Gaming Journals

Aqy’s SNES Journeys – Part 5 (Super Castlevania IV)

May 12, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: castlevania, konami, konami kukeiha club, sidescroller, simon belmont, snes | by Aquas | 1 comment

This box art is hype!

boring US logo

Super Castlevania IV has always been a favorite SNES game of mine. I never owned it but I rented it as a kid. Even back then, I was instantly enchanted by the uniquely dark atmosphere of the game. I primarily attribute this to the soundtrack which is unlike any other SNES soundtrack. The various instrumentation: wind instruments, piano, orchestral strings, electric organ, horns, realistic and earthy bass sounds and percussion, all come together to make the side scrolling legend Castlevania come to be more imaginative than it is on screen and in game play. The soundtrack is what I always liked most about the game, though the presentation and game play are nothing short of classic Castlevania. Rondo of Blood is also lauded for its soundtrack and both are wonderful, but Super Castlevania IV’s music always leaves me in awe because of what it did with the SNES hardware.

bad ass jpn logo

Revisiting the game has been a treat. The intro sets a serious tone as a grave is struck by lightning and explodes, revealing a bat (presumably Dracula) who flaps around and flies away into a purple night. Then mist and a wailing siren eerily que the story text and you begin to think you’re going to play the best game ever. The first stage starts and the Theme of Simon plays, immediately an organ shouts a triumphant melody and you’re whipping the shit out of skeletons and doing the signature Belmont strut. Fuck yeah.

Medusa puked everywhere!

Stage 2 begins as Simon enters “The Forest of Monsters,” the music is still upbeat but the melody isn’t strong anymore, instead the song’s flow is in the bass line. Like Simon’s legs in the stage’s running stream, pushing you forward. It’s apparent now that you’re edging closer to the evil as new enemies and hazards appear. So you get the idea. Every stage and part of this game is so accentuated by the soundtrack. As a lover of game music I can’t help but adore this game for what it’s done in that department. I also enjoy the usage of some old Castlevania things. There are yellow zombies that when killed make a sound that is taken from Haunted Castle (the arcade Castlevania.) It’s the sound of your Grandpa who smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day for longer than he could hope for, croaking for thinking he could land a jump off of his Grandson’s swing-set while drunk as a kite. Then I liked seeing the spiders from Simon’s Quest that simply dangle down and shoot a smaller spider at you. Nostalgic little fuckers, they are. There were other continuities of course but those were my favorite.

I’d say the game is worthy of the “Super” in its title. All signs point to the fact that Konami wanted better hardware to explore the unique mood of Castlevania. The graphics are colorful and the use of scrolling and foreground/background is good. Some things are pretty, specifically the detail of the enemies and bosses. But some of the background textures look like puke. I honestly thought my game was glitching because of how garbled some of the textures are. This is really my only nitpick with the game. The graphics merely pass the test of time.

Platforming stage, somber tone

In this game you can fling your whip diagonally and dangle it and swing it around for less damage. Also you can control your jump fairly well. None of these things compromised the fun factor of the game play or made it less “Castlevania” for me. I was still getting knocked into pits and dying instantly from spikes, so that’s left in tact. Also you can crouch walk which has a purpose for a total of like 4 parts of the game. The game is pretty helpful with the locations of health items in the stages, so I didn’t have a lot of trouble getting through the game, only after about 6 continues. Struggling with certain spots briefly. This time playing, however, I realized that the game is harder on the 2nd run through. I gave it a run and it was a good change of difficulty. Not annoying, not unfair, just more enemies and enemies take more hits to kill. Because of this, certain sections require your strategy to be tweaked a little. Figuring out those new strategies was a joy. And I finished the game on my second continue. My favorite boss is the bat made of gold, whom when attacked, sprinkles gold that can damage you. Watch out for that bat gold!

Best back of box description ever. The 90's.

Aqy’s SNES Journeys – Part 4 (U.N. Squadron)

May 6, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: nintendo, shmup, snes, stg, un squadron | by Aquas | 4 comments

U.N. Squadron is a special game for me. It was the first shmup I played that really made me want to play it more. This was way back when I was 9 or 10 years old when at first my brother had rented the game. I remember it being hooked up to a vintage TV that was sat upon an old wheeled piece of wooden furniture. In the basement my brother had a big sleep over with his friends, and to my recollection, they were all playing U.N. Squadron. Later when all of them were gone, I got to try the game… and I don’t know how well I did. But I knew it was cool. I rented the game later on and really enjoyed it.

Then the years passed and I’m probably 16 now, when one day I suddenly wanted to search out the game. I called a lot of game stores around my area and eventually found a place that had it. The smallest game store I had ever went to, a little place called Raven Games. This place was the size of a 15 foot by 10 bedroom. Walls completed shelved with games, and I’m sure a mother load of games under the counter or “in the back”. I picked up U.N. Squadron for $7 and the orange price tag is still on the cartridge I’m playing today. The cart is in poor condition. Grime is in the crevasses and the cover is partially peeled off, including the end label, as well as the back label completely scratched off.

What’s with people and their games sometimes? I wonder if the person who had the game originally was raging over how difficult it was, and released their anger on the cartridge in such a way.

But the difficulty is just right for beginners of the genre. You would get your ass kicked at first, but then you would buckle down and find out there wasn’t a strong threat in the game except your own haste and lack of strategy.

image links to page I stole it from

Now coming back to U.N. Squadron after gaining experience and knowledge of beating other shmups, it became easy. I realize now that there is a right way to play any shmup, and the game just wants to show you the way. In my first play through, I was automatically analyzing the screen for safe spots during the boss battles and I was able to utilize the special weapons to full effect. My experience with shmups showed. So I went all the way to the end and 1cc’d the game on my first visit back. With Greg Gates and 2 lives remaining. Wow!

Then I tired Hard Mode and did well until the last 3 stages. Then the difficulty began to equate to arcade level difficulty and I didn’t know the best strategy for the ceiling boss on hard mode. Hard Mode is nice though. The bosses are more aggressive and the enemies shoot more bullets and faster. I was using the whole screen to herd enemy fire, almost like a Gradius loop. Hard Mode is definitely more suited for me and I was having genuine fun. Playing the game made me remember that I wanted to tackle the arcade U.N. Squadron some more some time.

These type of games were just not prevalent enough to garner an obsessive attention from me. There were lots of cool games in the SNES era. And an SNES was all I had. Yeah I played Gradius III but I never owned it. I had the same impression with it. I thought it was cool but in the end it was just a “simple” shooting game that became very difficult near the end. It was only until I found out some shmups have scoring systems that I gave them the proper respect. …And that was another 5 years later!

All in all U.N. Squadron on the SNES is a stand-out port of the arcade game and has aged quite well.

BREAKING WAR NEWS !!!!

I found out that there is a “Gamer” mode which is an even harder difficulty. I will report on the war when the conflict has been confronted.

5-7-11 — AQY defeats HARD MODE and gets special ending message. He also tries the secret “Gamer” mode and finds it is more difficult than the switch from normal to hard. It became like P-47 Aces shit. Fast bullets that require memorized dodging!!! Also the 1 million dollar plane is over powered! lawl

Aqy’s SNES Journeys – Part 3 (ActRaiser Metroid Completion)

May 5, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: actraiser, enix, nintendo, snes, super metroid | by Aquas | 1 comment

Finishing Super Metroid was alright. As soon as I began any backtracking I felt like the magic of the game was lost. And that magic is the constant exploration of Zebes. I can see why Super Metroid became popular for speedrunning. Sequence breaking can be done in many different ways. Finished with 4:30-ish and 73% item collection. Never got the Spring Ball but now I know that you have to let this worm caterpillar dude to destroy some sand in your way. I love the final battle musics. They’re so serious and provoking. I saved the animals and escaped and that was it.

With Actraiser I began to maximize the populations in the different lands. Doing so is not hard at all, just tedious. So I want to say that even after knowing how to maximize the populations for each land, it really won’t matter that much by the end of the game. The difference between populating the lands unawares to knowing is only a few extra HP bars.

As it stands, the stages and bosses are fairly easy. Only because you can use a brute force / tank damage technique to beat most of the bosses. However if you don’t want to just tank the damage, you can fight them the real way, figuring out their patterns and such. Doing it that way is more fun. It would be a better challenge to just ignore the town segments and then face the stages with less MAX HP. The town simulation is just a novelty as far as it’s purpose. But it has it’s appeal. The masters of each land use peculiarly somber phrasing when they appeal to you. And what happens in the town stages helps define the struggle of the people and your role as God’s servant.

Enix really made ActRaiser awesome. I love it. And so glad I was able to play the same cartridge that came from the video store when I was 12.

I like that they added the Professional! mode, just the action stages with small enemies taking 2 hits, you take 2 HP instead of 1 HP on hit, and the bosses are slightly more aggressive. I got the nice message “You are the best player!!”

Thanks Enix.

Aqy’s SNES Journeys – Part 2 (Actraiser, Super Metroid)

May 2, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: actraiser, nintendo, sidescroller, snes, super metroid | by Aquas | 3 comments

I enjoyed the SNES some more, playing Super Metroid and Actraiser both for nearly 2 hour sessions. I wrote about Super Metroid on another forum, here is the snippet:

Before I even booted up the game, I started humming the beeps in the music before the Super Metroid logo appears. Such great sound and music.

“I found myself playing fairly hurriedly but amazed again at the detail of the game. Running through the slanting downwards corridor filled with the crawlers and brain-bug sacks— in the area after, there are the mantis’s that block your shot, need a missile. I love that they have an animation where they tense up and block your attack.

After hearing all about the sequence breaking that can run rampant in this game, I was trying to figure out something I could rig up with wall jumping. Somewhere along the way I used wall jumping to get something I knew I shouldn’t have, perhaps the wave beam… and right away I felt like I was playing it like I never played it before. Granted, it’s been years since I played it. But there was little time that I felt lost or I wasn’t meaningfully covering ground, which is just the way I wanted it.

The fight with Kraid was awesome. Pumped ‘em full of missiles and finished him off with a Super Missile.

I know I never found near close to full amount of hidden stuff in any of my previous play-throughs, but I’ll be hunting for never found stuff more adamantly this time. I won’t be using a guide at all though. Is it annoyingly hard to find everything without a guide, I wonder?”

And later on… I played some more:

“Lower Norfair is scary! I took the right path and once I got to the huge room with the rising lava and ascending platforms on the other side— I had to cower and turn back because the enemies leading up to the room were making some work of me without the Screw Attack. Wow! Later when going through those passages with the ScrewAttack I realized I could’ve taken the path if I was extra ballsy.

And Ridley had me at 86 energy! I was so relieved… haha.”

And even later, I finished the game with a completion time of 4:47 and 73% item collection. This game really sucked me in for a bit. When I got just a little lost as far as what I was supposed to do, then that feeling went away. Great game though. Was a pleasure playing it on actual hardware.

And on Actraiser… at first, when I put the naked PCB into the SNES, I had a black screen and was worried it didn’t work anymore. Afterall, it was out of its cartridge for many years and had likely collected lots of dirt or was possibly damaged from its poor handling. Thankfully the problem was only dirt. After a quick water and q-tip cleaning it was working flawlessly… then I marvelled at the pseudo orchestral opening music by Yuzo Koshiro. This game that was ran over when I was little was now about to be played again by the one who freed it from its casing. The epic title music summed up this whole passage of time.

If you’re not familiar with Actraiser, the game-flow switches between sidescrolling action stages and Town Simulation sections,. civilize a land, directing the townspeople where to build and to seal off demon’s lairs. The demon’s lairs spit out demons that eventually try to wreak havoc on your town, so you control an arrow shooting cherub to fend them off at the same time. An interesting tidbit I learned about Actraiser after a play-through on emulator a while back, was that your score in the action stages affects the population cap on your town. Which also plays into an end-game score. When I discovered this I found the game to be even more compelling, that I could aim for a higher end game score for each play-through.

I recently read up on the mechanics that surround achieving maximum population for your towns, not only does your scores in the action stages affect this, but also what type of structures you have in your town, the level of building, and some other things. It’s just a matter of knowing about this stuff and not so much skill in achieving the max population, as most of the score techniques in the stages revolve around milking points and collecting a 1up over and over. I’m satisfied to finally know about how to achieve the max population now in any case.

I guess there’s probably 12 stages or so, two for each new land. So… I think this concept of beating your old score can ring with this kind of time frame: maybe 3-4 hours to completion?

I was more moved by playing this game again. I paid more attention to the writing and what happens this time. It hadn’t occurred to me just how serious of a tone this game has and the writing is quite succinct for an SNES game. Usually tragic things are happening to the land’s people and you’re supposed to save them. The stages have really beautiful scenery, almost like a painting in some places. Yuzo Koshiro’s pseudo orchestral compositions fit in so nicely.

So far I beat the first 4 stages and civilized the first two towns. Now that I have the knowledge about population maxing I’m going to give it a shot in the following towns, however.

More on Actraiser to follow, I’ve also got an itching for some Super Castlevania IV.

Aqy’s SNES Journeys – Part 1, R-Type

April 26, 2011 in Gaming | by Aquas | 2 comments

Recently I have had the itch to play an actual Super Nintendo. Why don’t I have my own SNES, you might wonder? Well I was a dumb idiot who left his SNES with a friend whom he lost contact with. I lost the SNES, EarthBound and Secret of Mana notably. EarthBound had a lot of sentimental value to me, but, I don’t care, it’s in the past, and this certain individual has left my proximity and I hadn’t felt the need to bring such matter up. She wasn’t even a gamer.

So being without a SNES for the past 5 years I have grown to miss it. Actually playing it on the physical hardware, yes. Emulators are okay, I get a better sound system on emulator and save states and all that, but it’s not the same as on a clunkin’ mother fuckin’ TUBE TV. Which is what I have, quite a large tube TV at that, something like 28″. A few other things prompted me to ask my friend to borrow his SNES.

1. I’ve especially wanted to play an Illusion of Gaia cartridge I picked up a c0uple years back as an impulse buy. I know I like the game, but I have never actually played this cart I purchased. I had only rented it as a kid, as far as playing the actual cartridge… and beat it on emulator some years later. I am excited for this. I really love what Illusion of Gaia does.

2. He never plays his SNES.

3. He’s got a nice little collection of games that I can play through. And I also have an old Actraiser PCB I want to play.

Yes, the PCB. Because the cartridge was ran over after I fell off my bike as a youngin’– flinging the cartridge into the street where a car ran it over. Hardcore, right? It chipped the cartridge casing but the game was fine. Of course, it’s Nintendo hardware mother fucker. The rental place wouldn’t take it back so they had my parents pay only $15-20 or so. I thought it was a good deal considering it worked fine. Curiously, I removed the PCB from the cartridge years later and found it set down in a closet in my house. Now I’m dead set to jam this PCB into my SNES and get my Actraiser on.

Among the games I’m borrowing are Zelda 3, Star Fox, Super Castlevania IV, Super Metroid and Super R-Type. I also have a copy of U.N. Squadron that I’ll no doubt be playing too.

This morning I played Super R-Type. I set the difficulty to normal and noticed the difficulty difference from easy fairly quickly. Normal is definitely has more of an arcade feel than easy. Stage 1 and 2 I could manage well enough, game over’ing on the 2nd stage. But stage 3 had a lot of stuff filling the screen and the slowdown was significant. I credit fed to the boss of Stage 4 but couldn’t beat him. One thing this game lacks is checkpoints, it has none, you start at the beginning of the stage if you die. Pretty disappointing, but oh well.

The 4th stage boss was a gunwall and I had never reached him before. I got to his 3rd phase but then was overwhelmed by the bouncing lazers. I’m looking forward to seeing beyond stage 4. Game has nice music and graphics.

I’ll continue to update on the games I play and my experiences. ’Till then!

Awwwwwwwww!

April 11, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: armed police batrider, battle bakraid, battle garegga, raizing, shinobu yagawa, stg | by Raydere | 1 comment

Almost nailed a 1CC of Battle Bakraid‘s Normal course. I was “sight-reading” Gigamanta, so when I saw its 5-way machinegun spread I was expecting it to swivel a la Black Heart. Instead? The spread shrinks up and my head asplode.

Despite attempting to play this game mainly for survival (ignoring medals, not suiciding with the express purpose of getting more bombs, etc.), I have a tendency to bombspam or chargespam clusters of large enemies just so I can see that shiny x64 multiplier.

I think Bakraid is rivaling Batrider for my favorite game involving Raizing and Yagawa. Battle Garegga is still kinda bollocks to me–a good game, but Bakraid feels like that on steroids.

All aboard the Caravan!

April 8, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: blade buster, caravan, kusoplay, recca, shmups, stg, super star soldier | by Raydere | Leave a comment

So after one month of restricting myself to just three shooting games, I’ve taken the liberty of re-exploring some Caravan games.

First stop? Blade Buster 2 minutes.

I managed to improve my old record of 468k by about 20,000 points. Key points include the boss milk at the end and in general just trying to speedkill every air enemy to make the next wave of enemies appear (same strategy as almost any other Caravan game).

Dunno if I wanna tackle 5 minutes, but now that I no longer have a score that nets #1 on Shmups Forum, perhaps I’ll look into it.

Recca and Super Star Soldier will be dealt with another time. Is it wrong that I only play SSS for the Caravan modes, yet not give a care about the main mode?

Strange Dot-Eating Journey

April 3, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: jrpgs, pac-man, pac-man championship edition dx, Shin Megami Tensei, strange journey | by Raydere | Leave a comment

It’s been a long time, Gaming Journals.

Strange Journey — Hee-Ho!

I’ve been making strides in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey–currently in the 7th sector at Level 56 and locked into the Lawful route.

One particular boss was giving me a hard time–he had a powerful Gun-elemental attack, and a healing move that restores up to 1100 HP and removes stat debuffs. Stuck at a wall, I took the underhanded way out, using a couple password demons I found on another board. (No, this isn’t Action Replay black magic; summoning demons via passwords is an in-game feature.) One is a Pallens Athena with Makarakarn and Mortal Jihad, the other being a Doppelganger with Charge, Luster Candy, and Mortal Jihad, among other abilities. I was able to wipe out said boss, as well as a few later bosses, with the help of these two folks.

Currently working my way towards Level 75 so I can summon Demonee-Ho.

Perhaps once I complete SJ, I’ll move onto Persona 3 Portable, or I could be a jackass and try out the first two SMT games.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX — Dot Diet

Another game I’ve been devoting myself to is Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. Championship II and Highway are simple enough maps; currently trying to refine myself at Manhattan. Score attacking doesn’t look too bad, but Time Trial has a number of shortcuts involving eating non-trailing power pill ghosts, and that’s where I stumble. It’s not like earlier maps where Time Trial is simply about following paths of dots at maximum speed without making wrong turns–some serious strategy is necessary to figure out the optimal path here.

Current time on Manhattan TT is about 2:45. I can certainly do better. TT’ing it seems like it’ll be much more enjoyable once I map out a good path here.

Aqy’s TwinBee Score: The STG Rant

March 30, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: 1986, games, gaming, Gradius, hi-score, konami, rant, shmup, stg, twinbee | by Aquas | 4 comments

Sometimes it’s good to remember about your run-throughs in shmups that aren’t your hi-scores, or aren’t even runs where you reach a new stage. But are still exciting and different in their own way. This post is just about one of those runs.

I reach stage 13 with this score but I certainly wasn’t expecting to get this far. Like the Gradius games, dying in Twinbee is hard to recover from. If it’s a hectic part of the game, it’s very easy to die again quickly, and then again and again to game over. Especially during bosses. I don’t recall how I lost every of my 3 lives before my last in this run. However, two of those were solid recoveries to getting powered up again. Luckily, where I died was not during hectic parts, aside from a life I lost shortly before a boss battle. Boss battles are kind of interesting because you only need to get about 2 or 3 shots once the boss reveals it’s core to kill it. Even when it seems dire and you’re surrounded by popcorn or bullets, getting those few shots right before death to kill the boss is awesome.

On my 2nd recovery, I was crushed by the spinning metallic clubs. This section only consists of the clubs, a few ground enemies and clouds. It’s really not a bad place to suicide if you need to get your arms back. (Out of context, that sentence is awesome.) There I couldn’t power up from the clouds but soon after the metallic clubs dissipated, I picked up the spread power up, then there was a bunch of clouds with bells and I upgraded to options. There’s a long period in this run where I’m just trying to get my powers back, thus missing a lot of potential 10K bells. But you really have to ignore the bells sometimes because this game’s rank turns into bullet hell! Which becomes the most exciting part of the game, where minute dodging is used a lot more often. Most of the game is spent just sweeping the screen and making sure all the enemies are shot down, as to not linger on the screen and get a cheap kill on you. But that simple act is just so much fun, especially when fully powered up and the game throws tons of enemies and bells at you.

Anyhow, the run ends when there is an unprecedented amount of ground enemies in stage 13 and I am not prepared to act fast enough. There is a star that clears the screen of bullets and air enemies and I go for it and get shot down for my efforts. The best thing to do is to stay at a mid-upper range of the screen and just spam the ground for enemies when you know they’re coming. I didn’t know they were there. But I’ll remember next time, and I’ll practice, to get past stage 13, and my current hi-score of 2.2 some million. I genuinely want to see what else this game offers beyond stage 13.

One of my favorite things about playing STGs as a hobby has to be finding that game that I love to play. Everyone has different picks and tastes and you can never seem to please someone with a direct recommendation. For me it’s a curious search and a fun one. When I’m not invested in a shmup that is so awesome I want to keep replaying it over and over: I’m playing all kinds of shmups just for a credit or two for the simple enjoyment of casual play. Some games when I finish I thought it was fun, but sometimes it feels like it’s the same old, “Oh, I needed to know what to do at that part” to progress which can be discouraging. I feel that other factors step in when I really like a game. The music, the sound effects, graphics and animations have to create the right synergy. With Twinbee, I love how simple and classic it is for a STG. The enemies are often peculiar objects: lightbulbs, forks, bent spoons that explode into a magical dust when they meet my green energy blasts. The way the game handles music is also interesting, it changes depending on what power-ups you have. Other STGs have done this before, Star Force is an example. I like that game too, but I haven’t invested any serious time in it… it’s even more simple, it’s before MY time, in fact. 1985 (I was born in 1986.)

Tangent:
Sometimes I like to think about a type of media in terms of my birthdate, I don’t think I’m the only one who does this! Like, I think sometimes, is it just a funny coincidence that I like or love games like Commando, Son Son, Twinbee, Gradius, Salamander, Flying Shark, all games made right around 1986. Perhaps I just like them because this time was a brilliant era for the birth of video games and STG in general! It’s funny to think about video gaming still being in its infancy in the grand scheme of things. And to think, some day, we will all be the Cranky Kong’s preaching to our grand kids what a REAL “game” was. I don’t think the future is that bleak for the “core” game experience to be out there. Probably everything will be digital and accessible… I digress.

Finding a game you love is a joy in any matter. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what the reasons are. Except that you play it and you don’t want to stop. I think I like Twinbee because when the game doesn’t have tricky parts, it’s just fun to shoot stuff and collect bells. Which is probably half of the game as far as I’ve made it.

…Or maybe it’s because I have a hard-on for Konami shmups in general. Some of you know that I am in fact a Gradius nut, but certainly not the nuttiest of them all. *cough*TVIks*cough*

Shenmue II ~ Thoughts and Revelations

March 2, 2011 in Gaming | Tags: adventure, dreamcast, impressions, shenmue | by Aquas | Leave a comment

Aquas’ Room

3:58 pm

Mar. 02,2011(Wed)

Now Loading…Good Taste Grocery, as oppossed to Shitty Taste Grocery

Having not been dedicating time to any lengthier games lately, with the exception of Ys II Complete: I decided to resume my file in Shenmue II. From about 4 months ago, I beat the first Shenmue. It took me an extra long time to complete it, as I had abandoned my file in the game for a couple years. For some reason I don’t feel very compelled to restart the game after it’s been so long. Besides, not much goes on in Shenmue –you just talk to people if you ever need to know what to do. So resuming was not that difficult, the same could be said with my file in Shenmue II.

I resumed, having just secured the Come Over Guest House as a place to stay in the game. At first, you sleep in an open room near the dock, where a bum also stays. Now, I’m sleeping in a different place but I don’t have to pay rent to the Guest House! I really liked the first Shenmue so at first coming back to Shenmue II, I was wondering just how it was going to unfold and suck me in like Shenmue 1 did.
I was a tiny bit discouraged that the only way to make money, for a time, was to run the Lucky Hit stands near the guest house. But as I progressed through the game and reached the 2nd disc, I’ve found numerous ways to make money. There are multiple Lucky Hit stands you can run, and their boards change each day. I’ve since became a Lucky Hit fan. If you’re wondering what Lucky Hit is, it’s basically like Plinko from The Price is Right. But it’s the badass, eastern version of it. It’s now fun to analyze the different board tine arrangements and even better, gamble on them.
The crate moving job at the pier is the easiest money in the game to make. It just takes 2-3 hours game time, and about 8 minutes real time to make $60. I recently found the high stakes Roll it On Top dice tables and was able to double my $200 to $400 in a single dice roll. I was willing to shut off the DreamCast if I lost all my money in that single roll, but basically I now have as much money as I need in the game only some of the way through the second disc (of four total.)

There are also slot machines and a different kind of dice game, and selling figurines as well to make money. I haven’t tried the slots much and I didn’t understand the other dice game that well.Things about gaining money said: I’m now going to spend money freely and it’ll be nice not having to work any jobs anymore.

I’ve been enjoying the new characters, story progression and Shenmue II experience in general. When a cut scene is happening I get excited for what’s going to happen… I almost feel like I’m back in 2001, playing the game for the first time. When games with cut scenes, outstanding graphics, good story and full voice acting was still a new thing. The game is pretty amazing though, it’s just like Shenmue I, but a bit more expansive. There are at least 5 more town areas than you could explore in the first game. It’s kind of a big world in Hong Kong, compared to Ryo’s town in japan but as you play you get familiar with the areas.

I am still amazed at the sheer number of faces there are in the Shenmue games. You do eventually see some of the same ones, but every one nearly has the same amount of impeccable detail. The detail that makes you want to zoom in on them and watch their mo-cap sequence. On graphics… I think Shenmue 1 had this too, but you can have NPCs show you where you need to go, as Ryo automatically follows behind. I like this because while you follow you can just admire the scenery and familiarize yourself with the area a bit. It’s a great way to show off the game without having to deal with the sometimes tedious movement mechanic. The amount of detail is great, reflected right onto every faces wrinkle and tines on the Lucky Hit boards. I sometimes just look at the boards as I’m running around doing stuff. I look for new ones, check the stakes, possibly try them if they look interesting. I don’t even have to go to another screen to check the boards on the overworld. A “next-gen” moment if you will, of the gaming past.

Sometime’s it’s a hassle to run from area to area to get somewhere, because of 30 second loading screens. A feature I do like to save time is that the game gives you warp points from the place you sleep to a couple different places the morning after sleeping. Including the spot that you were at if you stayed out to 11:00 pm. Still, you do a good amount of running around, so sometimes it’s like, ‘oh I might as well gamble or play a game or talk to people since they’re already here.

I won’t spoil what happens in the story, but if you’ve played Shenmue 1 and not the 2nd, it’s starting to get as epic as you may imagine. The end of the first disc was a refreshing moment of change in the game. You know, I like when a developer makes the disc change a big deal. It’s like, “this crazy shit just went down! Now YOU have to get UP and change the disc, sucker.” Haha. The classic is after Aeris’ death in FFVII, of course. (true spoilers.) Also, just a note on the music, it’s as good, if not better than the first Shenmue’s. Sets the atmosphere almost profoundly for each area. Simple but very telling songs.

The only bad thing is that since I’m playing a pirated version of the game, the PAL version fixed to play on an NTSC console, specifically, is that I don’t get voices for non-cut-scene dialogue. There IS a version that has all the voices, but they are downsampled and in shitty quality. But I think I’ll just play through this time with the cut-scene-only version. If I ever play the game again in the future, hopefully it will be a full voiced, legitimate version. It does have voice for Ryo’s monologue and special parts, but not for random NPC talk. It kind of sucks because the voice acting in the Shenmue games is, if not fair quality, hilariously executed otherwise. Who knows, maybe I’ll switch in the low quality voice version for the hell of it one of these days. Save files work inbetween the versions which is nice.

Ah, DreamCast, you easily pirate-able machine.
Shenmue II never came out on the Dreamcast for the states. It came on the X-Box. However, it did for PAL and J region for the DC. So this version I’m playing is just a hack for NTSC. It doesn’t have the NPC voices because the discs are larger than the standard 800MB. I can play the full version only if I acquire special 800MB+ CD-Rs (or actually bought an Xbox and the game >_>) so there you have it.

Ryo, I found out you were downloading DreamCast games… for free.

I was going to tell you.

…What burning program should I use?

Uhh…