Note wrote:I've played a bit of Mega Man X the past two days, and am still working on the maverick levels. So far, I've finished the Chill Penguin, Storm Eagle, Armed Armadillo, Flame Mammoth, and Spark Mandrill. I think I've picked up all the upgrades, heart tanks, and sub tanks in each of these levels, but I'll have to check again. This is my first playthrough of the game and really enjoying it so far. The first play session was a bit rough, but after referencing a guide to help figure out what weapons certain bosses were weak to, and how to get a few upgrades, that helped a lot and made the game much more manageable. I had Mega Man X2 upon release but never owned the first title until recently, so it's been fun to finally play it.
I think the first Mega Man X is the best of the SNES X trilogy. It's an awesome action platformer with a lot of charm and polish. A must play, really.
Note wrote:A few weeks ago I also started playing Donkey Kong Country again. This is one of my favorite platformers on the SNES, the graphic style and music are great, and gameplay is just a lotta fun. My sister and I used to play this together growing up and always had a blast. I'm up to the Kremkroc Industries area, and was a few levels in but didn't make it to the save point before I got a game over screen, so I'll have to redo that area. I was playing casually and missed a lot of the hidden areas and items to collect, so I'll have to go back later on. Enjoying this one again as well!
Ah. there's so many jerk birds in this game! Even a couple in boss form. Such a classic platformer. You can say it's overrated, or that it's outshined by the sequels, but it's still an excellent 16-bit platformer worth playing. It's still beautiful to look at, and the music is still as great as ever.
I actually just replayed DKC1 as well, using the "restored" MSU-1 music hack. Long story short...
Jammin' Sam Miller is hunting down the original samples, then reconstructing the tunes so that we can hear what they sound like before they were compressed for the SNES. The result is very interesting. Since it's the same samples used, it sounds just like the game (and not a cover or something) but it's loads more clear. The MSU-1 is an enhancement chip created by Byuu for the SNES (you can use it on the emulator bsnes or with the Sd2snes flash cart) that can stream audio and video. So basically, these are recreations of the original tunes using the authentic samples but at CD quality audio, then with the MSU-1 hack you can play the game with these CD quality tunes. AFAIK, he's still working on some of the tunes for DKC2 and DKC3, so I haven't tried those yet. But I played through DKC1 with this hack and had a blast with it.