ugvm

the site of uk.games.video.misc

  • Home
  • Podcast
  • Articles
  • Platforms
    • Xbox 360
    • Playstation 3
    • wii u
    • 3ds
    • psp
    • iOS
    • PC
    • Mac
    • Wii
    • xbox
    • SNES
    • Mega Drive
  • Gamercodes
    • Xbox Live
    • Wii U NNIDs
    • Wii
    • PSN
    • 3DS
    • Steam
    • Apple Game Center
    • Battle.net
    • Elite Dangerous
  • Gallery
  • Back Issues
  • Other Groups
  • About Us
    • A brief history of ugv*
    • Posting Traditions
    • Join in
    • ugvm Charter

Marvel Land (MD): COMPLETED!

Posted on 05/04/2017 Written by deKay

Marvel Land is a game I had as a kid, but never completed. A while after the original release, it appeared outside of Japan as “Talmit’s Adventure” or something, but I always preferred the Japanese original. So the Japanese one is what I played through here.

It’s a happy fun blue skies platformer with slightly slippy physics. You know the sort – where floors don’t have quite enough friction when you land. It certainly took some time to get used to. Marvel Land’s “thing” is the bizarre attack you can perform by flinging copies of yourself around yourself. You need a power-up to give you a “chain” of clones, and then by pressing up or down you spin them around you, collecting items and attacking baddies. It’s very odd.

marvel land

Sometimes, you can use these clones to grab a node, which lets you swing around and cross gaps or jump high. The more clones you have (attacking with them depletes them) the higher or further you go.

The other “thing” with Marvel Land is all the warp doors. As is common in many platformers, there are hidden (literally) or hard to reach doors that warp you to other parts of the level or even other levels. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Only in this game, some of the warps take you back to the start of the level. Or back a whole level, or several levels. There’s one particularly evil one in the penultimate level. It takes you right back to the very start of the game. I’ll not deny I reverted to a save state for that one.

marvel land

Boss battles are a bit strange and thoroughly Japanese. One involves playing Janken, another is a bit Whack-a-Mole. Only the final boss actually involves a fight of any sort!

Marvel Land is a fun, happy, difficult, nonsensical platformer. It reminds me a lot of Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure, and that’s a good thing.

marvel land

The post Marvel Land (MD): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, Mega Drive, Post, retro

Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (MD): COMPLETED!

Posted on 04/04/2017 Written by deKay

I have never played a Ys game before. I don’t even know how to pronounce it. “Wise”? “Ees”? “Why Ess”? Who knows. Something else I also didn’t know: Ys III is a Castlevania game.

Not an actual Castlevania game from that series of course. No, Ys III just plays a lot like one. There’s a castle, a clocktower, and even a boss that is very much like Dracula. It has the same mechanic for walking up and down stairs. Grinding to level up, just like the Metroidvania CV games, is also a thing here. Even the music sounds like it has comes from a Castlevania game, with a couple of the tracks sounding almost identical to music from that series. It’s also hard as nails. Castlevania, see?

ys iii
Another Castlevania, another Clock Tower.

Before I started playing it, I was expecting a party based RPG. Imagine my surprise then, when it was a side scrolling hack and slash game. And that was before I realised the Castlevania parallels. There’s some Zelda II in there too. Unlike those games, however, Ys III is pretty short. There are only four levels, one of which you do twice, and each is impossible until you’ve levelled up enough. The bosses ranged from laughably simple to nigh-on impossible (I really struggled with the fire lion thing), and in Castlevania II tradition poor translation meant I was clueless how to progress at least twice while playing.

ys iii
Dancing on the sand.

Graphically, the sprites are not exactly the Mega Drive’s best, but the parallax backgrounds – especially the sunset – are incredible. Sound effects are nothing special, in contrast to the epic soundtrack. I found the controls a little unresponsive when it came to jumping. This made climbing up out of a cave more difficult that it really should have been.

ys iii
Gotta gets me some harb.

On the whole though, Ys III is really rather good. If nothing like what I was expecting. There’s a remake available on the PSP and on Steam, the latter of which it seems I own somehow, so I might give that a go.

The post Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (MD): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, Mega Drive, Post, retro, ys

Pang (Arcade): COMPLETED!

Posted on 04/04/2017 Written by deKay

It required all of the credits, which, if I’d not been playing it on RetroPie would have meant re-mortgaging the house, but I completed it. Boy are some of those final few levels hard.

Pang is always a go-to game in the arcades for me. That, Pac-Land, Rampage, TMNT, Street Fighter II, Mappy, Out Run. I never got very far on a single credit in the past. Perhaps level 10 if I was very lucky.

But now, I’ve done it. Life goals, and all that eh?

The post Pang (Arcade): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: Arcade, completed, pang, Post, retro

Lego Dimensions: Midway Arcade (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 31/12/2016 Written by deKay

I’ll be honest: I wasn’t expecting much from this Level Pack. It seemed a little contrived and almost like Warner Bros was scraping around their big ol’ IP library for something a little different and came out with this. They haven’t even got a “known” character as the main figure in the set – he’s just “Gamer Kid”.

However, it turned out to be awesome.

midway arcade
Robotron 2084

The level itself, for the most part, is quite small and doesn’t have a great deal to do in it, but the hook is that you unlock a load of actual real emulated arcade machines as you play. Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, Joust, Super Sprint (which, bizarrely, suffers from horrible slowdown), Defender, Spy Hunter and Robotron 2084 to name a few. There’s also a Lego representation of Paperboy, in which the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz have stolen the newspapers. It’s fun.

Paperboy
Super Sprint
Super Sprint

The dimension hub is fantastic too, with references to Rampage, Toobin’, Vindicators, Badlands, 720, Gauntlet and all sorts.

I’ve a complete playthrough of the level here:

The post Lego Dimensions: Midway Arcade (PS4): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: Arcade, completed, lego, Post, PS4, retro

Sonic Blast (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 11/12/2016 Written by deKay

You know something? That Sonic Triple Trouble wasn’t so bad after all. You know what was bad? Sonic Blast on the Game Gear.

No, not Sonic 3D Blast – that’s a wholly different game, being in isometric and with Flickys to save and stuff. This is a standard Sonic platformer, or should I say, sub-standard. On paper it sounds great – platforming, Sonic, no Tails, 3D rendered graphics. However, the platforming is dire and the 3D rendered graphics are so low resolution they look terrible. Sonic has a giant head, appears to be permanently tilted out of the screen, and only two frames of animation.

He doesn’t seem right in the context of the levels. I’ve never been a big fan of the graphical style (and I’ve lamented before about how awful Super Mario Ball and Donkey Kong Country look too) but never before has it looked so ugly and jarring.

It isn’t just the graphics that I hate about the game though. The physics seem off too, and the levels are tiny. You get just one chance at each chaos emerald, and you have to hunt for the entrance to the emerald special stage in Act 2 of each level – it’s very easy to miss them completely. Luckily, the specially stages are incredibly easy despite the dreadful collision detection, due to how slowly Sonic runs. They are much like a cross between the Mega Drive Sonic 2 (into the screen, collect rings) and Sonic 3 (seems to be on a ball) special stages, but not as much fun.

sonic blast

The main levels are dull, and several seem to be watered down levels from Sonic & Knuckles – there’s a Sandopolis level (Yellow Desert Zone) and a Lava Reef Zone (Red Volcano Zone), but they’re sparsely populated and boring. If they were doing that I’d have hoped for a Super Sonic Space Chase like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles if I completed it with all the emeralds, but no – just a weak additional final boss.

sonic blast

In all, it feels like a Sonic game driven by having a new graphic style and written by some people who saw a Sonic game in a shop window once but have been given access to some of the assets. I’m glad I’ve played Sonic Blast, but only so I know not to ever again.

The post Sonic Blast (3DS): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: 3ds, completed, Post, retro, sonic the hedgehog

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • …
  • 42
  • Next Page »
  • E-mail
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Latest Podcast Listenbox

98: There Were No Ramekins
byugvm

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? Of course not. You don’t listen to the podcast so why would some random jangling entertain you, eh? But do listen, because it’s only bloody Christmas again!

In Episode 98, deKay and Kendrick chat about some The Game Awards stuff, Half Life 3 (or not), and games!

98: There Were No Ramekins
Episode play icon
98: There Were No Ramekins
Episode Description
Episode play icon
97: I’m Feeling A Bit Squiffy
Episode Description
Episode play icon
96: Magic Beans
Episode Description
Search Results placeholder

Tags

3ds ACNL animal crossing Arcade assassin's creed Batman completed Destiny Diary Emulation evercade Game Diary games iOS iPhone lego Mac mario Master System Mega Drive minecraft PC picross Playstation 3 Playstation 4 Playstation 5 pokemon Post ps+ ps3 PS4 ps5 psn PS Vita retro sonic the hedgehog Steam steam deck switch Vita Wii wii u Xbox 360 Xbox One zelda

Contributors

  • Diary – deKay's Lofi Gaming
  • Game Diary – The Temple of Bague
  • gospvg
  • Lufferov’s Gaming Diary
  • Tim's Gaming Diary

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

RSS Feed RSS – Posts

Copyright © 2026 · Outreach Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in