A week in Dank Art
Over the weekend I busted into some special paper that I had which is designed to be postcards. This paper is the same texture and consistency as the Dank Art paper so it works quite nicely. I’m not sure how they will hold up against the elements in travel if that happens, but I guess I will need to try and mail them so I can find out how they hold up.
Most of this week was all practice streams by other people participating in the 1CC Marathon that took place on the weekend. I tried out the paper for both Trap, Fantastic Planet and BBH’s Arcade Roulette. I should mail these out to people & see how they hold up.
Later in the week, Funkdoc was learning a new strategy to play X-Men using a character he wasn’t used to as to improve his chances for getting a one credit clear for the Marathon. It’s really nice when you can see someone work really hard for that pay off, which was the really fun part of following an event like this. I made some really amusing Evil Zone art for Planets stream and notable was Macaw’s crazy delivery of old Windows 95 games from Japan. Everything was building up for the end of the week when the 1CC Marathon took place.
Fish or Die
I think this was the best I have ever played Sega Marine Fishing. It’s crazy too because every practice take I was doing ended in some disaster and I went into the run without what I felt was sufficient practice. Though somehow the fishing gods were smiling on me that day and I was able to save myself from near close calls that could have ended my game.
The worst possible situation is when you only need less than 300 points to advance when there is under 40 seconds to time left and thats when the biggest fish on the screen will troll you hard and bite your lure. You have less than a second to decide if its worth keeping it or to shake it off. If you don’t shake it off, the big fish might pull off just as it gets to the boat sucking away any time left for a recovery. I rolled with it and my practice paid off as I was able to bag that huge shark that tried to troll me in the Shallow stage with plenty of time left. I was more than impressed with how I did that I was excited and started to celebrate right away.
I was very happy when I watched the video afterwards and got to see what the chat was saying. I was very happy some of you came out to cheer me on and I just wanted to thank you :3
I made art for everyone who played in the 1CC Marathon! I posted the gallery up here if you want to have a look. Overall it was a lot of fun and everyone had a great time watching these games get played out. Thank you again to Pasky who single handedly put this entire event on himself
Dungeon Crawling
I streamed a bit of NES fun on Sunday when waiting for the 1CC Marathon to start up.
When I buy games I try to pick up 2-3 titles at a time. I like finding strange and unusual titles for my collection and scooping up a bunch of games in the $10-25 price range is way more satisfying then one really expensive gem. One of the games I bought this summer was Arkista’s Ring during a collecting trip in the town next to mine, Georgetown.
This game is so appealing from the cute music to the adorable 1 title sprite art that suddenly it’s my new favourite for the system. This game has very simple and easy to learn mechanics that you can start mastering it right away without the use of a manual. The difficulty does start to build up as you progress through the different levels of dungeons, however every room has a strategy that can be learned and exploited. Enemies can be killed with the characters bow and arrow or can use one of the magic items picked up after their death.
Arkista came out in 1990 and drew a lot of parallels to Zelda due to being a top down action adventure style game. It also only got a 3.5 rating in magazines when it came out which probably explains why you never saw this. It’s a typically average game and slightly dated next to titles such as Willow by Capcom (which came out in 1989). However, this style of top-down dungeon crawling adventure game is 100% my thing and it’s perfect for just casual play. A great find if you can pick it up.
Another great hit is Willow by Capcom for the NES which I picked up at the trade show for $10 a week ago. I wasn’t sure what I would get with Willow. I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie as I was a very small child when it was in theatres but I remember my parents did rent the movie for my brother and I and I just remember walking away from the TV for most of it. All I knew was that one of my friends told me it was special if I could get a copy of it and for $10 I think I got a deal.
This game is nothing like the arcade (big surprise) yet follows the movie’s plot a bit more closer in story with a very heavy Capcom influence. It’s an amazing RPG style action adventure game that I had overlooked for years because of my Willow bias. What really got me excited to play this game other then the amazing graphics was the enjoyable music that this game is packed with. It’s cheerful and catchy and makes you just want to keep playing and discovering new tunes by walking all over the world map. This game gets a bit technical in the menu system and I would like to put it in the category as Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, but Robin Hood needs it’s own blog post once I re-purchase that game.
I think over the next few weeks i’ll do more Willow play throughs and see what happens. I enjoy a nice little adventure game for my Sunday Streams and this game would be perfect to explore and have fun with for a few weeks.