Together Retro 2026 (1/1 - 4/30) - MMX, D&D, KotOR, SMB

[MrPopo]

After that, I thought I'd try out Mandriller, but that thing just does too much damage, and avoiding falling into it after doing the wall punch feels really tight on timing. Barely even see the wind-up most of the time.

Are you doing buster only or something? Because Mandrill just goes down like an utter bitch to his weakness since you can keep him stunlocked with the right timing; worst he'll manage to pull off is his lightning that crawls along the floor which is easy to dodge.

[pierrot]

Are you doing buster only or something?

Not by design, I just never remember the weaknesses for the stage bosses in X games, because I feel like they rarely make much sense. So it just kind of works out that way. I also always seem to think of Ice Shot as just stopping him for a second, and not really doing much damage.


Speaking of which, I finished up the stage bosses the other day. Went through Eagleed's stage (which I'm not a fan of), and took it out very easily with the buster. I remember struggling mightily with Eagle when I was playing X on an emulator in middle school, and that seems to have stuck with me for some reason because I generally think of Eagle being really tough, but it is most definitely not. After that I went to deal with Mandriller, and that was also a lot easier to just buster the hell out of than I was thinking. Seems pretty weak to buster anyway, and if I stuck to the walls more, it was a lot easier to dodge his wall charge. Finally went back to Octopuld. I resorted to boomeranging its tentacles and hitting it with Eagleed's weapon.

After that, I had started the Sigma stages, but was getting pretty pissed off with the initial platform climb. Eventually realized Eagleed's weapon helps here. Still pretty annoying, though. Was also having a bitch of time with the Amida-kuji spider, so after finally beating it, and dying a handful of times on the pits early in Sigma 2, I called it for the night. Went back to it the next night, and struggle bussed my way to Sigma. After a while on Sigma, I was getting pretty tired of how long his second form takes (and not really having enough weapon energy for more than two attempts of a slightly quicker way than with the buster), so I went to grab the Hadouken to take out the dog and Sigma's first form quickly for repeat attempts at second-form. Eventually I got used to second-forms attacks, and my final attempt was a pretty smooth take-down where I don't think I needed more than one reserve tank, if even that.

So, I definitely didn't like Mega Man X as much this time around. I think part of that is how much I've grown to prefer the original series, and also how much Sigma's stages took out of me this time; I felt like they were a lot more time consuming, and I struggled more with them than any time previously, outside of when I played it in middle school for the first time. (My final completion time seems to have probably been somewhere around five hours, but I don't really know how that compares to when I played it on an SFC cart, or the Maverick Hunter X version.)

Some things I wanted to mention about the Legacy Collection (only just realized that it's only the "Anniversary Collection" in JP) on PC: It's not tremendously optimized for PC, which is kind of unfortunate, but there are a number of extras along with trophies. I don't think it's a terrible way to play, but it basically seems to not be compatible at all with non-16:9 displays. For the Steamdeck, I can set it to windowed, and it will keep its proper rendered aspect ratio but with black bars. Any other setting tries to stretch to fill the 16:10 screen, though. Also, it was kind of annoying to realize that button configuration in the in-game options doesn't get saved, so they still have to be changed every time. Other than that, the scanline filter adds some random noise that actually kind of resembles an old CRT, which is cool on the smaller Deck screen (reminds me a little of the Sega Nomad). Not sure how good it would look on my desktop display, though.



So, part of me kind of wants to play through the rest of the X games on the collection; I've never really played more than a few stages of X2, it's been a long time since I played X3 on the Saturn, and I've completed X4 on PS1 and Saturn and could really always go for another spin. I think I'm going to forgo that for a while, though.

I was going to start on the D&Ds after finishing MMX, but I think I'm going to hold off on it until I get the Octopus arcade stick, since it should be arriving to me at some point before long--I guess they were starting to ship them on the 15th of Dec.

It might be a bit of a coin-flip between KotOR and Monkey Ball, but I'm kind of leaning toward starting Monkey Ball next.

[pierrot]

Well, I've been playing Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania for a bit, which is much more aptly titled (Ripened!) Super Monkey Ball 1+2 Remake in Japanese, and after playing a little bit I got really curious about to what extent it's a remake. I never really found any clear, detailed information, but essentially it seems to be a translation of the content in Super Monkey Ball Deluxe into Unity assets. I've been playing the story mode, which I guess comes from Super Monkey Ball 2, and instead of the movies in the original, it plays out in a kind of weird slide panel presentation. I assume it doesn't make much difference, but I don't really understand what's happening with the story.

At any rate, I'm on world nine of ten in the story, and the stages have been pretty unsavory in the last couple worlds. As a result my progress has slowed quite a bit the last week or so--I've actually been playing a little bit of Katamari Damashi Rerolled instead, lately. Aside from the Story mode, there's Challenge modes for SMB 1 and 2, and it seems like these challenge stages are basically all that existed for SMB 1 (It's a game I've tried to play through in the past, but I just never really remember anything about). I did start the SMB 1 challenge stages at one point, and they're pretty decent, but I stopped at about stage 11 because I had to do something else, and never went back to it. From what I can tell, they're exactly the SMB1 stages, though.

There are also party games in Mania, but I haven't spent any time on them. In my little bit of research I kind of found that the primary thing people seem to really like about SMB in general is the Monkey Target party game, but the translation to Unity physics apparently didn't go so well and people seem to hate it there. I've played a couple minutes of Monkey Target in the past, and I guess I could understand the appeal, but--.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll eventually finish the last 17-ish stages I have left in the story mode, but for now, I actually got my new Octopus arcade stick in today, so I'll probably take D&D Tower of Doom for a spin with it tomorrow.

[pierrot]

Looking back through the old TR threads, it's kind of funny that it takes about half the thread before it got past the talking-about-starting-the-game phase. At least for the MMX and SMB threads.

The first post I saw from someone who had started playing was pretty relateable:

I played Super Monkey Ball 2 for a while tonight and made it to the second level of the third world.
I'm not quite sure if I am fully getting it but it seems that luck plays a large role in the game and I really don't know exactly how I passed some levels.
I will admit that I love looking for jumps and shortcuts to get the best time for each course... but some courses I am just happy to get to the end.

I'm still not sure if I'm diggin this game or not.

I didn't really experience the feeling of clearing stages by dumb luck until much later, but it does kinda be like that.


I also found this pretty interesting post with a possible context link to a target reference I don't entirely undertand. (Was this an article on the main page at one point?)

I'll have to order my copy tomorrow but I'll definitely be taking part in this month's TR.

well I'd hope so, you wrote the book post on the topic: http://www.racketboy.com/together-retro ... -ball.html

Lol, from memory. I used to date a girl who loved it. Then she cheated on me and I sold my copy to buy a bottle of wine to drink with another girl.

Edit: Ahah, I actually found it (must have changed when the hosting was moved over): https://racketboy.com/together-retro/to ... onkey-ball
I guess I may as well add these old TR articles to the OP.

[Ack]

As someone who never played the Monkeyball games, how do they hold up? And what are other games they remind you of?

[pierrot]

Kinda hard for me to say. As I mentioned, I've tried playing the original Super Monkey Ball on GC for multiple summer games challenges and never been able to stick with it long enough. In Banana Mania, I'm on World 9-5 of the story mode (which more or less comes from SMB2), and I'm pretty close to giving up on it. I will probably try to actually complete the SMB1 challenge stages before completely dropping it, either way, since I feel like those stages are less outright stupid, but I think the story mode stages are only really "fun" for the first handful of worlds. Even then, there are quite a few of those story stages that just either feel like babytown-frolics or a new, more colorful brand of sadism.

Anyway, not that I've played any of them, but I noticed some people in the old TR thread mention Marble Madness, Kororinpa, etc. Mercury Meltdown is probably another similar game. I think it might be most aptly described as an evolution of Marble Madness (with monkeys in capsule toy balls) where you have some control over the gradient of the play field instead of the ball.


Oh! I also played through Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom via the Chronicles of Mystara release. Using my new Octopus Fight Stick with it was a delight. Took me about 32 credits, with my Elf reaching level 9 by the end. I like Tower of Doom, whereas I loved Shadow over Mystara, but something about the presentation in the Chronicles of Mystara release kind of makes it feel like a downgrade from the Saturn version for me (even when considering the load times in the Saturn release). All of the filters look truly abhorrent. Unfortunately, I realized after looking up why I was forced to play the English ROM that there was a physical release of Chronicles of Mystara on the PS3 in Japan that was put together by some of the original staff, instead of Iron Galaxy. I'm fairly curious how that version turned out, but I tried not to focus too much on it so that I might still be able to get some enjoyment out of the Steam version.

I'll probably play through Mystara some time in the next few days.

[o.pwuaioc]

As someone who never played the Monkeyball games, how do they hold up? And what are other games they remind you of?

Now you can try it for free:

https://monkeyball-online.pages.dev/

[Note]

Just wanted to post a brief update that I also played through Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom a few weeks back. I played through the Sega Saturn port. And despite some of the loading times, I really enjoyed it. I played as the Dwarf character, who has a shorter reach but I believe his attack speed is the quickest.

The game has a lot going for it, with great sprite based graphics, a good soundtrack, branching paths and bonus areas, and an intuitive control scheme and item system. I think it took me about an hour or an hour and a half to get through the whole game. It's interesting to read pierrot's take on the Mystara Collection version, and the differences. The only downside for me playing on the Saturn version are all the cutscenes have JP text, which I can't read. Once I get a new phone, I can perhaps install the Google Translate app with the camera feature to translate the text on screen.

Would love to play this in co-op with my fiancé or a friend sometime and looking forward to getting into Shadow over Mystara in the next few weeks.

[pierrot]

Nice! The Dwarf can't use any magic other than rings, right? I find I kind of need to spam magic spells with Elf in Tower of Doom to have a decent time, heh. Friggin Hellhounds are a nightmare, also. They must be blasted with magics for their transgressions.

I read in your review that you went Dragon path, and I'm pretty sure I also did that when I played through on the Saturn, but this time I chickened out when it asked me 'Are you really, REALLY sure?' I think it still lead me into a fight with a Beholder, which was no fucking picnic either. (Maybe it was just a refight with a Manticore, though. I can't remember now.)

I still haven't started up Mystara yet, though. Maybe tomorrow.

[Note]

Yeah, the dwarf can only use magic from rings. I found one earlier on and just saved it for emergency situations. I'll have to try the elf character next to get an idea of what having access to a lot of magic would be like. Lol, the Hellhounds are definitely a pain.

In regards to the path taken throughout the game, since the dialogue was in JP, I really didn't know what I was selecting. I just went for the first option in each dialogue choice and figured I'd see where it takes me.