Off My Mind

Apart from NG of course, that always stays in my while playing list. I have been going through my backlog trying to pick out games I either moved away from too soon or just straight up forgot I owned or played before. One thing I will get into later is that when you have played enough games it's quite bizarre to feel like you forgot playing it.  Streets of Rage 4 Actually was stunned to realise this game released over a year ago. I feel like it's almost impossible to have grown up in the SNES / Mega Drive era and not played the old Streets of Rage games. Between 3 games in 1, bundles and pack ins it felt like you could talk to anyone and they would have played one of these at some point.  I finished SoR4 when it came out and was originally intending to put quite a bit of time into it. The scoring and combo system is awesome and definitely scratches that fighting game itch that I've had over the last year or so. The characters are varied and look great, the enemies are fun t...

As much as I try, when NGB gets a hook on me it's hard to shake it off. I went back and further revised some strategies for Master Ninja after finishing that first run. A lot, and I mean a lot of this can be utilised on a single segment run as well which I just might do at some stage. The amount of optimasition from these two runs alone is pretty staggering. I'll group some of the chapters together as they really do depend on the one prior going well to get the fastest patterns.  Some of the bigger changes on this route were: - Only picking up 10 scarabs.  - No extra essence gained. - 3 additional saves. - Movement routing more specific.  Upon reflection I only think scarabs are worth it on a single segment run. I'd say go for 20 as you get a full restock of smoke bombs and one of each elixir and 20 isn't hard to get nor does it add a huge amount of time but will absolutely pay dividends in chapter 15. For segmented going forward I only think the scarab before the pleas...

Let's just get to the whistle tickling details shall we. Mainly just ironing out strategies to see how far this could be pushed in theory. I am not going all out for this; insert "that's for the next guy" sound clip from mine and Al's commentary. I got the urge to really breakdown a proper route for MN and much like Normal I thought a good place to start would be to break up the run into segments and see how much of it can be applied to single segment.  If you're reading this then there is a very good chance you know the current twitch and youtube situation so this is just good old text from here. As of right now I have no plans to stream or make videos for any of this. That said, I do have all the raw footage of this first run, so you never know. Right now though, I cannot be arsed :)  Chapter 1 The kills here need some rethinking, there is a lot of essence available and it's very consistent to get to Murai with at least 10k. This will heavily alter the p...

The strangest thing about this last month is how long it has felt, feels like it's been ages since I made a video or streamed. I guess that's normal when you make such a big change, I wouldn't say I am used to this yet at all. I am stilling playing games and yes, Ninja Gaiden is one of them. I even did a couple of speedruns a few weeks ago to test some stuff out without feeling the burden of having to post every little thought or do commentary for them. It was nice to go back to that feeling I had in 2005 when I was just busy playing and breaking things down entirely on my own. That's something I haven't done in a while. I'm working on another one as well which is quite a bit ahead of the last one I finished. I guess that feeling of solitude when it comes to playing NG is something I have gone so long without I forgot how much fun it was. It's not too different from the MKX days of literally spending hours in training mode in a single session just testing th...