you.

Upon fixing the village I needed to know just WHERE Agua was. Well one dude told me Agua was to the North. And then THIS chick told me:

Oh. Ok.

So I head out of town and find an incomplete bridge with a floating tower that I've passed by dozens of times. Keeping Bo at the lead let me go through the forest, and led me to the end of a walkway on the lake.

Using the Tablet, the castle lowered itself down. And thus began many many generations of fantasy nerds obsessed with floating castles and floating rocks. (I know it didn't BEGIN here...but close).

In its day, this cutscene was top notch

Once inside I was introduced to something a little different...

Dungeon Designers Tip 2:

Another way to have heroes take longer exploring small spaces is to have them do map puzzles. Not knowing where something takes you can be challenging and sometimes frustrating as hell if that something takes you back to the beginning where you gotta walk around again and fight seventeen more battles to start the puzzle again. As an example, try floating disks:

This dungeon took me a little while, but it was kinda worth it for the half decent treasure I found along the way. Then at the end of the line I came to this fella, who proves ultimately this game's lack of subtlety:

I woulda shat my drawers if instead they had this:

See what I did there?

So anyways. This Boss wasn't much of a boss at all. I only had Nina cast Cura only a couple times before I wore him right down. Then:

*facepalm*

So I finally dealt with this entire area of the map. After some quick hover disk maneuvers and walking ALLLLLLLLLL the way back down to Tantar and Tuntar I kind of discovered something.

For real? A hop, skip, and a jump and there's a fully functioning river over there? Ditch these towns, re-settle people! The pioneers did! GHAD!

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: A Cure for Zombies

2013-01-09T20:18:00.002-08:00

SO, jumping back in....we were left with a clan chief who wanted me to save his village so that an interracial couple could get married in the towns surrounding a dry river....

basically

The Chief said that Agua would have the key to unlocking the GIANT ASS ROBOT up in the north. Ok, lets do that.

I wandered a bit and found that zombie town again. I talked to the chief and he immediately told me what I wanted to know.

There we have it, Agua, a place I need to be to get to this robot business. But...rid the zombies?

They were still pretty hard up for a cure for these pretty harmless zombies. I mean...they weren't even attacking anyone.

Yeah, alright, lets put these monsters to rest

I'd like to take the time to introduce people to a minigame in RPGs known as Ask the NPCs. See, proper conveyance in a story-based game wasn't really a thing. You had to solve problems by asking around. Sometimes you ask the wrong people and there's consequences, but in this game, you're usually pretty safe to ask any ol' NPC nearest to you and you can figure out what to do next.

Clue 1: There's shit wrong with the soil

Clue 2: We can fix the shit with water

Clue 3: We can use a jar to hold water

People stopped giving me "useful" intel after that, and then I had an idea to wait til nightfall and check out the zombie situation again. Then I met a nice crazy zombie-loving lady who knew exactly what I needed.

Thankfully her zombie husband had some sense and opened a secret passage so I can take her jar and go get some clean water.

Putting Bo in the lead lets me skip through forests like its flat ground, so that led me to find...

A fancy cave! This is another dungeon with lots of stairs and badguys every three steps.

Dungeon Designer's Tip:

In order to make small maps more challenging to the player, make sure that all items are in the centre of the map, but you have to go out of your way to get it. Also, in order to progress through the dungeon, make sure the player has to take the longest route fucking possible.

At least power leveling is easy in forever-dungeons

Eventually I made it to the bottom and found an underground lake of the very hard to find...water.

Thankfully a miracle of RPG's happens. A quick cutscene took me back to the village instantly

*HALLELUJAH* and we dumped the water in the middle of town.

Went to the chief and he gave me lots of gold and items for my troubles as well as a magic Tablet.

ooooOOOooooo shiny!

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

F-Zero: League of High Speed Chases

2012-08-17T17:35:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next installment in the quest of completing F-Zero! I now have my own 16-Bit likeness to follow beside my postings, huzzah!! Ahem...

So, I had an... Interesting time, to put it lightly with the Knight League. I destroyed in the first 3 levels, and then fell off the wagon for the last two. But I still achieved the completion! And so now I'm onto the Queen League.

Stage number one was Mute City II, and like my run through of Mute City I, I handled it very well. I started off behind Mr.Yellow-I'm-Always-Right-Behind-You dickhead, but I passed him because of the very handy long straight line we were given. See, I also looked at the other car's stats before I started this playthrough, and I learned that Mr.Yellow-I'm-Always-Right-Behind-You has a slightly faster acceleration speed than me, and a lower max speed. That's why he always pulls ahead! Dur. But I didn't choose that car, I stuck with the Blue Falcon, because, goddamnit, it's Captain Falcon. Mute City II was fun and not too difficult. It contains a section where the road splits into a circle, so you can choose to go right or left. I always went right because I kept myself close to the edge of the racetrack so my turns would be shorter and sharper.

Needless to say, 1st place was mine.

Port Town I caught me off guard. It seemed simple enough, the track didn't look too ambitious, and the beginning was a pretty straight line for a bit. However, what I did NOT know what that there is a long strip of gravel road (a bunch of dark grey splotches that slow you down) just after the 'healing strip.' There is a jump pad to leap over said patch, but I was on the left, when I should've been on the right. So I was passed by Mrs.Stupid-Green-and-Yellow-Car-That-Rarely-Causes-Problems and Yellow-face as they both soared over me freely.

The next section was windy and involved constantly swirving around turns. However, just to make turning interesting, they also threw a few magnet strips along the edges, which pulled you in towards the wall. The best means to counter this is to hold your drift button (L or R) to lean yourself in the opposite direction of the pull. I was bounced around by a few of these, but I made it out without losing too many places. I finished the first round in 3rd place, but I was catching up to Green-n-Yellow, and I passed the green guy in the flight over the gravel pit. I couldn't see Mr.Yellow-I'm-Always-Right-Behind-You for most of the 2nd lap, but I was catching up as we started lap 3. The leap over the gravel was where I took him out.

See, as we flew, my speed was greater than his so I flew beside him and then checked him to the side. I didn't see him the rest of the race, and I improved my lap times significantly! So victory was mine yet again.

So those were the first two levels of Queen's League, sorry for the short post, and the incredible amount of time between posts... But, life, and busy... Blah-blah, excuses. Next time, I will finish the League!

Catch ya later gamers

F-Zero: 16-Bit Warrior... With A Vengeance!

2012-05-01T02:08:00.003-07:00

Hello internet! It's been... Months! The craziness of life is just too damn much sometimes, y'know? I don't want to do a lengthy excuse of my absence, or any of that jazz; just know that I will do my best to be back on this here blog at least once a week! If not more. If any of you gamers are still lookin' at us, I hope you'll continue along for the ride and tell your friends to come check us out with saying "And they'll actually keep blogging! For reals!"

But you don't need to say 'For reals'... Cuz I don't think people actually say that... ANYWAY!

So when we left off I was going to go into a cry-fest of how badly I failed at the next couple of tracks in F-Zero. However, I completely forgot the woes I had endured, and so we will pick up where we left off with a new fresh impression.

I did exceptionally well I thought at tackling the first two levels again; Mute City and Big Blue. I would say my experiences were largely the same (with the exception that I wasn't surprised by things.) Next we came to the Sand Ocean.

Sand Ocean taught me about corners. I remember why I hated it so much. There are these thin parts where you have pull tight curves. You have to release the acceleration, turn AND use the drift (L or R.) It is stressful, but when you make one of the tight turns without hitting a wall or another car it is SO satisfying. That's another thing that this game has going for it. It makes you feel good for when you succeed; because it's all about skill. You have to develop your skill at maneuvering these flying cars through these hazardous race tracks. Of course, I did not get through this course unscathed. I smashed walls, bounced off of others cars, went careening in directions for reasons I can only assume were momentum... But I came out on top!

I spent the entirety of that course in 3rd or 4th, but on the second last lap I got into a groove and pulled ahead to take victory. Just barely as you can see above. I remember when I raced this track those months ago I died twice. I have clearly improved by 'sitting on it' as they say.

The next track was aptly named Death Wind I. This track was frustrating as hell because if you look at the map - it looks incredibly straight forward. It's even more basic than Mute City! What makes this track difficult is the- wait for it- wind! On the long stretches of track the wind is constantly blowing you towards one of the walls. You have to constantly be drifting against it. Also, there are speed boosts (anyone who is familar with Mario Cart knows that drill - glowing arrow, zoom zoom.) But here's the kicker: if you hit a speed boost and you're drifting, you'll go FLYING into the direction you're drifting, and smash into a wall. Now, you may thing "Well, just don't hit the speed boost.' WRONG. Because every goddamn other car hits that speed boost, and you appear to be the only one whose car is being battered by wind. So if you miss a boost, you will be passed.

I spent the majority of this course in the lead. I had gotten the hang of the driving, and I clearly had figured out my problems from before. I knew where to drift, I knew which patches of gravel to avoid (all of them) and I knew how to turn well. But somehow I bumped something on the last lap, last corner, and got passed. By two cars. Brutal. So mad. Not pleased. Moving on.

Silence. This track should be called "How many right angles can we fit on a racing course?" Apparently it's quite a few. I wouldn't really have imagined racing on a track with square corners, why would you? That just seems like poor design, and dangerous, and stupid.

Nonetheless, here we were, racing along some terribly sharp corners. Of course these weren't the only obstacle. There was also a HUGE gravel section that had to be leapt over. There is a small blue bar that launches you over it all if you've picked up enough speed. You may also notice that there is a section that you can turn off to at the top of the track; DON'T. It's a lie. It's a trap. Whatever you want to call it. If you go down it, you won't be able to turn and have enough speed to make it over the gravel pit and whatever time you saved will be lost. I did not do that on this run... I remember making that mistake before. What I DID do this run was pretty stupid. I missed the jump. I did not drift over far enough and I drove all the way over the gravel which slowed me all the way down and I was passed by two cars... Again. So I came in third after spending the majority of the game in the lead. No luck for this guy, I tell ya.

This isn't a screenshot of my original race, I took it in practice so you guys could see the map.

I cursed my folley and grumbled as the race finished. The game then recounted for me the stats of the past 5 races: so here we are.

Mute City

Big Blue

Sand Ocean

Death Wind I

Silence

Not too terrible, apart from bombing the end of the last two courses... But I completed the Knight League. I'm not 100% happy with my performance, so I MAY redo it to get 1st on all the courses... But my next mission is to tackle Queen League, so get ready for some more high velocity action!

Catch ya later gamers.

P.S. Man it is nice to be back; it's a great feeling playing these old games. Thank you to everyone who kept popping in and looking at our blog even while we were away, hopefully we can keep you coming!

Breath of Fire: Tale of Two Thirsty Towns

2012-02-03T18:30:00.000-08:00

So I'm in town for the weekend and decided to scratch my RPG itch. So here are the results. I didn't get too far, but some nifty stuff happened and I wanted to show ya.

After picking up the controller I just went to playing. While in Wyndia I checked out the shops to make sure all my equipment was up to date and took off to the south. Wrong move, ME0. I was supposed to go into the castle dungeon and use their secret tunnels. It was only after I wandered around, going back to zombie-ville, levelling up a bit, until I realized I should probably check the blog to make sure I was going the right way. Good thing about blogs is, its a journey journal, and I should have checked it. So, I went ALL the way back to Wyndia and used the stupid tunnel to get across the humongous bridge to the East. Once across I found a copse of trees that said I couldn't enter because a big tree was blocking my way. So I went further south until I came upon a couple of towns.

They're called Tantar and Tuntar

One was full of wolf humanoids called The Forest Clan. The other seemed to be regular humanoids. Turns out, these guys are suffering a drought caused by a damn built by the baddies. The villagers say that there's a big Robot that can help out, but only the chief knows what to do. However, the chief said he had no clue. So I was confused and interrogated (pressed A when adjacent to) a bunch of people and one guy let let slip that he saw the chief go into the Forest of Despair, but the chief was in his house...odd?

Went back to Tantar (wolves) and the blue haired chief was pretty adamant about some kind of treasure that they didn't want to give to the Dark Dragons.

So that didn't help the current problem.

And neither did this guy...

That was when I found the blacksmith. A big dude in the wolf clan. He said he'd give me a Saw if I gave him an I.Ore. Which...for some odd reason, I apparently had...

And I'm not questioning it.

Then I made an immediate trek to the Forest of Despair.

Ryu Used Saw

It's Super Effective!

The forest was pretty creepy, and I must say I HATE the enemy called "Stool". For those of you who aren't familiar with my hatred for poison, please go back to here: http://16bitwarriors.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-not-safe-to-go-alone-take-300-gold.html

So I weaved through the dark and spooky trees, trodding on many skeletons before coming across a stone building. Inside was another basic maze-like dungeon, but this one had sneaky floor drops in the middle of hallways. By the end I defeated three guards and saved the "Chief". The "Chief" took us to steal the bad guy weapons and locked us in a room. This is where the "Chief" said Pog would have a nice tasty snack.

Not so bad...

WRONG!

Pog and I went at it, and it took almost all of Nina's AP worth of healing, but we killed the sucker. The "Chief" could believe it and he was getting pretty angry but then this guy showed up...

It's Bo, yo!

Just in the nick of time, I got a sweet, range weapon dude to join me in a battle against...

The General!!!!

I currently forget if this guy had real significance. He very well coulda been the dude who fought Sara at the beginning? I'll read back and probly regret writing that...oh well. So the General went down pretty easy, seeing as Bo had some powerful moves (Frost is my fave) and I just got Nina to either heal or use E.Key. He had a few things to say about it though, and it wasn't even cliche...

I lie.

So that was that, the real chief was there now and said he'd try and figure out a way to move the rocks in the damn...but I already know the answer...oh well. Bo tells me he's go beef with the Dark Dragons, so he joins me.

Breath of Fire is about diversity.

And we made it back through the spooky dungeon and the spooky woods. On the outside world, I quickly realized that characters beneath the top level of the party quickly advance due to speedy battles. So I leveled up a little and went back to Tantar and Tuntar. Wolf Chief still won't shut up about his treasure, and other chief seems to have failed on the new information thing...

Robot secret is in another castle.

And proceeds to add another step on this side quest. Oh well, at least I got a wolf-faced archer added to the group. Got one more slot before I get full-party action.

Keep on gaming gamers!

-ME0

ME0: A Real Life 16-Bit Warrior

2012-02-02T17:53:00.000-08:00

Greetings Gamers!

I just wanted to let you know that JO3 and I are still alive. In fact, a few days ago we had a lovely night out for steak and followed up with several hours of video gaming (like we do). I'm currently on the road performing a puppet show, and I just had some time to sit and think about my blog recently while showing a friend the video games we've been playing.

Just wanted to let all of you know that the blog isn't dying or going on "permanent hiatus" or anything like that. J03 is in his final throws as an acting student, and I'm on a really busy tour. Come April, we'll be alive and kicking. But I assure you, gamers, that we'll be trying to post as often as we can.

Gaming's already our life, so its a no-brainer that this blog is the least stressful thing in the world when it comes down to it. So, expect to see more of us, and I'm looking into making some sweet aesthetic changes to the site as well. Thanks for your patience and your viewership.

More 16-Bit Adventures are coming!

OH, and I found this on the internet, it might be a bit old by now, but I just thought..."Wow, THAT is a real life 16 Bit Warrior. Proud of you buddy."

Oh, and if I can get my funds in order this summer, I'll be attending Comic-Con and E3. I'm thinking my costume choice is pretty obvious....Steampunk Link!

See you soon, gamers!

Game ON!

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Battle Tunes

2011-12-17T00:58:00.000-08:00

Was just doing some level grinding today when I had some time to spare. I just wanted to let those of you with the latest version of Quicktime to check this out.

Breath of Fire Battle Music 1

Breath of Fire Battle Music 2

So now you can jam while you read our blog :). Also, try and picture a couple nerds with big smiles on our faces, thats J03 and I every time we play these games. Half our enjoyment comes from the music alone.

Keep gaming, dragons.

Breath of Fire: a Knight, a Wizard, and Princess Nina

2011-12-15T15:29:00.000-08:00

Jumped back into Breath of Fire today. Managed to get through two bosses. The first was the Knight and the second was the Wizard.

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely love this game so far. There are quite a few things that I complain about a lot, but first and foremost, the story is stellar even if the dialogue is somewhat stinted.

So after I killed that Frog dude, I was told that earthquakes were being caused by a Quake machine and that I should delve into the dungeons below Nanai to stop it. So I did just that. After a few minutes of crawling around the lava-covered dungeon I ran into this little problem...

Meo: "Arrrrrrrghhh"

Which made getting to the bottom of the dungeon difficult, so when I ran out of antidotes I died quite a few times. However, like I mentioned here, this is good for level grinding. The irritating part was sneaking past the guards from the save point all the way to the castle. It wasn't quite as convenient as level grinding outside a town, but the baddies in the dungeon were tougher and garnered more EP. So I did this for a while until I made it to the bottom relatively unscathed where I met a Knight tinkering with the Quake Machine. We fought and...

"that all you got?"

So I pressed on. And eventually I collected enough Herbs from fallen enemies and various (way out of the way) chests. I fought the Knight again, and it turned out that I could take him with about 4 Herbs and a lucky streak of Cntrs and Slams. It got pretty close, because once I wore him down to his danger zone, he'd use a magic ability called Recovery and heal. This persisted about 7 times and then he stopped and just did melee damage. Finally I killed him, but not before the damned "Seems Alright" happened. For those of you not familiar with the "Seems Alright" in the BOF games, it is what happens when you wear a boss down to zero and they miraculously regain the ability to stay alive a few turns more. Sometimes "Seems Alright" is replaced with "Grings Confidently" or something stupid like that. That is one of things that angers me about this game. But, it just has to be worked into my strategy when going into a boss situation.

Defeating the Knight brought me to level 10! So I took the E.Key from the machine and the whole town was reduced to rubble. It's ok though because the King said that it was a tough choice to make. A nearby NPC promptly told me that I should travel to Winlan, so I did.

The people here all have wings!

I mosied through their capitol and upgraded some weapon and armor at the weapon shop, then found out the king is ill. Went to the castle and they sent me to bed because I couldn't see the king yet. Then I got to play as Princess Nina.

I was able to sneak around the castle and gather a LOT of Herbs and upgrade her armor for free. Then I found Ryu asleep, and it turns out he sleep-talks...

Somebody apparently has a thing for Sara.

Then I left the city and went to the tunnel to the left and I was greeted by a couple winged soldiers who didn't want me wandering around unescorted. They came in handy, though.

Nina serves best as a healer while the soldiers did whopping amounts of damage. After leveling up a couple, Nina became super fast and would almost always go first, allowing for quick healing when necessary. So we made our way through a zombie town where apparently people were rising from the grave because of an evil Wizard. We trekked through the woods to the Wizard's castle and did some fancy dungeoneering until we came upon him. He overwhelmed us because winged people are apparently susceptible to his Xeon Gas. So one of the soldiers got away and went to the roof where he TURNED INTO A BIRD.

Because apparently having wings isn't good enough...?

He flew back to the castle and they deduced that someone without wings had to go to the tower because they wouldn't be affected by the Xeon Gas. So they flew me back, and they fought some dragons to allow my bird guy to get through.

Once inside the tower, I was shown a VERY convenient room, where I could save AND heal. I wish saving and healing could always just be one thing. But yeah.

Went down into the depths and found my new nemesis. He seemed very displeased that they winged people so easily thwarted his Xeon Gas with...gasp...someone without wings! Oh no! So then we did battle.

He kept using a move called Petrify, where I'm assuming he solidified his skin to make it difficult to deal damage to him. His strongest attack was Freeze which did about 15 damage. So when I was lower than 15 I used a Herb and continued to pummel him. Since I had like 20 Herbs, this was a pretty easy fight.

At last I destroyed him and we received the Remedy that will help heal the King's sickness.

Oh Ryu, just foiling evil plans wherever you can.

So we all flew back to Winlan and it was a glorious celebration of flying birds everywhere as we landed. Nina hurried to heal the King and when I found them the King was barely hanging on, but then suddenly was jumping up and down on his bed. I couldn't help but laugh. This is when I discovered that Ryu actually has some dialogue...which is weird for some RPGs...I don't remember the Ryu in BOF 3 saying anything. It's kind of like a Link thing, isn't it?

Oh well, apparently I'm wrong.

After the King granted me access to the "tunnels" or whatever, Nina decided to join my party. Thank goodness, someone to heal me while I decimate legions of baddies, muahaha.

In any case, I have the RPG bug and I'm gonna keep plugging away here.

Keep on gaming, dragons.

Breath of Fire: It's Not Safe To Go Alone, Take 300 Gold...

2011-12-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

Alrighty RPG fans, the trek has begun on Breath of Fire, or BOF (reminds me of the Marry, Boff, Kill game, haha. I'd rather BOF people than Boff them. Rawr.). Those of you who have played large scale RPGs of previous generation consoles know that they are tough, irritating, but fun as hell.

The BOF games are nothing short of brilliant. I have played this one briefly when I was younger and shelved it for eons. I did, however get REALLY far in BOF 3 for the Playstation, which is a fantastic game. Things that separate the BOF games from any other RPGs are the extensive challenges that tie in MANY off-the-beaten-path sidequests with a very solid storyline. Turning into various types of dragons in battle is extremely fun and the games are completely filled with a crazy cast of unique playable and non-playable characters.

From my experience with BOF 3, I learned that there are SO many sidequests and strange segues that you easily lose track of the many through-line and often have a lot of thinking to do in order to decide what happens next. SO, I am pretty thankful for this blog, because if I forget, voila, I got it documented, yo!

As far as this blog goes, you'll see me talking more strategy and somewhat less story-explanation. I'm not a GameFAQ writer, so don't expect anything super detailed, after all, we have a goal at 16-Bit-Warriors, and that goal includes me seeing this game til the end.

For this first post, let me just do some explaining of the mechanics briefly so that future posts you'll be able to get what I mean in case I short-hand too many things.

Let's start off by me telling you I'm a traditional RPG'er. I stick to the canonical names.

Fun Fact: Ryu is Japanese for Dragon.

Battle Mechanics:

In BOF, the battle screen looks like this:

It's actually much better than some RPGs. The animation, personally is among my favorites because the sprites don't stand still, swing, and deal damage from a distance. The characters actually move up to the bad guys and attack. For 16 Bits, that's ballin. In the Battle area, you make a choice if you want to select your move, auto-battle, skip your turn, or flee. In the moves you can attack, defend, use magic, or use item. Auto-battle will just skip the move select and deal damage to your foe. It will persist until you cancel it by pushing B.

When your health gets below a certain point, the health bar turns red and Ryu takes a knee. From hence-forth I will be referring to this state as the Danger Zone. Queue 80's music:

"Riiiiiiide innnnn tooooo theeeee Danger Zone!"

(Sorry Kenny Loggins)

Things about BOF battling that you need to know:

1. It's easy to die, so stack up on Herbs or stay near a Save Point (more on that in a bit)

2. Counter Attacks (Cntr) - They are SO handy. Once in a while, depending on your Luck Level (more on that in a bit) you'll automatically counter attack after being hit, which you get to stack a normal-turn attack on top of.

3. Critical Hits (Slam) - Once in a while, also depending on you Luck and your Strength, you'll critical hit a monster with a Slam, which does double of more damage.

4. Sometimes you actually forget that you have to push A - Like in the above picture, the animation will continue, but there's nothing but cards on the screen as if you're waiting for something to happen. Get in the habit of pushing A a lot because this is just waiting for you to decide to do something. If you have a brain-fart problem like me, this will occur often.

Stats:

So as you level up you get stats. Your stats include poitns in HP (Health Points), AP (Ability Points), Vigor (Taking Damage), Agility (Turn Speed (Initiative to you DnD players)), Wisdom (Magic Damage), Strength (Melee Damage), and Luck (Chances of Slams and Cntrs occurring).

Also included in your stats are your ability stats that increase and decrease with your weapons and armor. These include ATK, ACT, INT, DEF, MAG, and FATE. Now, I think I get all the first five, but Fate? Why the hell would a pair of boots increase or decrease my fate? Yeah, I'm sure one day I'll figure it out.

Ok, SO, After gathering this knowledge off the get-go, I set off to take down BOF. I didn't get very far for this first post, but let me just start you off. The story opened up with a dragon waking me up from my dream...

...to find out that my town was burning down. When I found the refugees, I gathered info a little too quickly:

Who the hell did you hear that from, NPC? And why is it breaking news NOW?

So a gal named Sara fought off the bad dudes after turning us to Stone and then we awoke to a destroyed town. So sad.

Darth Vader: "NOOOOOOO!" Audience "Ffffffuuuuuu..."

One thing I quickly deduced was that the walking in this game is tooooo slow. But the dialogue boxes are good and quick, so my irritation level was pretty low when I moved on to the first town. This town had a save point in it like my home down. They are easy to spot with a stone dragon head over the doorway.

Note on Save Points: You can die at any point after saving and be revived at the save point, you will NOT lose levels or have any penalties. SO, if you are a level-grinder like me, just find a town with one of these guys in it and keep battling outside until you die. You can save money on Herbs this way and spend less time looking for healing pools (found in dungeons and castles:

Which I didn't find out about until level-grinding to level 5.

I had stepped one foot into this neighboring town's castle and got insta-killed by a Gloom. So I decided to grind until I could one-hit a Bulla and attack faster than a Flea, believing that to be sufficient enough to explore the castle.

"So get your muk blobbin and your arms flip flobbin, Do the Creep! Ahhhhh! Do the Creep!"

Found a few pieces of armor and a better sword along the way and quickly encountered my first boss:

Tough as nails this guy. I used all my Herbs to beat him because his jump attack could take 12 HP at a time.

Luckily he didn't poison me (which, you'll find, is my biggest RPG pet-peeve. Lord, do I hate Poison.)

I wasted this dude and the castle was restored to normal. I got so many EP (experience points) that I leveled up to level 8. Win!

That was about as far as I got, an NPC mentioned some trouble in Nanai, so I'm off to do some hero-ing over there.

Keep on gaming, dragons!

PS: I shall name him Bill.

"Bill, you stay away from the cliff edge. Bad Golden Stag! Bad!"

F-Zero: Brakes are for Suckers

2011-12-09T08:22:00.000-08:00

Alright, so my first go at this F-Zero game was a... Partial success. To be honest, I was actually feeling pretty confident about my abilities after the first lap of Mute City. I thought the controls were simple, and that I knew exactly how to power through this whole game. Oh ho ho, boy, was I wrong. This game is vicious. It is fast, and relentless, and it is near impossible to stop to think about anything else when you're blasting along in your hover-car. By the end of my sit-down I was cursing left, right and center. I slammed my fists down on the table and walked away to get some chocolate ice cream. Let's see how I started off so well.

The game starts off simple enough. Two options: Grand Prix or Practice. I'm like "Practice? Hah, who needs it." So I jump in. There's only four different cars, which seems ludicrously small considering the roster of cars in modern racing games (over 1,000 in some cases.) I don't really take time to look at stats or acceleration because the Blue Falcon looks perfect and I love me Smash Bros.

Logic = flawless.

So here go, Mute City. Pretty basic starting racing level. More or less an oval-ish shape.

^See that oval? It's a bit distorted

So the cars blast off and I gun it. I pass two of them easily enough but the yellow car is just ahead of me. We tango for a bit, weaving side to side, he's trying to keep me from passing him, I'm trying to pass him... Classic. Then we turn.

Let me tell you something about F-Zero corners. They are tight. These are not very forgiving corners of the stage. And when you bump the wall you will know. It electrifies you. I'd say it's like the bottom of your car is fingernails, and the edges of the stage are like a chalkboard. You grind down on it and it hurts you and makes a horrible sound that you never want to experience again. But if you're going too fast, it'll shuck you all the way into the opposite wall, which will shoot you back and electrify you too. So brings in the power meter at the top right of the screen. This is your health bar. It goes down when you hit something - be it a wall or another car. There is one strip of healing track per level (so far anyway) and when you go onto it a little robot appears above you and lasers down some glowing energy that heals you.

So anyway, back to the race at hand. This yellow guy was not letting up, and even when I passed him, he was ALWAYS right on my tail. It was like no matter how fast, or how well I thought I was doing, he was literally always right behind me. I did manage to keep calm though, it was all about focus, that's one of the main things I took away; this game demands your attention or you will be passed. You can't idle. Idle and Die.

So I'm in first place right now, great place to be. There are only 3 other cars and they're behind me (right behind me infact), when I see a car coming up infront of me. And I'm thinking, "Sweet, I'm lapping one of them!" But, no, it was a car I didn't recognize. So I pass it, and there are a couple more. Then it just becomes normal that there are all these other cars in the race. Some of them are flashing, and if you bump them, they explode. I guess their extra enemies to deal with, because just racing would be boring, right?

So that's the gist of Mute City. I won though.

Wooo! First place!

Next we came to Big Blue, which is a really fun stage; and has an AMAZING soundtrack to it. It's very recognizable, but that may be because I played a lot of Smash Bros. (When will I stop referencing that game? Who knows.)

Anyhoo, pretty well the same deal here. Kept ahead, couldn't look back, smashed into some walls, tight corners, flashing enemy-bombs. Came out on top.

So I really felt good about those two first levels, and I imagined I would continue this winning streak and demolish anything in my way. You'll see how wrong I was in my next post, catch ya later gamers!

ME0: No, It's Not A New Cinnamon Chewing Gum

2011-11-30T12:53:00.001-08:00

So after much thought I have decided to follow in JO3's footstopes and step outside of the sidescroller genre for my next game. I didn't want to start taking on obscure ones quite yet (as I have heard from many friends that this will likely be a problem later if we hit all of teh mainstream ones too early) because there is one game I started to play about three years ago and lost my copy of it. So now I'm bringing it back and I plan to see it through to the end. It's one of my favorite RPG series out there, as it is ripe with story, heart, and a unique gameplay.

Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you (if you actually read this instead of went from picture to picture :P) Breath of Fire!

Work on this game of dragon-filled awesomeness starts as soon as possible. Also, take a look at that cover art! I was blown away when I looked it up because it is far more epic than the cartoony style that the games are well known for. Nevertheless, I'm super stoked. This is gonna take a while, but I am dedicated to kicking its arse one way or another.

Keep on gaming gamers.

PS: We have added a few new features to our blog. We now have begun a list of defeated games so readers can keep track of what we've done already. We also have a page with tips and tricks for the games we've beaten, feel free to click and check them out.

Super Metroid: Couldn't help but ace this game right away! Death to the Motherbrain!

2011-11-27T22:39:00.000-08:00

So I literally took a few minutes in between writing that last blog post and going back to finish the game. Unfortunately I've now published them together because I had the other one on draft for too long. But that's the life of technology. So anyways, I couldn't help myself and I went back into Super Metroid and completely destroyed this game.

Like I thought, things went down once I went to the golden statue. (I picked up more health and missile upgrades along the way, btw) The statue started blinking out, one boss at a time....

And then sank into the water...

It was a nifty cutscene, and I was presented with an elevator to a new world. The final one. This one had no secret passages, just Metroids and stupid computer-controlled laser loops that fired at random, a LOT.

By the way, I now fully understand every webcomic joke about Metroids. They are the most irritating creatures. You cannot at ALL get rid of them once they latch on, aside from entering a different room and coming back in. The trick I soon discovered was to plasma freeze them and then super bomb them. I later discovered I should have used regular missiles instead....woulda made things easier.

I forgot to get a pic of it, but I did come across a metroid MUCH bigger than the one displayed above. It attacked me and sucked my health all the way down except for one health. Then it pulled away....was....was this the Metroid I was looking for? Motherly feelings swam through me as it sadly withdrew from me. I then found health, missiles, and a save point, then it was time for the mother of all bosses...the Mother Brain.

note: getting to the mother brain proved difficult, and many retries were had due to the fact that the laser loops would drastically lower health as I took apart the obstacles getting to it. THEN it took WAY too many missiles to destroy the case the brain was in, which in turn made the boss fight impossible after. SO, I eventuall discovered you could do a whole bunch of damage to the brain, then make your way back to the missile loader and energy recharge station, then come back and the brain had the same amount of damage taken. So this is what I did eventually and I exploded the brain.

Which brought me down to a little square room to face off the evil brain with its new body. Suddenly Ninja Turtles comes to mind...hmm. So the fight was hard, namely because he/she/it had a mega move that couldn't be avoided and you had to ensure you had about 4 tanks of health left. Then it hurt me for a bit and THEN tried the move again...but I was saved by this!

My Metroid baby came back and defended me. Then it gave me all of my health back, but the Mother Brain killed it. It was very tragic. Samus got furious and I gained an even more powerful laser attack...somehow.

But hey, who am I to complain. DIE MOTHER BRAIN!

And I showed it who the real boss was. Then she proceeded to activate the self destruct (of course) so I had to boogy my way out of the planet, shooting MANY space pirates along the way *hallelujah!* and got back to my ship.

I took off into space and then the entire planet blew up. Take that you dirty Metroid-Thieving Pirates!

Another surprise was the actual number of hours I logged on the game was not nearly as much as I have been exaggerating about, haha. I had a good laugh at that.

Thus brings an end to the fun of Super Metroid. I hope you had fun journeying to the depths of Planet Zebes and defeating the Mother Brain. It was a difficult mission, but I think we all came out the better for it. Thank you all for your patience on my posting lateness.

Stay tuned for my next game announcement. Also, we still encourage game suggestions in our comments field. Don't be shy. We like comments at 16 Bit Warriors. Keep gaming gamers.

Super Metroid: Bye Bye Draygon and Ridley

2011-11-27T22:19:00.000-08:00

Why hello there gamers! I sat down to take down this game once and for all. And wouldn't you know it, I took down two bosses in one sitting. This game has gotten a whole lot more interesting and I feel the end of it is near. Not to spoil any secrets, but I've already picked out my next game. *big evil grin*

So, without further ado, here are the tasks and challenges I faced today.

Well we left off having been brought back to Brinstar and me not knowing particularly where to go next.

I took that door to the right there and soon discovered that my new suit had the ability to withstand most forms of lava. SO this made for plenty new discoveries and a lot of missile and health tank upgrades. Some new passages brought me to this interesting thing I wanted to show you guys.

It's a giant turtle. Although I couldn't do any damage to it, once I shot at its babies, it would go into his shell and start flying around trying to knock me on my armored ass! I jumped on top of it and discovered it then would go straight up and show me secrets. Then I made my way through the other new areas....

I thought this was a pretty cool pose. Using the grappling hook on walls.

I mosied along and it wasn't very long before I made my way through the weird underwater/sand levels and found myself in a new boss room. This guy is Draygon, and he was easy once I figured him out. I shot at his stomach, and he took lots of damage, but wouldn't die. Then I had the bright idea of shooting out the cannons on the wall, letting him catch me, then electrocuting him! He flew pretty close to the electric buzzing stuff where the cannons were and I used the grapple beam to kill him. I took a lot of damage in doing so, but he was instantly dead.

He/She sank beneath the sand and its babies followed.

My reward? Space Jump!

The trick with Space Jump powerup is that I had to jump JUST after descending from a previous jump and I could theoretically jump infinitely . I say theoretically because the timing was really rough unless I was in shallow-roofed tunnels, then it was easy. Soon I also got another upgrade to my weapon. A Plasma Cannon!

This just simply dealt more damage, so I could take on the space pirates when they became more powerful. So, with my Space Jump and Gravity Suit, I was able to dance my way through a lake of lava and get to the entrance to Ridley's lair. The iconic bad guy awaited my arrival.

But first, an upgrade! I fought a Golden Chozo for this sucka.

The idea of this attack was I could do damage when jumping into things and baddies. it also opened up cave-away rooves. So I dropped into a dark room and something sinister was...

...waiting.

Then BOOM! Attack of Ridley. I emptied every missile I had at him and when I ran out of those I gave him nothin but charged shots, all the while trying to discern his dip and lunge patterns. He was hard, but easy to hit. Lots of damage was done on both side, but in the end...

Ridley was nothing more than a health and ammo dump. *spits on Pterodactyl corpse*

So now that I've defeated the bosses of all the worlds, I'ma head back to that creepy golden statue thing and see what happens now. Keep on gamin, gamers!

JO3; Need for F-Speed

2011-11-24T04:27:00.000-08:00

Dear gamers, I apologize for my extended absence. I'm currently stage managing a fantastic theater production and have had no time to myself to settle down and start up a new game to talk about. I feel terrible about not posting though, so I decided I could at least announce my next game, which I will be posting about right away. I thought about what game I would play, trying to consider what I'll have time for, what kind of game I would even want to play, etc... And I came to a final decision!

Not just a racing game - a FUTURE racing game. With jet-cars and boosters and Captain Falcon. Everytime I see the cover I just think "Show me your moves!" And I intend to. Yes that's the wrong game. Yes that one is amazing too. Sadly that's not on the SNES so I can't blog about it... Not yet.

Catch ya later gamers.

P.S. Thank you for the continuous views, really makes me feel like I'm providing some entertainment - don't be so shy and comment! Let us know how we're doing.

Mega Man X: Grand Finale!

2011-11-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

So here we are team. Last boss. Sigma. He's a big ol' jerk. And he has 3 different stages for the fight. I am thankful that the whole stage itself was essentially just the boss battle; because I did NOT want to have to deal with any mini-punks.

I beamed into this... Pit? A rather thin pipe that I had to wall jump up. There were these two holes that little robo-worms popped out of. Every one of them would either drop health, ammo for powers or an extra life. So I spam killed them until I was satisfactorilly stocked up.

Eventually I popped up into the room where Sigma appeared with his little robo-dog. He talked a little bit in regular bad guy fashion, then he call me a traitor!

What the hell!? Who did I betray? And when!?

Gawd, what I bastard. So he vanished and left his dog to do his dirty work. Well; this dog is annoying, I'll tell ya. He had a fair amount of moves at his disposal. He could leap at me, run at me, shoot glowing blues balls up and over at me, launch a large flame curve downwards and upwards at me. I could avoid his attacks easily enough, but his leaping was hard to gauge sometimes; and if I crept up the wall, he would jump up towards the wall, back and forth before dropping down.

Hitting him with a charged shot would knock him back a bit, but hitting him with an ice shot did a helluvalot of damage. So I switched between the two and took him down. Sigma re-appeared and threw off his cape and pulled out a ligthtsaber. And then we started the fight.

He began by lounging forward at me, and so I jumped up the wall. Then he jumped up the wall, back and forth. He hit me and knocked me down. I shot at him and (because he has a lightsaber) he deflected my shots. I started a charge shot and jumped on the wall again. He leapt up at my and I shot him. It hurt him, but but he kept coming and he killed me. So this began a series of unfortunate events... Or, I suppose of series of X dying. His leaping back and forth just seemed so erratic, it was so hard to predict where he would go and he kept hitting me, and dealing a top of damage! Gah.

Eventually I took a break and took a step away from the game.

I came back and thought of how I could hit him when he was in the air. The Ice-shot, the Boomerang all had means of striking out in angles I couldn't normally hit. Since I used much of the Ice-shot against his pup, I knew that power ran out pretty quick, so I didn't use it right away. I did find the Boomerang very useful though, because it would swing around up and hit him.

The boomerang was not strong enough, and I couldn't quite finish him off by the end of the power. So I switched to the Ice-Shot and shot him a few times. I really found the rhythm of his leaping, and could avoid him fairly easily now. And so I finished him off with a good amount of health left.

He exploded and I was very happy. But, of course, that was not the end. After the explosion cleared his head was floating in the center of the room with a stupid grin on his face. He floated up and the back of the screen lit up revealing a large... Robot-Dog-Headed-Floaty-SpikeHandy-Thing. His head joined with the canine head and the battle began.

He had two floating platform (hands) which opened up and shot lightning up and down, or flew down at me. I could jump on these in order to rise up on level with the head and shoot it (with a fully charged buster shot.) The platform would open and lightning blast me off often though, so I had to get used to leaping off of them. The head could also breathe fire down at me in a slow arc, or shoot large electric orbs which had a rather slim margin of error in dashing between. Through these combinations of attacks I found myself defeated a number of times.

Luckily I had those robo-worms to farm at the start of the level each time I died, so I stocked up on health, power and lives.

Eventually I found that I could wall jump up to the platforms (instead of waiting for them to float down) and I could continuously damage him with the Rolling Shield. As long as the platform wasn't directly touching the wall I could leap off of it when it shot lightning and back onto it to continue my onslaught. This strategy worked wonderfully, and I brought Sigma to another explosion. Again, in solid bad guy fashion he had a little bit to say before he died; but he did ask some very provocative questions.

I don't know! Haven't you been reading my progress!? No one tells me anything!

So I let the baddie explode, and I teleported away, conveniently on a cliff-face many miles away. From there I saw Sigma's fortress crumble into the ocean and then explode in brilliant light.

Now... If I can teleport so far away, so easily, why do I have to go through levels at all? Can't I just teleport into the bosses rooms?

Then some nice Bit music started to play, and some epilogue details started to crawl up the screen, again, questioning why we did this whole thing.

"Those who sacrificed themselves will never return." ... Doesn't Zero have his own series now? Also, you should say "never be forgotten" it puts more of a positive swing while keeping the weight of the words... But that might just be me.

The epilogue ends saying that the X-buster on his arm knows the answer. The GUN on his arm knows the answer to whether he will have to keep fighting... I wonder what the gun will say? NO, DON'T USE ME, I WANT TO BECOME POINTLESS. But, then again, ya never know.

So the credits rolled, and there were some names and stuff, and then they ended and I was greeted with this smiling face! (Accompanied by some rather creepy music.)

!!! A sequel!? No way!

And that concludes my trip through Mega Man X. I hope you all enjoyed the adventure as much as I did! I had a lot of fun with the game, I can see why it is held in high regard among those lists of "Best SNES games." The action is alot of fun, and the 16-Bit graphic style is quite lovely. My only gripe is story... But, I suppose that's what RPGs are for!... I don't think I'll do an RPG next though, judging by the amount of time I've been able to settle down and play last month, it'll be best to get a less time consuming game out of the way... But which one? If anyone has any ideas, throw them out in the comment section below, I'd be happy to see what you're all thinking.

Catch ya later gamers!

Mega Man X: Holy Boss-Battles Batman!

2011-10-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

So I demolished the rest of the old bosses in this one level, and fought a new robo-beast; which ended up having me face 6 boss fights in one level! SIX. I was running low on all counts of powers and energy tanks as the level progressed. It also felt like the bosses were a little more difficult than the first time I fought them... not that I DIED a whole lot. The fights just felt harder.

The first boss door (which again was pretty much as the start of the level) was the Armored Armadillo. I knew I had to electrocute him with my lightning shot to get rid of his armor, and then continuously do so until he died.

Don't worry, I'm not invisible, I just got hit by his forehead shot.

After defeating Armadillo, I made my way through some baddies and got myself to full health; just in time for the next boss door (which was pretty much a single hallway away.)

And within this doorway was that bastard who can actually turn invisible: Sting Chameleon. He was just as annoying as I recall, the first time we fought. Only THIS time, I found his weakness!

THE BOOM!... erang.

So I made my way out of his chamber, down a little drop where there was some health behind some pipes. I used the boomerang to snag them up (that thing is all kinds of handy, ain't it?)

Onto the next boss! Here I had to face off with Spark Mandrill! I already knew his weakness, so I could use my wonderful Ice Shot to freeze him whenever he was getting to close for comfort. I did not leave the battle unscathed however, as each one of his flying punches would knock me off the wall if I tried to avoid them that way.

You know what killed the dinosaurs? The ICE AGE!

So that was 3 bosses down, so I was imagining I would be facing a new boss right away, but I was wrong! I dove down into some water and instantly knew what was coming.

Hmm... I wonder who I'm fighting next?

Oooo... Surprise, surprise.

Octo-whatever his face is was a bastard. I very much did not enjoy fighting him. Mainly because I couldn't figure out his weakness, and also I couldn't remember how I beat him last time. So I switched rapidly through my powers and buster shots, trying to avoid his missiles and keep away from his whirlpool thang.

Then I killed him with his own powers; just for the hell of it.

Then I leapt out of the water and found another boss door. When I entered I saw the conveyor belt and knew right away I was to be facing Flame Mammoth. Last time I didn't have his weakness, and I knew I did this time. As far as I could tell, it seemed the tornado power did more damage to him. I jumped away from his fireballs, and soot shot, and blasted him down as much as I could.

I finished him off at the same time as getting knocked into the air by his fat-ass weight coming down.

So I had finished them all off. All them old guys. And the level wasn't over? Who was I supposed to fight next?... Some rather large robot, T-Rex head thing? This guy was annoying as hell. He killed me a fair amount of times, to be honest. He only had two attacks really. His upper half and lower half would split and move seperately attempting to hit me. The other is if both halves come together and shoot a large electric orb out at you. I had to dash under that one. You can't hang up on the wall to avoid it... It will launch at you.

Also, in trying to jump through the gap of top and bottom, the top would often be too fast and crush down on me, causing a fair amount of pain. How I ended up winning was getting into a rhythm of his movements and blasts; I scrolled through my powers, charging fully as well as I could to do the most damage possible. And in the end, it was still a damn close call.

HUZZAH! I won! Whew... That was DAMN stressful.

But I finished him off, that I did. And was then sent to the boss screen again. This HAS to be the final boss now; Sigma. I'm also curious as to whether I'll get some answers of some plot? Maybe?... Maybe I'm hoping too much. I guess we'll see.

Catch ya later gamers.

Mega Man X: Another Down

2011-10-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

On the home stretch team! I demolished the next level of Sigma's Fortress, and killed some more old bosses. The levels in the fortress are fairly standard; as a matter of fact, there isn't much in the way of platforming or obstacles that cause worry. It's more about getting X from one boss-fight to the next.

For instance, within the first 10 seconds of the level I came to a boss door!

And it was my good friend Chill Penguin.

The fight was pretty similar to how the last one went, I jumped over his attacks, shot him when he was up blowing wind, and got hit by his tackle a few times. The big difference this time though, was that I found his weakness!

FIRE! Hahahahaha!!

.... Ahem. So, that killed him faster.

Next I came to a mech which I used to tear through some baddies. Short and sweet, as usual.

Next there were these two paths I could go up, littered with bad guys either way. After getting struck down a couple times, I used my Chamleon ability so I was untouchable to leap up as fast as I could, avoiding bad guys and shots alike.

I ran out into the open and was greeted by the noise of flapping wings. And so I faught Storm Eagle again. He felt more annoying this go around, but that may just be because he didn't do anything special when I hit him with any of my powers. The Chameleon Sting shot seemed to do more damage, but it didn't stun him so I kept getting hit by his little birds or dive attack.

I did manage to kill him before I fell off the edge, luckily. But I was hurtin' pretty bad. After the fight I made my way forward and got some more health. It was a short distance however, before I came to the last boss of this level. Which was a big, giant, robot, face.

So, this guy had a few options for attacking. His eyes opened one at a time, being different colors. The green eye shot one bullet, the red eye shot a spray of 3 bullets (it could also fly out at you) and the blue eye, which kinda flys at you and then hovers there for a bit. After a bit the walls would close in and it's nose would fly around and try to hit you.

After enough damage, the eyes would explode, leaving you to just deal with the nose.

When you kill it, the spikes disappear and you teleport away, victorious! Onto the next level, I'm feeling so pumped, I know I'm close to the end!

Catch ya later gamers!

Super Metroid: The Gravity of the Situation

2011-10-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

Hey Gamers, been a little while, hey? I just recently got back from a tour of a puppet show that I'm in the middle of, and up until now haven't had a lot of game time. Buuuttt, that's not my excuse, seeing as whenever I WAS available, I was gaming like a mad man. However, my actual reason for not posting in a while is because I finally figured out how to get unstuck in the abandoned Space Pirate ship thingy. Because I now had the grapple beam, I went back into Brinstar and found that I had skipped a spot that was grapple beam friendly. I grappled my way across this large gap with glowy little bug things getting in my way and then I found something. I nearly pooped my pants and totally forgot to make a screenshot while I was at it, but the item I found was called the X Ray scope. So you know that problem I had since I started playing this game, where I'd get stuck for hours and have to shoot walls and bomb floors until finally I found the one passage what would allow me to progress through the game? Well, let's just say the X Ray Scope would have come in handy a LOOOONNNNGGGG time ago. However, I've now made good use of it and discovered many secret stashes of missiles and tank upgrades and whatnot. So THEN I went back to the abandoned ship from the end of my last post and found a passage at the bottom of the ship with my new X Ray Scope.

All of the above took me a few hours of game-play...but the one, true, SOLE reason that I have not been updating in a while is because many many many more hours were spent in frustration trying to kill this guy.

A website told me his name is Phantoom, or something like that. In any case, if you're panicky and trigger happy during boss fights like I get from time to time, this fight was hard. It wasn't until hour...oh I dunno...13? That I finally smartened up and stopped using super missiles and power bombs on him, because little did I realize that the super move he kept using on me was only because he was angry at MY super moves. So then I gave my head a shameful shake and used strictly regular missiles and charge shots. The fight was ten minutes that time.

So after killing Phantoom, the lights and power came on again in the ship and the save point (which woulda been really handy pre-boss-fight for dummies like me) was now accessible. I was then able to explore more of the ship and soon discovered another awesome upgrade, this time to my armor.

As you can see, it's purple. Which already makes it cooler, seeing as the last one wasn't much of a color upgrade. Now this here is called the Gravity Suit. Sounds cool, yeah? Well, it is. Under water is no longer a slow, arduous process, as the suit treats undersea travel as if in open air. Also, it has a super jump ability that you can use by entering super speed, pressing down (which holds the charge) and then pressing jump when you're ready. It's a bit hard to use, but worth it for those hard to reach places. So then I found a reserve tank for my energy and proceeded into a new world, which was short lived for some reason and brought me back to Brinstar. I'll be playing more soon and will let you know if I figured out why it brought me down here.

Later Gamers.

Mega Man X: First of the Last

2011-10-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

So, it was silly of me to think that it was just going to be the last boss right away, I OBVIOUSLY was going to have to go through his mystery hideout and fight legions of baddies, and then take on old bosses again. Why didn't I think of that? Tsk, tsk.

Anywho, it started with meeting up with big ol' Zero. I don't wanna say he's a cocky bugger. But. He's a cocky bugger. "Don't worry X, I'll handle the big guys." "Don't worry X, I'll go first so I can destroy all the big guys who might give you trouble." "Don't worry "X, I'm just viscerally better than you in every way, no big." I'm not bitter.

Ya, that's always a good idea.

So, I make my way, tearing through some robo-turtles. Leap on some floating platforms and make my way up along this floating path, careful not to fall to my doom. I enter Sigma's fortress and begin blowing apart some baddies. Nothing too out of the ordinary here, just had to blast away. I started to realize that I had so many different powers that I could totally start using them to ease my way through the levels. The cyclone power is SO FREAKING SWEET. It protects me from things coming at me, and rips apart any bad guy infront of me, cuz it hits them so many times.

I made my way up to this ladder area and had to deal with some rather annoying moving turrets. I popped up through the ladder though, and Purple-Jackass popped down and was ready to get an ass-whooping when Big Red shows up being a 'hero' (even though I'M the hero of this story... Right?)

You jackass, let me do my own dirty work!

So I follow after them and hear the sound of some charge shotting, and a >thunk<, and I'm thinking "Oh shit, Zero got pwned!" And I hurried forward, and I was mostly right.

Oh, so I guess you aren't so ALL POWERFUL are you, Zero!? Hah!... And I resent your words, Purple-face.

So, Purple-Face managed to get IN his mech and trap Zero in a very short amount of time. After some banter about how I can defeat him, and how I know I can't defeat him, the battle began. However, there was no health bar for Big-Purple-Mech so I didn't get the feeling I was supposed to win again. I was right. When I got me down to near dead he paralyzed me AGAIN, and then picked me up to bring me over to the other side of the screen for... Some reason.

He laughed, and said I was helpless. Then Zero did a big ol' "BUT I'M NOT!!!" And broke free of the prison and exploded them both.

... Well shit, he saved me.

However, Zero only destroyed the mech, leaving Purple-Man for me to deal with. Out of nowhere, I broke out of the paralization and was restored to full health. Baddie says "Where did that energy come from!?" I dunno. Still don't. Plot hole anyone?

Anywho, without his mech, I could easily jump over Purple when he charged, and I could damaged him with all my attacks. I didn't really pick a defined strategy, I just charged up my buster, or switched between powers, and just shot the hell outta him. And thus he died.

Not so tough without your big mech, eh? I tore through you, boi.

So, I washed my hands of Big-Purple and continued on my way, only to find Zero's body... And from the looks of it, his legs were gone. He told me I was stronger than he ever imagined, and then said that "Maybe you can defeat Sigma..." And, I still have NO IDEA who that is! So he faded away and died.

Now I feel bad for those bad things I said. Why'd you have to go and die?

And that WASN'T the ended of the level. I still had to fight some regular bad-guys and leap over some other guys. Again, same old same old. No new faces here. And then I came to a boss room, with an especially familiar face. KUWANGER!

When I entered the room and he started in with his phasing-in-out-dance thing, I was like: "Oh, I know how to deal with you." And he was exactly the same as I could tell. I switched to his weakness (missles) and blasted him away with them. Just for the hell of it, I waited when he was at low health to charge up my missle shot and...

I beat you already, bitch. Eat homing pirahnas!

And that wasn't the end of the level! I still had to continue on and fight more baddies, and lump up some walls, and get annoyed with some turrets and whatnot, but I made it to the NEXT boss in a short amount of time. And boy, was he annoying.

Enter Big-Spider-Robot. He has these four long poles in the room which he manuvers on, and when he exits the screen these little horizontal green bars appear in random patterns between them, somewhat hinted out how he'll approach next. That is sometimes difficult to judge. You think he's going to follow the descending path of bars, but sometimes he'll wipe around and come at you from the top. Other than simple charging down the poles at you, Spider only has one other attack. Which is to throw down four mini-spiders which run at you and are an inconvenience.

The only way I seems to be able to get him was to shoot the moment BEFORE he came to the bottom of his trip downwards, because he scurried up the pole very quickly upon reaching hitting you or not. And forget about hitting him if he hits you. Ain't gonna happen. I'm so glad I got the armor upgrade, because he was still hurting me quite a bit with his obviously excessive body weight.

Ouch. Scary robo-spider moves fast.

Also, he speeds up the more you damage him. Just thought you should know.

But he still dies like everybody else!

So I finally beat him by constantly doing a super-charge of my regular ol' Buster shot, as you can see here.

That was the end of the level. The game returned me to the boss screen again, with the same picture of that Sigma guy... So I'm guessing I'll have a few more levels, maybe 3 bosses per level from now on? I guess we'll see.

Catch ya later gamers!

Mega Man X: Prepping for Onslaught

2011-10-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Hey gamers, sorry about the mini-hiatus, but life has a way of not giving you any free time sometimes, y'know?

As I said in my last post, I headed back into the older levels to find myself some missing upgrades, and I did just that! I got myself 2 more health upgrades, an energy sub-tank and the super-charge buster cannon.

The health upgrades were both in sight when I first ran through the levels but I just didn't know how to get them. The boomerang got me the one in Kuwanger's level (see Kuwanger), and then I just had to be more of a badass in the Chameleon level and jump into the unknown (see Chameleon.)

For the energy tank, again I needed the boomerang, this time in the Spark Mandrill level. Note: You have to jump in order for the boomerang to curve downward.

The king of all upgrades; the arm upgrade. I said I needed a new buster cannon, and boy did I get a new cannon. This was in the Flame Mammoth level. There were these 'blocks' that I paid no attention to my first play through on the level, and with my new helmet (see Eagle) I could pop through them and get an awesome new toy.

This epic charge shot not only works for the regular buster cannon, but it also gives supped up versions of all my elemental powers. Awesome? I thought so. Let's take a look at what we got!

Here we have the buster shot, becoming a wave of fireball death.

Lightning shot

Then it streaks out in both directions, pretty sweet, huh? This all happens very fast of course.

Super boomerangs! If you really are surrounded and need to hit multiple guys around the screen.

This ones wicked. Fire shoots up infront of you and continues in a straight line. Until the floor runs out, or it hits a wall. Bad-Ass.

Now, this one isn't so easy to tell, but you kinda of gain a phasing quality and attacks pass through you and you can run through bad guys.

Here we have the missles, which launch five homing pirahnas! Sweet.

Alright... So... You create an ice penguin sled. You can ride it! Not sure when this will be useful...

Bubble shield! Simple enough, except I don't think you can attack when you're in it, and I think it only stops one hit. Meh?

Giant whirlwind tornado! So cool, really good at dealing with anything above you or coming towards you.

So there we have it. I'm all set to face Sigma, but I don't have time right, right this moment... So hopefully I will get to it soon. Thank you for the patience and the continuous views, keeps us going! Catch ya later gamers.

Mega Man X: A Storm's Coming

2011-10-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

I've been playing this game whenever I can because I'm really feeling the need to just beat it. I'm getting excited with each new upgrade, each new power; I really feel like X is growing into a powerful force of nature... Er... Technology. Now it was time for me to face the last of the initial 8 bosses, Storm Eagle. Too be honest he is one of the cooler looking bosses I have so far encountered; and his level was a blast to go through.

I entered the level and was clearly on a roof of some kind. I came up to some platforms on a rotating belt. I had to jump from on to the other and work my way up. However, there were some flammable containers across the way, so I switched to my Flame power and burnt them up. All that was revealed was a large health container. I thought this was rather anti-climactic...

But then there were multiple sections of containers. Majority of them had health, but one had an extra life. Win.

I then followed the platforms given path and came on top of an AIRPORT (which was spelled out for me in great big letters.) There was then a pillar which went up and down with a turret on it. So I killed the turret, and stood atop the pillar as it rose and I was shown this command tower. So I hopped atop it, but there was nothing on it. I thought that was strange so I made my way along, and when I got to the other side I saw an energy sub-tank just in the glass. I fired a missile to hit a floating turret, but it turned around and broke the glass! So I scored the tank.

So that was sweet. I continued on my way and had to leap from floating platform to floating platform. I had to kill a turret every now and then, but they only had a flame-thrower, so I could stay out of range.

At the end of this leaping fest, I noticed another string of flammable tanks. I had to slide down the wall, jump (facing towards it) burn it, and then again before they started exploding... However, after the rather long string of explosions, there was no upgrade. -le sigh-

So I made my way to these metal-fence-towers, and there was a gap I could slip through. There I found more flammable containers, so I blew them up. And low and behold there was an upgrade tank! It gave me a fancy helmet that can breakthrough blocks. And I recalled a spot in an earlier level where there were some blocks... I'll check them out later though. So I made my way onward.

There were some more metal parts to jump on, an extra life which I grabbed up, and some more baddies to kill, but it wasn't so bad. And then entered into an airship through a boss door and thus began to battle with Storm Eagle.

So this guy fly's up, making him rather difficult to hit normally, so I found myself veering to the homing missiles. I did in-fact try out all the powers... But I couldn't really tell if any of them did extra damage, none of them stunned him. His most annoying attack was the dive bomb. He flies away and then shoots down at you from an angle; I dodged this every now and then, and when I did I would manage to get a shot off; although the missile was to slow to catch him so I switched to the ice shot for quick damage. He could also use large wind-gusts to try and push me off the ship (cuz we were now flying) or he could shoot out an egg which hatched into 4 little birds that attacked. I felt like I was in control of the battle and defeated him deftly; I even finished him while he was dive-bombing.

After I defeated him I unlocked the whirling tornado power, which is pretty freaking sweet. But cooler, is that there was small little cutscene after the level! That red-guy, Zero, showed up with me and we apparently for Sigma's Base. I'm assuming that's the bastard that kicked my ass in level one. So we set out to destroy him. However, when it returned to the boss screen, the boss there did not look like armored, mech guy... So... I still dunno who that is.

Before I face this Sigma I'm going to back-track through levels and find more upgrades. I'm sure I can find more health, maybe get another energy sub-tank and I still need to upgrade my buster! Catch ya later gamers.