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.

[RT-55J]

@neen the game "Velgress" in this collection is literally just da crumblah. It even stars Legally-Distinct-Samus.

[neen]

i am filing a lolsuit 

[RT-55J]

You wanna know something so unbelievably cringeworthy and m*ssed up about Vainger?

The screens in the starting area, Theta Sector, match the height of the game's output resolution of 216 pixels (or 13.5 blocks), while the screens in the other areas are 8 pixels taller (or 224 pixels (14 tiles)). Why would they make this sort of inconsistency that only I would notice???

[RT-55J]

After completing Stage 3 of Velgress on my second attempt ever, I immediately biffed it in Stage 4, costing me the run.

One-life action games are a modern blasphemy against game design. (I'm actually enjoying the game. I just got a smidge tilted because I got past the point where I could have gotten the bad ending.)

[RT-55J]

i'm velgressed this little not!samus gremlin all the way up to the top of this velgress

so proud of myself

   

[neen]

  maybe i should play this one

[RT-55J]

I messed around with Planet Zoldath for about 40 minutes today.

It's like a miniature world randomizer for a alt-universe sci-fi Zelda 1. The planet is randomly generated. You start off with nothing except for 3 hearts. You didn't even remember to pack a weapon.

You got friendly aliens who disperse flavor text, hints, and their desires to barter. There are unfriendly aliens that attack you. If you attack the friendlies, they join the ranks of the unfriendlies. The sprites for which aliens are friendly and unfriendly are randomly assigned every time a world is generated.

The game went to the Dizzy school of inventory design: you only have two slots, so picking another item up means you have to drop an item you have (don't worry it will stay there :) ).

The items are cool. My favorite is a transmogrification gun that turns enemies into little guys. The shots can even rebound off walls into yourself.

There are very silly screen-edge errors when flipping between screens --- probably the best implementation of that kind of thing amongst the early games in this collection.

There are 4 (four!) different kinds of rupees. I don't have it in me to suss out that kind of economic system these days.

The furthest I got was collecting 1 out of 3 macguffin squares.

Fun game. Glad I tried it out.