Just a simple and appealing rhythm game. That being said, it sort of works with how the show is presented: very simple, but cute and feel good. K-on was actually one of the first animes I had ever got into, so I have a bit of a personal attachment I suppose. I don't know man, I was really just sitting here doing every track with a smile on my face reliving some good memories I had with the show. Unfortunately, there is no fan translation, so a majority of the text is not readable, but the core game part you can still experience perfectly fine. I'd highly recommend if you like the show and just need some 2000's anime tie-in game nostalgia to vibe to for an afternoon.

So I went to the arcade with my family today, and it was pretty fun. We bought 16 tokens and equally distributed equally between us (4 each), but mostly spent our time playing Taiko because of course we would. It's a really fun game to play both alone and with your family, and the fact that you could play 2 songs with a single token was really helpful as well, because each one cost around 5 reais, which is a bit pricey.

Between all of the terrible kids oriented ones and loud Kof cabinets where 30 year olds were screaming like their lives depended on it, my cousin kept staring at Flying Tickers. I have no idea why this one in particular but he's 7, so maybe he recognized the visuals from a youtube kids video? Weird to think that flappy bird is older than him...

Anyway, while my parents were blasting the drums with folklore music on easy, I decide to spent my 2 last tokens so that we can give it a shot together. Considering that he burned his tokens in some quirky whack-a-mole reskin with zombies that were too fast for his hands, I felt like it could be fun y'know.

Anyway, after the 2 tokens went in, we pressed the 2 buttons to play the only mode there was for multiplayer: versus. Since the game had only a single button, tap, I was wondering what the hell would happen in it, hoping for the best.

After mere 4 seconds of not understanding how the tapping works because the screen trailers only kept showing flashing lights with blatantly adulterated gameplay to call the attention of small kids, he died. Immediately on screen a small 'Player 2 wins' message appeared, and... that was it.

That was the game.

2 tokens burned in 4 seconds.

He almost started crying out of guilt, saying sorry because he felt like he made me burn 4 games on the cool drum machine. We ended up buying 2 more (of course, just saying that we found it in our pockets) just to play together the 'weird songs' that I liked on Taiko, which I'll one day explain to him that are vocaloid stuff.

Anyway thanks for reading until here, I know it's not the usual meme reviews that I do but I needed to vent this terrible experience, this game is peak predatory garbage and a strong contender for worst experience I've ever had with the medium as a whole.

I'm not playing this.





Fuck you

Going to complain for a while. Had an urge to.

The trope of "children's media and playthings is actually scary" is so fucking tiresome. You could trace it back to the 1988 movie Child's Play at a bare minimum, probably even further, less popular examples, but there's been a really absurd resurgence in the past decade that seems to have found its roots in this series. Five Nights at Freddy's is completely inescapable to this day and so are its cheap imitations. Shit like Bendy and Poppy Playtime rose from the anals of utter filthy incompetence to get a quick buck. Some random made Baldi's Basics as a pisstake on the phenomenon, then it got equally popular somehow. It's spreading back around into unimpressive movies, shows and pitches. The Banana Splits movie is dogshit, that Barney movie will be dogshit, and I said Learning with Pibby will be dogshit but I also got violently assaulted by my friend circle for it. There's so many analog horror and fake lost media series on the internet that my friends are hooting and hollering for, yet when I try a couple I just squirm and die. I don't get it, it all blends into an amalgamation of the same basic, trite concept. I guess this is where the cynical asshole in me truly shines. I don't have a real preference in how I prefer my horror media, but I can tell you it's none of this.

I decided to rack my brain a little and see if i could recall whether Five Nights at Freddy's, the patient zero of this whole thing, was of any interest to me back when it was new. I think I only played these first two games, and didn't like either. I more vividly remember this one, though. The atmosphere it provides never really got to me, I just found myself frustrated with all the mechanics and how unforgiving it is as a whole, namely the narrow ass reaction time. The music box is the worst, most of your time spent is winding up the damn thing. It's tedious as hell, but at the same time you can't get too focused on it or one of the double digit amount of fuckikng animatronics will get the drop on you somehow. Don't you think there's a bit many?? It certainly succeeds in being stressful as all get out, but in my case it really isn't at all in an enjoyable way that makes me want to give it more shots. I ditched at I think night 4 or 5 and uninstalled after some weeks of not touching it.

Yet its impact remains completely bonkers. Did Scott Cawthon just get lucky? Who knows. Maybe he did, if you look at his prior works such as "Fart Hotel". Maybe it had to do with Markiplier's claims of them being the "scariest games in years", he's had a pretty massive influence since the cretaceous era. Did other game studios really just try to top it in scariness by doing...more of the same? And still earn success? Did they perhaps get lucky rather than Scott? Or was it both? Who knows.

No sir, I do not like this genre of stuff. When I think about it, and see all my friends infodumping to each other about it, I look at myself and feel like a hating little bastard. Hell, I kind of envy people who find so much interest in it! More power to you! That said, I don't have a strong urge to LIKE stuff like this, or Pibby, or whatever the hell, but it makes me wonder if something in my head isn't clicking like everyone else's. Missing the hype train is always an ass feeling for me. Sometimes as a kid I would refuse to step on, to be "different", and other times like this I really have tried and I don't understand.

I guess this isn't much of a review, is it? I kinda just felt like ranting for a while, uninterrupted, about a thing I don't understand so well. Yet I feel somewhat hollow after writing it all down. Maybe I should like grab a meal or something, go back to shitty old games on my shitty computer. That aligns with my interests a lot better.

This game gives absolutely no fucks at all when it comes to shamelessly ripping every single mecha anime cliche and trope wholesale and I'm all fucking for it. From the titular Kikaioh (oops i mean G-Kaiser which is literally the only name they localized for some reason) with the most classic of all super robot loadouts - rocket punches, chest beams, kicking, and a sword to finish it all off, to "Oh hey it's literally the RX-78 but with fin funnels" Dixen, to "my name is kawamori i will literally just put a vf in the game and call it a vf too" Rafaga, this game just gives. ZERO. SHITS. The story is cheesy as hell, as it should be, and every playable unit feels exactly like they should based on what hodgepodge of mecha cliches they're referencing. It's the kind of to the point where where 99.99% of it would just go over most peoples' heads unless they were already super huge into mecha, which is why I imagine this game's kind of gotten forgotten amongst all of Capcom's fighters throughout the years. Still though, fucking solid ass game that no /m/head should ever be caught not having played.

The very prospect of bringing the arcade experience to a portable console at one point was seen as a laughing matter, this is especially prevalent in those dumb ports of fighting games for the Game Boy where there were only two buttons to work with, but we're not talking about FGs we are talking about classic shmups that despise humanity both in-universe and in real life. Seeing attempts made to fit these large arcade games on a tiny grey cartridge is honestly sometimes kind of adorable, even if sometimes they just look sad especially in 2022, but sometimes it can work out and be their own experience.

DX here is actually a compilation/enhancement of the Game Boy versions of R-Type I and II. These enhancements are mainly things like adding color as well as a bit of QoL, the biggest probably being able to select your stage once you start completing them. This one is really nice, because car rides are often not gonna last long enough to beat this thing in one sitting, and you also can get practice on specific stages for your quest to 1cc the Game Boy versions of R-Type. I never got past the fourth stage in I as a kid, so my physical copy is still stuck on "4" for it's stage select. It's worth note they also redid the intro for R-Type II on here, it looks alright.

If for whatever reason you wanted to play the original versions without the enhancements those are also in here, just in case you like less color in your life and if the very idea of a "stage select" makes you throw your cane across the room and start shaking your fist at the clouds decreeing that gamers have gotten "soft".

R-Type DX is a humble game and it probably won't be taken seriously by anyone who didn't grow up during the original Game Boy era, but I appreciate it a lot. The content for a Game Boy game is pretty damn nice, and for what it's attempting to do it does more than well enough.

Thank you for your service sir.

cw: mentions of ableism, transphobia(?), and rape

Reeling from his recent break-up, Haruaki Fusaishi stumbles into the remote village of Yasumizu. Before long, an ominous fog descends on the mountain, trapping Haruaki and the residents within the town. The residents begin holding a ritual known as the "Feast." Its essentially a game of Werewolf. One of your friends and neighbors has been replaced with a murderous "wolf." You have to vote to hang the wolves before the wolves kill you. On top of that, Haruaki finds himself time looping and repeating the feasts over and over. In a community that already distrusts outsiders, can he find a path to escape?

Hard to get a read on my feelings on this. I think there's compelling stuff here. Major themes of how societies and religions form. How isolation or ostracization shape how people view themselves or others. How anyone, no matter how strong a will, can justify a cult mentality or mob violence.

I found myself getting pretty attached to some of the characters. The post-game revelation mode lets you hear the internal monologues of characters you had trouble reading for most of the game. When the main game is a paranoia run of who you can trust or fear, its a great way to add layers to the experience. You can understand the pain the characters are going through when they have to fear their loved ones or how someone is slowly convinced to become a wolf. Some of the stand-outs is Haruaki himself. Starting off as a generic mc man, he quickly reveals himself to be one of the Most Characters I've ever seen. He's a prankster and a liar, and for a game of paranoia and manipulation it makes him the kind of rogue-ish hero that a narrative like this needs. It also shows how he's not above the village's legends. He's a skeptic by nature, but in the route where he's forced to become a wolf, his desperation to survive sinks him to the same depravity he tried to stay above.

At the same time, there's elements of the character work that feels... weird? Yasumizu is established as a town of people who were exiled from the more affluent nearby town. There's a fascinating class and prejudice angle that the story digs into multiple times.

But then you get characters like Mocchi. Mocchi was exiled because he's an eccentric and his family thought he inherited some family instability. It makes sense that Yasumizu wouldn't exact have a robust mental health system to support Mocchi and provide the language or aid he needs for himself. But one of the ways they show that Mocchi is "weird" is that he wears dresses. Haruaki goes out of his way to ask "are you uncomfortable with your gender identity?" and Mocchi literally responds, I quote, "No I'm just weird." No one ever judges Mocchi for this and its never brought up again but it makes the intentions of that writing decision even harder to pin down. I don't THINK its transphobic but the fact that I can't even tell is some kind of damning.

The final villain runs into a similar problem. Without getting into details, its revealed that the villain needed to sleep with almost the entire cast for their plan to succeed. This includes minors. Whether or not sex was actually involved or not, that's just a bizarre writing decision to make? At the same time, the villain tragic past involves some weird sexual aspects that are also horrifying to untangle? It just seems like a decision that didn't need to be a part of the story and was thrown in as a last minute gross out factor.

Its a weird game to decipher. I think it has genuinely great themes about social conflict, but some of its decisions are so baffling that it completely takes you out and makes you question how intentional those themes are.

Bizarre little game.