Mega Man Derusting: Mega Man X2 (SNES)

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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: X2 was always my favorite of the X trilogy on the SNES. Better graphics, gameplay and music made this a worthy sequel. Months passed since X defeated Zero and a new enemy appeared with an army of mavericks for X to battle, and they’re also holding Zero’s body parts hostage!

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Mega Man Derusting: Mega Man X (SNES)

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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! 

REVIEW TIME: I loved this game as a teen and replaying it now, I still love it! Finishing it finally I’ve only finished X, X2, and I think X4. The gameplay is solid and the graphics are very pretty as per Capcom’s usual high quality. The music is incredible! The story of X fighting Sigma during the Maverick War (the 1st of many), and X seeking vengeance from Vile and later Sigma is classic. Besides the graphical and music improvements, X sports a number of new moves and features. One of them being the 8 bosses you fight being called Mavericks and their names being based upon different animals and plants and are humanoid in appearance, and of course Sigma replacing Dr. Wily as the final boss. X can still gain new weapons from defeating the 8 Mavericks just like in the classic series. Another change are the upgrades to X’s helmet, armor, boots and gun which are found hidden in capsules around the 8 levels. X now sports a dash move when you upgrade his boots, along with a wall jump move letting the player jump up walls and slide down them, along with doing dashes off walls themselves. Other upgrades found in stages include heart tanks which increase X’s life bar and 4 sub-tanks which replace energy tanks from the classic series. Unlike the classic series, you can fill these with energy until max, and use as needed, and keep refilling them with energy when your life bar is full. A password system like the classic series, saves your progress on fought Mavericks and other upgrades.

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Zelda 2: Adventure of Link (NES) Review

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Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link is the 2nd installment of the Zelda series, and known as the black sheep of the series. This is due to its change from the gameplay and view of the first game, and future Zelda titles. Instead of an overhead view, you have a side view when Link is in palaces, towns, and fighting enemies, the overworld being how you navigate from one area to another. As a direct sequel, Link must save Zelda who is under a sleeping spell and prevent himself from being killed.

This is for the original NES Zelda 2, not any of the later ports or remakes.

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Mega Man Derusting: Mega Man 8 (PSX)

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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:  Released for the PSX in 1997, this was the first mega Man to jump to 32 bit along with Mega Man X4. MM8 was also released for the Saturn with 2 extra mini-bosses in the form of Wood Man and Cut Man. Plot of Mega Man 8 isn’t so much a “Wily wanting to take over the world” like the others, but Evil Energy from space and a mysterious robot named Duo showed up which got the curiosity of Dr. Light and Wily. of course Wily decides to use the Evil Energy for his next Robot masters as its corrupting Wily more and more. This one added animated cutscenes to continue the story and questionable voice acting when translated to English. I actually didn’t like this one as much as the previous games.

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Retrorevisited: Street Fighter 2/Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 (SNES/Genesis)

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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 still have or had at one point, playing them with and without nostalgia goggles, and do with mini-reviews of them too. If I decide to play any fully later and do a full review, parts of the mini-review would be incorporated into it. Depending on the playstyle or system, games reviewed will either be mini-reviews or one about all games in this session.  

The Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat series were big hits in the arcades in the 1990’s and that translated to their home editions, becoming big hits in the 16bit era for the SNES and Sega Genesis. The various game ports are translated perfectly to the home systems (complete with cheating AI!) from the graphics, gameplay and soundtracks. Street Fighter 2 Turbo was really the port to own and the one most gamers in that era knew and studied all the move and combo lists.

The Mortal Kombat series had a more creative and public history when it was introduced by midway due to the graphic violence as part of the gameplay. Blood, gore, and violent Fatalities were what everyone wanted to do and see, and what non-gamers were appealed over. Because of this the editions of Mortal Kombat which came home had the more violent elements removed or locked out behind a code. SNES MK had the better graphics and music, but the blood was changed to sweat (which you can easily change to red or any other color with Game Genie codes!), while the blood was behind a code for the Genesis. MK2 and onward everything was intact for gamers!

For the record, I do enjoy fighting games, but I suck at them. I can hold my own to a point, I’ve always had trouble building combos and thinking fast with performing special moves and the like.

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Hack Showcase: Y’s 3 Renewal & Rebalanced Hacks (Genesis)

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Hack Showcases and RPG Hack Showcases are a series where I show off various game and rpg hacks. I try to stick with hacks that improve gameplay or add quality of life features, completely or partially change the plot and characters, along with additional content, dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. Non-rpgs I try to give a full run to, or at least enough for a solid review. Rpgs I will stick with titles that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, show parts later in the games where more differences appear. There may be spoilers in the reviews and videos. Some of these I may stream fully in the future or play on my own. Reviews are open to later revisions due to bug and content updates or me playing them and finding anything new I wish to bring up.

Y’s 3 Renewal by Plombo aims to clean up the dialogue and script of the game into something that flows and sounds better. Beside that, the hack also presents terms and names used by XSEED in the modern remakes of the Y’s series along with some graphical improvements to clean up the look of the game more.

The goal of Y’s 3 Rebalanced by Mentil is to reduce the amount of time grinding and a lot of the difficulty issues this game has with the following changes:

  • The player getting hit now grants 25 invincibility frames rather than 10; each mistake is now less likely to get you hit more than once.
  • Enemies now grant 6x the gold and XP in the early game; once reaching an area where you should be about halfway to the level cap, this drops to 2x. One should reach the recommended level for each area by the time one arrives, with almost no grinding required, if one slays every monster in one’s path.
  • Many enemies and bosses have had their damage output nerfed to more-reasonable levels. The final boss got particular attention and should be far less frustrating to fight.
  • Each enemy defeated now grants 3 ring points instead of 1, making rings more useful without frequent recharges in town.
  • Adol now starts the game with a sword, given the intro states he has one.

I combined both these hacks for gameplay and for this review, which is recommended and possible to do. Review will be for both together and separate and same with my final score.

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Retrorevisited: Sonic 1-3 (Genesis) & Sonic CD (Sega CD)

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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 still have or had at one point, playing them with and without nostalgia goggles, and do with mini-reviews of them too. If I decide to play any fully later and do a full review, parts of the mini-review would be incorporated into it. Depending on the playstyle or system, games reviewed will either be mini-reviews or one about all games in this session.  

The Sonic series quickly became Sega’s flagship series when the first game came out in 1991, becoming the pack-in game with the Sega Genesis and later Sonic 2. The first game sported beautiful graphics and a great soundtrack, and faster gameplay not seen on consoles at the time. After Sonic hit it big, the series continued on the Genesis with Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic Spinball, and Sonic & Knuckles (aka Sonic 3 Part 2), which was a continuation of Sonic 3’s story and sported new lock-on technology that allowed gamers to plug the cart into other games for new and exciting bonus levels to test their skills. Of course there was a Sonic for the Sega CD system too! All future games sported even better graphics and soundtracks and faster gameplay! 

I plan to cover Sonic 1-3 for the Sega Genesis and Sonic CD for the Sega CD in this edition of Retrorevisited and my mini-reviews.

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My History with the Mega Man and Mega Man X Series

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The “My History With…” series are my thoughts back when I was a kid to young adult, about when I got games of a series, my initial thoughts about them, and other thoughts about the games. I stick to games I have or had, not one I played for the first time when i discovered emulation or modern system remakes. 

So I’ve mentioned before I do have a long history playing and loving the NES Mega Man series. First one I played being 2 thanks to a cousin and he and I tore it up figuring out the order to fight the Robot Masters, figuring out the weapons to use in Wily’s Castle, and looking through Nintendo Power issues for if/when the password system was cracked. MM3 was the first one I owned myself and loved, doing the same as with 3, and eventually went back to the series roots with 1, and 4. Never owned 5 or 6, though I eventually did play them via roms and played them again, along with 7 in the ps2 MM Anniversary Collection. I had played 8 thanks to a cousin bringing his copy over.

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Hack Showcase: Mega Man 2 Revamped (NES)

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Hack Showcases and RPG Hack Showcases are a series where I show off various game and rpg hacks. I try to stick with hacks that improve gameplay or add quality of life features, completely or partially change the plot and characters, along with additional content, dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. Non-rpgs I try to give a full run to, or at least enough for a solid review. Rpgs I will stick with titles that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, show parts later in the games where more differences appear. There may be spoilers in the reviews and videos. Some of these I may stream fully in the future or play on my own. Reviews are open to later revisions due to bug and content updates or me playing them and finding anything new I wish to bring up.

Created by TheSkipper1995, this hack is just like the Mega Man 3 Revamped hack where it adds polish and other corrections to Mega Man 2 with hose weapons are used, ai of enemies and bosses, new level design to benefit stage gimmicks and more. There’s also 3 optional patches included with the base hack which are recommended:

  • NoFlash – Removes the flashing visual effects
  • Friction – Removes the slide Mega Man does when he stops running
  • FastEnergy – Faster speed which energy is refilled

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RPG Hack Showcase: Final Fantasy 2 – Unprecedented Crisis (SNES)

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Hack Showcases and RPG Hack Showcases are a series where I show off various game and rpg hacks. I try to stick with hacks that improve gameplay or add quality of life features, completely or partially change the plot and characters, along with additional content, dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. Non-rpgs I try to give a full run to, or at least enough for a solid review. Rpgs I will stick with titles that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, show parts later in the games where more differences appear. There may be spoilers in the reviews and videos. Some of these I may stream fully in the future or play on my own. Reviews are open to later revisions due to bug and content updates or me playing them and finding anything new I wish to bring up.

Created by Pinkpuff and his team, this hack changes up the events of FF2/4 in a new and exciting way that makes it feel like an all new game. You’ll have new party configurations, new skills and stats for your heroes, new items, new locations and a lot more. A lot of events from FF2/4 are more fleshed out in this hack as well as a cleaned up script. Visiting the Training Room in Baron will give a good rundown of a number of the changes and more.

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