Eyes > Stomach

It's been a while since I've posted, hasn't it? Better do something about that.

Nintendo recently posted a Direct presentation on YouTube, and while I didn't watch the whole thing, I caught the highlights reel from IGN and got a little extra information from my Twitter feed. We're getting a lot of Square-Enix games on the Switch, including a remaster of the loose sequel to Chrono Trigger and several Kingdom Hearts games that run from the cloud... provided your internet is fast enough to handle playing the game remotely from a distant server. (My internet service won't even download Switch games at more than a snail's pace, so I think I'll pass.) On the Namco side of things, we're getting welcome remasters of the first two Klonoa games (likely without the coupons for fish tacos) and another entry in the Taiko Drum Master series.

It's covered with rust and half-fellated by
a video game hero, but it STILL runs
better than my Buick.
(image from Know Your Meme)

Nintendo probably had the most exciting news, announcing a long overdue Rookie Mode in the ball-busting Metroid Dread, twenty four additional courses in Mario Kart 8, the resurrection of Nintendo Sports with a stunning new look, and Kirby half-swallowing machines in the upcoming Forgotten Lands. By the way, he can also pay to have his tried and true Copy abilities enhanced, turning Fire into Volcano and Cutter into Chakram Cutter. You know, like that metal doughnut Xena threw around in the action show from the 1990s. No, Kirby doesn't get a metal and leather bra while he uses this ability. Yes, I'm disappointed, too.

In closer to home news, I finally bought a high-capacity external hard drive for my Xbox One, more than doubling my storage and letting me actually download some of the games I've purchased over the last couple of months. Games are big these days, weighing in at 30, 40, even 50 gigabytes. The 500GB drive built into my Xbox One S just doesn't cut it anymore. I shudder to think of what I'll do when I eventually upgrade to an Xbox Series and am compelled to use pricey solid state drives to save its even more enormous games.

I've also ordered a ZX Spectrum cartridge for the Timex-Sinclair 2068 mentioned in my last post. While that supposedly arrived at the post office this afternoon, I sure as hell didn't find it there. Between that mailing mishap and a car that steadfastly refuses to stay fixed and a bunch of yapping mutts on either side of my house keeping me awake at night, I think I can safely count this day as a loss.

Oh! There was one other thing I wanted to mention before I left. Someone, or a handful of someones, is working on a sequel to Mega Man: The Wily Wars, that little seen and even less enjoyed collection of the first three Mega Man games for the Sega Genesis. Wily Wars was farmed out to a freelance team of developers and felt rather off in its execution, but there's very little wrong with the beta I've played of Mega Man: The Sequel Wars. The blue bomber feels like he did on the NES, firing at a brisk clip and making precise jumps... which are kind of important in a game where you're often forced to hopscotch across tiny vanishing platforms. Better still, the game is flashier than the NES games, flaunting a 16-bit level of polish with enemies that burst into pieces and robot masters who light up like the last firework in a 4th of July celebration.

One other nifty addition is that each Robot
Master gets his own custom introduction,
along with an ominous tune that plays
in the hallway before his lair. Bright Man
shatters a fuse in the background before
making his appearance.

The only downside is that with three games to include in the package, the design team has a lot of work ahead of them, and may not finish the project for years. They say good things come to those who wait, but anyone who lacks the patience for all that waiting crap ought to check out the Sequel Wars demo, which offers a substantial chunk of gameplay... roughly half of Mega Man 4, with a special extended mode for Skull Man. If you're a fan of the series, you definitely want to play through this, if only to realize how much better The Wily Wars could, and should, have been.