I thought I was free when I beat Loonyland, but the nostalgia trip never truly left me. So I played Loonyland 2 but that one's not in the database and fuck it I'm too lazy to add it. It's pretty good. Last few areas ticked me off, 3.5 stars maybe.
Anyway then I moved on to Kid Mystic, a game which I actually had played as a kid non-mystic. I remembered Mike Hommel getting the rights back and working on new features for an updated release, but I never played the thing.
If you didn't know, Hommel/Jamul/Hamumu made a couple of small games based on Dr. Lunatic (recently rereleased on Steam which kicks ass) for eGames, a game publisher that's impossible to Google. The first Spooky Castle was essentially a single world of Dr. L, but Kid Mystic had two more interesting things going for it. The first was that it has RPG elements for some reason, and the second was the box art eGames made. Look at that sucker. They edited Kid Mystic's nose to be round instead of pointed and once I was told this I can never not think about it when I look at this thing.
What was I talking about again?
Well, turns out I don't think making you grind out levels is actually a good addition to an action/puzzle type game anymore. Especially when you have to buy the ability to move at a decent rate. The spells are cool but you can only use them like, once before you run out of MP until way late. It's all still pretty good, but if you're looking at this thing and you haven't played Dr. Lunatic you should give Hommel ten bucks through Steam. If you have and are playing this for nostalgia reasons then you know what you're in for.
The new features include some new levels (one of them is an infuriating sliding puzzle but for the most part they're on the usual level of quality) some fairies that add little modifiers (probably some fun to be had there) a new mode with Tony Hawk goals for some reason (I enjoy the sheer audacity of the concept) and also inexplicably fancy water effects that look kind of terrible and don't fit in with the rest of the art.
Twist ending: I didn't finish this run because sticky keys kicked in and just totally ruined my session because the game's so old and I lost like an hour and change of progress. But I beat it years ago that counts. I don't want to mark it abandoned that makes it look like it's bad. Just... remember to save.
Anyway then I moved on to Kid Mystic, a game which I actually had played as a kid non-mystic. I remembered Mike Hommel getting the rights back and working on new features for an updated release, but I never played the thing.
If you didn't know, Hommel/Jamul/Hamumu made a couple of small games based on Dr. Lunatic (recently rereleased on Steam which kicks ass) for eGames, a game publisher that's impossible to Google. The first Spooky Castle was essentially a single world of Dr. L, but Kid Mystic had two more interesting things going for it. The first was that it has RPG elements for some reason, and the second was the box art eGames made. Look at that sucker. They edited Kid Mystic's nose to be round instead of pointed and once I was told this I can never not think about it when I look at this thing.
What was I talking about again?
Well, turns out I don't think making you grind out levels is actually a good addition to an action/puzzle type game anymore. Especially when you have to buy the ability to move at a decent rate. The spells are cool but you can only use them like, once before you run out of MP until way late. It's all still pretty good, but if you're looking at this thing and you haven't played Dr. Lunatic you should give Hommel ten bucks through Steam. If you have and are playing this for nostalgia reasons then you know what you're in for.
The new features include some new levels (one of them is an infuriating sliding puzzle but for the most part they're on the usual level of quality) some fairies that add little modifiers (probably some fun to be had there) a new mode with Tony Hawk goals for some reason (I enjoy the sheer audacity of the concept) and also inexplicably fancy water effects that look kind of terrible and don't fit in with the rest of the art.
Twist ending: I didn't finish this run because sticky keys kicked in and just totally ruined my session because the game's so old and I lost like an hour and change of progress. But I beat it years ago that counts. I don't want to mark it abandoned that makes it look like it's bad. Just... remember to save.