Ephemeral Enigmas

Tea from Yu-Gi-Oh says "You won, so you get Griggle"

Who else is up getting their Griggle on

A blue helicopter carries civilians through a destroyed subway

A large skeletal dinosaur is lodged into a wall and attacks

In a forest, a blue T-Rex and two stegosauruses attack the player and a civilian clinging to a tree

A massive blue squid like creature with a single eye and a gaping black jaw attacks above a volcano

17. Prehistoric Isle 2

This late sequel (10 years after!) is more conventional and easier than the first, but it's a solid shmup with a prerendered look I love. The difficulty and pace are tuned just right to make the 1CC very approachable and the civilian rescuing adds to the scoring potential

Ishido: The Way of Stones No matter how boring or bland Ishido may look to you, I honestly encourage anyone to give it a shot. I have a lot of respect for this kind of board game design because it ain’t easy to do at all! I…

New blog post time!

This week's game is Ishido: The Way of Stones, a puzzle game about fitting stones into a board that's way more challenging and nuanced than it may appear at first. The strict scoring rules make this a real "learn or die" kinda ride.

If you like Shanghai, this one's for you!

Ishido: The Way of Stones No matter how boring or bland Ishido may look to you, I honestly encourage anyone to give it a shot. I have a lot of respect for this kind of board game design because it ain’t easy to do at all! I…

New blog post time!

This week's game is Ishido: The Way of Stones, a puzzle game about fitting stones into a board that's way more challenging and nuanced than it may appear at first. The strict scoring rules make this a real "learn or die" kinda ride.

If you like Shanghai, this one's for you!

Titan Warriors, an FC/NES shoot-em-up developed as a sequel/remake of Vulgus, but went unreleased for some reason www.hardcoregaming101.net/titan-warrio...

Vulgus, Capcom's first shoot-em-up (and first arcade game! www.hardcoregaming101.net/vulgus/

REIGNITING MY FIRE

Gurren Lagann changed my life for the better.
#blog #anime

March 8th Welcome back readers. Let me start with some around-the site news. First, we published the roundup for our second Fansite Jam! If you haven’t already done so, go check out the submissions! In…

This week: 21 fresh picks on Requiem, Rare, Radirgy, and plenty of things that don't start with R, I promise:

critical-distance.com/2026/03/08/m...

A red biplane shoots energy waves downward. The stage is a green jungle and there are hostile cavemen and pterodactyls.

A big turtle boss fires a bunch of little turtles at you

In a cave level, you encounter a large bug enemy clearly based on the Ohmu from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

A massive green tyrannosaurus Rex attacks. It's so big that only its head and neck are visible

16. Prehistoric Isle in 1930

A shoot 'em up with a great setting and some neat ideas. You rotate your option equivalent and you get a different projectile depending on the position, pretty cool! Dying is extremely punishing, but the short length and presentation make this one I plan to replay

The Gate Guardian has 3,750 attack and 3,400 defense, which is much stronger than any card available at this point in the game.

I used a Hoshiningen, a light monster with a mere 500 attack (it looks like a cute little star with a ribbon and feet), to instantly defeat the Gate Guardian because the alignment system is really silly

In Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters II, there's a very low chance that Para or Dox will summon a Gate Guardian at no cost, which is way too powerful for how early this is.

However, this is the first game to use the alignment system, so you can instantly defeat it with any light type since it's a fiend type

Astonishingly powerful turtle fit

Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher (Switch) The Monster Rancher series is one with which I'm not very familiar. I do remember, probably more than twenty years ago, spending an afterno...

breeding big boys for fun and profit~

You bet, wouldn't be a real list without it on there 🤝

My 9 games are: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne Earthbound Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening Romancing SaGa (supposed to be the PS2 one but it wasn't on there for some reason) Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Phantasy Star Online Bomberman Generation Super Smash Bros. For Wii U

Am I too late to the 9 games thing

You definitely should at some point, it's a delight and you'll definitely enjoy it! Yeah, I'm glad it lives up to the hype because I would have honestly been a bit heartbroken if I ended up not liking it

That's true, it's basically like a TLDR for Final Fantasy II, which is kinda neat! I really enjoy the mechanics of FF2, so having a quick fix like SoR feels made for me

A battle against a "Spider Man" (a guy wearing armor with a spider on it, not the superhero lol) and a "Flying Pig", which is a weird multi-armed monstrosity

A character says "Please, never give up. See you soon. Boyoyoing!"

A Clockwork Soldier (a big robot with golden samurai armor and arm cannon) launches a flame attack

Ziria, the protagonist, stares up towards the sunset while laying back with a twig in his mouth

15. Tengai Makyou: Ziria

After years of pining for this game, I'm so glad it lived up to my expectations! It's essentially the best possible take on Dragon Quest II, offering similar mechanics while using the CD format for a presentation so exceptionally ahead of its time. An utterly joyous game!

It's been an extremely good few months for fans of Milestone/RS34 games.

Save 35% on Radirgy Swag on Steam Dodge, slash, and shoot your way through waves of enemies while collecting items. Blast off on a quick trip toward the Moon in Radio-allergic Shoot ’Em Up!

Now that it's out, it may not surprise you to know that I was part of the team to localise this game, just like with Karous! I was on FIRE when translating some of the lines here - hope you enjoy the new English version!

store.steampowered.com/app/3179820/...

#RadirgySwag

No worries, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to find when I was writing this, so thank you! I could see myself going back to try these tips, I gotta try the 3DS Karous too

If you're willing sometime, updating the shmups wiki page sounds great to have this information easily available

Nice, that's good news for me!

Thank you! I wanted to be as fair as possible since there's so little on the game out there and the series has such a good track record, there had to be something cool about it!

The music was good but I found it hard to hear over all the noise lol, I gotta give it a listen outside of the game

Radirgy de Gojaru! Radirgy de Gojaru is such an interesting game to me. It’s often misunderstood in the wider English sector of the gaming landscape, but not by that much. It’s a genuine, workable concept that could …

New blog post time!

This week's game is Radirgy de Gojaru!, the bite-sized Japan-only 3DS entry that's based on a mode from the Xbox 360-exclusive Radirgy Noa Massive. Such an odd approach didn't earn it any favors at the time, but I found some fun in visiting it now and laying out all the details:

Radirgy de Gojaru! Radirgy de Gojaru is such an interesting game to me. It’s often misunderstood in the wider English sector of the gaming landscape, but not by that much. It’s a genuine, workable concept that could …

New blog post time!

This week's game is Radirgy de Gojaru!, the bite-sized Japan-only 3DS entry that's based on a mode from the Xbox 360-exclusive Radirgy Noa Massive. Such an odd approach didn't earn it any favors at the time, but I found some fun in visiting it now and laying out all the details:

Yeah wow, I'm no game dev but I would think such a thing would be pretty hard to miss in testing! Then again, I bought armor the whole game without noticing a problem lol, so maybe it's a trickier fix than it looks

I guess some bugs are the price of all that ambition and style it's packing! Some of the bugs are kinda rough though, like I found at least one site that claims armor doesn't actually work right lol

Yeah, the endgame encounters give such high experience for how easy most of them become that this trick isn't as life-changing as it sounds, but I was definitely surprised to see the game not only lets you drop the sword but rewards you for it lol

Obtaining the Sword of the Divine from a spirit that looks like a white dragon

You receive 15,808 experience (called Virtue in this game) each time you get the sword. That's a lot, but the exp curve at this point gives you large amounts of experience from every battle anyway, so this isn't as gamebreaking as it sounds (unless you're very patient)

In Tengai Makyou: Ziria, you get a large EXP bonus when you're given the Sword of the Divine. If you decide to drop the sword, you can talk to the spirit that gave it to you to get another one as well as the same experience bonus again.

This can be done for infinite experience, which is very funny

The party faces a series of pirates wearing blue on a ship

The famous "Guy speak beaver." quote

Minwu (a white mage) casts Teleport to instantly kill an enemy

Soul of Rebirth culminates with a light version of the Emperor sitting atop a crystalline throne

14. Final Fantasy II: Dawn of Souls (replay)

FF2 is still one of my favorites! I love all the ways you can mess with the game and I think this version is my most preferred take on it

Soul of Rebirth is a cool thing too, though I'm a guy who likes Persona 3's The Answer, so your mileage may vary

An encounter against Lucifer shows Ricard doing 6,250 damage with the Blood Sword. This is far more than anything else will do and is enough to defeat anything in 2-3 hits, including the final boss of SoR.

If you bring the Blood Sword over to Final Fantasy II's Soul of Rebirth via Ricard, you can easily steamroll the enemies and bosses in a few hits at most

Grind up your evasion levels in advance as well and you can really turn this scenario into a joke! One of many examples of what makes FF2 peak