TCP

Final Fantasy VII Well, that was good but I have questions: Who did Red XIII bang? In all seriousness I think Remake/Rebirth kind of spoiled me, I would have enjoyed this more if I played it first. But it did make me even more excited for Part 3, things just kind of happen in VII with no weight given to it, I'm excited to see everything expanded. I also used a bunch of texture packs via 7th Heaven, they looked really good, Square needs to do something official and do a faithful remake/remaster. Grade: A-

Final Fantasy VI I've started this game many times but never completed it until now. Looks and plays great on the Steam Deck with the Pixel Remaster. It's a classic for a reason, just a really great 2D JRPG. I can only imagine how great it would have felt in 1994, but it holds up in 2024. Fun fact: coincidentally, I learned earlier today that today, April 2, is the 30th anniversary of the game! I saved last night right before the Kefka boss fight and saw something today about it being the 30th anniversary. Clearly, it was meant to be. One other thing: this game needs the HD-2D treatment. Expand the script a bit, make some areas bigger, but keep the ~vibes~ Rating: A+

"Rebirth makes Remake feel like a tech demo" is that better?? or "Rebirth retroactively makes Remake feel like a tech demo"?? At some point in the next year or two Square will rerelease XIII (I think it's the only game currently not really available except maybe via an old PC port and Xbox BC) and I feel we'll see a lot of people come out of the woodwork to sing it's praises. Basically, it's going to get some Star Wars prequel revisionism.

Remake felt like a tech demo for Rebirth. There's significantly more to do in Rebirth, side content, main story, areas to explore. And almost all of it is great. There's a bunch of mini games in there that could be there own game. I heard a podcast today where one person said "Rebirth is one of the best games I've ever played", and another person responded "Rebirth is two of the best games I've ever played, Rebirth and Queen's Blood". But also: Rebirth is the best mini game collection disguised a semi-open world RPG.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth This game fucking slaps. I was skeptical, Remake was "just ok". But goddamn I loved this game. It's my favourite Final Fantasy. Hopefully we don't have to wait 4 years for Remembrance... or whatever it will be called. Grade: A++

Spider-Man 2? Final Fantasy Rebirth? I couldn't hold out any longer, something had to be done.

Metroid Fusion I never hear anyone talk about this game (compared to the other Metroid games that is) but I think it's one of the better ones. I imagine people have issues with the robo telling you where to go, but there's so much reward for exploring that it makes up for it. And honestly, I like that I didn't always have to figure out where to go. The boss fights were great. There is a lot of modernized Metroid in it, like Samus holding onto edges. Each area was varied. I liked the super missiles just being an upgrade to the regular missiles instead of their own separate weapon. The moments when you randomly (sometimes literally) walk into SA-X. But most of all I liked the pixel artwork. This game looks GREAT. I wish Nintendo would still make the occasional pixel based game. There's some great moments like when you walk past windows and see the planet below floating past. The game is very colourful especially coming from Zero Mission and Super, which makes the image really pop on the Analogue Pocket screen. Grade: A

Super Metroid Yeah, I somehow have never finished Super Metroid. I've started it a bunch, but I've never gotten that far for one reason or another. This great shame ended today. It's a game rich in atmosphere and ~vibes~. I liked it more than Samus Returns/Return of Samus and more than Zero Mission. The controls kind of.... sucked. Maybe that was one of my issues in the past with it. But especially coming from the other games, this game felt very differently. Fortunately I used the Redux patch which, among a few other things, modernized the controls making the game a much more comfortable experience to play. Score: A+

I'm trying to play more retro games, and despite the lack of save states on some cores (most frustratingly SNES), it's definitely the best way to experience those games portably, IMHO.

Not the game but the hardware: I was excited to see my Metroid II save file that I would have started in 1995 is still alive. My Oracle of Seasons save file from that games launch also still exists.

Steam Deck! There's a few different layout options, including stacking the screens on top of each other in the same screen, having one big one small, side by side, etc. I prefer going full screen, on the Steam Deck if you use Emudeck R5 will swap screens.

Metroid: Samus Returns The original Metroid II holds a special place in my heart. It was the first game I ever beat. My memory is foggy since it's been almost 30 years but I played it all throughout grade 3 when I was just an 8 year old TCP. There was no map and every location looked the same. What I was suppose to do next was never clear especially as a kid. I'm pretty sure I sequence breaked at one point because I definitely sank through a bunch of acid and got to an area before I was suppose to. At some point I killed all the metroids and took on the final boss, then, with the baby I got to the surface. My point is, it was a perfect game to just wander around in for the entire school year since you lucked into getting to the end. I think this was always going to be a difficult game to remake because by it's tedious by it's very nature. I think MercuryStream did a good attempt at it. Ultimately I think there could have, and should have, been more variety in the types of metroids because by the end it feels like you're repeating the same boss battles over and over. Either that or just have the majority of metroids in each area be the basic metroids and have the challenge be in finding them. Obviously my memory is foggy but none of the areas felt familiar. Some of the enemies were straight out of Return of Samus which was cool but there was a lot of gameplay based on the aeion abilities which were obviously not a thing on the Game Boy version. So a very loose remake which is understandable. The depth of the backgrounds look cool and I bet it would have looked cool in 3D. It looks good playing at 2x resolution on the Steam Deck via Citra. It sets a lot of groundwork for what would later be seen in Dread and honestly I think I would have liked it more if I played Samus Returns before Dread. It's a fine Metroid game but the weakest of all the ones I've played recently (Prime, Dread, and Zero Mission). I'll be moving onto Super Metroid in a bit but I'm waiting for a new piece of hardware to arrive to do 8 and 16 bit games on so for the moment maybe I'll try Prime 2. Grade: B-

Metroid Zero Mission A nice, short, Metroid game. Great pace to it too, you're constantly finding upgrades. The section where you play as Samus without her armour and weapons is pretty cool, I wish they had expanded on it. Anyways, onwards to Samus Returns! Grade: A

Metroid Dread So I started playing this game at launch, got maybe half way through and just sort of... forgot about it. But after playing (and mostly liking) Prime, and wanting a game I could play portably without a huge focus on story so my wife and I can watch TV at night, I thought I'd give Dread another take. I started a new save and dived back in. This game fucking slaps. It's everything I want out of a Metroid. Samus' movement is great and gets better throughout the game, through both unlocking new abilities, and you the player mastering those new abilities. There's a lot of quality of life enhancements too that the Prime Remaster was lacking, like auto save outside boss rooms that make retrying the bosses much less frustrating. Which is good because the bosses are tough in this game. But honestly, it's kind of fun learning their patterns and retrying, progressing a bit further each time. I think I prefer the exploration in Prime. The secrets were harder to find. The environments were more engrossing due to being 3D. Both styles of Metroid games have their advantages. Bring on Prime 4 this year. Grade: A+

Has anyone here upgraded to a Steam Deck OLED?? If so, what are your thoughts? I want to upgrade but at this point I'll hold out for the next revision. Unless they start selling refurbished OLED Decks like they did with the LCD models.