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 I joined this site back in 2008, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, looking to make LPs of my own. I had no experience, no external mic, nothing more than a Dell laptop and desire to create videos because it was the thing I was watching others doing at the time. I posted a Youtube video or two in the sandcastle and...from what I remember I was essentially told not to bother posting them here because I was doing nothing new or interesting with my content. 2008 LP subforum sure was a different time. I quietly left SA for a while and did my videos on Youtube anyway. They're still on my channel, even! They're bad and I don't recommend watching them, but they're there. Anyway, the point of this anecdote is that the thread I wanted to make at the time was a thread to showcase Super Metroid romhacks and share my love for them. They were some of the very first romhacks I ever played and I've been involved in various romhacking scenes for the better part of the last two decades as a result of discovering them. Now that I know what I'm doing with LPs, I wanted to revisit the idea I had so long ago. This LP's been 15 years in the making; it's finally time to LP some Super Metroid romhacks. My plan is to play through at least a few hacks with my friends Artix, PoorlyWritten, and possibly some others in the future, taking a look at both new hacks from the past couple years and some from the ancient era of SM hacks. I don't know how many I'll do, and I certainly won't do every hack. I'll try to keep it to standout hacks that are fun, interesting, and/or influential in the scene. We'll see how long this goes on for. I'll keep the table of contents in the OP updated with each hack we're playing. Unlike the couple Romhackeria threads I hosted in previous years, this isn't meant to be a megathread where anyone can contribute a romhack playthrough. I want this to be my thread first and foremost. Spoiler Policy: If I say a playthrough is blind, don't spoil anything from it. Assume I haven't played any hack released since 2020 or so, but everything earlier than that I have so you can talk about it without worry. ------------------ Table of Contents: Super Metroid: Subversion Episode 1: Big Gravity is my wrestler name Episode 2: I was raised by birds Episode 3: Samus's Power Suit beer helmet Episode 4: The Virtual Boy Visor Episode 5: Spore Spawn's yoku block madness Episode 6: Making a Metroid Cookbook Episode 7: Part of a balanced Chozo breakfast Episode 8: Learning about escarpments Episode 9: Heat 2 Episode 10: What are Mochtroids anyway? Episode 11: Faint praise for Metroid Other M Episode 12: A dangerous diversion Episode 13: Benthic bewilderment Episode 14: We have no respect for vital infrastructure Episode 15: Chilling in the Fire Temple Episode 16: Majora's Mask music opinions Episode 17: The Four Elements: Life, Fire, Ice, and Violence Episode 18: We've created an ecological disaster Episode 19: Double Draygon Episode 20: Baseball Episode 21: A big, semi-blind laser puzzle Episode 22: Metroid maintenance engineers hard at work Episode 23: We blew up Rocky Road Ridge (and more) Episode 24: An extended Beach Episode Episode 25: Puzzle Masters Episode 26: The Perfect 99.1% Run Super Metroid: Searching for Items Episode 1: Door tube appreciation Episode 2: Becoming ungovernable by 2D space Episode 3: That item jingle dopamine rush Episode 4: Happy Metroid Pride everybody Episode 5: I've ruined my chance at a cereal sponsorship Episode 6: Phantoon/Kraid 2024 Super Metroid: Eris Episode 1: Questioning the freshness of salad Episode 2: The nostalgia goggles are slipping off Episode 3: I speedrun the five stages of grief Episode 4: A fresh perspective Episode 5: Take Me To Church Episode 6: Dude Statue Episode 7: Nihilism, or why I disliked Iconoclasts Episode 8: It turns out that wasn't salad Episode 9: A ghost in the machine Bonus: Some of my personal SM hacks FPzero fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Dec 15, 2023 18:56
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 First up, we have Super Metroid: Subversion, created by Test Runner and Amoeba of Doom. The hack was created as a showcase project for a relatively new Super Metroid editor called SMART that was also created by these two hackers. It came out in 2022 and was basically considered hack of the year among the Metroid hacking community at Metroid Construction. And honestly? From what we've played of it so far I can see why. It has a world roughly twice the size of the original, a functioning logbook, an ingame hint system, room and area names displayed, new items and more. I'm thoroughly looking forward to finishing this one and seeing where it all leads. This is a blind playthrough.  Episode 1: Big Gravity is my wrestler name FPzero fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 18:56
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Huh. I used to be big into the SM romhack scene fifteen years ago. Looking forward to seeing all the cool hacks I’ve been missing out on! Maybe it’ll help me finally kick my ramdomizer habit. 
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Dec 15, 2023 19:21
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I don't really participate in the hacking community, but I always keep an eye out for Super Metroid hacks (and A Link to the Past, but that's not this thread). There's a lot of neat, creative stuff the engine can handle and Subversion is one of the best I've played. I beat it last year and had a ball the entire time. I remember only having difficulty finding the way forward one time but I think I was thinking too hard. Anyways, I love listening to y'all discuss these games. You guys are way more involved in these communities than me so you offer insight and perspectives on things that don't occur to me. I'm definitely looking forward to this
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Dec 15, 2023 20:49
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I really should look into the Super Metroid romhack scene. The last real one I played was Redesign ages ago. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. In the last year I've been playing a lot of randomized Super Metroid through the Archipelago multiworld stuff, though. Your items being locked by someone else's progression makes for a great motivator for learning dumb tricks/skips. I can now say I have fully cleaned out Maridia without the gravity suit, just because I didn't wanna let the game beat me. But having done that I'll be the first to say it sucks rear end and I'd take on suitless lower Norfair over Maridia any day.
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Dec 15, 2023 21:16
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Geemer posted:I really should look into the Super Metroid romhack scene. The last real one I played was Redesign ages ago. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. I liked Redesign and I feel like I'm in the minority on that front. It's biggest crime is that it's so drat long. Finding those guardians is a slog. There's one I remember reading about that's even bigger than that, though. Something Rescue? I remember "absurd" being used to describe the size of it's map
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Dec 15, 2023 21:31
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I am also a Redesign apologist but I'm biased because it was the first romhack I played of any game and the one that got me into the whole scene. I didn't care about the endgame fetch quest, I was too enamored by the hack's existence as a starry-eyed 16-year old at the peak of my Metroid obsession. Rabbi Raccoon posted:There's one I remember reading about that's even bigger than that, though. Something Rescue? I remember "absurd" being used to describe the size of it's map I believe it's called "Metroid Mission Rescue" and yeah it's like 6x the size of the original game. I remember playing it through because I was sunk-costing really hard after a certain point, only for the game to have a softlock in the escape sequence in the version I was playing. I counted it as beaten and moved on with my life.
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Dec 15, 2023 21:40
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Subversion looks like a ton of fun, but unfortunately even with a gamepad designed to emulate the SNES I haven't been able to train my muscle memory to handle Super's control scheme. I have been playing a bunch of the more in-depth Zero Mission hacks that have popped up in recent years, however.
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Dec 15, 2023 22:20
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Oh goody, more romhacks! I stopped keeping up with the hacking community after awhile; my last one was Eris (which I did a subtitle LP of in, I think, the last Romhackeria). Incidentally, to be an insufferable trivia nerd for a moment, the Varia suit does have one thing that it does which Gravity does not: if you have the Varia suit, then Mother Brain's rainbow beam does 300 damage. If not, it does 600. Gravity does not do this. So far as I'm aware, that's the only ability that's unique to Varia.
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Dec 15, 2023 22:29
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I confess, to someone who never payed a lot of attention to Metroid stuff, aside from level structure, this looks more or less identical to normal Super Metroid. Am I missing some bigger changes?
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Dec 15, 2023 22:55
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PurpleXVI posted:I confess, to someone who never payed a lot of attention to Metroid stuff, aside from level structure, this looks more or less identical to normal Super Metroid. Am I missing some bigger changes? So far the mechanical changes we've seen are: - (Presumably) unified ammo, probably using a rule like "missiles use 1 ammo, super missiles use 5, power bombs use 10" or something like that - Some updated graphics, most notably the doors and enemies - The rooms have names that are displayed when you enter them - The map is easier to read, with doors/room transitions marked - The customized transition from the station to the planet - The logbook - The altered gravity and associated powerup It's entirely possible that I've missed some stuff. But I guess you're more looking for stuff like overhauled graphics, altered jump physics, and new enemies. Those are all much harder to implement, especially new enemies, so they aren't seen too often. It's kind of like how every Super Mario World hack uses Big Boo when they need a boss fight. Or in the case of jump physics, hackers mostly don't mess with that stuff because their player base is very used to the vanilla controls.
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Dec 15, 2023 23:48
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FPzero posted:I am also a Redesign apologist but I'm biased because it was the first romhack I played of any game and the one that got me into the whole scene. I didn't care about the endgame fetch quest, I was too enamored by the hack's existence as a starry-eyed 16-year old at the peak of my Metroid obsession. My first ones were Super Metroid Legacy (which I think got an update recently) and Super Metroid Limit, which I found at the same time. I loved Legacy and forced myself through Limit for the same reason as you; the sheer novelty of it. Bloody Pom posted:Subversion looks like a ton of fun, but unfortunately even with a gamepad designed to emulate the SNES I haven't been able to train my muscle memory to handle Super's control scheme. I have the same problem. I am World Class Super Awesome at Super Metroid on a keyboard. I am once again the little 8 year old who got Super Metroid for Christmas with the controller Rabbi Raccoon fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Dec 16, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2023 00:16
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Bloody Pom posted:Subversion looks like a ton of fun, but unfortunately even with a gamepad designed to emulate the SNES I haven't been able to train my muscle memory to handle Super's control scheme. The beauty of Super Metroid is that it lets you rebind buttons. The vanilla layout sucks.
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Dec 16, 2023 00:33
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I've actually been playing a bunch of various Super Metroid romhacks lately. I played through Subversion, and it definitely kicked rear end. Definitely looking forward to seeing what y'all think of it.Rabbi Raccoon posted:I liked Redesign and I feel like I'm in the minority on that front. It's biggest crime is that it's so drat long. Finding those guardians is a slog. Redesign was actually one of the romhacks I checked out, and I played the Axeil Edition version, because that was supposedly the "improved" version of Redesign. I hated it a lot. I'm fine with a large map, but here you're just constantly railroaded through the most twisted, winding path through the map. It seems like it's like that just for the sake of the creator showing off the cool map they spent a long time making, but it just feels like padding. Tourian is padded to hell, which is loving wild to me, and the escape sequence is complete dogshit. The hunting down the guardians actually was one of the things I *liked*, weirdly enough, because it actually encouraged you to explore on your own, unlike a lot of the second half of the game, where you're just forced down a linear path that takes up a very sizable portion of the already huge map. Maybe vanilla Redesign is a bit better despite its age? Dunno. Redesign Axeil Edition loving sucks though.
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Dec 16, 2023 04:49
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Geemer posted:The beauty of Super Metroid is that it lets you rebind buttons. The vanilla layout sucks. Putting Select/Start on L2/R2 so you can swap weapons without having to move your right thumb off of the jump/shoot buttons is a game changer. And yeah, one of the big things that SM romhacks have done is given me an appreciation for the importance of small maps in Metroidvanias. Even in ones that have fast travel, having tons of rooms to review when you're looking for where to go next is just a giant pain in the rear end.
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Dec 16, 2023 05:22
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I think medium size is just fine as well, as long as it's done correctly. Have optional sections, provide fast travel and shortcuts, stuff like that. But there is definitely a point where, even with all that, it's just too bloated. Too much to keep track of. And I think that's where Redesign messed up. There's just so many pointless areas. I love the aesthetics. I love that there are optional puzzles that test your mettle. I love that you can still tell it's Super Metroid. It's just so drat big I never played Axeil Edition but I did see a video of Tourian and yeah, that's just bad. I'm not sure of the size of Subversion compared to the original but it can't be that much bigger than the original. I also can't imagine slogging through a map 6 times the size of the original only to get soft locked during the escape sequence. I'd be furious. The only thing I can think of is something like Spring Ball was optional until then. Or you need Missiles, Super Missiles, or Power Bombs and the RNG decided not to give them to you
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Dec 16, 2023 14:29
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My redesign adventure back in the day ended about 80% of the way through, when a broken 'lock you into morph ball' trigger in some pipes never came undone and I lost 2 hours of progress. Never touched it since.
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Dec 16, 2023 14:33
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...ok that's fair
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Dec 16, 2023 23:51
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Redesign is just kind of bad and boring. Its claim to fame was essentially being the first SM romhack to do what it did, but honestly every single thing it tried to do was done far better by later hacks. Redesign itself is from the era where the overall feeling of hacking was "if you're not as good a player as me, the hacker, then you don't deserve to play my hack". It very much shows; pathing that requires insider knowledge to figure out in any reasonable time frame, over tuned damage, arbitrary barriers. Yeah, it was super impressive back in the day, and I can see being enamored with it without anything else to compare it to, but nowadays it's just kind of not good.
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Dec 17, 2023 00:09
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 Episode 2: I was raised by birds Considering the fact she was raised by a race of bird warriors, Samus seems to have turned out mostly okay in human society. Mostly.
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Dec 17, 2023 18:33
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I really love the sorts of enhancements to the map that a lot of more recent romhacks have added. Back in the day, Super's map worked well enough and was an amazing standout, but other games have really refined it so much more. Subversion's map is a really good example of this, with transitions being clearly marked, as well as sub-areas being divided by color.
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Dec 17, 2023 20:17
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My only complaint with Subversion is that item dots on the map are hidden until the late game, at least when playing on Normal. That and a certain mechanic involving suit upgrades that I won't spoil, that is coincidentally also disabled on Easy.
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Dec 17, 2023 21:57
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OK, that was the most interesting Bomb Torizo fight I've seen in a long time. Here's hoping they're similarly inventive with the other bosses!
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Dec 18, 2023 01:42
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I really love this first section. It does a good job of showing where you're gonna branch off to and showing you what you'll need without making you feel like you wasted your time taking a wrong turn.
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Dec 18, 2023 07:29
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You: there's Castlevania music in this section My view:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq7lg6hjoM4 one of my favorite CV tracks too I guess we're hearing this version ingame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6CmmXuksY0 I especially enjoy the xylophone background beat As for the game itself, big fan of romhacks, big fan of Metroid, but never tried a Super Metroid one. I'm not the biggest fan of SM's controls, I got it too late in my SNES-playing days to really sink my teeth into it. Got probably a hundred hours each in Fusion and Zero Mission, though, which are simply much more fluid. Otoh you can do far fewer shenanigans with jump lengths, Samus' general speed, and so on. I'll be just happy to follow this along watching!
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Dec 18, 2023 13:07
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Question, what's the spoiler policy for stuff these romhacks added? Also, yeah, Other M's concentration ability restored E-tanks, but only when you were on very low health. It also refilled all of your missiles, no upgrades required, probably because that game didn't have enemies drop anything and there were several points where missiles were required.
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Dec 18, 2023 22:13
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Well, Subversion is being played blind so at the very least I wouldn't spoil anything from it in as much as you can spoil a romhack. We're a little ahead of the videos by one recording session but I'm still discovering new things about it as we play so yeah, definitely don't spoil it. For other hacks, well I've played many older SM hacks by now and most of my other candidates for this thread are going to be things I played before. The only notable exception is the recently released "Super Junkoid" but I'm not sure if I'll get to that or not since I'm also not sure if I'm supposed to play the NES Metroid 1 hack named "Junkoid" first. I suppose a better metric would basically be assume I haven't played anything released since 2020, but everything made before that can probably be talked about without spoilers. If I say a playthrough is blind, the same spoiler rule applies. I'll edit something saying as much into the OP.
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Dec 18, 2023 22:25
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FPzero posted:I suppose a better metric would basically be assume I haven't played anything released since 2020 Let me be the first to say you owe it yourself to branch out into Zero Mission hacks for this thread, because Spooky Mission 2 and Scrolls 6 are fantastic. New Zero Mission, Lost Chozo and Desolation are also very good, but kinda take the Redesign route of being long and frustrating at times. Also, the comic chat in the latest episode made me think of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/comments/12ol4nw/plintoon_star_wars_x_metroid_samus_arran_x/ Bloody Pom fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 09:43
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 Episode 3: Samus's Power Suit beer helmet We should be sponsored by various beer companies after this episode. ----------------- Bloody Pom posted:Let me be the first to say you owe it yourself to branch out into Zero Mission hacks for this thread, because Spooky Mission 2 and Scrolls 6 are fantastic. I might take a look at some ZM stuff but I haven't made a decision yet. Good to hear the hacks of it are getting good though. I haven't kept up with that scene at all.
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Dec 20, 2023 18:57
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I love the Night Visor. It's such a handy little tool and easy to do a quick check with if you're stuck in a spot. And of course I forgot all about the fact that it does help you see better in the dark and not just invisible stuff when I explored the spores section
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Dec 20, 2023 20:56
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Yeah, the music in the Shores area is a custom piece that mixes Tallon Overworld and Red Brinstar. I was a little disappointed that they didn't do anything mechanical with the Kraid fight, aside from "make you do it without Supers or Charge", but I can see the argument that it would have taken way more effort than it was worth. I do remember in the early days of SMILE, doing anything at all to Kraid's room (or the two mode-7 rooms in Ceres) would turn all the graphics into colorful static. ... I should download SMART and give it a whirl.
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Dec 21, 2023 01:30
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Having 100% Subversion twice, hearing you guys speculate about some stuff and try to anticipate things is great. There are definitely some surprises coming up for you, and I eagerly await each video to see what you run into. Subversion does have some issues with backtracking, though. Even with some of the tricks it pulls, the maps are fairly large and intricate so sometimes you have to ping pong around for a while hunting for progress. Plus as you've seen, layered secrets can sometimes discourage you from returning until you have significantly more equipment than necessary, but then sometimes it feels like progress is just "do the trickiest path you can think of". Admittedly, I'm the type to try wall jumping and light sequence breaking tricks if I can, so I get fairly lost sometimes. On the subject of Super Junkoid, I played through it sans playing NES Junkoid, and enjoyed it just fine. It's certainly more mechanically distinct from Subversion or most other Super hacks, trying some new tricks, and definitely worth playing.
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Dec 21, 2023 20:41
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Kurui Reiten posted:Having 100% Subversion twice, hearing you guys speculate about some stuff and try to anticipate things is great. There are definitely some surprises coming up for you, and I eagerly await each video to see what you run into. I have not 100%'d it (I think I was somewhere around 80%) and while I don't remember everything, I am also eagerly awaiting their reactions to certain things based off stuff they've said. I want to see how long it takes them to figure out one optional puzzle in particular that I felt was absolutely genius once I finally figured out the absurdly simple solution
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Dec 21, 2023 22:57
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:one optional puzzle in particular that I felt was absolutely genius once I finally figured out the absurdly simple solution It says a lot about this hack that four or five different optional puzzles immediately sprang to mind for me.
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Dec 21, 2023 23:16
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 Episode 4: The Virtual Boy Visor Despite being a child of the 90s, I never got to play a Virtual Boy. But thanks to the power of this hack, we can now all experience the eye strain I missed out on! Your eyes will thank/hate you!
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Dec 23, 2023 18:58
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I never played Virtual Boy. Is it that bad? Also, I can't put my finger on it but something about the environments reminds me of the original Blaster Master
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Dec 23, 2023 22:33
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:I never played Virtual Boy. Is it that bad? No. Virtual Boy is substantially worse.
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Dec 23, 2023 23:00
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Imagine a gameboy that you could only play by shoving your face into an awkward 90's imitation of a VR visor. The 3D gimmick was unimpressive. The red on black wasn't amazing. The game selection was abysmal, though Virtual Wario Land was decent. IIRC the manual included a warning to take breaks regularly to avoid eyestrain. Of course, multiplayer or even spectating was just impossible. also, red on black is codec poison, so the video encoding goes to poo poo really easily (edit: or maybe that's my wifi)
TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Dec 24, 2023 |
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Dec 24, 2023 18:15
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The more I go back and look at the 90's, the more it seems like we were trying SO HARD to seem really advanced before 2000
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Dec 24, 2023 21:43
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I was a kid when it came out and we managed to get my mother to rent one for us over the weekend. It was alright, we all played it and had some fun, but the two games we had (one about piloting a space fighter and one I think was something to do with mario and tennis) were mediocre and the tech clearly wasn't ready for what they were trying. I don't remember having problems with eye strain, but we were kids.Rabbi Raccoon posted:The more I go back and look at the 90's, the more it seems like we were trying SO HARD to seem really advanced before 2000 That was a big deal back in the 90s, yeah.
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