I ran out of credits for Dall-E 2, so today’s mutant images are courtesy of #Midjourney. If you’re on the Team Spode Discord, you might see a new channel 😉
You doubtlessly remember my post from a couple days ago that had my shopping list for today’s Retro World Expo. To recap, I was looking for PaRappa the Rapper, Um Jammer Lammy, FFXIII: Lightning Returns, and a stretch goal of a working Vectrex console system, circa 1982.
Let’s see how we did.
Keen-eyed readers can’t help but notice that I didn’t buy — at the expo — any of the games on my list.
I did see two copies of PaRappa the Rapper, one (this one) at $230 and another at the eBay-approved price of $100. We also found the sequel, PaRappa the Rapper 2, for $60.
I was already kind of disinclined to buy this game at either of those prices before I even went. I was hoping, really, for a loose copy that would let me buy a repro case and manual for cheaper, but I did not see any loose copies. The game and its sequel are both available on the PlayStation Store for digital download at $30 for PtR and $10 for its sequel.
I was really hoping to find Um Jammer Lammy, the rock-focused companion game to PtR, but no luck, and it is not available on the PlayStation Store. Verdict: Probably buying Um Jammer Lammy online, and PaRappa the Rapper digitally.
We saw many, many copies of Final Fantasy XIII and its first sequel, Final Fantasy XIII-2, but we found no copies at all of the second sequel, Lightning Returns. This game was almost universally panned, as the combat system was completely changed.
In FFXIII:LR, instead of using Paradigms to set how your group of three battles, you have three different outfits — Schema — for Lightning (the only playable character) to switch into during battle. The game has a time limit of initially seven in-game days to thirteen days if you play correctly. Each day is a real time hour (easy mode makes days last longer). So this is a max 13 hour game.
Since we didn’t find any copies of this game at the Expo, we went to used video game shops elsewhere afterward, and found two copies of the game for half the eBay price at Gamer XChange in Enfield. Verdict: crossed off the list.
The only Vectrex we found was not for sale. It was part of a retro video game console exhibit that had consoles from ancient to less ancient. They had an Odyssey and a bunch of others, including the Vectrex.
I was a little bit disappointed. When we got home, we watched a video that showed every one of the 29 games that were ever released for the console, and there were some bangers in there. I’ll keep an eye out for one, but I don’t think I really need one. We’ll see if fate wants me to have one, I guess. Verdict: not happening anytime soon.
Okay, now for the games we did come away with.
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon
Side-scrolling beat-em-up for the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo. I snapped this screenshot (as well as those from the other SFC/SNES games) off my Analogue NT+.
You alone or with another player take on the personas of one of Sailor Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus or Jupiter, each with their own abilities.
I only booted it up to this screen and haven’t yet played it, but when that familiar music starts… I kinda wanted to play.
Othello World
Although this game is in Japanese, it’s easy enough to figure out how to play if you know Othello. I’ll have to translate the Japanese text. This first game had the rabbit, Usagi (literally “rabbit”), reacting in alarm when it made what it thought was a bad move.
It played black. As white, I used the perpendicular opening for safety. It flubbed a response to my attack on the top row and wasn’t able to keep me from getting the first corner. With the upper right corner and the top row, I was able to march around the board using safe squares to demolish him. I was hoping for a better challenge. I need to translate it to see if I can use a higher setting.
Legend of Ogre Battle (Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen in USA)
I have this game, complete in box, in English, for the SNES already. I paid ~$175 for it and it’s worth three times that now. This Japanese version for the Super Famicom was only $10. I don’t really plan to play this Japanese version. I did play through the first level just to see if it used the English voice acting, and it did.
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen and Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Virtue are real time tactics games. The other two entries in the series, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together and Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis (where you play the story from the side of the villains of the previous entries) are tactical strategy games in the spirit of its cousin game, Final Fantasy Tactics, developed by the same team.
Power Monger ~The Demon General’s Plot~
This Super Famicom game was never released in the United States, though it did have a European version. It came to the USA on the Atari ST and the Amiga, instead, two platforms with a little more graphical horsepower than the Super Nintendo.
Powermonger is Peter Molyneux’s follow-up to his genre-defining Populous series. Unlike those earlier games, you aren’t playing a god having their way with the pitiful mortals on the world beneath you, but instead, you are a general trying to prepare your vassals for war.
Although the screen only shows a portion of the map, you can freely scroll through the entire map or jump to specific spots on the satellite view to keep track of your armies and the farmers and tradesfolk who keep them supplied.
Powermonger and the Sailor Moon game are Kasul’s purchases; he also bought a GameBoy Advance collection of board games that I didn’t boot up.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond
Back in the day, I played Pokemon Pearl and my son played Pokemon Diamond. I was hesitant to get the remake for the Switch, Brilliant Diamond, but I had a moment of weakness. Since I played and completed the follow-up game, Pokemon Legend: Arceus, I already have all the legendaries that Pokemon Brilliant Diamond can give me, but still, it’ll be fun to experience an “old school” Pokemon game again.
More on that when I get to it.
Anyway. Crossed one game off my list, found a couple neat imports, I think it was worth the trip. We’ll see what’s on my list next year.
