☆20240318 my favourite onion games so far :) except for the racial stereotype character lol... but it's pretty cool how they manage to squeeze so much out of the genghiskhan(?)/flappybird formula. i'd recommend playing in short bursts and not grind too much for the special boss characters, but the rng can still be a pain even then!

☆20240316 silly lain dance. didn't understand the mechanics/strategy behind the shooting minigame but hey i beat it

☆20240308 i like how stupid the ai is. i wish you could play this with a friend. def style over substance but not a bad thing

☆20240306 surprisingly solid for a christian myst clone made by a dude! like it taught me how to use a bible and its game loop is pretty well thought out. it suffers from some rushed choices in term of presentation but that only makes it more endearing. i really liked the midi music. i missed a lil bit of story/better integration of its puzzle mechanics within the world (though they def manage to make you link concepts from the bible in yr mind), which is something i really like to see in myst likes.

☆20240305 oh i'm sad there's seemingly so little info online about what seemed to be a pretty important game for its time! this got translated to so many languages is unreal, and it was a little bit hard to find a working english-language copy. but it's really really good! the way the hand-drawn backgrounds contrasts with the crispy fmv for the humans and the cool as hell 90s cgi makes it one of my favourite visual styles in a game ever. the author truly loved stories and its characters and you know i'm a sucker for pieces that just *get* it. it just makes me so sad how forgotten this is, damn it's kinda like girls' media just tend to be ignored over time for some reason no matter how big their numbers of copies sold

☆20240304 i thought i was gonna vibe more w this than with ghosts but it tries to include too many different types of urban legends and there's no christopher lee in it sooo anywho. the skeptic vs truther angle is lost which i also didn't like! and it really does not get into detail at all (albeit i'd admit ghosts could get way too redundant at times)...i found myself looking up the wikipedia pages for many of the mysteries touched upon which is cool but i can't help but think that probably wasn't as ideal in the mid 90s... the x-files vibe with the british workbook listening practice narrator voice didn't match too well i think. the notes about the devs being happy about their new studio were really cute, and they were already advertising a new game about ants in the manual for this, but i do not think it ever got released, which makes me really sad.

☆20240301 i wasn't expecting this kind of puzzle game at all! it gets hard hard. i love dream themes in my games and this one definitely managed to capture how dream mechanics work without going into the weird/bizarre like many works out there, which i found to be a pretty fresh take. and i loved how the town also worked as a reflection of a child's psyche.... it's also hard to find stories about parents divorcing from the kid and their friends' pov so i really appreciated this. addie's quest can drag on for a bit but the way everything gets resolved at the end truly elevates the whole experience... i thought it was interesting to see sony produce this type of thing nearing the end of the playstation's life, and seeing that the puzzles are actually in english and how it has no voiceovers it's interesting that it wasn't localized, but thankfully we have a really charming fantran now! i like when she says jeepers :). i wish more people outside of japan would play this.

☆20240226 i love my girls but i'm glad it's over over OVER now. i definitely hated the new alien wars angle so i'm gonna pretend i didn't see it. hinamizawa bus stop was pretty interesting though, it's crazy to think how such a small theatre drama could become a +100hr piece even after being rejected at first, like you gotta give ryukishi props for not giving up. the dev rooms were really insightful too! i just love hearing about what makes devs tick...

☆20240221 i'm so happy we can emulate epoch's cassette vision now! i spent a whole day manually formatting the games' sprites into the emulator's code with a friend but it was worth it. yosaku stands out as one of the more unique games for the console even though it is an unauthorized copy of an earlier snk arcade game which is considered lost for now. all in all it is pretty fun to play, and i like how it plays the yosaku enka song :) i also played the other games for a bit, but i couldn't truly understand the sports ones nor monster block. elevator panic and astro command were highlights too, even if the former's jumps were particularly finicky

☆20240220 played both mac and dos version and i'd recommend going w mac, mouse controls are so much better for interface-based games such as this one. it's pretty good, it took me a while to win the game and made me compromise my own ideas at times so i could comply with what was promised at the start of my term... trying to manage my country's relations with the two blocs was esp interesting. this type of game makes me think of the... difference in maturity? between console games and computer games in the same era. which makes sense considering their userbases and the categorization of consoles as toys, you know! but it's still such a stark contrast...

☆20240217 NOT a glorified wallpaper...! i mean it's kinda that but it also has a pretty interesting layer of realistic simulation on top, with some confusing systems at play esp if you're not good w japanese, but super interesting nonetheless. the small amount of options when it comes to fish/customization saddened me, and after a look at my manual i realized this was an append disc-based product since they already tease the angel fish (not included w the main release) in the last page, which would be included w the first append... i found that to be a bit disappointing tbh, but thankfully it's 2024 and i can simply download those off the interweb. it's pretty relaxing to have it running on the side, and captures the aquarium feeling quite well...

☆20240216 played this because a real 1999 game being based off the y2k problem seemed p interesting but this is probably one of the most rushed games in terms of content i have ever played (though it's not too buggy so props 2 the devs for being able to finish the product in time). the runtime is pretty damn short and most of interactable objects in the world only prompt the same annoying and overly long response from the super rude asshole protagonist (what was wrong w him??). the dialogues are too long and say nothing most of the time? the original idea feels wasted as well, like this is the most straightforward point n click ever and doesn't do anything with the concept apart from ooo machine got crazy (and not even like anything relevant on a global scale, it's just some dude on a mansion???). also the mc looks like the virgin walk meme. not the good kind of kusoge i'm afraid

☆20240210 another synergy-produced cd-rom, this time with hiroyuki miura as the director (who was a visual/3d artist in refixion, l-zone (my beloved <3) and tetsujin). i found the usual point n click ordeal to mix quite well with the real time item-oriented strategy combat, but the experience is so streamlined that i don't feel like it truly takes advantage of the pnc part - i kept thinking how fun it could've been that you could return to a difficult battle with new objects to experiment with, but the game only ever lets you continue after every necessary item has been picked... it's also way too short and ends on a cliffhanger, which is made worse by the fact that two sequels were produced, but not translated into english! oh well

☆20240209 imagine the look on my face when i randomly downloaded an iso of some shovelwarey edutainment title and got greeted by christopher lee lmao... his narration is great, the art is very good and i appreciate how they give some lore to the glorified encyclopedia that is the house. however... the game makes us believe that we're going to find contrasting opinions wrt ghosts being fake/real, but it is too biased towards the later with only one true skeptic in the group of ~experts~ that got interviewed. which is pretty funny considering the fakeness of the stories being told being quite clear - the more information they gave me about the einfield poltergeist case the more convinced i got that it was all staged. moreover, i would've appreciated that the original stories for the house did a lil more than being non interactive slideshows with lee's voice on top. the inclusion of the ghost encyclopedia was a nice touch, and i found the overt britishness of it all to be quite charming...

☆20240207 i'm not the biggest dragon's lair-like fan but i gotta say this might be one of the better ones. the simplicity of the qte-based design works surprisingly well w the illusion of maneuvering a car, i found myself predicting what the next prompt would be according to what was going on @ the fmv, which cannot be said about many other games in this style! plus its timing windows are not too strict, so it's all in all pretty affordable difficulty-wise. it still suffers from the repetitiveness that comes with the genre, but i still had a fun time with it.

☆20240129 the power-up system is pretty novel but it can also be pretty hit or miss since blindly picking them can screw you over by making you miss a giga ball or a shield, but it also adds this layer of strategy to it by having some levels where certain powerups can prove to be a nuisance. sadly it gets too repetitive when they start running out of ideas for the stages. it took me a while to realize why the first girl you play against looked so familiar!

☆20240128 rare 90s shmup with the right amount of challenge that still manages to be pretty fun. super cool presentation that genuinely made me go :0 at the sight of some of its effects that idk how they managed to pull off.

☆20240127 fascinating. dunno what i expected but it tackles so much at once and pulls it off so well and manages to keep it all cohesive and i just love this, it changed my outlook in life. genuinely made me feel like i was having a one on one conversation with its dev, like i could truly understand where they were coming from, the thought process they had while working on their project... i cried so much in a good way. it's a passionate love letter to the medium and to fiction and to their characters and to creators and to players and to their own stories alike. it reinforces the fact that pure enough hearts can touch upon others' by simply not being afraid to expose their soul, an idea that keeps me going.

☆20240123 needy girl overdose's 1st fandisc. the presentation is fun and the minigames are what it says on the tin, with the amechan visual novel being the highlight. this vn, though super short, lets us see more of ame as her own character than her shallow representation as yr quirky menhera gf in the original game... it left me with some thoughts on the subject about how ~you will never be her~ because she is, after all, still an unattainable videogame character wrote by men for you to project into, and the self-awareness of it all

☆20240118 it is way too simple and easy and repetitive. once you manage to dodge/defeat each enemy type there's no difficulty in it at all. i wonder how hideki kamiya-san managed to get the guiness record for this considering how boring it gets, with it being more of a demonstration of patience than of skills i'd say. it's still fun for a while though, with most of its charm being around its visual style, with the froggy powerup probably being the most memorable thing in this.

☆20240112 1cc'd, didn't get the best ending still. it's not too difficult but i wish i was smart enough to fully exploit the combo system. story is way too edgy but i don't really mind that. the little setpieces and and hidden secrets were a lot of fun to find too, esp with everything going on at the same time!

☆20240111 it's truly impressive it is ville kallio's first foray into gamedev afaik, like he GETS it. hats off for going with an aesthetic usually only seen as alt games' visuals and turn it into a more conventional game genre but not without its quirks, it's also pretty wack and revolting and alienating in its game design thankfully! like you can tell this is an immersive sim inspired by deus ex's mine stacking but amped up to the max. it's pretty cool.

☆20240104 it's sokoban! it's amazing how so many modern titles could take so much from this seemingly simple puzzle game made by a single hobbyist in the early 80s. sadly there's so many weird decisions in this one, with the limited continues in a trial and error-based game being the most glaring issue... but it gets worse. around the middle of the game they suddenly throw in a new mechanic where you have to pixel hunt blocks to break so you can solve the puzzle, which also make them way easier but also even more tedious to navigate. i don't think they used said mechanic again in any of the following games so at least they realized it wasn't a good feature i guess!

☆20240102 pretty solid all around and rly novel control scheme if you play with touch controls, which i recommend doing! apart from that it doesn't bring much new to the table though, but it's pretty fun. dunno about the antivaxxer valensia lyrics tho

☆20240101 completely obliterated my pc :( it's not what i usually play but it was very good. having the player look out real closely for anomalies while building up a jumpscare that might never come works great.