FreakBoards 2024 SNES/GENS Book Club #1: MARIO vs SONIC

[stratsodia]

Ok finished Mario World. I like get it now, this game owns. I'm a bit surprised I actually managed to get all exits, I thought I would have given up halfway through the special zone. Special zone wasn't that bad though, definitely difficult and frustrating, but nothing too crazy hard. Then I spent like an hour with 95/96 exits trying to find what secret I missed. Turns out it was the valley ghost house secret, which was kinda balls to get but oh well. Never quite got the hang of long distance flight with the swooping and stuff, sometime I got close but I was never able to pull it off on purpose. All in all, excellent design and gameplay, wonderful time all around. Super fun game, really happy I sat down to finish it.

[Finch]

I have played very little Sonic in my life so I decided to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles! I haven't gotten very far, just into Flying Battery zone, but Flying Battery zone is soooo fun so far. I found two bonus levels in the Mushroom zone and I have seen people play those with such ease, I do not understand how they do it so well.

I'm going to try to carve out some more time to get further in because Going Fast is so fun in this game

[Cuboid64]

I'm a day late, a dollar short, and I didn't finish the hack! But at this point i'm happy to at least try and just keep this thing going regardless. So now that we've enjoyed a classic rivalry, let's look at some other potential games. Sound off below this post! You can keep it themed to this month (so, maybe another platformer?) or go off the rails! Ideally suggest a SNES or Genesis game. It's fine if we play a system exclusive next month, but the next time we do a player's vote it'll probably be limited to the other system to be fair. We'll reconvene to vote on the nominees on Monday the 29th!

[SkieSquiggles]

I played some Sonic and some Marios this month, wasn't able to complete anything but it's nice to play these things I kind of missed growing up!

I'm going to put Rocket Knight Adventures for the Sega Genesis in the ring because it looks sick as hell

[VentusVulture]

We could do a Disney-themed games month (like Aladdin and Lion King or something (Aladdin was apparently one of the top three selling games on the Genesis?)) or racing games, though both categories are fairly broad, so maybe for specific games I'd go with Kirby Super Star / Dream Land 3 or Super Metroid, or Ranger X for the Genesis. I also saw a game called Super Scope 6 that uses the Super Scope that looked cool but I have no idea how anyone would play that without the physical hardware for it lol
Rocket Knight Adventures does look cool too, reminds me a lot of Ghosts and Goblins or whatever that series is called

[Cuboid64]

A little late but it looks like we got some good options! Choose between the following, voting will end Feb 1, midnight est.

- Rocket Knight/Sparkster
- Disney Month
- Super Scopers (could be a light gun games month?)
- Rackng Games

Going specifically for the more broader categories so we can have both SNES and Genesis options in there, though I wouldn’t mind a Kirby month at some point myself. Putting my vote towards Rocket Knight/Sparkster.

[Finch]

I did end up playing more Sonic & Knuckles - I was playing Knuckles, and got to the second stage of the Sandopolis levels, and I did not like the whole switches thing and that I got stuck in a loop for like 4 minutes! The other levels were all good and fun though The boss of the first sandopolis was fun, a neat little change from the usual!

As for next month, I don't have strong feelings. I did look up Rocket Knight and see that he's a cute dog though so I'm going with that

[coin-cache]

Been a lot this month and this slipped through aa. I want to see if I can try a bit of knuckles chaotix but I'll probably finish my session after midnight, so I'll put a vote in before that. I'll put in for sparkster as well, the characters have been a favorite of mine but I never actually played the games lol. That said I would love to see racing games come back as an option another time, this era is so interesting for those i feel.

[coin-cache]

Knuckles' Chaotix is a Game. I got to play it for a bit, so there's most likely more going on that I've yet to get (maybe). This game feels like one of those platformers from this era that's trying to do *everything* new or at least sort of off-center. The most clear is the rubberband system between the two player characters, but there's also changes in the way the bonus stages work and what you get from them, and the way stages are selected follows a sort of gunstar heroes kind of random pick.

I've always wanted to play this game because the tech regarding the rubberbanding stuff seemed cool. I'm sure it is cool if I practiced it more, but the game never really eases you in to some of the more complex stuff you can do. The level design pushes you in some sense to learn a few new things, but once you get to know how to get around most obstacles, it's hard to motivate going deeper with the tech outside of a speedrun setting. The level design is also just kind of all over the place. You kind of just move around to random spots until you find the finish. It doesn't usually feel like I'm lost though, the goal is found eventually. It's still pretty fun though, there's a little bit of small-scale puzzle solving with how you can throw yourself where you want to be, which I like quite a bit.

Another thing I'll give the game is I do like that it's pretty blunt in just throwing you in the game. The new quirks did sort of succeed in throwing me off for a little bit, and it's fun figuring out bit by bit how it works at the start.

Overall it's neat. Maybe I'd go back to it? I still think learning some of the tech might be cool.
also music's goood.

[Cuboid64]

RAT ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!