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Retro Monday Returns! Game 89 – Prince of Persia!

OK, It’s been a little while since I’ve done Retro Monday. I believe the last time was back in October 2017 where I played Monster Max for the Game Boy.

So, A long while indeed. I decided to bring back Retro Monday for a few reasons.

  • The first is that I miss doing it, it was a way to give games I may not have played before a try, even if it’s a brief 1 hour. It gives me that chance and I can play it more in my own time if I like it
  • It’s fun, I had loads of fun with the games that were played, even the bad ones because of the chat.
  • Mario Kart Monday and life got in the way before. I can now get Retro Monday back, but the earlier time of 7:45 – 8:45 was too early as my children got bigger, but with Mario Kart Monday not happening anymore, Retro Monday can take its place

That brings us to the newest Retro Monday. I thought Hey, we’ll pick a game a go from there. I forgot about E3 and for the first Retro Monday in about a year and a half, it was Retro Wednesday.

On to the game I got to play.

The game was choosing on The GRcade Forum in the Retro Monday Revenge thread, the rules are the same a person picks 3 games and 1 is picked via a poll. The person who chose this time was Grum and the game that won was Prince of Persia for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Coming out in 1992 it’s a platforming game that originally made for the Apple II in 1989, The game has a timer of 60 minutes where you have to reach the end, fortunately on the SNES version it’s doubled to 120 minutes which you would think would make the game easier, well that isn’t the case, the levels are more difficult and there are double the amount going from 12 to 24. One good thing in the SNES version is that after the timer runs out you can still finish the game, but you fail to save the Princess.

I really liked playing this even though I ran out of time on the second level. The game is tough and requires trial and error, but I think that’s the point, you have to take your time, or if you move quick and get taken out by a trap, you then know when to slow down and think about your approach when you get there again. I found the combat a little irritating. Not because it was bad, but I was never sure about when to attack or parry. Sometimes the enemy would take one swipe at you, you’d parry then attack, other times it was several consecutive attacks, and I’d die. Maybe there are better signals for their attacks that I personally didn’t see, and on a replay, I’ll keep an eye of for that. The platforming is solid, with simple running and jumping over gaps and traps to climbing up and down ledges, there appears to be a sneak, that must be used later in the game to get by things, maybe enemies that are sleeping. I know it’s useful when there are spikes. If you run into where spikes are you get poked, but if you sneak you walk into the fine enough as if you are walking between the spikes and you can progress. Little things like that make it pretty interesting. Oh and then there’s the frog thing which I have no idea what it’s for.

Musically the game is good, there’s great music in the levels and some wonderful sound effects, from the spikes jutting up through the floor noise, to the ARGH of the guy you attack with your sword. It uses the SNES sound chip well.

I’ll be honest, I never played Prince of Persia before Sands of Time, and I think this is a very very good game and should be tried by all, yes it’s difficult and you have a time limit, but it’s fun and learning the game is a part of it that’s done so well it feels like it makes sense.

Verdict: Recommended.

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The GRcade Twitchcast Episode 14 – Arnie-mal Crossing!

Today’s hosts are Doom and Pedz

With E3 mere days away you can guess what the chat is about, right? Well, you’d be correct in thinking it’s the Ghostbusters remaster. Pedz brings up the remaster and Doom asks things like what generation would Pedz buy a remastered game of. The discussion is about remasters in general in the end, not just Ghostbusters.

You’d also be correct in thinking Doom and Pedz talk about the baffling decision Nintendo has made with regards to online friend play in Super Mario Maker 2. Truly bizarre, and the reason just doesn’t add up.

Next up, Pokémon is discussed (You guess that? – with the Pokemon Direct the day before this Episode was streamed. Doom disagrees with Pedz on the better-looking wolf, but surprisingly, people agree with Pedz (It’s surprisingly ’cause Pedz is normally always wrong) and both are pretty impressed with how it’s looking, also… Why Wolves? Red Squirrels, they’d get, Wolves? Not so much.

Lastly, you, you guessed it, Google’s Stadia. A mere couple of hours before the stream went live. Google had its own with some Stadia chat. Both hosts are interested, but there are concerns which Doom has more and the concerns are higher, while Pedz while having concerns feels that they could be levelled at Netflix and the like and yet people lap that up.

Okay, okay. We do then jump into Pre-E3 chat: what we want, what we think we’ll see, but the guys find it difficult with thinking of things due to the winding down of the current gen of consoles; it’s difficult to think of things you want over the next year when within 2 years we’re all (maybe/probably/more than likely) getting our shiny new consoles.

This episode is a doozy though and comes in at over 3 hours long. Hope everyone enjoys this as much as Doom and Pedz enjoy doing them!

Don’t forget, you can always tune in live to the GRcade Twitch channel for these episodes, plus various game streams.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZWDcyCv8iU]

Audio Download Link

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The GRcade Twitchcast Episode 13 – Kil-ing time with Doom and Pedz

Doom and Pedz are joined this week by Captian Kil for his first Twitchcast appearance.

This week’s exchange is all about:

  • Super Mario Maker 2 and the latest Nintendo Direct. Honestly the direct isn’t spoke about too much, it’s mainly Doom, Kil and Pedz talking about whether it looks like a significant upgrade,or if it should have been Super Mario Maker Deluxe.
  • Sony and Microsoft teaming up and perhaps Nintendo using Azure for streaming games.
  • Kil catches us up on City of Heroes and Villains, which has recently come back to for all to play and for free.
  • Doom brings the Playdate and Huawei into the conversation with how interesting the former looks and hipster-ish, while Huawei has been great for him and he’s hoping things will be changed back so he can have more Huawei devices.
  • Kil tells us about his visit to the V&A exhibition in Dundee. It’s sounding pretty ace.
  • We then talk a little about games we’ve played, though it’s pretty brief, most talk is about Sea of Thieves and how Doom and Pedz view the game differently.

Audio only