The New Tetris

This is really just a generic tetris game, but it keeps track of total lines, and shows you some cutscenes after so many, but the graphics are pretty easy on the eyes, and I really love the music, its become my tetris-game-of-choice lately, beating out even the GB version.

Best site ever

http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/

A Christmas Hack

I just played a fun little SMB hack by Darkdata, its only four levels, the levels aren't really difficult either. A lot of things are changed around for a little hack, though. The "small" size of toad isn't small like small mario was, the fireball behavior, now a snowball, has been changed, and there are only four levels in this hack. The music has also been changed around, its not spectacular, but it did a good job of adding to the theme.

You can grab the IPS patch here. There area few extra screenshots posted there as well. The included readme has information on how to patch a ROM.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

So I finally got a chance to check this game out, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. I got 99% of the castle in normal mode, and played a little bit of Julius mode. The only thing I really didn't like was the whole seal thing: pain in the ass and if you screw it up you've got to re-fight the boss, but the bosses themselves were all great. From a demon who orchestrates the attack paterns of locusts, to a giant head with four arms, who performs voodoo magic to throw you in one of those spiked sarcophaguses, all of them felt really original.

Another good thing about this game, unlike most of the other portable castlevania titles, was most of the enemies were completely re-drawn, instead of just taking graphics from older 2D titles, it added a nice touch and really made it feel fresh. The soul-synthing aspect, where you can take your weapons, and upgrade them into better versions, gave you something to do with the souls, since most of them are fairly pointless, and is a nice touch too. The only bad thing about the big wealth of weapons in this game is you wont use anything but the scythe once you get it, that with the boomerang skeleton's soul makes for the most powerful weapon in the game, just because of how fast it goes, it goes through enemies, and goes the entire length of the screen.

Nintendo DS game, I'd buy it if I wasn't broke, and had a DS, and would suggest any fan of 2D platformers do the same.

Which Way Is Up?

Really fun little puzzle/platform, I didn't get too far in it last I tried, but this game felt really original. Its a platform game, no scrolling, where you throw switches, which rotate the stage, and the goal is to get the key. Mechanics are smooth, graphics and sound works good, nothing really spectacular about the game, but its very fun nonetheless. Written in python, you can get the source and windows binaries from the homepage.

Ubuntu:
$ sudo aptitude install whichwayisup
Homepage

Upgraded

So I recently upgraded my PC, I also temporarily lost a lot of data in the heat of the action. I say temporarily because its still there, its just sidelined, and I need an IDE enclosure to get to it now, conveniently anyway. The goods: I went from a celeron to a pentium dual core E2180, and onboard intel to a GeForce 7600 GS, also doubled my ram from 512mb to 1GB.


Anyway, I'll get back to games worth checking out on monday, maybe do a flash week or something.

Ufouria (Hebereke)

This is a fun little NES platformer/exploration game. The characters went through a lot of changes in the porting process. You can read more about that here. It has four characters, you unlock them as you go along, each has different abilities, some secret, some can swim, some can hump the ground. Really great gameplay, some sweet music, and lots of fun is to be had with this, I'd suggest playing through it at least once because its awesome.

This was released for the NES, in europe with the name Ufouria, and in japan with the name Hebereke.

The Majesty of Colors

Not much I can think of to say, other than try it for yourself. Its a really simple game, and you can't lose, there are 5 different endings to unlock, and it wont take long to get them all, but its fun, and unique, so I'd say its worth a shot or five.

Megaman X6

Back when this game came out, it was this or X5, I can't remember, it got a lot of heat in the reviews, one of the things that really stuck out in my mind was it was being bashed for being 2D, I couldn't believe that, I rented it and thought it was an awesome game. I just replayed the game and I can see why it might have gotten low scores, its extremely cheap with all the spikes, crushing obstacles, and red donut wtfs.

Its also, however, extremely fun, with zero at least. I've still never got 128/128 reploids, only 126 that last run, and once you manage to miss the spikes and get the speedup power-up, the rest of the game is actually pretty easy, still I'd say its worth playing.

PS1, this also saw a PC port that I can't remember if it was released in the US or not.

Densetsu No Stafy

This qualifies as one of those games I really wish had an english translation, and by one of those games, I mean all three that were released for the Gameboy Advance. Even without a translation, you can still kind of figure out what you have to do, its a fun little adventure/platform game. The graphics are really cute, and really colorful, most of the game takes place in water, you can spin, and swim fast, and there are above-water portions, where you can jump and glide. You play a cute little star, I guess you're supposed to be a starfish, anyway you help fish somehow, get through levels, and then fight bosses. It could be compared to cave story, I guess, except that you can't tell wtf is going on since none of it is in english.

GBA, pirate it, import it, whatever.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance gets a lot of hate, but I don't really get why. I always enjoyed the game. It was a little on the short side, I managed to 200% the game and play through boss rush hard mode with good ol' simon belmont in under 7 hours, it was also a little on the easy side, I don't think I saw the game over screen once.

The best part about the game has to be simon belmont. He even controls like he did back in 1987. Which is probably pain in the ass annoying to some, but I really enjoyed it.

Anyway, pretty fun game, gba

SeppuKuties

One thing I've always hated was overly-cute animals. One thing I've always loved is puzzle-platforming games. This is probably the only game I'll ever play that combines both and still makes it enjoyable. I played through this awhile back, but was reminded of it when it got badges on Kongregate, so I played through it again. I don't really know how to describe it, just a very fun game engine, with puzzles that make you have to kill cute animals to get through the levels. The ending is also great.

Click here to play on Kongregate

The Firemen

This is without a doubt the most badass game about firemen (okay, the only game about firemen, unless you count "FIRE" on G&W), and at the same time the most interesting and fun top-down shooter I've probably ever played. you can spray the water in 8 directions, or at the ground, for two different types of fires, get to save people, and your partner, unlike most video game partners you hear about, is absolutely awesome. he throws bombs for you, kills fire with his axe, and carries people off to safety and opens doors and all the fun stuff that isn't "Hey! Listen!"

This game is also hard as balls. There were 5 or 6 stages, all the way up to the roof, each stage has a boss. The bosses are different forms of fire that want to kick your ass, and usually do, you get three lives and then its game over, I managed to make it to the roof, but haven't proceeded past that boss yet :(

SNES game: The Firemen
Thanks to Scarred Sun of sonic retro for suggesting it. I expected a much worse game when I tried it.

Pingus

Another really good clone and worth playing: Pingus. Its lemmings, but with penguins, which means you don't have to feel bad if some die, just pretend they're those diehard linux nuts who hate everyone, then you'll be glad to blow them up to make a path for more to get to the finish.

This is another really well-done game, it took the original and expanded upon it. Tastes great, less filling.

Ubuntu: $ sudo aptitude install pingus
Website (Windows/Mac ports): http://pingus.seul.org/

I'll try to get some more games worth playing down in this next week, and less filler art.

Windmills are creepy.

I really like the way Death's pale horse turned out in this picture, as well as his bony mitts and some other areas of the image, this hit third place in one of ShoneGold's contests on Deviant Art. I might have done better if I threw some more colors in there, and didn't leave such a black void in there. Looking back on it now, I really should have done those things, I'd got this done a few hours after the contest started, and hadn't touched it since, and the contest ran about a month, so I had no excuse. Even so, I'm pretty pleased with how this thing turned out.

Inversities.

This may have been one of the most creative things I've done, how it was made. I really like the color usage also. This thing hit a two-week feature at sheezyart, for whatever that is worth, and 2nd place for the Pixel Joint challenge it was intended for. Mmm.... Parallel Worlds.

fanart

I did tails up as a mechanic. I can dig it.

This just wouldn't work in real life.

This is the biggest piece of pixel art I've ever made, and it took me forever, too. I think it was about a month on/off I had been working on it when I called it done for one reason or another. Looking at it now, I see a ton of flaws, especially with the perspective, but I'm still proud of how it turned out.

Hey, at least my filler entries are pretty.

People love giant goldfish.

I can tell because its my most popular deviation (by far) over at dA. I didn't think much of it when I was making it other than it was a pretty nifty idea, somewhat stolen out of a conversation with my girlfriend, but just about everyone seems to love this thing. I'll be posting some of my older (and newer) pixel art here when I run out of stuff to say, I hope you like it.

Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls

This game is easier than it looks... and it looked pretty easy. At first I thought it was that I had done the optional dungeons, so I had done a game without those dungeons. It was still far too easy, I decided to try a solo character challenge, I picked Red Mage since he has the sexiest map sprite, I let all my characters die before finishing one battle, so they all had 0 exp, except ol' Gilly boy there. However that didn't really seem to matter much, I wound up hitting level 99 by the time I got to Chaos, and he still went down pretty much without a fight. I then ran through the optional dungeons, and had some fun with Shinyruu and Omega, they were tough, but still the game was too easy :(. Fun, but no challenge.

Frozen Bubble 2

Frozen Bubble

The one thing I don't expect to find on Linux is good games: usually what I find is shitty clones, or the trash packaged in gnome/KDE's suites. Frozen Bubble is a clone, but a very good one, it doesn't try to hide the fact that its Puzzle Bobble, it just throws in some penguins and calls it a day, there is some multi-player, but I haven't tried that out yet. One of the nice things is when you run it from the terminal, it gives you an output of just how much time you've wasted, and bubbles you've popped, nice little touches like that are what makes it so much fun to play, great engine, great game, and thats saying something because I don't even like Puzzle Bobble all that much. Unfortuntaely for windows users, this one looks to be linux/mac only :( Sorry.

Introduction

So I dig Linux, retro gaming, pixel art, and some other junk along those lines, like maybe rewiring a snes pad to a parallel port if I could afford any solder. I'm making this blog for a few reasons: I suck at writing, and I might be slightly better if I, you know, did it every now and then. I've got no grasp of time, doing something every day could help slightly with that, but as is I couldn't tell you what day of the week it even is, I'm just proud I've got the month down. Lastly, I actually figure out some interesting shit every now and then, and it could be nice to share.

For now, just some links:
arc-nova.org - great chiptune archive.
pixeljoint, deviantart and sheezyart - Some places I post my pixel art (a, b, c).
forums.sonicretro.org - Check out that retro blue theme, sexy.
kongregate - I must admit I am a bit of a tower defence junkie :(