Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Pastellioli Yeah, I like retro games a bunch myself. In Conker, I'm not quite yet at the legendary poo, last thing I recall doing was something with a peg legged farmer or something.
I'm playing via Rare Replay btw.
I'm concerned FEH will end outside Japan soon. The ending of book 8 wasn't even dubbed. Just slapped subtitles on it, and uploaded to youtube. I'm still guessing only 9 books, because 9 realms.
I see you started Genshin late. When I started, they only had the first two regions out. Of the first 5 regions, imo, Inazuma is by far the hardest. You kinda can't make progress with the default characters. You have to get the gacha pulls if you wanna stand a chance. My current team is Razor, Bennett, Barbara, and Sucrose, and it's primarily just Razor and Bennett. Traveler actually kinda sucks to play as.

@Mariotag Rare is my go-to when it comes to retro games, but I do want to play a lot of other retro games too, I just need to find something that is close and similar to what they make.

I see, so very early in the game! I think the game has a few memorable moments very early, most discussion of the game is about the poo boss and this very interesting sunflower, those two are probably the most well-known characters from the game from how weird and absurd their moments are.

I do hope they don’t end service for FEH soon or ever, cuz even though I do think that the game isn’t amazing, I made a lot of progress on it and I really dislike it when companies have a popular mobile game, proceed to shut it down and not making it offline and still giving people ways to play it and keep their progress. I’ve only seen a game stay offline and playable after closure about twice and Nintendo is taking that approach with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. I am hopeful that they do the same thing for FEH if or when they close it.

I want to say I started Genshin in August 2022, around when they added Sumeru in the game, so I was two years late to the game. I see, so the game was probably harder for me because I had a poor selection of characters. The only characters I had were The Traveler, Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Thoma (the only character I got from the gacha) and Barbara, whom I think I got for free. Genshin had this thing that would give you Xiangling for free if you completed this challenge, but because I did not have a good selection of characters and made the mistake of using default characters for the challenge and absolutely got destroyed, I gave up.

@Pastellioli
I really hope Animal Crossing Pocket Camp got console version on either Switch or Switch 2 with physical release and no micro transaction again in the game since the offline version of mobile version already have all content.

@Anti-Matter That would be cool, I did like Pocket Camp but the micro transactions absolutely drove me insane, especially with the Leaf Tickets. However, I do not know if Nintendo would make the decision to port their AC games over. I think there was a thread on the Direct thread and they were discussing this and I feel like that Nintendo would want the next AC game to follow a similar formula or features like New Horizons since that sold extremely well. But, I think it would be cool if they ported Pocket Camp and let it be playable on a console rather than a phone, especially with how they ended micro transactions in the game for good.

@Pastellioli I have lots of Rareware games I still need to play...
And yeah. Early on.
As for FEH never ending, all things in the universe have an end. FEH will be no different. But uh. It'd help if it weren't a stupid gacha game mobile title. I dread losing all my units when it goes offline.
Dragalia was a good example of a game that shoulda gotten an offline version. Heck, it was good enough, ppl might've gone for a paid switch edition. But no, instead, just shut it down.
As for Genshin, wow. Sumeru was 2022? I'd been playing for a while at that point.. Most of the ppl I've talked to dropped the game at Sumeru, one person saying it became a bit more like a visual novel at that point. The region after that, I heard compared to Ace Attorney. But yeah. You aren't getting very far without the gacha pulls. Even my main team is kinda useless for a lot of stuff. Partly cause I never pulled for weapons...

For the past several days, I decided to continue my first-time playthroughs of the 2D Metroid games after giving Zero Mission and 2 a bit of a break. Not sure why, maybe I just felt motivated by the buzz of Prime 4 and such. It should also be mentioned that, when it comes to retro/older entries, I tend to not enjoy them nearly as much as the newer/more refined ones. There's plenty I do enjoy, just not to the level as most of the fanbase. With that said, I have been having an absolutely delightful time playing through Super, Fusion, and currently Dread. Like, holy cow, I get it! These games are so good, and Super holds up so well that, if I didn't know better, you could tell me was made recently and I'd believe you. These games are super high-quality, super addicting, I get it now. I started Super on a whim thinking I'd just play it here and there, and ended up staying up till 3 AM finishing it. I couldn't put it down!

I ate some ramen from an Asian store for dinner and my mouth is on fire, it’s so awful
The ramen pack came with a vegetable mix and a gourmet spice flavoring packet that you put in when the ramen is done. I let the ramen sit in hot water so it could get soft, but I made the poor decision of dumping the water out of the ramen bowl, since I find that the water dilutes toppings and extra flavoring and ruins it…but putting the spice mix in dry ramen was a huge mistake, it was way too hard to mix around evenly and the powder wasn’t fully submerged, so I coughed too much when eating and it made my nose runny. Spicy stuff is tasty, but I hate it when it’s too hot to the point it makes my mouth feel like it’s burning and makes my nose feel blocked. Spicy wings do that to me a lot as well.

When I make ramen using those packs that come with a block of noodles and the flavoring powder, I almost never use the powder because it’s often salty and makes the noodles super unhealthy, but I chose to give it a try this time and I regret it and I’ll never do it again. Oh well, I have a milk caramel puff snack from a brand called Tohato and it’s so heavenly, so I at least have that after my ramen fiasco.

@Mariotag Rare Replay has a lot of good games and I am so happy I purchased it on sale last year, though I’ll say that the Xbox 360 and N64 games are the ones that are the most worth playing. How many games in that collection have you played? I think I’ve tried out all of them, but I’ve only completed a couple, that being a few 360 and N64 games and nearly all the NES games.

Even though FEH is a mobile game, I feel a certain way when a mobile game that is long running gets shut down, I know there was some effort that went into making the game and it’s such a waste to see a lot of game updates and progress over the years away permanently. I am also worried about my unit collections when the game goes offline one day, even though I only have around 300 of the 1100 heroes, a lot of my units are really good and I wasted so many orbs getting a few of them. Plus, I don’t actually have a Nintendo Account linked to FEH, so I need to be extra cautious with my progress on there. Dragalia did look great, too bad I didn’t play it before it closed. I remember being disappointed when they closed Miitomo and how they didn’t make it go offline, but compared to Nintendo’s other mobile apps, Miitomo was more of a social media app than an actual game, so I don’t know how making an offline version of a social media app would work.

Usually when I did the gacha pulls, I got a ton of weapons and used them for a few of my characters, I often pulled for characters but only got Thoma. Thoma was a nice character and I liked using him, but I unfortunately didn’t level him up more than the weaker characters, so I avoided using him most of the time, but if I did level him up more, then maybe I would have had a better time with the rising difficulty.

@Pastellioli
I will cook the instant Ramen on the stove instead of pouring with hot water unless it's instant Ramen cup.
I will cook the soup first (usually with other toppings like vegetables) then pour the soup on the bowl.
I wash the pot quickly to boil the noodle after making the soup then drain the water and put the noodle on the bowl with soup.

@Anti-Matter What I did was that I put a dry block of noodles in a bowl and then put in boiling water and let it sit, but the way you cooked it sounds like it would work better. Sometimes, I used to put the ramen block in a pot of water and let it boil and sit until the noodles became soft, and then put the ramen and water in a bowl when it’s done. I will probably use other toppings instead of the ones provided in the ramen packs. They taste way too salty and ruin the noodles a lot.

@Pastellioli Eh, only one or two of the Rare Replay games, but that's in decently large part because I own a few of the originals.
Yeah. I put some effort into getting those units! I kinda really like the beast and dragon units.
I tried Miitomo, but never could get into it. The Nintendo social media I ended up getting attached to was miiverse. But that ultimately had some impressive downsides to it. Though, I might not be here commenting today if not for miiverse, so I guess that counts for something.
I have a few higher level units in Genshin that I just never could bring myself to grind for upgrades. Never got any 5 star weapons, but I have a fair few 5 star units. My highest possible level is like, lvl 70-80.

@Mariotag I see! I am a bit of a newbie to Rare’s games, I only started to play them about two or three years ago and got curious and played a lot of the games included on Rare Replay. The only one I didn’t touch was Banjo-Kazooie since I already cleared it and got 100% on the NSO port. The other games were completely new to me.

I really like the Dagger units a lot, and I find units that use daggers to be super helpful when playing because of their weapon range, but I also enjoy the Tome units. Also agree that the Beast units are good too! A lot of the effort I put in to get units really came from grinding to get orbs for hours and pulling a number of times until I hit 40 pulls and could choose a character I wanted, I really don’t want to lose the units I got from that.

I remember liking Miitomo a lot, I did (and still have) a WiiU and 2DS around the time so I could have used Miiverse, but I only made maybe two or three Splatoon-related posts on it and didn’t really use it. I know it’s more well-known than Miitomo, and I did think Miitomo was nice but there wasn’t a lot you could really do besides looking at others Mii creations, answering questions, playing a mini game to get customization accessories and outfits, and that feature people used to take and make photos with Miis. I remember some aspects of it were very similar to Tomodachi Life.

Oh yeah, I really didn’t want to grind a lot in Genshin just to level up characters a lot, especially with my experience grinding for orbs in FEH and how annoying that was, hence why I only had half of my character roster in Genshin leveled up. When playing Genshin, I don’t think I ever had a 5-star character. All of the characters I had in Genshin were 4-stars, so they were sort of weak unless I actually tried leveling them up and upgrading them.

Time to play catch-up. Wow, it's already been a year since Trolls Band Together came out. Think I know what I'm watching tonight.

Indeed, the cool thing is Sega did release a patch to the game in January of 2015. Was a fairly big update (around 1GB), it ended up fixing a lot of the bugs and problems the game had at launch (yet, too late to undo the damage reviews and YouTubers did to it). Yeah, you had people like myself who liked the game for what it was, though I do feel we're kind of uncommon given the popular opinion on Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric recieved. I was late to the show, my copy of Sonic Boom Fire and Ice came with some episodes on a DVD, then I got the DVDs of the series later on. Yooka-Laylee IIRC was trying to be like the older N64 era of platformers. Never played it, that would be my guess to why it may have had outdated level design. Super Lucky's Tale was the original Xbox and PC one, I have it on PC. New Super Lucky's Tale was a remake. Both versions were great IMHO.

Really surprised Rare hasn't done anything with their old IPs and some of the games have been outsourced. I do recall a version of Killer Instinct that was available on Xbox, even though I never did play it. I think it might have been on the Windows 10 store at one point too.

Nice, I actually did recently watch a movie on YouTube's movies with ads too. Legends of Oz: Dorthy's Return. I remember watching this one with my friend and all this talk about the upcoming Wicked movie made me remember it. When I went to watch the trailer, to my surprise, the movie was on YouTube as a free with ads movies. So watched it again. I was also surprised to see Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius recommended alongside that movie too. Nice, I should try to watch Barnyard one day. I remember the promos Nickelodeon had for the movie a long time ago. I remember seeing Secret of NIMH once, I think it was on one of the free streaming channels years ago, I remember it was good, but also a really dark movie. Got to hand it to Don Bluth, he did not shy away from dark themes. All Dogs Go To Heaven was dark at times too.

Indeed. I feel the worst on Instagram would only be comments sections of larger accounts. I like wrestling, follow WWE, but wouldn't touch their comments section. Comment sections on other accounts tend to be fine for me.

Alrighty, that's fine then. The update actually fixes a lot of the issues the games had at launch. Indeed they are platformers, Sonic Boom was different than the usual Sonic game. Yeah, the Wii version did have a lot of the werehog stages, they were broken up into parts (I think because of the Wii's limitation). I haven't played the Xbox 360/PS3 version, because just like Sonic 06, I lacked the system to do so. Always been a Nintendo and PC guy.

I know how Sonic 06 does get despite not playing it, I've seen too many YouTube videos on the game to even count, lol.

I really started to laugh when Karen started talking. XD Ok, this is pretty bad. I'm also being reminded of the first Sonic Adventure. Sonic saying to Tails "Tails, watch out, you're gonna crash, ah!" with no emotion whatsoever, lol.

Not only that, but they definitely will hate it when I make garlic bread, lol.

@Pastellioli I have both Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie on OG N64, but haven't touched Tooie, while Kazooie is still on the final stage, because a certain family member had a temper tantrum, and swiped all my game consoles off the TV, as well as overturned all my containers with games and videos in them. (And yes, they were an adult) It was years ago, and I never quite recovered from that moment of enttledness.
I prefer the close ranged units, but will admit, longer range units have many advantages. Having played the main games, or at least a bunch of them, I'm used to long range units being helpless when attacked, and you should only send them out when they can't be attacked.
I usually just collect dailies in FEH. It adds up, even if you miss some banners. I got some really good luck lately, but it's already ended.
I initially just made some posts for fun on miiverse, then some accomplishments, before full on joining chatrooms in 2015. One thing I learned the hard way is it's dangerously easy to have a minor approach you, and you end up "friends".
Genshin grinding is simply too much. Get materials from the map, duplicate units, fight enemies at a specific difficulty tier, and refight bosses.

@Sunsy Have you tried P06? I hear it's great, but doesn't have the Sonic 06 cutscenes. If Sega remastered that game, I'd love it.

@Sunsy Compared to most, although I didn’t fully play the games and only the demo for the Wii U game, I kind of didn’t mind the more Westernized look and designs for the characters the Boom games took. I heard that Fire and Ice was the best out of the Boom games, but I also remember reading that the Boom games kind of got ruined because Sega signed an agreement with Nintendo to release a few Sonic games exclusively on WiiU and handheld platforms, and they chose to have the Boom games as Nintendo exclusive, though the studio developing the WiiU game apparently didn’t intend for it to be a WiiU exclusive and the game couldn’t run well because it wasn’t being developed for the WiiU in the first place. I’m sure if that didn’t happen, then some people would have thought about the Boom games more favorably. The show was amazing though, I remember seeing some episodes air on Cartoon Network and then I went binge watching the show on Hulu with my family but I don’t think we got to finishing it. I probably will maybe try Super Lucky’s Tale if I get Game Pass again and if the game is still on there by the time I get a game sub. I really want to try new games.

I think Rare moved on from using their old IPs (namely the IPs from the N64 era and pre-N64 era) since most of the people and workforce that worked on those games left the studio throughout the 2000s during the Xbox 360 days. I think they did acknowledge that fact and someone who works there (I can’t recall his name) said something like “Rare still exists, we just make new games” since a lot of people think the studio kind of became a shell of its former self, not to mention that some of the original employees don’t have an interest in working with their old IP. Compared to most studios, Rare (both in the past and present) dislikes making sequels to their games or milking them to death, so most of their games stayed as one and done things or either got one sequel or another entry of some sort, and then they moved on to an original game afterward, which does explain why they haven’t worked with their old IPs since 2008, so Microsoft instead outsources their classic IP to other studios that have an interest in using it or have the skills to make new entries, though so far, only three of Rare’s old IPs have been revived (being Killer Instinct, Battletoads, and the upcoming Perfect Dark reboot). I would love if Banjo did get a modern game alongside those three.

I have heard of that Wizard of Oz animated film, I haven’t watched it but I remember watching a review of the film and I do think that a lot of the character designs in that movie are nice, especially the porcelain people and the porcelain princess. YouTube offers a ton of nice movies, it kind of surprises me that they had the rights to make some movies free with ads, especially since a lot of companies took their movies off of other streaming services and made them exclusive to their own streaming services, like Disney removing a majority of their library off of Netflix to move it to Disney+. I can remember a bit of Barnyard before I rewatched it, but I think that it came from the show that came after the movie. Even though a lot of people thought that movie wasn’t good, it’s kinda a guilty pleasure for me, cuz it’s fun watching it when bored, and it’s themes and the more serious parts were done shockingly well in my opinion. Yes, rewatching Bluth’s movies, I didn’t realize they were kind of dark despite being aimed toward kids and families. I was surprised with some of the violence in N.I.M.H (as well as how the final battle with Justin and Jenner ends) and I was already expecting All Dogs Go to Heaven to be dark since I saw that years ago, but seeing some parts in that film again did shock me. I actually found out that another movie he made, Anastasia, is also on YouTube as free with ads, so I’ll probably watch that later today and rewatch Barnyard again too. I’m having so much fun watching movies now, I’m super excited to go back to the theaters next month for Sonic 3!

Some comment sections on some videos and accounts are funny, but I’ve seen some that are super rude on popular videos for no reason. Since popular videos and accounts have more people leaving comments, of course there will be some bad apples in the comments section. I usually like being recommended posts by smaller accounts and artists, the people there are super friendly and kind to each other There are a lot of smaller art accounts Instagram recommended me and I enjoy what they post.

@Mariotag I did complete Tooie but on the Xbox, though I didn’t get all the collectibles because of this stupid race they inserted near the end. I prefer Kazooie more over Tooie, mainly because I found Tooie was a bit too big and difficult. It sounds really awful with your games and consoles being damaged and moved off from the TV just because someone else was upset…I would be super angry if someone did that to my stuff, especially video game consoles, since those are extremely expensive and can be hard to fix in the case they get damaged or destroyed.

Yeah, I find that when playing FEH, Yuri is an extremely helpful dagger unit, usually when most of the enemies on a map are gone and there is only one far away enemy left, I have Yuri go up and defeat the enemy, or when there is an enemy surrounded by other enemies, I have him attack one close by him and then have him get away to safety, but yeah, I do need to be careful using long range units a bit. I mostly just use close range units like Dimitri and Ratatoskr to attack, and I have an axe variant of Fjorm who usually stays behind while my other three units attack, but she has been very useful when it comes to defeating harder units like Axe Knights, which do significant damage to my Dagger and Beast units when they attack up close.

I see, I never really used Miiverse besides making a few drawings on there, in fact, I never actually downloaded social media until earlier this year in February. I avoided social media for years mostly cuz I wasn’t interested in it but also because of how some people are toxic and very negative online, especially on Twitter/X. All I really do is show artwork on there and that’s it.

I didn’t know grinding in Genshin was like that, I feel like I would dislike grinding in that game way more in FEH.

@Mariotag ...Still not sure if I'd try Ender Lilies in that case. Maybe eventually. I like games to be challenging, but there's definitely a threshold between actual "improve your skills" challenge, and artificial challenge due to either bad game design or games that are ridiculously hard to extend playtime and/or make you feed more coins into an arcade machine (I'm looking at you, late 80s/early 90s games....).

NNK DS sounds like a fun original take of the game, though I'm admittedly not one who likes using the touch screen much. Not an issue on an emulator I'm sure if there's a way to simulate the touch screen.

I do like Echoes of Wisdom and have put in half an hour here or there since last time, but I've still been very busy IRL lately. And I'm also investing some time in the Famicom Detective Club games too. Glad that FEH's writing did get better, though I'm not sure I'll ever go back to the game. I do like Pokemon Go overall - it gives me something to do when out running errands or speedwalking - but I will admit the game is more heavily monetized than it was previously. It's still fully possible to play without paying a dime, but there are a few paywalled exclusives once in awhile.

@Pastellioli Come to think of it, I haven't seen any crane games in a Walmart for a long time either. They used to have kiddie rides at my local one too. I typically see crane games, gacha stuff, stickers, etc. at restaurants. Some of the better stuff like arcade racing games and pinball are at bowling alleys, the occasional bar & grill, movie theaters, etc. Some places will let you buy plushes straight from the machine in my experience, but others don't allow it.

You're making me wonder if Fire Emblem Heroes's writing is comparable to Fire Emblem: Engage lol. I know the latter has amazing gameplay, but the plot from what I've read isn't its strong suit. Haven't played FE:E yet though, so I don't know the specifics. Sounds like FEH isn't completely boring at least. It also sounds like they do try to introduce original characters but toss them aside when their section is done with. Which, to be fair, isn't too uncommon in RPGs, but that's more an issue with some older titles I've played. I'd think this would be less likely to come from a modern game...at least from a quality series like Fire Emblem.

I really wanted to like Cadence of Hyrule and even tried the game more than once; via its demo the first time, then through its NSO trial some time ago. I'm just not into needing to move to the beat, at least not effectively; I even tweaked some settings from suggestions I saw online, which did improve my experience a little. But the game still didn't grip me.

I've not watched all the Chaos Wars clips out there, but the voice acting kills me. Karen is my favorite just due to how bored and uninvolved she seems to be. I actually haven't seen that clip and think it's indeed cringe-y lol.

@Sunsy Karen is almost always the funniest in any clips I see from the game due to how bored and uninterested she always sounds lol. I'm gonna have to look up that Sonic Adventure voice bit; it sounds like it's very deadpan.

Conversely, I love garlic bread, so feel free to send some my way next time I hunt vampires.

@Pastellioli Well, I don't think the consoles are damaged, or the games, but because of the situation, I haven't been able to set it back up again. The fact the person in question was my own mom makes it worse... I am indeed super angry. They were my retro systems. And on top of that, it was one of the few areas in the home I live in I felt particularly safe in. Regarding Kazooie vs Tooie, I agree that collectathons suffer from larger areas. Yooka Laylee showed that.
Genshin grinding sucks.
Social media has plenty of toxicity. I was thrilled when I finally got my twitter feed to be only stuff I wanted to see. But then ppl started moving to bsky. Miiverse only had the toxicity if you looked deeper.
I particularly like FEH's Ratatoskr. Among other units. But at the same time, now you have the stupid Felix unit, who in addition to being a tank, can just move to an empty space, and be like, okay, I think I'll move again. The danger area no longer really helps with units like him.

@Tyranexx Eh. Ender Lilies big artificial difficulty is this stupid toxic mist. It's not necessarily as hard as something like Castlevania, where you basically need to learn each room, and boss, and work out the most effective way through. Been playing lots of that lately.
I know next to nothing about NNK DS tbh, just where it ends in comparison to the expanded game, the fact it used the touch screen for spells, with some fakes to keep you careful, and that it's Japan only.
I never tried Famicom Detective Club. Not a big fan of visual novels much.
Pokemon Go is like, my big contentious issue. My younger bro is obsessed with it too much, and I never get out enough to regularly play. Even then, when I'm out, there's very little walking around. I went out twice for the game. The first time, I destroyed my shoes walking across the railroad tracks, the second, I fell over sprinting to a gym, and destroyed my leg. Not interested in continuing that trend, and am still being pestered to play on a regular basis.
Echoes of Wisdom is neat. Closest to classic LoZ we've had in a while. It's got a sort of open world, but unlike BotW/TotK, it's a good open world that doesn't feel stupidly empty.
Cadence of Hyrule is a game I wanna beat. Got it a while ago, but have trouble making it anywhere because of mechanics.
FE Engage was honestly cringe with its writing. Your main character is regarded as divinity, in spite of being a self insert, so your entire army is basically like, "Oh Divine One, please sign my rear!"
It has a few twists, but is honestly lame. And the level scaling could do with a little work to make it so you can raise units up.
Your comment about arcade games is basically the OG Castlevania Haunted Castle in a nutshell. Except the game limits how many times you can put credits in...

Actually, now that I think about it, firstly, should mention, Dominus Collection Haunted Castle does have the option of unlimited credits.
Secondly, about FE Engage, while the plot ended up being just cringe, it did have me theorizing where it was going throughout. I had some ideas, but unfortunately, they were wrong.
The "Their lives after" segment of the ending made things somewhat depressing too, not to mention a very loose thread from the ending.