Gargoyle's Quest II - Finished the Game

Time: Monday 2:43am
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100, Gargoyles Quest II
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 3 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate, 1 Nantucket Nectars Lemonade, 1 Lo-Carb Monster Energy



The next level is some sort of Egyption-themed dungeon. You can't tell from the picture, but all that sand is moving which looks pretty impressive. Also, I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of any of the bosses yet. So I decided to take a picture of the next one and this boss is probably the most boring one there is. The rest are much more interesting, I promise!


The game has kind of a fun mechanic where vials you collect throughout the levels can be used as currency to buy extra lives. Because there are points in the overworld where you can fight a few enemies for vials, you can always grind them until you have a ton of lives and power through every level. Sort of a way to circumvent the difficulty. Oh, extra lives are called "The Power of the Maelstrom"


I like how "The Password" is sort of a mystical power in this land that can revive the fallen. Clever, Capcom.


This is a more interesting boss, but he's incredibly frustrating because once he moves near you, it's nearly impossible to avoid his projectiles. In general, that was my problem with this game. The level designs were, for the most part really well done and presented fun platforming challenges. And then you reach bosses that are tedious and frustrating because you have very little margin for error.


The big guy above is "Rushifell" who was probably meant to be Lucifer, but thanks to a rather awesome mistranslation of Japanese ended up with the r and l switched. I mean, he even looks like him. ("Rushifell" also appeared in the first Gargoyle's Quest).

Tragically, I lost many of the pictures I took, due to them coming out as blurry messes. But after an incredibly frustrating final boss fight (not only do you have to move in perfect precision, but there are instant death spikes below you and the moving platform in the final bosses room often throws you down toward them due to poor programming), I beat the game.


Yeah, I totally am. The other minion in the throne room here says, "You did very well." Just very well? I save the freakin' world!


The credits sequence is pretty cool as it shows you each of the bosses again and names them and then deisplays credits while the bosses do their thing. A nice touch.


"Capcom Presents: Thank you for playing"
This is almost as good as Ninja Gaiden's ending: "See you next Tecmo"

Overall, Gargoyle's Quest II was disappointing as it felt like a mediocre experience. I really think Capcom hastily slapped this together. The world design shows flashes of brilliance, but overall comes off as empty. The original game wasn't long, but everything felt tight and cohesive while in this game, it feels like there's something missing. Heck, there's a section where it talks about a guy named Dagon in the desert and getting his claw (supposed to be 'Dragon', perhaps?). I looked for him, but never found him and went I went on to the next section, I couldn't even return to look for them again. I think the level designer did a pretty good job, although I seem to remember that in the original, much better use was made of the special attacks you got that could also affect the environment (breaking walls, creating hold on spikes, etc.) So, this was mildly fun, but not as good as it could have been. Now I just want to play the original game again.

Gargoyle's Quest II - Obtained Candle of Darkness

Time: Sunday 11:32pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100, Gargoyles Quest II
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate, 1 Nantucket Nectars Lemonade, 1 Lo-Carb Monster Energy

So the original Gargoyles Quest is one of my favorite games for the original Black and White Game Boy. It was the first game to really show the system was capable of full, engrossing games on its own and not just puzzle games and ports of NES games.

Upon starting the game, I am immediately struck by the difference in music between the Game Boy game and its NES sequel. While similar, and probably meant to be the same theme, the difference in sound chips of the two systems clearly changes the exactly quality of sound both can do. So far, I think I prefer the Game Boy versions of the songs.

I still can't get over the fact that this is in color! Whoo!

Ah, the days of 16 digit (or more!) passwords. At least this game uses all numbers so you're not stuck wondering whether something is an O or a 0 or a 1 or l or any other the other countless mistakes I made as a kid until I learned to quadruple check my passwords (and then I still would something not be able to tell if I wrote a 1 or an l...

There are a lot of empty houses and otherwise empty areas in the game. It really feels like they were originally going to fill the world with lots of things, but ran out of time and so there are a lot of structures (and outside map areas) with absolutely nothing in them. Weird.

Such scintillating dialog! Actually, the localization in this game is pretty bad. The translation is almost completely literal making the story a bit hard to follow and I've noticed some spelling and grammar mistake. I wonder if Lucifer is once again mistranslated as Rushifell?

This came out way more blurry than I had intended because I was originally going to comment on how beautiful this level was. Definitely has the graphical fidelity of a late-era NES game. This level is also the first time the game gets hard. Took me three tries to make it through.

And the winner is...

Time: Sunday 7:32pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate, 1 Nantucket Nectars Lemonade, 1 Lo-Carb Monster Energy

While a bit disappointed in the turnout, there was a clear winner in this vote. Out of the eight votes cast, five of them went to Gargoyles Quest II. That makes some sense because it is probably the best game on the list (Take that, Sonic fans!). Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin did get two votes. I wonder if it had gotten more if I'd have mentioned just how horrific the animations are before and after the levels and how cheesy the early 90s rock song composed for the game was. Super Punch-Out!! got 3 votes, but there is some dispute as to how many of those votes were cast by canines.

Sorry Snake's Revenge, no one else likes you.

I will be delayed in playing this due to being a bit more social this evening than I thought. But fear not, I shall get through it!

Audience Participation - What should my last game be?

Time: Sunday 4:15pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate

Okay, so I've gone through all the planned games for this weekend (apart from some Rock Band later) and need to pick out one last game to play to end tonight. I will present to you, dear readers, a list of games I am considering (and why) and you tell which you think I should play.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis) - Can I finally make it all the way through the game without getting bored?

The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin (Sega CD) - This game took the linear Genesis Spider-Man game and attempted to make it more of an open world game. It failed pretty spectacularly, but it's still does a decent job of capturing Spider-Man's web slinging.

Super Punch-Out (SNES) - I have never managed to beat the first of the Bruiser brothers. I'd probably just start all over to help myself get back into it.

Snake's Revenge (NES) - The non-canonical sequel to the NES Metal Gear, this one isn't that bad as long as you're not in one of the awful side-scrolling sections. Otherwise, it gets the overhead sneaking parts pretty well done.

Gargoyle's Quest II (NES) - Recent Game Boy retrospectives have reminded me just how awesome the original Game Boy game of Gargoyle's Quest was. I've never managed to get very far in the NES sequel which seems to be largely the same (awesome) game but with color!

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES - Finished the game

Time: Sunday 3:14pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate

Ugh, I ended up staying up way too late to see all that this game has to offer.

I got to January 30th (the day before last) with my Yukari S-Link at level 9 with it telling me that my relationship could get stronger soon. Man, I really wanted to maximize that S-Link! So I reloaded a save from December 30th and just focused on nothing but doing that. It was worth the effort as it was pretty funny. Ah, sexing the ladies...

I also went ahead and saw what happened when you chose to kill Ryoji on December 30th. Interesting, but probably not worth it.

And then I finally got around to finishing the game. The final boss battle took forever, but I was pretty over-prepared as I was in no real danger of losing. Which is good, because having to redo a battle that took about a half hour would have totally sucked.

My favorite part of the ending was how it used all the people whose social links you had maximized. For me that was Yuko, Chihiro, Kazushi, Hidetoshi, Mamoru, Nozomi, Dying Man, The Monk, and Tanaka. I especially liked being able to explore the school after winning and see what everyone was up to.

Overall, I'm glad I finally finished the game. It was a good game. Not absolutely amazing as some would say, but it was unique and innovative and quite entertaining. Its flaws can definitely be overlooked given the experience it gave me.

Of course, I ended up staying up way to late to experience all of this and so it's only now at almost 3:30 that I am ready for a relatively open and free day today. More on that later!

1 vs 100 - First Experience

Time: 10:04pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100
Drinks Consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate

So I took a break from Persona 3 to play the live beta of 1 vs 100 on Xbox Live.

I love trivia. I play it every night at a bar here with a group of friends. And this was fun too. Several of my Xbox live friends were on and it was great to see how idiotic the actual players were. I also learned that the lyrics to the LL Cool J song are "Mama said knock you up" and the lyrics to the Bon Jovi song are "Whoa, oh, sitting on a chair."

It was pretty fun, though I would have been much more bored if I wasn't chatting with Xbox live buddies. I imagine the chance to actually be part of the real mob (if not the one) was pretty miniscule.

Back to Persona 3. I'm on 1/25!

Textropolis - More Word Games

Another break for dinner and dog walking and it gave me some time to play another recent iPhone obsession of mine - Textropolis. It's a pretty simple game where it gives you a city name and you have to form as many words of four or more letters as you can out of it. For each word you make, you get points (the population of the city increases) and at certain intervals, your city gets an additional star. Getting two stars unlocks the next city. It's a very simple game, but it's word games and I love 'em. Now to get a little more Persona 3 in.