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yamamanama83 days until the vernal equinox
Widget
Widget was a TV show before it was a video game.
It’s like Captain Planet jumped the shark and there was a tiny alien that only he could see, and then the tiny alien starred in a spinoff without Captain Planet or the Planeteers or the surprisingly realistic villains. See, some people, like Steven Miller, don’t have complicated motivations, they’re just evil for the sake of evil.
This is the only level you can select right now.
The controls are stiff. Really stiff. And you can only have one pellet from your gun on screen at a time and there’s really no reason for this limitation.
And sometimes shooting enemies causes them to teleport closer to you.
The select button sends you to the transformation screen. The start button just stops the action. You can ask Mega Brain for advice but it’s usually nonsense or duh things.
You start out with a cannon powerup that is almost completely useless. You can jump but you can't move.
I’m not sure if the crocodiles (as I am assuming Widget is neither in the United States of America nor China) respawn when scrolled off screen or are just damage sponges. If it’s the former, it really sucks because the only way to dodge the crocodile’s attacks is to scroll him offscreen.
The conclusion I’m coming to is that scrolling the enemies off screen replenishes their health, which sucks because dodging their bullets or getting hit by them require you to do that.
The knockback is two blocks. And it’s based on which direction you’re facing, not which direction you get hit from.
If you look hard, you can see that some of those blocks are shaded slightly differently. I didn’t actually notice this until I was looking at the screenshot, but there are more than enough powerups to max out.
The boss is actually pretty easy. Actually, all the bosses are pretty easy.
I didn't get a good screenshot of him, though. Oh yeah, there's a powerup there that you can't reach.
The thing that sticks out about this game in my mind is that you have to go to stage 3 before you go to stage 2.
I don't think we needed the narration here.
I'd love to see ZetaPlays interpret the voices here.
Sometimes Widget is blue and apparently that’s an emulator issue.
This is annoying.
The speedruns involve manipulating glitches. Holding left and right fucks up Widget’s hitbox. Or so a TAS guide says; I’m not seeing this in Nestopia. Or OpenEmu. Although you can’t do that on an actual NES either so I dunno.
Okay, so I changed the OpenEmu core from Nestopia to FCEU and yep.
Are you fucking kidding me? Okay, so what you actually need to do here is transform into the mouse, who can jump really far. I looked up the manual and it doesn’t mention this. And if Mega Brain mentions it in his hints, it gets lost among all the noise.
And we end up in a castle.
I don't even remember what he does. He does, however, switch between being a normal looking scientist and a crazed biker, making me think there's some sort of Jeckyll and Hyde thing going on.
The last word is "business." Anydangway, for being this level, you get the bird powerup.
You can go to 2 or you can go to 4.
Smuggling whales sounds really difficult but I guess you can smuggle the babies. Which still weigh 3 tonnes at birth.
There are some really annoying clam enemies that I guess I forgot to screenshot.
That looks like a squid in an inkwell. It doesn't really do anything. The crab shoots three projectiles at you.
Oh boy! Ice physics. You slide until you jump.
This guy being the exception because either he disappears or reappears or this fight has a serious problem with sprite flicker. The ice physics don’t help.
The ice physics are even more obnoxious if you're up against a wall.
I have no idea what's going on here. Aside from the narrator being made redundant once again.
The rock monster can destroy certain walls but he can’t fit into smaller spaces.
One of my issues is that the game makes transformations necessary but you also have very limited power for transformations. It takes three points to transform into the mouse. And some of the other transformations take four.
The last word is them.
The music is definitely the best part of this game.
If you game over or shut off your NES and use a password, you're back to square one with powerups. I really have no idea why.
This is an obnoxious jump. There's no way to jump down.
That alligator man just appeared out of nowhere.
Flim Flam McSham can appear in three places, drops a flame under him and tosses a ball at you. This battle is made slower by the fact that Sonic the Hedgehog Widget ain’t.
And now you can go to the final stage. You can also explore Stage 2 in fish form and grab a few more powerups first.
The problem with these pigs is that you have to stand inside their hitbox to fight them. You can shoot at an upwards angle (and if you reached this level, you really should know that) but not downwards.
For a planet made entirely of pollution, it sure has thriving plant life.
The boss is ridiculously easy.
I guess it's supposed to be a recurring theme that the first Elder always gets Widget's name wrong, but they only show up twice.
He'll be back in the sequel.
These are the people who did the music.
There are nine debuggers listed. Don't quit your day jobs, whatever those are.
burning question: I had a thought after playing Distorted Travesty 3 and watching Beepsalt suffer through Bubsy the Bobcat, and it is this: is is possible to make a platformer both difficult and enjoyable or do you have to resort to cheap bullshit like leaps of faith, tiny platforms, slippery controls, awkward controls to make a game hard?
Distorted Travesty is at its best when it’s not overly difficult, or when it is difficult, it’s in a forgiving way.
I dare say most of the nightmare gates aside from the enemy jumping in Mario and the last part of the color thing weren’t that bad. there’s one cheap part in Mega Man world and I’m not entirely sure what you’re supposed to do aside from take the hit.
I think you can make an RPG that is hard without resorting to cheap bullshit.
Nier Automata’s very hard mode knows it’s bullshit.
Final Fantasy doesn’t count as challenging because absolutely nothing in that game works the way it is supposed to. But with Final Fantasy V, every boss can be easily defeated with the right setup. Yunalesca and Evrae (well, not so much Evrae) and Seymour Flux are hard but there are tricks to beating them. Avernum on Torment is more about optimizing your stats and what you spend.
I think my go to for the only RPG I’ve ever played that is unfairly difficult is Realmz, only because it’s so random that even with high dexterity, you’re not always going to get in a good position or optimal move order. Made worse by multipart battles, even when you know they’re coming and make scrolls and don’t waste spell points.
Also, there are ambushes. Scripted ambushes.
I blame D&D for some of the unfairness because I remember either Michael saying or me reading somewhere that early D&D was less about adventuring and more about killing off the party after two sessions.
I think low-key my biggest gripe with Realmz is not being able to load a save file in battle unless it’s your turn.
Widget
Widget was a TV show before it was a video game.
It’s like Captain Planet jumped the shark and there was a tiny alien that only he could see, and then the tiny alien starred in a spinoff without Captain Planet or the Planeteers or the surprisingly realistic villains. See, some people, like Steven Miller, don’t have complicated motivations, they’re just evil for the sake of evil.
This is the only level you can select right now.
The controls are stiff. Really stiff. And you can only have one pellet from your gun on screen at a time and there’s really no reason for this limitation.
And sometimes shooting enemies causes them to teleport closer to you.
The select button sends you to the transformation screen. The start button just stops the action. You can ask Mega Brain for advice but it’s usually nonsense or duh things.
You start out with a cannon powerup that is almost completely useless. You can jump but you can't move.
I’m not sure if the crocodiles (as I am assuming Widget is neither in the United States of America nor China) respawn when scrolled off screen or are just damage sponges. If it’s the former, it really sucks because the only way to dodge the crocodile’s attacks is to scroll him offscreen.
The conclusion I’m coming to is that scrolling the enemies off screen replenishes their health, which sucks because dodging their bullets or getting hit by them require you to do that.
The knockback is two blocks. And it’s based on which direction you’re facing, not which direction you get hit from.
If you look hard, you can see that some of those blocks are shaded slightly differently. I didn’t actually notice this until I was looking at the screenshot, but there are more than enough powerups to max out.
The boss is actually pretty easy. Actually, all the bosses are pretty easy.
I didn't get a good screenshot of him, though. Oh yeah, there's a powerup there that you can't reach.
The thing that sticks out about this game in my mind is that you have to go to stage 3 before you go to stage 2.
I don't think we needed the narration here.
I'd love to see ZetaPlays interpret the voices here.
Sometimes Widget is blue and apparently that’s an emulator issue.
This is annoying.
The speedruns involve manipulating glitches. Holding left and right fucks up Widget’s hitbox. Or so a TAS guide says; I’m not seeing this in Nestopia. Or OpenEmu. Although you can’t do that on an actual NES either so I dunno.
Okay, so I changed the OpenEmu core from Nestopia to FCEU and yep.
Are you fucking kidding me? Okay, so what you actually need to do here is transform into the mouse, who can jump really far. I looked up the manual and it doesn’t mention this. And if Mega Brain mentions it in his hints, it gets lost among all the noise.
And we end up in a castle.
I don't even remember what he does. He does, however, switch between being a normal looking scientist and a crazed biker, making me think there's some sort of Jeckyll and Hyde thing going on.
The last word is "business." Anydangway, for being this level, you get the bird powerup.
You can go to 2 or you can go to 4.
Smuggling whales sounds really difficult but I guess you can smuggle the babies. Which still weigh 3 tonnes at birth.
There are some really annoying clam enemies that I guess I forgot to screenshot.
That looks like a squid in an inkwell. It doesn't really do anything. The crab shoots three projectiles at you.
Oh boy! Ice physics. You slide until you jump.
This guy being the exception because either he disappears or reappears or this fight has a serious problem with sprite flicker. The ice physics don’t help.
The ice physics are even more obnoxious if you're up against a wall.
I have no idea what's going on here. Aside from the narrator being made redundant once again.
The rock monster can destroy certain walls but he can’t fit into smaller spaces.
One of my issues is that the game makes transformations necessary but you also have very limited power for transformations. It takes three points to transform into the mouse. And some of the other transformations take four.
The last word is them.
The music is definitely the best part of this game.
If you game over or shut off your NES and use a password, you're back to square one with powerups. I really have no idea why.
This is an obnoxious jump. There's no way to jump down.
That alligator man just appeared out of nowhere.
Flim Flam McSham can appear in three places, drops a flame under him and tosses a ball at you. This battle is made slower by the fact that Sonic the Hedgehog Widget ain’t.
And now you can go to the final stage. You can also explore Stage 2 in fish form and grab a few more powerups first.
The problem with these pigs is that you have to stand inside their hitbox to fight them. You can shoot at an upwards angle (and if you reached this level, you really should know that) but not downwards.
For a planet made entirely of pollution, it sure has thriving plant life.
The boss is ridiculously easy.
I guess it's supposed to be a recurring theme that the first Elder always gets Widget's name wrong, but they only show up twice.
He'll be back in the sequel.
These are the people who did the music.
There are nine debuggers listed. Don't quit your day jobs, whatever those are.
burning question: I had a thought after playing Distorted Travesty 3 and watching Beepsalt suffer through Bubsy the Bobcat, and it is this: is is possible to make a platformer both difficult and enjoyable or do you have to resort to cheap bullshit like leaps of faith, tiny platforms, slippery controls, awkward controls to make a game hard?
Distorted Travesty is at its best when it’s not overly difficult, or when it is difficult, it’s in a forgiving way.
I dare say most of the nightmare gates aside from the enemy jumping in Mario and the last part of the color thing weren’t that bad. there’s one cheap part in Mega Man world and I’m not entirely sure what you’re supposed to do aside from take the hit.
I think you can make an RPG that is hard without resorting to cheap bullshit.
Nier Automata’s very hard mode knows it’s bullshit.
Final Fantasy doesn’t count as challenging because absolutely nothing in that game works the way it is supposed to. But with Final Fantasy V, every boss can be easily defeated with the right setup. Yunalesca and Evrae (well, not so much Evrae) and Seymour Flux are hard but there are tricks to beating them. Avernum on Torment is more about optimizing your stats and what you spend.
I think my go to for the only RPG I’ve ever played that is unfairly difficult is Realmz, only because it’s so random that even with high dexterity, you’re not always going to get in a good position or optimal move order. Made worse by multipart battles, even when you know they’re coming and make scrolls and don’t waste spell points.
Also, there are ambushes. Scripted ambushes.
I blame D&D for some of the unfairness because I remember either Michael saying or me reading somewhere that early D&D was less about adventuring and more about killing off the party after two sessions.
I think low-key my biggest gripe with Realmz is not being able to load a save file in battle unless it’s your turn.
