FreakBoards 2023 NES/GB Book Club #2: Super Mario (And Wario) Land (GB)

[coin-cache]

Wario land 3 is one of my favorite platformers ever so i'm starting with it. Been playing it in between a runthrough of elden ring and they work together pretty well? idk, the level designs of both games feel like they complement each other sorta well but maybe i'm totally off lol

[Cuboid64]

Beat Wario Land 1! Funny little game, more of a challenge at points than I expected. Not the BEST ending but i'm happy with what I got. Gonna move on to 2 next and play as much of it as I can until the new Destiny expansion takes up the rest of my time!

Spoiler!

[VentusVulture]

Just finished Wario Land 3! I have... conflicted feelings about this game. On the one hand, this game does not value your time in the slightest, and honestly it sometimes felt sadistically annoying to accomplish things. Earlier in the thread Goblinoid said to use something with savestates or a rewind function since because the game doesn't have a time limit it has to waste your time to punish you, which I thought was an exaggeration but no, I think not having the rewind function from NSO would have literally doubled my playtime from 8 to 16 hours since the "powerups" are so slow to either wear off or get rid of, even when you want them. The bosses all requiring you to beat them hitless due to the fact that if you get hit once you get a powerup that forces you out of the arena completely exemplifies this pretty well. Also:

Spoiler!

Fuck that stupid ass rabbit boss. It took me literally twenty minutes to beat due to how obtuse/inconsistent it was. The only two strategies you can use are either far too difficult to pull off (the turtle goalie getting knocked down for only five seconds makes it nearly impossible to pick up the rabbit and score in that time period) or are far too obtuse to figure out (dash jumping into the rabbit – if they'd had like one singular enemy that you had to dash jump into in any level before this I would've figured it out far quicker, though again this strategy is also completely inconsistent and only really worked for me like an eighth of the time. ugh

I also wish there were more minigames than golf since it got a little repetitive, though I feel like the guide I used really exaggerated how difficult and annoying it was (I personally kind of liked it, though I can see why people don't).
That being said: this game is still, somehow, in spite of all this, very fun. I love the movement progression (outside of a few powerups I found to be a little unnecessary), and movement itself is surprisingly smooth outside of the powerups. The treasure system is also fantastic, and I love how levels can completely change by getting a single treasure from another stage – it really ups the replayability of the game as a whole, not to mention making the game feel very exploration based in a great way (though there are a few flaws with this, namely that if you finish certain pathways of treasures and find one that requires a different treasure it's often difficult to find exactly where that treasure is, as well as the fact that when you get a treasure and the game directs you to three different treasures, then you get one of those and it directs you to three more treasures can be pretty overwhelming and confusing at times (though again still in a fun way!)).
Overall though this game is pretty fun and I do plan on 100%ing it eventually since it's genuinely fun. I would not be saying this if I didn't have savestates/rewind. If I didn't I think I would have quit very early on out of frustration.
Also this turned out to be way more long-winded than I thought it would be, sorry

[Cuboid64]

IMPORTANT UPDATE

It's nearly the end of February! So, we need our next game. But i've had my fun picking and choosing, now it's YOUR turn! I've selected three games from the big list at random, and i'd like y'all to vote on what we ought to be playing next month!

• Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
• Metal Gear
• Takeshi’s Challenge

We're alternating to NES games for March! Vote below which one you'd like to see get picked for next month and I'll tally them up March 1st!

[okidokidev]

SIMON'S QUEST

[Mak-Etcetera]

Simon’s Quest sounds fun!

[coin-cache]

ooo simon's quest!!

[SkieSquiggles]

Castlevania sounds like it would be fun!

[Finch]

All good choices but Simon's Quest sounds good!

[ROBBYDUDE]

Takeshi's