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[BikeRacks]

Huh, what a coincidence. I just finished playing that less than a week ago.

I'm finding the old school NES version of the game very unforgiving.

[Akura]

Some old woman tried to mug me. I resisted, she attacked me with a knife. After punching her in the face a few times, several more people tried shanking me. Eventually my leg broke, and I tried running into the city hall. Didn't help, and the cops did nothing about it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Shadows of Doubt.

[Telgin]

Killed by a psychic spaghetti-o, or cheerio or something.

Mother Brain fight, Metroid.  Wow, what a coincidence that several others mentioned it recently.  Rant on my experience:

Spoiler: Rant (click to show/hide)

I've never played any Metroid games, so I randomly decided to try it on the Switch's virtual console.  I'd say I "beat" it, but it was more that I "experienced" it with the help of the emulator's save states and rewind feature.  Life is too short to play it normally.

The lack of a map is probably the biggest issue with the game overall, compounded by the fact that many rooms reuse pieces to save memory and it makes it very, very easy to get lost or think you've been in a room when you haven't.  I eventually had to just look up a map to find Kraid, though I got lucky and found Ridley on my own.

Kraid was one of the cheapest boss fights I've seen in a game, and I ultimately just had to damage boost and spam missiles because I have no idea how you're supposed to hurt him.  Ridley was a chump.  There's a spot you can stand to hit him where he can't hit you back, so you just hold the attack button down and he dies.  Mother Brain was a colossal pain in the butt, where it was almost impossible to aim at the meat shields while dodging the spaghetti-os, and those spaghetti-os did a ton of damage even with the varia upgrade.  After dying, I spent forever farming missiles to try again, until I broke down and looked up a better way to farm them, which was killing metroids.  I didn't even know you could kill them since nothing seemed to hurt them, but I guess if you spammed stuff at them you might figure out you can freeze them and kill them with missiles.  Hope you didn't pick up the wave beam upgrade!

The game definitely shows its age, and I don't want to blame it too much since it is 37 years old, but man, I'm pretty sure I'd have broken something in rage if I played this as a kid.  Getting lost sucked, but you can make a map yourself.  Getting stuck under crap while in the lava with no way to get back out without dying, however, just plain sucks.  Rooms that are impossible to enter without getting hit due to enemy placement also suck.  Dying to an enemy flying into you while you're stuck in the door transition animation also sucks.  An inability to shoot enemies less than 3 feet tall also sucks.  Enemies that bounce up and down faster than you can aim or recover from hits also suck.

Funnily enough though, I think the thing that made me angriest about the game were the red doors.  If you shoot them, you get a tink, no effect sort of sound.  I figured I had to get a weapon upgrade to shoot them, so as soon as I found missiles, I shot one.  And... tink, no effect!  I guessed I had to find another weapon upgrade, and spent 3 hours going back and forth trying to find a path I missed.  I eventually broke down and googled it, only to find out you had to shoot the red doors with 5 missiles.  Maybe I'd have eventually gotten frustrated enough to unload all of my missiles on one, but that's a perfect example of something that games have learned not to do.

[Aoi]

Spoiler: Rant (click to show/hide)

I didn't even know you could kill them since nothing seemed to hurt them, but I guess if you spammed stuff at them you might figure out you can freeze them and kill them with missiles.

Funnily enough though, I think the thing that made me angriest about the game were the red doors. ...  Maybe I'd have eventually gotten frustrated enough to unload all of my missiles on one, but that's a perfect example of something that games have learned not to do.

This feels like a callback to when manuals doubled as copy protection. I'm guessing that the VCs didn't come with scans of the manual though.

Spoiler: Image (click to show/hide)

And fun tidbit: In the English manual, Samus Aran is explicitly referred to as a male cyborg... though his true appearance is unknown.

[Akura]

There's one thing about the Metroid franchise I've been thinking about.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Federation. At times they seem frighteningly competent, other times mind-bogglingly stupid. Two examples that occurred in Super Metroid but not revealed until Fusion: First, despite the fact that Ridley attacks Ceres Station literally minutes after Samus delivers the Metroid larva, killing everyone, stealing the larva, and blowing up the station, the Federation still managed to get a DNA sample out... And then they used that sample to clone-farm Metroids. Great idea, guys.

Second, they managed to recover Ridley's corpse from the deepest and most hazardous part of planet Thebes, despite the fact Samus detonates the entire planet very shortly thereafter. And then they put it in the freezer on the BSL station, where it gets infected by an X-Parasite. And also wanted to cultivate the X as a bioweapon. Greater idea, guys.

Semi-death, but I had redone the tutorial case for the third time(it bugged out a few times), and actually got solid information on the killer. I broke in while they were home, got a fingerprint match that puts them at the crime scene. Unfortunately, I could not make an arrest since unlike the victim, the killer did not live alone. So I had to turn in the case without the full reward of arresting them or recovering the murder weapon.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Shadows of Doubt.

This feels like a callback to when manuals doubled as copy protection. I'm guessing that the VCs didn't come with scans of the manual though.

They don't. Particularly hilarious because Startropics is also on the VC. Remember that copy protection?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's 747.

EDIT: Couldn't get enough people into my second city quickly enough, meaning the heating plant was vastly understaffed. Cue about 1000 deaths in one December. My nation-wide population was 5800 at that start of December.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic.

[Telgin]

Funnily enough I did check if there was a manual available for the game through the Switch since I wondered about that, but as far as I can tell there isn't one.  Well, that makes me a tiny bit less frustrated, but only a tiny bit.

This reminds me a tiny bit of Mega Man X, actually.  Modern games are very careful to be sure that all of the story and everything you need to know is presented in game, but old games frequently embedded a lot of that in the manual.  For Mega Man X, if you didn't read the manual you'd literally have no idea what the story is, except there's a big bald robot named Sigma you have to kill.  The game does at least have zero roadblocks to playing it if you don't read the manual.

Anyway, I was going to try the original Legend of Zelda next, and I'm going to look for an online manual first since I'm betting it has important nuggets like this in it too.

[Robsoie]

Some old woman tried to mug me. I resisted, she attacked me with a knife. After punching her in the face a few times, several more people tried shanking me. Eventually my leg broke, and I tried running into the city hall. Didn't help, and the cops did nothing about it.

For a second i thought you were describing the average tourist day in some european big cities

Anyways, got a bit too greedy trying to clean a volatile nest in The Following campaign for Dying Light during a night as i unfortunately underestimated how big that specific one was and got lost around while trying to find the last breeding spot to destroy it in time while fighting off the regular infected respawning there.

The day unfortunately came and so the volatiles returned to that nest spawning list (as it simulate that at night the volatiles leave their nest to hunt on the surface and come back in the day as they can't handle sun light) and things went to hell very very quickly.

[pisskop]

Funnily enough I did check if there was a manual available for the game through the Switch since I wondered about that, but as far as I can tell there isn't one.  Well, that makes me a tiny bit less frustrated, but only a tiny bit.

This reminds me a tiny bit of Mega Man X, actually.  Modern games are very careful to be sure that all of the story and everything you need to know is presented in game, but old games frequently embedded a lot of that in the manual.  For Mega Man X, if you didn't read the manual you'd literally have no idea what the story is, except there's a big bald robot named Sigma you have to kill.  The game does at least have zero roadblocks to playing it if you don't read the manual.

Anyway, I was going to try the original Legend of Zelda next, and I'm going to look for an online manual first since I'm betting it has important nuggets like this in it too.

The biggest thing is to just look up the solution to the infinite repeating maze.  The rest can theoretically be sleuthed out by somebody with experience playing nintendo era exploration games.  In fact, it was kind of fun to find secrets.

Actually, I really did enjoy how crude the OG zelda was.  My first experience with a savable game too


.

P:  I dont game much any more, but I lost 2% today in the stock market.  And, of course, the stock kept going up after I sold at a loss.  It happens, but I guess Ill just be bitter now.

[Mathel]

First mission, against a landed ship of what turned out to be Night Lords.

It started out decently well. I had some losses, but I was devastating them.

Then a Neverborn Daemon appeared. I could not hurt it. My guys emptied several bolter magazines into it, for no apparent effect. I also chucked a number of Frag, Krak, and Proxy grenades at it, I could not check how damaging those were, but it did not fall over.

As such, I was forced to flee. From a single Daemon.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

OXC: 40k mod + ROSIGMA

[EuchreJack]

First mission, against a landed ship of what turned out to be Night Lords.

It started out decently well. I had some losses, but I was devastating them.

Then a Neverborn Daemon appeared. I could not hurt it. My guys emptied several bolter magazines into it, for no apparent effect. I also chucked a number of Frag, Krak, and Proxy grenades at it, I could not check how damaging those were, but it did not fall over.

As such, I was forced to flee. From a single Daemon.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

OXC: 40k mod + ROSIGMA

Much like the lore, you gotta Melee the Daemons, for the most part.  But if you'd suffered grievous losses, you might not have anyone beefy and brave enough to do it.

[Robsoie]

Neverborn daemons have very high resistances to mostly everything, but a huge weakness to fire.
So get a flamer weapon or two in your squad and enjoy cooked neverborn

[Akura]

Punched a bighorn ram to lure it into my pen. Then I learned they are much faster that me. So much faster.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Vintage Story.

[Funk]

Turns out that no you can't avoid a para drop, an that you can strike and make hole.
Dark tie. AKA , you like losing.

[Telgin]

Killed by a red lynel because I started moving.

The Legend of Zelda.

So far the game isn't as aggravating as Metroid was, but I can tell I'm probably not going to be able to finish the game without googling things.  I finished two dungeons and got boomerangs, magic boomerangs, the bow, and a candle, plus two heart containers.  I finally figured out how to get past the maze by bribing the old lady, but got stuck in the next dungeon past the graveyards because I ran out of keys.  I... guess I have to go buy one from a merchant now?

Anyway, I stepped outside and was promptly ganked by a lynel and teleported back to the starting area, so that was it for today.

[Akura]

I finally figured out how to get past the maze by bribing the old lady, but got stuck in the next dungeon past the graveyards because I ran out of keys.  I... guess I have to go buy one from a merchant now?

No, every dungeon has exactly enough keys to finish it. You probably don't have the right equipment to explore that dungeon - they are supposed(well, "supposed") to be done in numerical order.