So yesterday, I turned 21. Having never drunk before, I decided to destabilize myself a bit and play Imperishable Night and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, in that order. Somehow alcohol fails to make me do better or have fun– stage 3 deaths and ragequitting against Keine in IN stage 3, and stupid deaths as early as partway through stage 3 in EoSD, and I didn’t even make it to stage 5 (where I usually start to really have trouble). It didn’t help that drinking had made me feel drowsy, so I couldn’t focus as well.

And on another note, Eversion HD!

Don’t click if you haven’t cleared the whole game.

If you haven’t played all the way through Eversion, and do not wish to be spoiled, stop reading, now. You have 20 lines.

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With Zaratustra’s release of Eversion HD, and my curiosity for what changes are made to a game when it is updated, I forced myself to revisit the nightmare.

After donating 5 USD to get my copy, the first new thing I notice is, of course, the pretty 640×480 graphics. There are actual backgrounds now, though oddly enough the new World x-1 is darker, especially in contrast to the new x-2. And this being Eversion, my paranoia for what lies ahead came back. When I evert to a lower level, what new horrors await me? How fucked up can the backgrounds get? Is there a new hazard, such a new giant hand, right ahead?

Fortunately (for my sanity) none of the stages changed in layout. My one complaint is the new World x-8 background. The old x-8 was significantly creepier due to its design, or rather, lack of design–black nothingness for foreground textures, and purple nothingness (similar to the Dark Link area in Zelda II) for the background–one kind of nothingness against another. It succeeded in making x-8 the epitome of the game’s creepiness. The new one adds a detailed background (in keeping in theme with the rest), which takes away from the atmosphere and makes it look less like a special layer.

So after clearing out all 8 worlds, time attack mode opened up as usual. World 5 in particular is bugging me due to a couple of particularly tricky jumps towards the end of the stage, and I’m not a big fan of World 6′s limited forward visibility. World 3 is kinda fun because the first 1/4 of the stage involves some intricate key presses that feel really nice when pulled off right, but may trigger restart syndrome if done improperly. World 8 as usual is a puzzle to figure out which permutation of eversions will yield the shortest path. Which may or may not have to do with shortest-path problems.

I need to put up more time attack videos.