The funny thing was, as I returned to playing on Hard, after having recorded the game on easy. It felt less pressuring to play and also more fun to play on Hard than it did during the first level when I had the record button on, and had to constantly redo the level. I just wanted to see if I could make it until the last level, and once I did, I decided to hit the record button again to film it for the final final boss. And in retrospect, I do wish I would've recorded the third level (including the boss at 16:14) on the Hard difficulty, because the whole level (in my opinion) went much better for me, and the bosses are more interesting... on the other hand, the hive boss on level five, is a lot messier, more confusing and straight up nausea inducing on the Hard difficulty. The ground around the boss spins even faster, to the point where you spin around faster while pushing against the ground spin, than you do on Easy while pushing towards the ground spin. And that is definitely less interesting to watch, as you would be just watching a spinning screen for 5-10 minutes until the boss dies...

@bulleteyegames that is a surprise, though I know sometimes RNG can mess with speedrunners too.

Yeah, I like it as an addition to the original, but not necessarily as a replacement. I.e. it feels more like an expansion pack than a sequel... In the future I would consider playing the two, more or less back-to-back, as a single game, rather than two separate games... and yea, save states are really nice, especially when you don't yet have the feel and experience of the levels and bosses down, as they save a lot of time from having to replay the entire game, with the added bonus of allowing you to keep your gun.

@bulleteyegames thanks for explaining.

yeah, you can't really go wrong with classic Contra and Castlevania... at least the home console versions (the Castlevania GB game was anything but fun).

Hamster? I'm looking forward to that😏

Same. People always say that Dracula is the hardest, but in my opinion Death is always harder (maybe intentionally)... And I'll have to check that fangame out, sounds like fun.

@@bulleteyegames GREAT! The game is available, as far as I know, on the cdromance website. On windows but really is so fun.

I know, especially when there are no hints to suggest you could do that... how would you even know to try it (if you didn't have a guide)?

@@bulleteyegames The only thing I can guess is that this game is firmly in the era when players were expected to read manuals before/during play. Do you have access to the game's documentation? Could this also explain the choice of equipment in the beginning of the game with (deliberately?) vague labels? Copy protection?

@@Fronzel41 No I do not have access to the documentation... I don't even know where I would begin to search for such a thing. But indeed, it is possible that the manuals and docs would have a a lot of necessary information. After all, most manuals at the time used to be practically novellas in those days. But unlike western games, that you are more likely to still find the docs saved somewhere, obscure old Japanese games probably don't have their docs as easily accessible... at least for English searchers. And I definitely don't know Japanese well enough to be able to search for it them in Japanese. Luckily there guides and walkthroughs made by much more talented players that get us through these games.

Pray is like a... magic attack, essentially. It does good damage against most enemies, but is limited in use (especially in the beginning). Its real merit is in solving certain puzzles (where it is required) and in the final boss (where it is also required)... And yeah I know there are a lot of encounters, but luckily most of them are really quick and simple (unlike in most other RPGs of the time), so cutting them out didn't really make the video that much shorter (I kept cutting them out until I reached halfway and noticed that the impact wasn't all that big in overall time, so I decided to keep them all in... and it kind of adds to the ever present horror in the game.

@bulleteyegames thanks and yeah it's on the NES/famicom so I'd go easier on it, like how that ninja jajamaru lost rpg has invincible mode and encounter toggles. Even seeing a background when fighting was a lot back then.

Hi! I was actually planning the video for Sunday, the week before last, but I had to attend my cousin's wedding which ended up taking up the whole weekend, so I couldn't record. And then this weekend there was Hololive's GTA event, which delayed and slowed down both recording and editing, as I spent most of my free time catching the streams and clips from the event... I finally managed to render the video this morning... And I mean, otherwise I would've saved this video for the upcoming weekend, but I have specific games planned for every weekend of October, for spooky times, and I don't want to separate the two versions of Sonic 2 so far away from each other. So this weekend it'll be Sonic 2 on Mega Drive, on time, on Sunday...

@bulleteyegames oh no problem. Glad it was for a happy event 😊

It spoils many, myself included.

In my opinion, if you wanted to improve this one, you'd have to pretty much redesign it from scratch... or at least redesign the levels...

Personally, I use M88, which you find just by searching "M88 emulator" on google... as for games, Internet Archive is probably your best bet (that's where I got my games)

trust me, I am very much human... I have save states between levels and do die quite a lot while I practice each level... in the NES days, I could never get past the Turbo Tunnel level, with part of the reason being that, after a few deaths, I had to always start the game from the beginning... with save states I only have to start at the beginning of the level...

Thanks, it only took me like... 20 years to finally be able to complete the level... not knowing just how much harder the game gets afterwards...

Yeah, it definitely surprised me too. It's like everything in the game is a step down from the NES versions. Maybe it was made by people who were all actually famicom fanboys so they made it worse just out of spite😆

No, it's just edited in. Unfortunately, I don't know how to open the files and translate the actual text, so editing them in is the most I can do atm.

Just like me and Battletoads back in the day... But I will have my rematch, and I will win... one way or the other... Honestly, without save states or, at least, save spots between levels, most older games just feel almost impossible to beat...

@@bulleteyegames festers quest worked me over pretty good too. Perhaps I still harbor resentment from those experiences of agonizing defeat. Lol.

I don't really remember gradual petrify, I mean, there was really no reason to use it most of the time... though I think I used it on one specific enemy type that could be consistently one-shotted with it (...or I might be thinking of Break). And yeah, the last dungeon is literally hell. I remember playing the 3d remake, where if I remember correctly, there was one boss fight at the top of the tower, before actually stepping into the last dungeon. And I remember white knuckling the entire last dungeon knowing that if I died, I'd have to do both the last AND the penultimate dungeons all over again, since there was no save points once you entered the dungeon. I feared death at every enemy let alone the five boss fights... to which end, I feel like the original was easier, though, that might be just because I was fully prepared for it. And in the 3d version, I while I definitely did not max out all of them, I think I maxed out the white and black mages, warrior, maybe even knight, and the monk... which was my biggest drawback in the original, because the monk does not get as nice stat boosts as he gets in the 3d version, especially when he doesn't even get a lvl 99 item. I remember, starting out the penultimate dungeon with the monk, and wondering why some of the enemies die one-shot while others don't, when he hits 9999 every time... until I realised that he actually hits beyond the damage cap (around 11000 as I remember), and the numbers only showed the 9999... and I still chuckle to myself reading some of the guides that say monk will be completely useless the moment you unlock black belt. I'd say a monk could take on the final boss... And Sage is definitely a bit too overpowered in the original, as he has the exact same stats as Magus and Devout, but with even more "MP". I almost didn't even want to use him, because I thought it would be a bit too unfair... but then I started thinking about the final dungeon and thought "...why not". But yeah, grinding the onion knight is definitely not for those of sound mind.

@bulleteyegames thanks for the background. I did have a vid on that petrification kzbin.info/www/bejne/oIXLZKCDfd1pis0si=WBK1yhm3n7aMbis2 And yeah you don't even level fast in the 50s with boost for that onion knight (ff5 dualcast for red mage mastery is faster at quadruple ABP) but people made vids soloing lol. I also saw ff3 3d and ff4 3d are easier on mobile than ds, not sure if they patched difficulties for those older ds versions. Though ff3 ds one enemy on screen is so weird lol damage sponge.

@@MrVariant thanks for the vid, the petrify looks very different in the original, but now I definitely do remember there being some enemies that could be one-shotted with Petrify. I remember casting it first as payback for petrifying my troops, and then just continuing with it, because it worked so well. I myself played the PSP port of 3d remake. I'm not sure how it compares difficulty-wise to the other versions, but I have heard the mobile versions being easier for all the games in the series...

Indeed! It made the game flow much smoother, and made the overall experience much more enjoyable. (at least in my opinion).

Torture is a good word, previously I played the PSP Anniversary edition of the game, and I remember it being a lot more amicable with the level ups (I remember being able to easily level up Osmose to max level in the last dungeon, along with other spells) but the original really wants you to grind yourself sick, especially with spells like Esuna, which only becomes useful at lvl 5, and there is really no way anyone would naturally use that spell often enough for it to level up to that point when you need it. I never touched the Pixel Remasters myself, because I thought they looked graphically too inconsistent (the characters being like 16-bits, background 32, and the UI in full HD) which turned me off of them... I think the Anniversary versions look a lot better. And yea, I decided to cut the encounters out after rewatching my FFI playthrough and realizing that most of the video is just encounters. But now that I cut off like 3-4h of encounters out, the game feels much easier to watch.

@bulleteyegames yep you're right about esuna. I do remember casting magic to hit my party lol. PSP/old mobile had very tedious arcane dungeons that didn't let you save. Though I admit the soul of rebirth was fun if you gave Ricard a blood sword or cursed sword to make ultima weapon beatable (double ancient sword dual wield had a chance with curse messing him up for both atk and def once connecting). I had to whiff about 50 times for one lol and poison did 5 damage out of its 25k hp. Glad pixel remaster improved the poison axe as well. Ripper knife helped too with its fixed damage.

Yea, the PC Engine (or TurboGrafx) really does seem to get the best ports out of all the other consoles (especially concerning music), which makes me somewhat surprised at how niche or forgotten the console has become. Though, in this game it is quite annoying how you need to keep swinging your sword to attack, which coupled with the fact that you can just press the attack button down to keep constantly attacking, feels somewhat redundant or unnecessary. and I'm actually playing a party RPG for next week (it won't be an Ys game, though)...