MIDI Week Singles: "Mitsurin" - Dragon Spirit (TG16)

 

"Mitsurin" from Dragon Spirit on the TurboGrafx-16 (1988)
Composer: Shinji Hosoe
Album: No Official Release for Turbo Grafx-16 Music
Publisher: Namco Ltd, NEC Home Electronics
Developer: Namco Ltd.

I promise you I didn't intentionally choose the same song from Dragon Spirit that I chose from Dragon Spirit: The New Legend almost six years ago.  I was listening to this song and thought pretty much the same thing as I thought then, that this song screams 1980s from beginning to end.  The biggest difference between this song and the one from the NES version is that "Mitsurin" is a little more subdued and just a little less flamboyant and exciting.  It makes sense that the sound chip in the TurboGrafx-16 has smoother sound quality compared to the NES, as it was running a more powerful system and was afforded more audio channels.  It also doesn't completely loop at 0:40 like the NES version and develops a bit more by throwing even more instrumentation in.  I am a bit sad that every version of this song from the TurboGrafx-16 game cuts off right at 1:09, and I couldn't find an extended version, but that's what the replay button is for.

This is still a hella fun song though, so we're using it again.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And the Moonsparkling Sea

First Impressions: ROBMEMBOR (MQ2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for ROBMEMBOR through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

ROBMEMBOR
Systems: Meta Quest 2/3/Pro
Release Date: September 29, 2023
Publisher: Palindrome VR
Developer: Palindrome VR
Time Spent: 39 Minutes 41 Seconds
First Play Playlist on YouTube

I feel like I should have enjoyed ROBMEMBOR more than I did, and I'm disappointed to say that I didn't enjoy it for several reasons.  Although, let's start off with how the game advertises itself.

Navigate the labyrinthine corridors of an elderly woman's mind, whose memories have been broken by Alzheimer's. As the chosen mind-repairer, you will solve puzzles, guided by a witty robot, to piece together the tapestry of her life. Merge technology with empathy to revive beautiful memories from oblivion.

That there sounds like a great experience.  A moderately chill VR video game tackling the topic of Alzheimer's in video game form in a way that doesn't seem to make light of this condition.  The game's title is a portmanteau of the words Robot and Remembor, as you help a robot fit back together the memories of a woman with Alzheimer's disease.  The in-game narration even describes the process and mechanics as similar to an escape room.  On top of that, I have about six years of experience working with people with dementia, Alzheimer's, and in memory care units.  I should have liked this game.  What ended up turning me off from ROBMEMBOR wasn't anything to do with the content, but the execution of the game itself.

One of my biggest problems with the game was that the in-game menu and any dialogue text boxes were physically (virtually?) attached to the head of your robot guide.  This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if the robot didn't move around in the playable area and wobble its head so damn much.  Trying to read the menu screen or text while I was standing still with the screen bobbing about was starting to make me motion sick, something I was not expecting from this game at all.  Even the second time I played, for the short amount of time the menu was visible, I felt my stomach churning.  Thankfully, you're able to minimize the menu screen, and the dialogue disappears after a short while so it's not visible the entire time, but during the tutorial, as you become accustomed to the controls and what you're supposed to do, it seemed somewhat important.

My next issue was with the controls themselves.  In the game, you're basically playing as two floating hands that serve multiple functions.  First, you can pick up and manipulate objects.  By pressing the X/A buttons on their respective controller, you can turn on a transparent/duplicate mode where your hand can pass through objects and duplicate any object you pick up in the process, just by picking it up, leaving the original object in its place.  The third function is that your hand becomes just an outline, and you can swap colors, in the most rudimentary sense, with the object you're touching.  You can also raise both your hands to your head, which will reset the colors of the objects you've altered to their original color.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that in my first time playing, I missed part of the text from the robot about using its head, which I realized while thinking about the game between my first and second time playing.  I can't explain, though, is why the game didn't seem to want to accept my solution the first time (in Part 2), but after exiting and redoing the puzzle (again), it did seem to work.  I also don't know why the game wouldn't let me place the head back on the pedestal after thinking that one head wasn't where it was supposed to be.  That led me to think that there was some kind of glitch, and I needed to either reset the puzzle or just exit out completely.  

That was when I decided to give the freeplay/playground mode a try, but that ended up with its own issues.  To me, there was just too much free rein and not enough direction, but I guess that's kind of the point of a playground.  It really just felt like I could spawn any of the objects from the catalogue and then change their color if I wanted.  I did find out that I could change the environment, but that seemed to have an unintended consequence on the other objects in the room, like the table and the robot, not taking into account the rocky terrain of the moon/tree landscape.  So I went back to the tutorial level.

This time around, I again couldn't tell you what I did differently from the previous attempt, but whatever it was was an acceptable solution, and so I was (finally) taken to the first chapter in the story mode.  I admit that I probably didn't give this first chapter a fair shake in terms of really exploring the room and trying to actually figure out how to solve whatever the puzzle(s) were.  I genuinely thought that the layout of the room was odd and not initially clear on what it was that needed to be done.  Likely something to do with the figurines and the pedestals.  And I probably could have tried to connect the dots.  And done something with the weights and the scale.  By this point, though, my left hand seemed like it had glitched beyond repair, as I wasn't able to cycle through the different functions, and eventually the same happened to my right hand.  I was also starting to feel more and more nauseous from moving around the environment and the robot's bobbing text box.  So I gave up.

I know.  That's bad journalism to stop playing a game after fewer than 60 minutes and only just past the tutorial stage, but I felt like I was playing a game that was buggy and making me physically ill due to a design choice.  I also wasn't having fun due to the aforementioned issues, something that I felt that I should've been experiencing by this point, especially in a VR game that wasn't in the horror genre.  I love the concept of approaching memory loss and Alzheimer's in a video game, and VR does offer the unique experience of the medium, but I just wish that ROBMEMBOR had been a better game than the one I experienced.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
In Four Moons the Antlered One Will Go To Rest

MIDI Week Singles: "Sand Fabrics" - Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix (PS2)

 

"Sand Fabrics" from Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix on the PlayStation 2 (2005)
Composer: Akihiko Hirama
Album: Racing Battle C1 Grand Prix Original Soundtrack
Label: TEAM Entertainment
Publisher: Genki
Developer: Genki

I don't really have much to say about "Sand Fabrics" apart from that I really dig it.  I haven't played Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix, so I don't know if the title is related to anything in-game or if it's just a title that Akihiko Hirama came up with on his own.  "Sand Frabrics" is just a fun, high-energy (trance?) song from a game that I'll likely never play, although a new English translation was released last year.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

Game EXP: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (VSD)

Everybody's Gone to the  Rapture
Systems: PlayStation 4, Windows, Steam OS
Release Date: August 11, 2015 & April 16, 2015
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: The Chinese Room
Time Spent: 10 Hours 42 Minutes

When I first started playing Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, I had intended on filming everything and doing another video walkthrough/playthrough series for the YouTubes, but after my first time playing and just basking in the beauty that The Chinese Room created, I decided that this game and experience was instead going to be just for me.  Granted, there were some caveats as I did film some sequences that I knew I would want to revisit, like The Mourning Tree sequence, as well as the end of the game and the final ascent up to the observatory.  With only a couple of exceptions, I didn't want to have to worry about whether I was getting a good angle on something that was happening or fear that I might have missed something story-wise in-game and would later be chastised by the greater internet community, who are also professional cinematographers.

My biggest critique for Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has nothing to do with the movement speed, which probably won't surprise people who know me, but was with how the story was communicated throughout the game, but that seems to be my general critique with exploration walking-sims where bits of information and story are scattered throughout the playable area.  Here, you have the light that travels around that you're supposed to follow, the lights that appear in locations that you discover yourself, phonebooths that ring, and radios that all transmit information and little story points connecting various characters to each other and the overarching story.  There's a lot that can be missed.  Before passing out of an area, I would constantly worry if I had missed something that was not required to move the game along, but still important to the story.  After playing the game, I did read the Wikipedia article just to make sure that I had gotten the main points of the plot, similar to how I finished Blood Meridian or even perusing YouTube lore videos for Dark Souls II.  There were some finer points of the story that I missed, glossed over, or had just completely forgotten, but I'm thankful that I got the basic gist of what happened.  Except I don't think I registered that the events in Naughton later became a worldwide phenomenon, although you think I would've with the event being right there in the title.

I had wondered if the title was just a metaphor since the player is moving about the world, watching past moments from people's lives as interpreted and broadcast by The Signal.  I also wasn't entirely sure what it was that the player was supposed to be as they wandered through this idyllic English countryside.  There were no legs when you looked down, but that's not entirely uncommon for first-person perspective games, as it's more rare to see legs/feet.  I did notice that when I was moving through water that there were ripples and a sloshing sound, which implied that there were legs attached to this consciousness, but that could've also just been something to do with how movement worked in Cryengine.  I don't know, I'm not a developer, and ultimately, I don't feel that what the player was was necessary to enjoy and take in the story.

I am glad that I played Everybody's Gone to the Rapture at this moment in time.  Had I played it in the before times, my laptop would not have been able to handle the game cranked up to the highest settings.  Plus, the story here revolving around people suddenly experiencing some mysterious illness before dying and in some cases, disappearing completely, does really hit different now in the years following the outbreak of the pandemic.  And, equally so, have been my reactions to the story now that I am a parent.  Seeing an abandoned suitcase along a country road with a lone teddy bear does hit so much harder than it would have just five years ago.  And I'm thankful for that because I love it when a game can have an emotional effect on me, especially little things like that little bear.  Just waiting there.  For the rest of eternity.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "BGM 3" - Mario's Picross (DMG)

 

"BGM 3" from Mario's Picross on the Nintendo Game Boy (1995)
Composer: Unknown
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Jupiter, & Ape Inc.

I've been playing a lot of Mario's Picross from the Game Boy Nintendo Switch Online app-thing a lot since it was released last month (March, 2025) close to around 18 hours and I'm almost 2/3rds of the way through.  During the game there are five possible songs to either choose from manually or let the game cycle through them and for whatever reason, I seem to hear "BGM 3" more frequently than the rest.  Or, more likely, I enjoy this one the most out of the others so I just happen to notice it more regularly.

I don't have a good reason for liking this song as much as I do.  Maybe because sections are more easily hummable than others or that I almost don't even recognize this song during the first 35 seconds so when 0:35 does crop up, my brain is like, "Yeah, this song!"  I guess that's just music for ya.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Well Maybe You Doing Your Best

First Impressions: Same Room Same Day (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Same Room Same Day through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Same Room Same Day
Systems: Windows, macOS, SteamOS, Android
Release Date: September 17, 2024
Publisher: Bugi Games
Developer: Bugi Games
Time Spent: 49 Minutes
First Play Videos on YouTube

Yeah, I know I didn't spend even an hour playing Same Room Same Day (SRSD), but after playing as much as I did and even then seeing the games difficulty curve rising steeply before me, not to mention the level/stage design choices (which we'll mention in a bit), I knew that I wasn't going to finish the game and unlock the coveted "Psychotherapist - Complete the Game" achievement that only 16.3% of players have managed to do.

At its core, I really liked the premise of Same Room Same Day and its novel approach to crafting an excuse for this first-person shooter.  In SRSD, you play as a psychotherapist who is helping their patient Rosaline through traumatic events in her past.  The game explicitly states in-game that "This game serves as a metaphor for what happens between the psychotherapist and Rosaline, the traumas she experienced during the sessions, and how much it helped her."  I don't think that the game is saying that therapy is akin to sprinting through a hellscape, shotgunning demonic-like creatures while injecting yourself with healing additives, so I don't believe there to be either any animosity towards therapists or a dumbing down of the important work that most therapists do; that's just my theory.  But as for what each of the enemies in this game is supposed to represent, you've got me there.  Or you might if I had actually managed to make it through the game and had read more/all of the pages of notes that preceded each chapter/level.

Where I fell off of Same Day Same Room was the apparent inconsistency in difficulty; or it could just be that I need to git gud, just like in HELLBREAK.  I started the game on Normal difficulty because that seemed the safest bet for my skill level in controller player first-person shooters.  But then, when I started growing frustrated with my own skill and the overall difficulty in the game, I jammed it up to Extreme, and not only did I not notice the game being significantly more difficult, I actually made it through the room that was giving me grief.  THEN, in what seemed to be the final room in chapter/level 2, I knocked the difficulty all the way down to Easy because of how cheap that last group of swarming enemies after you take out the two flying monstrosities, and I was still getting my ass handed to me.  And it didn't feel like a Steam Deck-related skill issue either, although I'm not prideful enough to totally discount that as a possibility.  I also want to throw in there that the lack of an aiming reticle felt like a deliberate choice and not an oversight, and a decision that definitely led me to wasting ammo in that last fight; which in turn required me to reload more frequently and take more damage, which required me to use up more of the healing injections.  After a couple more attempts, I threw in the proverbial towel.  

I knew that as difficult as the game was at that point, I was not likely to join the other 16.3% of players who had beaten the game to uncover the full story behind Rosaline's trauma and her path to healing.  I enjoyed some aspects of Same Room Same Day, like the lack of importance in the background, the focus on the enemies, and the combat.  I guess you could say I liked the art direction, but the difficulty curve, coupled with specific enemy design and placement, has halted my progression. 

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Rise and Prevail" - Fallout 4 (PC)

 

"Rise and Prevail" from Fallout 4 on Windows, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S (2015-2024)

Composer: Inon Zur

Album: Fallout 4 Original Game Soundtrack

Label: Bethesda Softworks

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios

I know there's a lot of online hate for music in Fallout 4 that will crop up when you get into battles (or battles fall upon you while you're trying to peacefully explore a desolate wasteland.  I haven't found out if there's a specific time when a specific song will play, say when you're being attacked by raiders versus gunners versus super mutants versus the Children of Atom, et cetera.  Maybe there isn't some cue that the game puts out and just randomly picks one of the tracks labeled fo4music_battle-05, but when "Rise and Prevail" starts playing, it will always bring a smile to my heart.

Granted, at this point, there aren't a lot of combat encounters in the game that make me anxious, except for maybe a Legendary Assaultron in close quarters.  Or maybe if I'm surrounded by a lot of the Children of Atom and they're pummeling me with their gamma guns and energy guns, although I am building up my radiation resistance after completing most of the quests in Far Harbor; canonically it makes sense after how much RadAway I had Jacqueline consume throughout that DLC.  But anyway, I really do love how heroic and uplifting "Rise and Prevail" gets at 0:32, and that carries me through the battle.  

Unless I accidentally backpedal off the top of a building in downtown Boston or forget to check my health before running headlong into a room filled with lasers.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Got the Music in My Soul

Nintendo's Switch 2 Direct: Reaction, Thoughts, and Analysis

My original idea was to take notes during the Switch 2 Direct and then write it down into some semblance of an article, but that would really just be adding more words to what was already here, and let's be honest.  This is just a more distilled form of what the article could have been, and really that's all that we need.  There were a lot more games announced during this Direct, but the ones I listed were the ones that either caught my attention, or ones that I felt I was excited to eventually play, so please don't be (too) upset if I didn't list something that you yourself thought was more interesting than the Project 007 name-drop barest hint of a teaser.

Switch 2 Direct

• Mario Kart World
• Grand Prix
• Knockout Tour
• Free Roam
• 24 Racers
• Joy-Con Controllers
• Larger controller
• Larger joystick
• Hall effect joysticks?
• C Button
• GameChat
• Voice Chat
• Screen Sharing
• Looks very laggy on little screens
• Can display different games
• Switch 2 Camera
• Video Chat Functionality
• Online Membership Required
• Free Access through March 25, 2026
• GameShare
• Share compatible games with up to 3 other systems at one time
• Switch 2 System
• 7.9-inch screen
• 1080p Screen
• Up to 120 fps
• LCD & HDR Support
• Magnet Joy-Cons
• Larger SL/SR buttons
• Larger control sticks
• Mouse controls 
• Two USB-C Ports
• 256 GB Internal Storage
• Dock w/ 4K Support w/ Compatible Games
• Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour
• Launches as a paid digital game
• Great concept, horrible idea to charge for it.
• Red Game Cards
• Only Micro SD Express Cards will function w/ NS2
• Can Transfer Data from Switch to Switch 2
• New Switch 2 Pro Controller w/ 2 additional GR/GL back buttons
• Launches on June 5, 2025
• Play 3 Types of Games
• NS2 Games
• Compatible NS Games
• Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
• Select Games will be upgraded
• Upgrade pack purchase required
• Smart Phone app compatibility with BotW & TotK
• Metroid Prime 4 can use mouse controls
• Drag x Drive
•  murderball  x basketball
• Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 & 4
• Project 007
• Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remastered
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
• Probably the most excited I was as far as game announcements in this Direct.
• Doubly excited that the current word is that this game is considered canon.
• Nintendo Switch Online
• Same Membership Package between NS & NS2
• Nintendo GameCube exclusive to NS2
• Launch Titles
• LoZ: Wind Waker
• SoulCalibur II
• F-Zero GX
• Future Titles
• Super Mario Sunshine
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness
• Super Mario Strikers
• Chibi-Robo
• Luigi's Mansion
• Pokemon Colosseum
• Dedicated GameCube Controller
• Will NYXI Wizard Controller be compatible?  Some signs are pointing to "yes?"
• CyberPunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
• Star Wars Outlaws
• Borderlands 4
• REANIMAL
• Professor Layton and the New World of Steam
• The Duskbloods (FromSoftware, NS2 exclusive)
• Wait, it's multiplayer!? =( As in Dark Souls type multiplayer, or Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure type multiplayer?
• Prices
• Base Unit: $449
• Mario Kart World Bundle: $499
• Digital copy of Mario Kart World included, not a physical game.
• Preorder Starts April 9th
• As of Friday, April 4th, Nintendo has delayed the original pre-order date of April 9th to an as-yet-unknown future date as a direct result of the Trump administration's blanket tariffs, although the release date of June 5th is still predicted to be accurate.
• Receive notification of pre-order starting May 8th through Nintendo's website.
• Have to have:
• Nintendo Account
• Online Membership for at least 12 months
• Opted in to share gameplay data
• Have at least 50 hours of gameplay
• How will price be affected by the Trump administration's tariffs?

So that's it, really.  There'll probably be more information as we approach April 9th (that's my theory), and as more details and fallout from our embarrassment of a president's decision to further alienate the rank and file citizenry of the United States from the rest of the world becomes louder.  I don't want to say or speculate that people's displeasure at a potentially higher cost video game console and video games/consoles in general going forward for the foreseeable future is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but we can only hope that there'll be more than mere ripples.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
You Got Problems

Monthly Update: April, 2025

 

Well, a lot happened there at the end of March.  There was the Nintendo Direct on March 27th, then there was the Switch 2 Direct on Wednesday, April 2nd (which, as of this specific sentence, hasn't happened yet).  In the March 27th Direct, I started making a list of the games that interested me and by the end, I realized how old I am; I mean, I know how old I am, but looking at my list of what interested me really hit home that I'm of a different generation than what it felt like the main focus of Nintendo's marketing arm.  The Dragon Quest I & II 2D-HD Remake, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered, and then the news about the Nintendo Today news app and the Virtual Game Cards (although there're still plenty of questions I have about that beyond being able to lend digital copies of games to people in your family network.  So two remakes, and a sequel to a 40-year-old franchise (The whole of the Metroid franchise, not just the 23-year-old Metroid Prime franchise).

And there was a lot to cover in that hour-long presentation, but then on Thursday there was also a four hour-long Nintendo Treehouse: Live presentation where several of the games announced in the Switch 2 Direct were played for 15-20 minutes a piece; probably similar to the demos that a lot of publications played immediately after the initial presentation.  I enjoyed both presentations for what they were, although I had hoped there would be more first-party Switch 2 exclusives to be excited about.  But huge shoutout to Nintendo for featuring one of their announcement titles,  Drag x Drive which looked like Murderball meets basketball, but just the fact that it's a video game featuring all players in wheelchairs; don't tell the Trump administration or they're likely to sue Nintendo of America for not doing away with any semblance of DEI initiatives.  But we'll cover the Switch 2 presentation in greater detail on Monday.

You know, we actually covered a lot of games last month, with about half I wasn't able to finish for various reasons specific to the specific game, but there were some good games in there too.  S4U: CityPunk 2011: and Love Punch, DeathOmen, and Ashen Arrows were the highlights although with some caveats.

Conklederp and I are finally watching Skeleton Crew (although I had already watched the first four episodes while donating platelets a few months back)  and have been really enjoying this Star Wars take on 80's kid-centered adventure Goonies-style story telling and we're alos looking forward to the second season of Andor; although I'm still not on board with the release schedule of three episodes released every Tuesday, with all 12 episodes being released by May 13th.  I'm sure there's a reason behind Disney's decision, but I just don't like it.  I'm also in the camp of not liking an entire season released on Netflix on day 1.  Again, it's likely because I'm old and grew up in the era of episodic TV where there was one episode released once a week for 22 weeks, and if you missed an episode, you might be able to catch it whenever your local affiliate decided to show reruns.  It's a thing, ask your local Xennial. However, I feel like my older sister (she's 2.5 years older) and I are of different generations, whereas I feel closer to the Millennial generation that Dr. Potts and The Kid (she's 7 years younger than I) are a part of.

Let's cap it there, and we'll see y'all on Monday.  I woke up and my back hurts after all.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Rise Again" - Ragnaröck (MQ2)

"Rise Again" from Ragnaröck on the Meta Quest 2, Windows, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR (2021)
Composer: Equilibrium
Album: Armageddon
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Publisher: WanadevStudio
Developer: WanadevStudio

I know, this isn't the best performance by me in this song.  I didn't get silver and I didn't even beat my previous best, but what I lacked in skill during this playthrough I feel like I made up in gusto by the sheer fact that sections of this are difficult to tell what the hell's going on because the screen (ie, the Quest 2 headset) is shaking so damn much.  That's not good television there, but it I feel the energy does come across.  Tell me that that doesn't come across when the blast beats start at 3:45.  And you know, despite only getting a bronze on this attempt, I nailed a few sections like 2:07 - 2:40 and 2:50 - 3:03.  I can be proud of that.

A little bit of additional context for this video was that I first tried three songs that had been added to Ragnarock that I hadn't played yet, and I started to record an attempt on those songs, but I just bombed it.  Each one on the middle difficulty was absolute garbage, so I thought I would play "Rise Again" again since I love Equilibrium, and this playthrough did lift my spirits a lot.  I just can't help but smile for the majority of the song.  Even if I end up missing eight of 1,319 beats.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental