Kinda messed up how UFO 50 has more games than Action 52 tbh

[RT-55J]

UFO 50 is so cool. They should make something like this for books or movies or something!!

I like Vainger and want to make a screenshot map of it. (It's the Metal Storm metroidvania.)

Excited to give Mini and Max a proper playthrough.

[veni-vidi-ascii]

I'm really enjoying it, though I've only played it a few hours. I'm definitely gonna go back and complete a lot of them.

[RT-55J]

They should make something like this for books or movies or something!!

I said this mostly as a joke about how common anthologies of short stories and short films are in comparison to anthologies of games, but even then UFO 50 is unique. I feel like there's hardly any anthology out there in any medium that covers such a wide variety of genre, form, and theming. It's kinda dizzying.

I guess if you count rereleased there are a good number of videogame anthologies, but personally I'd hesitate to count single-series collections. Atari 50 and the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection feel closer to this in spirit, but it's not quite the same thing as having a bunch of new(-ish) games under one roof.

Come to think of it, Nintendoland might be one of the closest points of comparison to this after Action 52. (I sure there wre others.)

(I know some people have said that stuff like those huge itch.io bundles are like UFO 50, but imho that's like calling a bookshelf an anthology --- not being glued together in a bound volume makes it a categorically different experience.)

[RT-55J]

I only played a brief 4 stages of Rail Heist last night, but I was genuinely impressed by how intricately/emergently all the different mechanics interact with each other. Good stuff

[veni-vidi-ascii]

Rail Heist seems like a gem so far. Gonna be hard to 3-star every level.

[RT-55J]

The full sountrack is up on bandcamp right now:

https://phlogiston.bandcamp.com/album/ufo-50

(bandcamp friday is tomorrow fyi)

One guy composed over 300 of these tracks, which makes the technical consistency and stylistic variance especially impressive.

Campenella 3 sounds like a late NES Konami game.

[RT-55J]

Rail Heist seems like a gem so far. Gonna be hard to 3-star every level.

I went back to the first level to three-star it after getting my first star incidentally in another level. It was fun seeing how easy it was with all the mechanical knowledge I had gained.

Some of those later levels though --- hoo boy, I'm not sure how I would even begin to get the angel star on them.

[RT-55J]

Rolled credits on Rail Heist with 11/60 stars. I didn't really go out of my way to 3-star any level in particular, except for Stage 18, Sitting Duck (at least that's what I think it's called). The pacifist strategy in that stage is hilarious.

What a fantastic piece of videogame.

Really wish it had a level editor.