So since I basically just use this blog to talk about what old games I'm playing

I figured I'd talk about Mickey's Ultimate Challenge, which I blasted through in about 30 minutes yesterday. I used to have this game for Gameboy when I was a kid, but yesterday I was playing the SNES rom, so I'll talk about that.

At 30 minutes (I cheated a little, more on that later), this is a pretty shitty purchase for someone to make back in the day. I guess that's passable for Gameboy. Gameboy cartridges are pretty small, so unless you're playing Link's Awakening or Final Fantasy Adventure or something, you're probably not expecting a full-length game. Mickey's Ultimate Challenge, on the other hand, is literally a direct port from SNES to Gameboy. Or Gameboy to SNES, depending on how you look at it.

For those of you who haven't played it, basically what you're paying for is a handful of... I don't even know. I want to say they're like the games that come with your computer, but Windows computers come with Solitaire and other weird bullshit nobody likes like Spider Solitaire, so that's not really true. Basically think of the most badass games available on Windows the day 3.1 came out, besides Hover. Anyway, that's what you have here, all connected by Mickey Mouse dragging his ass (And I mean dragging) around a castle in his dreamworld.

The first game I played, actually, was the only game that really broke from this mold. I don't know what I'd call this game. The goal is to alphabetize some guy's books. I guess he's the castle librarian or something. Anyway, you do this by jumping round like an idiot on a bunch of blue books, and every so often a brown book with a letter on it will come by. You're supposed to jump on these books in alphabetical order, which is no problem if you graduated kindergarten. The only problem is that what letters show up is completely random, so you might be starting on J or something and not know it until you've been hopping around for a while. It's definitely doale, just a little annoying since the guy keeps his alphabet books over a bottomless pit

Next we have.... a block shoving puzzle, I guess. So this is basically... uh.. I don't know. I'm trying to think off a game to compare it to. It's really common, but I can't think of any by name. Anyway, this one's decent, just don't push any buttons or you'll reset that shit and scream and stomp your feet.

On the main floor of the castle there's Simon and Concentration but nobody cares about those games so they can deal without having their own screenshots.

Last of the immediately available games is Mastermind with Goofy. It's Mastermind, but with more in-depth clues in the early levels. I ended up cheating on this one because I had no idea what the hell clues he was giving me on the third part. I guess part of the longevity of the game is based on how many times you have to repeat shit, because that's how you want to know you've gotten your money's worth, right?

After you beat all the games, you get a bunch of random items to distribute around the castle. You trade the items for beans, and your ultimate prize is that you get to go do a slider puzzle. This easily took me as much time as the rest of the game combined, because I fucking hate slider puzzles and so should you. After you finish the puzzle, Mickey wakes up and it was all a dream. Wooooo yeah.

I honestly don't think I'd know this game even existed if I hadn't owned the Gameboy port. I never beat it on Gameboy because I guess I was an idiot. Like I said before it's literally a carbon copy of the SNES version, just with downgraded graphics. Anyway, I'll try to focus on a more popular game next time. I'm still playing Castlevania III, but Death is a fuck and makes it hard to progress.

Combo is continuing

Ahoy there. I put up a picture of the Castlevania 3 cart because that's next in my series of olden times games I'm playing through. It fits the retarded pattern I have going right now because about a month or so ago, I played through Castlevania 2. I beat the first one several years ago on an airplane and decided to skip it. Well, this shit directly in the middle of my Metroid series, but technically I started playing Castlevania 3 immediately following 2, then took a break because it's so fucking hard. I started playing it again today to avoid writing papers. I've also been playing Castlevania 4 here and there in the background since the middle of October. Also hard. But we'll GET THROUGH THEM GOD DAMN IT FUVJKVUZXKM

Anyway, I did finish Metroid. The part in Mother Brain's room with the donut lasers and the other green shit flying all over the place is a big pain in the ass, but after I stopped just trying to blitz her it went fine. Samus only took off her helmet for me, so I guess I sucked at it. Oh well. She's not very attractive, so I don't consider it a huge loss.

I probably did this a while ago, but I'm going to plug Groztunes again here. It's.. stuff, and also gives me a few more words to write here. It's not like it's going to do a lot of good because this blog is a ghost town, but maybe it'll garner some more popularity now that I'm talking about things that were popular 20 years ago, like Castlevania and Metroid.

Anyway, I'll keep posting my adventures through olden-gaming land. In the meantime, I have absolutely nothing to report on Dog Adventure, but my life becomes a hell of a lot freer on Tuesday afternoon, so hopefully by the end of the year I'll have something new to tell all the smiling folks in this ghost town.

Bainemo plays some Warcraft 3 World Editor

You may be wondering why we haven't updated in...however long. You may think we're lazy. Well, you're right. But that's not the only reason.

You see, you update a blog when you do something worthy of bragging about. What have we done? Played several MMOs, some WC3. Homework. Regular work. Nothing fun.

UNTIL NOW!!!!!!!

Well, Grozlam still hasn't done JACK SHIT. He does a lot of schoolwork, and a lot of not doing anything. That's because he is boring, unlike me.

I've been working on, of all things, a Tower Defense for Warcraft 3. I'm actually fairly far along. All the triggers are done. All the...unit is done. All that's left is towers. Based on my current rate of progress, I should be done with version 1 within...let's say two weeks. I really don't want to use rapidshare to upload it, but since Blogger gives me no other choice...

I'll figure something out.

Grozlam Plays Some Metroid

Hey there, nobody. I'm taking a different turn with this blog than we previously have, mainly because I haven't done jack shit on Dog Adventure since school started. Well, finals are this week, and I think I've had a long enough hiatus, so with any luck we'll see more of that in the weeks to come. Anyway, I'm bored and hiding from studying, so instead I decided to just ooze my brains out here about my experiences with the Metroid series, specifically the original. I guess it'll read more like an actual blog entry, I dunno. Anyway, here we go.

I'd had Metroid for a while on actual NES, and can recall maybe like 10 separate instances where I've tried my hardest to play through that god damned maze of a game. Well, I finally got down to FUCKING BRASS TACKS and am actually getting around to playing the game proper-like.

Super Metroid was my first Metroid game, and my first Castleroid in general (If you use that term. Metroidvania, if you're an idiot). It's probably one of my favorite games ever, even though it took my 5 year-old ass like a full month to play through the whole thing. I picked up Metroid II: The Return of Samus shortly afterward, but I didn't like it very much because I was a stupid kid who couldn't handle taking steps backwards.

Flash forward to when I was like 10, maybe, when I re-bought an NES. I'd had one when I was a kid, but my parents sold it when I was pretty young, and I was too stupid to care at that point. I had the Super Nintendo, so why did I need that shit? Anyway, I saved up some cash and bought a new one in 4th grade, and proceeded to pick up whatever games would turn up cheap at FuncoLand. It wasn't long before I got my hands on the dirtiest-ass copy of Metroid ever. Like, the sticker and the contacts were all covered in this, like, brown film. I have no idea how the hell FuncoLand got their hands on it, because they're usually huge assholes when it comes to a speck of dust being anywhere near what you're selling. I remember I blew into the cartridge at the store and a bunch of dust visibly came out of it. The clerk was like HEY DON'T BLOW INTO THAT IT'S BAD FOR IT, but seriously it couldn't h ave been worse than it was.

Well, I bought it anyway because it was cheap and I hadn't ever played the original Metroid before. After about a hundred years of scrubbing the shit out of it with those pink scrubby brushes and ELIMINATOR spray, I got that thing working, and was immensely disappointed. I think by that time, I was old enough that I could respect games in their original context, but to be honest, I wasn't really big into Metroid. Climbing giant vertical towers of retarded jumps with spiky turtles wasn't my thing, and I really lacked the patience to play the game properly at that time. Like I said before, I probably started and tried to make progress in Metroid like.. several times, and never succeeded in getting anywhere, unless I just blew straight through to Norfair and got my ass handed to me.

But yeah, now in 2009 with another like 10 years of life under my belt, I decided I'd give it one more try, and this time I'd go for a more methodical approach. I sat down and started playing, and any time I'd reach a door, I'd add to a map that I started drawing in one of my notebooks. There's a picture of how far I got on the left. I decided that because this entire game was basically one giant maze, the only way I was going to get through it is if I knew where the hell I was. This was going just great for a while, and I was actually, for the first time in my life, legitimately enjoying Metroid. Everything was going great. Then I got to fucking Kraid's Lair and everything turned to shit.

I dunno if you've ever played Metroid, but if you have played it, you know how giant of a pain in the ass Kraid's Lair is. It didn't help that the first time I went there, I had like 1 extra energy tank, no Varia suit, and nothing else that'd make the place bearable. So while I'm going along my merry way trying to map out this tunnel of doors, I'd usually just get my ass killed and have to start exploring all over. It was at this point that I decided fuck drawing my own maps, I'm just gonna look one up. I had a subscription to Nintendo Power as a kid, and while Nintendo Power didn't go into publication until 1988 and I didn't get into being alive until 1989, I assume I would've gotten my hands on the map somehow around that time. I think I remember the Angry Video Game Nerd showing some pictures of Metroid maps in an issue of Nintendo Power. Maybe they put them in an issue when they did that yellow-stickered Metroid reissue cart. The one that didn't have the ADVENTURE SERIES thing on it with a terrible hand-drawn screenshot. But, I digress.

So, not only is the place hard as hell if you come ill-equipped, but it really is just a giant god damned maze. The game as a whole is a maze, but compared to Kraid's Lair, it's nothing. Kraid's Lair is a horrible mess of identical looking rooms with identical powerups placed specifically so you don't know where the hell you are, exactly. As I'm writing this, I'm looking at a map and seeing there are only like 4 missile upgrades jammed around there, but when I was playing it I felt like there were thousands. I'm probably just some kind of idiot. To make matters worse, there's a fake boss in there. It'd be a pretty huge smelly pain in the ass if you killed the fake Kraid, climbed all the way back up to the door to Tourian only to find that you killed the wrong one. So, you climb all the way back down, find your way to the real Kraid, finally actually kill him, and then have some retarded wall climbing shit where you have to blow holes in a wall of those bricks that come back after you shoot them. It doesn't help that I had the wave beam here. Suicide was faster. I'll stop this section here because I don't want to turn into another AVGN ripoff. Takeaway message: shit's frustrating.

I'm actually having a lot of fun with the game now that I'm out of that hellhole and have an actual, decent quality map. It's like I'm playing my good old friend Super Metroid, just a little more primitive. I'm planning on moving on to Metroid II again after this, and hopefully playing through the whole series. I'm especially looking forward to playing Zero Mission after this, which I hadn't played before. I'm sure it'll take out a lot of the more frustrating crap that's here. The screenshots look like Super Metroid, so that's cool. I dunno if I'll include the Prime series. Probably not. People love them though, so maybe I should. I dunno.

Well anyway, that's all I can think of for now. I sure killed a lot of time and avoided a lot of studying by writing this. GROZLAM OUT

Well this blog may be dead

BUT I'M NOT

Still working on Dog Adventure. I took a biiig break in like.. June where I didn't do anything, but I've been making massive strides since then. I want to say I'm about 25-50% done with the game, but I'm not sure exactly. I have a lot more ideas that I want to incorporate, but with each town it's getting harder to write dialogue that's funny or interesting. Whatever, I'll keep trying and you 0 readers will have yourself a wacky Dog Adventure game to play some day.

If there is anyone reading this, though, you want to suggest a place to promote/release Dog Adventure besides here? Some RPG Maker Game site? That'd be soup-er meal.

VAMPIRE LINE NEW YEARS SPECIAL

WAIT NO

I'm releasing a game I made in about an hour or something in MMF, though.

http://rapidshare.com/files/244217698/RAM_JAM.zip

THERE IT IS. ENJOY. It's basically a low-quality ripoff of Megaton Punch from Kirby Superstar, but hey whatever. Just.. close and reopen the program if you want to play more than once. Restarting makes it wacky because there's a minor bug I'm too lazy to fix

EDIT: Uploaded a new version that I did today. It's slightly better wooooooo

MAXIMUM ARMOR

Fun news on the Bainemo front.

I've...more or less abandoned my RPG for the moment. It still exists, I'm just not working on it. WHY YOU ASK? Well you see, I just learned about Allegro, a...plugin or whatever for C++. It has allowed me to program my own games in C++, from scratch. It's quite exciting, and is something I always wanted to learn how to do. It's extremely smile-making literally having complete control over every single thing that goes on in your game, but extremely frown-making having to deal with how obnoxious coding is. I'm learning a life skill, though, so hey. Skill.

Right now I'm still working on my engine. I've got collision PRETTY much down (which was a GOD DAMN PAIN IN THE ASS), and drawing the actual graphics is no problem at all. At the moment I've got a triangle who can slide around and jump. Not bad considering I programmed the entire thing myself. Once I make my engine less horrible I'll be working on actual maps/graphics/whatever. You know, the "fun" stuff.

guess who's back

oh hey i didn't see you come in

It's been awhile since I've posted, and you're probably thinking that means I haven't been working on my RPG, right? Right! Sort of!

Recently I've experimented with the idea of making my own maps. Using the standard RTP makes my RPG look like everybody else's, and there aren't many tilesets out there. This leaves me with two choices. Either I can draw my own maps from scratch in photoshop, or I can make my own tileset. The first one is a HUGE pain in the ass (as one might imagine), but it allows exponentially more freedom when it comes to maps. However, in order to implement objects you can walk under (such as trees, bridges, etc), I'd have to make those into a tileset ANYWAY. So chances are I'll just be making my own tileset. Though for now I'm just using the base one so I can get my maps and ideas done before I start with the most laborious thing anyone has ever done.

On the actual productivity side, I've basically finished my gem forging system. That's...about it. Not a whole lotta work has gone into this RPG, partially because of my rekindling with Diablo 2 and Pokemon Platinum. Well, Pokemon Platinum is new, but still. Kindling.

Dog Adenture Continues

So, after a long period of doing JACK SHIT for this game, I've started to pick it up a lilttle more again. Today, I put a bit more polish on the first "Hub" area, and unless subsequent tests surprise me, I think I'm done with it. I'v egot some good ideas for towns coming up, but I gotta work through the actual implementation of them, and the puzzles, and so forth. Not to mention the constant challenge of balancing boredom with impossibility when it comes to fights.

WE SHALL SEE, EH

HEY HUYSPGE

Howdy thar.

Finals are over for me as of today, so I'm hoping to get back on track with my RPG, which I basically put on hiatus for the last week or so. I'm finding that the hardest part is balancing out the classes so that they're all about equal without being too similar. It's kind of hard making 3 distinct classes for a game that's going to be largely/entirely single player, since a lot of the unique.. things about classes are contingent on their place in a group.. if you get me. It's also hard making the classes distinct since it uses a traditional RPG Battle system. You can't really notice that the Seeing Eye Dog Class is supposed to be more ranged than the Guard Dog Class.

Balancing classes is easy in theory, but hard when you have to actually set the numbers or whatever. OH WELL

On the song feront, I have notihng. Nothing at all. I had an idea for a song, but realized it was stolen and threw it away. I might keep part of the structure though, like a thief in the night. I dunno. I've had a bunch of ideas for songs. I kind of want to get back into the spooky halloween songs of olde. I heard the Lavender Town song from Pokemon and that reminded me of this. We'll see what happens.

Find the computer room

Yesterday was not a very productive day for me. My computer decided it was going to freeze at random intervals for no reason throughout the day. I threw it into a volcano and it works now, but the lava deleted a bunch of data I had to fix. The good news is I implemented my gem forging system about 30% of the way, and I must say it's pretty cool for an RPG maker thing. The next step is finding a way so I DON'T have to program 2^50 conditional branches in order to implement it correctly. I'm sure there's some way.

ROLE PLAYING GAME

Still truckin' on the RPGs. Since we last spoke (?) I added about 20 minutes of playtime onto the game and I'm not even remotely out of ideas yet. I haven't talked to Grozlam today but his RPG is also going quite well. Mine's more of a normal RPG with comedy elements whereas his is more of a normal comedy with RPG elements. If you get me. Needless to say there are seventy billion laughs to be had in each game. It won't be awhile til they go gold (assuming they ever do), but I'll be able to upload a nice little "demo version" fairly soon. I want to give you a taste of the full product and right now it's more of a taste of...barely being passable.

No news on the songs front, although Grozlam made a new mix of one of his old songs. It's barely different, so it isn't even worth uploading to Newgrounds, but it'll have a starring role in his RPG.

The past three days have been fairly packed for me, what with traveling back home up north and doing other...shit. Grozlam's having a smiling time studying for finals. Hopefully the summer will afford us with many hours of productivity. The summer and the preceeding weeks.

It's almost like cheating

Our RPGs are going exceptionally well. We've both got some fairly unique ideas and are implementing our asses off. So far we've each got 15-20 minutes of content in. This doesn't sound like too much (because it isn't), but it takes a lot of effort to initialize everything. Adding items, adjusting stats, ensuring balance. It's all stuff the player doesn't really notice, but the developer certainly does.

When it comes down to it you COULD say that the more work has been put into a game, the more efficient a developer becomes. The work:content ratio starts evening out. It's something everyone gets to look forward to.

VL Quests

So Bainemo and I started up work on RPG Maker stuff again last night. They're coming along well so far, I guess. They kind of seem like extensions of the VL RPG we were going to do back in the actual VL days.

Mine's called Dog Adventure, and it's about a dog and adventuring.

Bainemo's is called nothing, and is about complicated branches of events.

We'll keep the LATEST AND GREATEST news about these stupid god damned games up here as they develop. If they develop.

BRING ME BANANAS AND PEARS AND WHAT THE HELL EVER

EDIT: The song is now available for consumption here

HELLO THIS IS GROZLAM

I'm also going to be linking my NG musics here.

RIGHT HERE DUDES

I make more songs than there are stars in the sky, and some of them are pretty decent I think, albeit of shit garbage production quality. Anyway, take a listen and see what you think. Like Bainemo, I get less shitty as I go. Anything with the Grozface plastered on it has my seal of approval for a song I considered to be better than my mediocre others.

I'm working on one more right now, actually. I'll let you FUCKERS know when it's up.

oh yeah speaking of music

I have made songs aplenty in my thousands of centuries of life. Almost all of it was made in the past year, though. Call it a phase.

http://doneveno.newgrounds.com/audio/

There it is. You may notice that I started out low, then I started to grow. The stuff I made on famitracker (AKA NES music making thing) was kind of...really bad. Then I moved on to Modplug Tracker and made SNES music with samples. That was better. Now I live in Orgmaker territory and have improved greatly. I think you will agree.

Despite the fact that all my songs are hosted on Newgrounds (due to the fact that I have no idea if Blogger lets you upload MP3s or what) I'll be posting when I make new ones here. It's more flexible and Newgrounds is a bunch of techno-loving MORONS. Don't get me wrong, techno has its merits, but it doesn't have all the merits. Those merits belong to the villagers.

WELCOME TO VL QUEST

Here is a little background info on VL Quest and all it stands for.

Mant years ago there was a website called Vampire Line. It was full of magic and wonder. Then it died due to lack of interest and also because it cost me like 15 dollars a month to keep afloat.

But now it's back as a blog. It's called VL Quest because that's the name of a game we were going to make but didn't.

Wasn't that interesting?

Oh yes, about the actual site. Expect a lot of amateurish music from Grozlam and I. He uses Fruity Loops exclusively, and I uses...all sorts of CRAP, but lately Orgmaker. If you've played Cave Story, Orgmaker is what Pixel used to write the music for it. If not, think NES music but more instruments.