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Retro Monday #91 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Randomizer

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was made by Nintendo and released for the Super Famicom in 1991 in Japan and the Super Nintendo in the US and EU in 1992. It is the third Legend of Zelda game and did a lot to set the template for the Zelda series up until Breath of the Wild.

This week the game choices were all randomisers and over on GRcade Cheeky Devlin picked them for me to try. A Link to the Past was chosen by the members via a poll.

Well, while this is Link to the Past, one of my all-time favourite game; it’s ALttP with a major twist. It’s a randomiser. I know it’s a little different to the traditional way the games have been played normally, but, I thought having a randomiser would be a really interesting way to play an old game and breathe new life into it. I’m hoping those that read this and watch back the stream will agree that it’s a great way to see things old in a new way.

For those who don’t know, a randomiser is a mod for a game that takes a game ROM and then randomises the items. Simple really. An example: in this you could open the first chest in Link’s uncle’s house and normally you’d get the lamp. But instead you could get a shield, or hammer or rupees. It’s really interesting. There are also ways to set the randomiser so you can’t actually play for hours and hit a point when you can’t progress, and you can also pick how difficult it all is. It’s definitely worth trying it out and seeing for yourself.

The game itself is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and I love everything about it. The music is terrific, the visuals are lovely, the gameplay is great. There’s so much to love. I normally try to stick to around an hour and then move over to multiplayer games, but this I got really engrossed in and lost track of time and was playing for around four hours until after 1am.

Seriously give it a go – you’ll be surprised by how it may reinvigorate something you may now find you’ve overplayed.

Verdict: Highly Recommend.

If you’d like to take part in voting for the games or even  picking the games yourself, take yourself over to the GRcade forums and pop into the Retro Monday thread and just post to show your interest. Not just that, you can watch the gameplay live over on Twitch where it’s streamed at 9pm on a Monday evening.

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Retro Monday Game 90 – Tomba!/Tombi!

Tomba! was a platforming game made by Whoopee Camp and published by Sony for the PlayStation 1. Releasing in Japan in 1997, it was 1998 that we in the UK got the game but it was called Tombi! not Tomba!.

 

I looked online for a little while and I saw that Tomba is Italian for grave and that may be the reason for the title change.

The game was picked by GRcade in a poll of three games that were selected by Jeffyard.

I have little knowledge of Tombi, very little. The only time I can remember seeing it was one year at Awesome Games Done Quick, and some guy asked another guy if he would basically shut up. Well, as I found out on during this stream that was Tomba! 2, so my experience was with the wrong game anyway.

The game centres around a young boy, named Tombi. Described as a pink-haired feral boy, you started the game to try and find your grandfather’s bracelet that was stolen by the Evil Pigs. You’ll get to see a lovely animated cutscene at the start for that. Travelling around you’ll come across a variety of friends and things to collect (and this was in only around 1 hour of play time).

The gameplay is a little different to your standard platformer – you don’t just run along and jump on the enemies and then carry on running. In this there are more platforms in the background, and there are then places you can jump onto a wall in the background and climb it, and then explore the area. It seems to be like that for a fair whack of what I played –  you even climb a pretty big set of walls and platforms at one point to find an old guy. Enemies are defeated in several ways: you can either hit them with a weapon which will kill them dead when fully charged, or incapacitate them, when not charged. When incapacitated you can jump on them and grab ahold, press jump again and you jump up with them and throw them. They will die and if hitting another enemy take them out too. I must add, you don’t have to hit the enemies you came across to grab ahold of, but it can make it easier than jumping on them while they are moving. It’s the unique fun of this play style that has me itching to play more.

Musically it’s also lovely. The sound effects pack a punch and the music has a kind of whimsical, upbeat colourful feel.

I’ll say now, that I plan to play more of this. I’m eager to get back to it – there’s something about it that just calls to me. It’s colourful, fun, cheery and plays extremely well, and even as I’m writing this I just want to get back to the game.

Verdict: Highly Recommend

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfv_2NIeT8]

If you’d like to take part in voting for the games or even  picking the games yourself, take yourself over to the GRcade forums and pop into the Retro Monday thread and just post to show your interest. Not just that, you can watch the gameplay live over on Twitch where it’s streamed at 9pm on a Monday evening.

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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.