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Vampire Savior (Switch): COMPLETED!

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No, not the horde-based twin stick only one stick sort of shooter. That’s Vampire Survivors, even though I keep getting the two names mixed up. No, this is the Capcom 1-on-1 fighting game from the late 90s heyday of Capcom 1-on-1 fighting games. There was a cheap bundle of bundles (a bundle^2, if you like) on the eShop recently where you could get Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection and Capcom Fighting Collection together for less money than either collection had ever been on sale for individually. Ah, gwan then.

Vampire Savior (the lack of a U is making me queasy), or Darkstalkers 3, depending on region, is a CPS2 based game, much like Street Fighter Alpha and X-Men: Children of the Atom, so it has big ol’ sprites and loads of animation. The fighters are generally based on monsters like a mummy, a vampire, and a Definitely Not Frankenstein’s Monster.

I played as newcomer-to-the-series Baby Bonnie Hood, who absolutely isn’t supposed to be Little Red Riding Hood, and has a machine gun and a dog. It was silly fun.

Metroid Zero Mission (Switch): COMPLETED!

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An actual Metroid Metroidvania game! Released on the Switch Game Boy Advance Online Service Thing presumably to tie in with the re-announcement (and gameplay footage) of the upcoming Metroid Prime 4, I thought, why the hell not eh?

It’s good. Oh so good. Yes, I’ve played it before, but almost 20 years ago so I remembered very little of it. In fact, I’d even forgotten about the whole “zero suit” bit where Samus loses her armour and you have to sneak around a Space Pirate ship with a weedy little gun. A bit which inspired the whole premise of Metroid Dread, I’m sure, but still – totally forgot it. And didn’t really enjoy that section too much either, truth be told, but it’s fine as it’s only about 15 minutes of the whole game.

The rest of Zero Mission is glorious ‘vania exploration and traversal and it hasn’t really aged either. Being a GBA game, it’s a shame nothing was done to make use of the Switch’s extra buttons as some of the moves are a little tricky using just ABLR. Specifically, swapping between missiles and super missiles has to be done with the Select button, which on the Switch is next to your left hand, not your right like on a GBA, so that’s a minor pain. You only really need them for Mother Brain though.

What I also hadn’t remembered, is how bloody easy the game is. I’m used to Metroid games, and the genre generally, being pretty difficult. At least, more difficult than this. I died once. On Mother Brain if you’re interested. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve played a lot of these games recently, or I was especially careful here, but I was very surprised at how easy I found it.

Metroid Zero Mission (Switch): COMPLETED!

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An actual Metroid Metroidvania game! Released on the Switch Game Boy Advance Online Service Thing presumably to tie in with the re-announcement (and gameplay footage) of the upcoming Metroid Prime 4, I thought, why the hell not eh?

It’s good. Oh so good. Yes, I’ve played it before, but almost 20 years ago so I remembered very little of it. In fact, I’d even forgotten about the whole “zero suit” bit where Samus loses her armour and you have to sneak around a Space Pirate ship with a weedy little gun. A bit which inspired the whole premise of Metroid Dread, I’m sure, but still – totally forgot it. And didn’t really enjoy that section too much either, truth be told, but it’s fine as it’s only about 15 minutes of the whole game.

The rest of Zero Mission is glorious ‘vania exploration and traversal and it hasn’t really aged either. Being a GBA game, it’s a shame nothing was done to make use of the Switch’s extra buttons as some of the moves are a little tricky using just ABLR. Specifically, swapping between missiles and super missiles has to be done with the Select button, which on the Switch is next to your left hand, not your right like on a GBA, so that’s a minor pain. You only really need them for Mother Brain though.

What I also hadn’t remembered, is how bloody easy the game is. I’m used to Metroid games, and the genre generally, being pretty difficult. At least, more difficult than this. I died once. On Mother Brain if you’re interested. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve played a lot of these games recently, or I was especially careful here, but I was very surprised at how easy I found it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Did I completely forget that this was also an arcade game? Pretty sure I only ever knew it as a SNES title, but no – here’s the arcade version. It is, as you’d expect, very similar to the original version but with better graphics and animation, and levels set in various time periods like “dinosaurs” and “pirates” as the title would suggest.

It felt somewhat easier than the original, perhaps because there are a few more moves and certainly more floor pizza to pick up. It still required a virtual piggy bank filled with virtual coins to get through (in two-player mode this time) but as before, it’s button mashing mindless fun.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Yes! The arcade version! It’s another game on the Cowabunga Collection, and probably the best one on there from what I remember.

Sure, it’s mindless and lacking in combos and special moves like newer examples of the genre, but it’s a classic and you can never hear “SAY YOIRE PRAYERS, TOITLES” too many times. Also, being an arcade game designed to extract as many coins from your purse as possible, it’s really rather hard and the bosses especially are just unfair money-sponges, but it doesn’t matter when you can just feed it unlimited virtual credits.

We also played through in three player, which is a very unusual thing these days.