Discuss games you've been playing

[The Colonel]

curious if you have any deep monkey ball aesthetic thoughts cause i'm mixed on the visual design of banana mania and really do not like how they changed the sound design. i hate the change from sound design revolving around the rotation of the ball, to revolving around the footsteps of the monkey. half of the weight that monkey ball 1 and 2 conveyed feels like has been lost. i also just think the ball sending up these huge sparks when it gains a ton of momentum is way cooler looking and more exciting than the generic speed vfx banana mania goes with

[Danny Trabajo]

Super Monkey Ball Adventure is the cut-off point where the visual design becomes completely charmless. Super Monkey Ball 2 is good but Monkey Target was ruined already, plus there is an increasing reliance on levels featuring mechanisms which just instantly kill you (fall through this gigantic blender-esque thing without hitting the blades, carefully pass through this giant lawnmower-esque thing without hitting the blades)

SMB 1 is a total masterpiece though

[Danny Trabajo]

A fitting subtitle for Adventure would be "An Uncomfortable Funeral For Monkey Ball"

[Danny Trabajo]

Yeah, and definitely appreciate that we got that second GC game, plus the decent GBA game and DX on the other consoles, before the series abandoned the Japanese arcade flavour

[esper]

you look up from an intense game of monkey billiard 2 and kiryu kazuma is sitting at the bar. what do you do?

[The Colonel]

i think this master mode comparison's a good way of feeling the differences between banana mania and og (will note that while there's also lots of stage design changes in banana mania here, you can unlock the original harder versions of the stages, though the changes feel a bit unnecessary to begin with to me since the game lacks a lives system so dying too much isn't that raw of a deal)



i also have music complaints but those are more minor because you can use the old ost. still though i dont think any of the new ost stacks up against the old at all. i've seen people who think the new monkey billiards theme is great but i really can't get into it vs the original

[Zondekel]

While I only played 2 here and there, I played 1 to death when I was younger. I still want Banana Mania, but I definitely miss the older presentation, and especially the old voices. The current voices for the monkeys and the announcer are pretty grating in comparison.

[The Colonel]

tbh i dont miss the old announcer. guy had a good voice but it'd be kinda weird having monkey ball continue to be attached to a guy who shouts at china on twitter and believes in conspiracies about donald trump taking back the presidency now. even if the actual reason they removed him had nothing to do with any of that and was just because he broke nda in a really obviously dumb and avoidable way lol

also he went around to random jp twitter users playing the game to shout about how women don't belong in monkey ball because their voices are too loud and that's. that's the most incredible thing i have ever seen anyone say. in my entire life

[Zondekel]

I did not know any of that. Guy is pretty shit then.

[The Colonel]

i dled a fatal frame 4 iso but it turns out it was a wbfs and it thus unpatchable so i tried my hand at playing fatal frame 4 in jp. unfortunately my knowledge of kanji and vocabulary is too limited, so i guess i gotta download a pre-patched iso

at least until i commit to a big game like fatal frame 4, code veronica or kuon i've been playing witch's heart. it's an... interesting game cause i feel like you can very easily trace its influences to many contemporary games, such as umineko and danganronpa, but it's a pretty decent execution of all the basic formulas present there so i'm interested to see where it goes

i am also having rule of rose flashbacks but i dont feel enough like playing a kusoge to re-experience that game even though it is one of my favorite ps2 video games of all time, top three. unlike caligula effect, rule of rose is a kusoge that i also personally consider an actual kamige with super incredible storytelling that sticks with me unforgettably to this day, and not just interesting but badly made. rule of rose is the only shitty unplayable ps2 horror game that affects me emotionally as much as silent hill 2

[Mr/Sir Norris]

Originally Posted by esper

you look up from an intense game of monkey billiard 2 and kiryu kazuma is sitting at the bar. what do you do?

Melt into a puddle from the sheer power of his cool aura. Also check Grindr cause a person can always dream lmao.


I picked up Stardew Valley again in my never-ending search for a feel-good before bed chill out game. Tetris did the job for a while but turns out it is a bit too much focus, plus falling asleep to imaginary falling blocks in your head does get a little tiring. Stardew has been a gorgeous slice of escapism.

Has anyone played the friends of Ringo Ishikawa on Switch? I've had an eye on it for a while cause I love the lofi aesthetic but haven't brought myself to buy it.

[Solid Snix]

Originally Posted by esper

you look up from an intense game of monkey billiard 2 and kiryu kazuma is sitting at the bar. what do you do?

initiate a side quest where kazuma beats the **** out of me and I thank him for helping me love my son again

[Danny Trabajo]

Played this last night. It's a proto puzzle game for the NeoGeo that I didn't know existed. It's good but kind of difficult to get your head around at first. Probably way more fun in multi

[Danny Trabajo]

Yeah, appreciate the use of photographs/stock images as backgrounds in these arcade puzzlers.

[Danny Trabajo]

Playing video games before bed. And yet choosing to play a Spanish arcade cycling game which probably had pedals on the machine, but on an Xbox you have to mash X and Y alternately to move, with A and B changing gears



In order to avoid coming last, I had to exert more upper body strength than it takes to do fifty push ups

Daño permanente en los tendones: el videojuego