Monthly Archives: April 2020

RetroRevisited: MUSHA, Task Force Harrier EX, Silpeed (Sega Shmups)

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Retrorevisited is a stream series where I revisit a game or a game series i haven’t played in over 10 or 20 years. I’ll go through to try see what i remember until a game over or I run out of continues. In some cases muscle memory may slowly return, in others probably not. This is a chance for me to revisit games of my youth that i enjoyed have or had at one point and bring more to the retro community with mini-reviews of them too. If I decide to play one later and do a full review, parts of the mini-review would be incorporated into it. Depending on the playstyle and graphics of the games the review will either be mini-reviews or one about all games in this session..

So one night I decided to do a night of Sega shumps that i grew up with. I’ve never been that big on shmups or Sega games but these 3 are ones I’ve played or had at one point: M.U.S.H.A, Task Force Harrier EX, and Silpheed. Still wishing M.U.S.H.A. wasn’t going for so much or else I’ve make another run for it on ebay. I had a blast with them once I started remembering the controls and some muscle memory began to kick in. So here’s the video of it, Some mini-reviews follow.

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Legacy of the Wizard NES Review

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Legacy of the Wizard is the only game in the Dragon Slayer series localized outside of Japan. LotW was originally titled Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family and was released on the Famicom, MSX and MSX2 systems along with the NES in the United States by Brøderbund. It was release din Japan in 1987, the NES port came out in 1989. This is an open world dungeon exploration action-RPG game, and could be likened to what were later called “Metroidvania” type games in recent years. This game follows the adventures of the Drasle family, a family of woodcutters descended from a great wizard destined to defeat an evil dragon that was returning to life after a number of years. You will end up using and needing all members of the family to explore the underground dungeon, as only certain members can get to some areas and use certain items. You’ll buy items and shops scattered in the dungeon along with finding some in treasure chests along with finding health and magic restoration items and inns to restore all your health and magic. Saving the game involves a long password of random letters and characters, something made infamous back in those days on the NES where writing one character down incorrectly locks you out of your progress. Thankfully most of us have phones with cameras now so we don’t have to write anything down.

Your family includes Xemn, the father who’s tough and strong and can push blocks, the mother Meyna who can fly and use magic, Roas, the son who is the only one capable of using the Dragon Slayer sword, lyll the daughter who can jump really high. Then Pochi the family pet who monsters cannot harm and is a lovable ball of destruction who smiles as he murders his own kind. Going through each part of the dungeon requires one of these family members and you’ll be looking for one of the 4 Crowns. Finding a Crown result sin a tough boss fight. Finding all 4 Crowns means Roas can find the Dragon Slayer sword and fight the evil dragon Keela.

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Final Fantasy 6: World’s Collide Randomizer (ver 0.9.3 as of 11/14/2021)

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Worlds Collide is an open-world randomizer for Final Fantasy 3/6. It follows the same features and format as other open-world randomizers FF4 Free Enterprise and FF5 Career Day. Set up your seed (seed being the type of randomizer you wanna play) by difficulty, randomizing heroes, Espers, monsters, gear and more! Your final goal in the game is to acquire the prerequisite heroes and Espers (which you can change the amount from 3 heroes or Esper, up to all 14 heroes and/or 26 Espers including the 8 Dragons) so you can enter Kefka’s Tower in the World of Ruin and win the game. You can play a normal open world game, or one set up with character gating. Character gating is when your starting hero(es) are limited to key events tied to them, to see if you get a new hero, Esper, or gear. For example Strago is tied to the Burning House, Ebot’s Rock and Fanatic’s Tower, and Edger is tied to the Ancient Castle and Figaro Castle in the WOB and WOR. A spoiler log can be generated with your seed (in a handy zip file with the smc rom and txt log) if you so wish if you get stuck. Only issues I’ve found with both style games, especially character gating, is that the key events tends to be geared more towards gear and Espers, so it may take a while going through everyone’s gating to pick up a new hero or two and make progress.

From the start you begin at Narshe with the airship Blackjack in the World of Balance and have access to all locations there, towns, dungeons, etc. Getting on the airship you have the option to fly around, do stuff in the airship, or go to the World of Ruin. Going to the Floating Continent when you have Shadow in character gating starts the trigger of forming a party of 3 and fighting your way through the Imperial Airforce and Ultros before plopping onto the Floating Continent.  The World of Ruin flips you to the World of Ruin with the Falcon at Narshe, and again, access to all locations. But Doom Gaze is still around somewhere and could strike at any time. You can also set to start with Moogle Charms, which eliminate random enemy fights.

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Mega Man Derusting: Mega Man 1 (NES)

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So I have a long history with the Mega Man games growing up. I came up with the Mega Man Derusting series to do such a task. The goal is to play and finish the Mega Man classic series along with most of the X series and some other Mega Man titles. I still have some of my Mega Man and X carts and discs and hadn’t really played them in years but I wanted to share my adventures on stream of relearning my way through the classic titles, and in some cases finish the later games to completion! 

THE REVIEW: Mega Man 1 was released by Capcom in 1987. Comparing this to the later games is rough due to the differences between the first title and later games in the series. Mega Man puts you in the role of the super robot Mega Man as he fights Dr. Wily. To get to Wily, you need to beat the 6 robots that he reprogrammed for nefarious deeds first. Traveling through each world is a reflection of which Robot Master lives there. Guts Man’s area is a construction zone, Elec Man’s stage has many electric beams and so on. Beating one of the Robot Masters will gain you their special weapon and a ton of points. This weapon can be used against enemies throughout other stages and the other Robot Masters themselves. Each Mega Man game has an order, or multiple, to progress through the game to beat one Robot Master and use its weapon against the next one. The Robot Masters paths are compared to playing rock, paper, scissors. Finishing off the 6 Robot Masters will open up Dr. Wily’s castle where you’ll use all those weapons, and a special support item called the Magnet Beam, to fight your way through Wily’s horrors and stop him from trying to take over the world.

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