Alexlotl

Had another crack at L3 last night, but dying by falling off the bottom of the screen on the vertically scrolling stages is just doing my head in. Not sure why I'm struggling with it so much - if it was a push-scroller, I'd accept it completely, but when the scrolling is player driven it just seems perverse. It's also frustrating because other than dying by falling, I've not lost a life in all the time I've put into this - the enemies are no great shakes, and I quite enjoy the sense of serene progress I get from plodding my meatlump through the game, whipping all and sundry. If the game were universally bollock hard, like Ghouls & Ghosts, then I'd be more willing to accept the cheap fall deaths.

Anyone know why Lampard has dropped Tomori? I assumed it was a one-game resting so didn’t ship him out of my FF team on my wildcard, but now he looks firmly out of favour. That said, you could argue he had a good game yesterday!

Yup. This season they’ve beaten City, Chelsea, Spurs and Leicester, and drawn with Arsenal and Liverpool (spoiling Liverpool’s otherwise perfect record). They’ve also lost to Newcastle, Bournemouth, West Ham and Crystal Palace, and drawn with 2/3 of the newly promoted sides.

Did some more of L3 yesterday evening, but got frustrated by the erratic control on the stairs. Maybe this kind of thing isn’t an issue for Castlevania veterans, but I had all kinds of problems where two sets of stairs cross, and your pressing of up is suddenly interpreted as wanting to go up the other flight of stairs rather than the one you’re on. That, combined with the rather silly rule where the bottom of the screen becomes instadeath seconds after scrolling away, cost me a heap of lives and put me off quite a bit. Climbed some stairs, turned around at the top and try to walk across what looked like a platform across the top of the stairs, only to fall down the stairwell and die even though there was a platform about 5 pixels off screen. Turned it off at that point and played some Chrono Trigger. I will probably return, but that stuff felt more shoddy than legitimately hard.

Gave it a spin for half an hour or so just now, got to 3-2 before I had to stop. No save game option, so I had to repeatedly hurl myself down a hole. It’s okay so far, doesn’t feel like anything particularly special. Didn’t like the L1 music, and was just asking why it has such a reputation when the L2 music kicked in - much better! Playing the US version on the Super NT. quite a bit of slowdown at times, e.g. the dividing mud-men on Stage 3. The shuriken is clearly the best item. Get the range right and it does huge damage. The game hides it like it’s something special too, at least on Level 2.

Flawless picture here - Roku 3, 802.11ac, BT Fibre-to-the-Property on the cheapest package. We're the youngest people in our neighbourhood by a good 30 years though, so I'd imagine contention is low. That said, I honestly think I prefer listening to it on the radio, then watching Match of the Day.

Confession time - other than CotM on the GBA, which I rinsed, I’ve never really put time into a Castlevania, so this might be a nice nudge. Always meant to get some kind of hi-def NES going and play the original 8-bit games first, but life is perhaps too short. I’d put money on there being an uncensor patch for the US ROM, based on the discussion above.

Pint of wine time, surely?

You do know Everton are also based in Liverpool, right?

At a guess, because Liverpool has a population of half a million while a quick google suggests Anfield only seats 54,000, of which only 2,000 or so will be available to Everton fans. Also, not everyone can afford to go to the match and/or fit it around their other obligations.

I'd be happy for any version of The Ninja Warriors Again to be played, including the modern remaster! Needn't be SNES only.

Playing Splatter House at Christmas is all kinds of wrong Lots of good games there I'd be happy to revisit - a lot of things I've dabbled in but never put concerted time into.

Yeah, football really needs an equivalent of Umpire’s Call in cricket. If it’s not obvious, go with the on-field ruling.

Of the remake, I hope! I think the SNES cart commands quite a price these days.

I’ll nominate The Ninja Warriors on the SNES, which is also available on the Switch in an enhanced port. 1p side scrolling brawler with a great cyberpunk theme and a lot of depth in the move set. Technically, it’s The Ninja Warriors Again, a SNES only sequel to a rather rubbish arcade game which also got ports to the PC Engine and Mega CD. Developed by the same Natsume team that did Wild Guns.