Weekly Update #35: The Origins of Metroidvania

August 24-30, 2025

As you may be able to tell from the title, I tested out a bunch of Castlevania and Metroid games this week. I’ll get into that in the emulation section of game acquisitions.

Game Acquisitions

Mostly giveaways and Steam Family purchases as usual, but I did decide to spend some Steam wallet funds on Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. I already own Max Payne 1-3, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control (with Alan Wake II in my wishlist), so I figured I might as well complete the set. It was only 96 cents after tax, and I have over $30 of Steam credit from selling trading cards, so I figured it was probably worth it. Afterplace looks like an interesting experience as well, I’m curious to see how that one plays.

# of Games: 8

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

I’ve played a few metroidvania games over the years, and I’ve enjoyed most of them. I came to the realization that I’ve never actually played the origin of the genre, that being Metroid and Castlevania. I was already planning on playing the Metroid Prime trilogy, and Epic gave away the Castlevania Anniversary Collection a while back. I decided to broaden my horizons and add all the major games from both franchises to my list to really experience them. I’m really excited about the Metroid games, but I’m more hesitant about Castlevania. The 3D games I tested out seemed fine, but the 2D ones were proving to be quite challenging. The Dracula X Chronicles in particular was proving to be a hassle. There are a couple games included in this package, and I found out that you have to play through a couple stages of Rondo of Blood and do a specific thing in Stage 2 to unlock a special Stage 3, then get a certain powerup in that stage to find a secret collectible to unlock Symphony of the Night. I was having a hell of a time getting through Stage 2 and 3’ to unlock the other game and made liberal use of save states to do so. I imagine this will be a common experience for me as I make my way through this series.

Apart from exploring the origins of metroidvanias, you can see that I also added the Breath of Fire JRPG quintology. I went back and forth on which ones from this series I should include. A lot of people say to skip 1, 2, and Dragon Quarter, remarking that 3 and 4 are the only ones worth playing. I was also debating if I should add Breath of Fire IV since it’s technically available on PC and my general rule is to not emulate anything where the best version can be purchased and played natively on PC. I decided to add 1 and II since I found some fan-made QOL improvements which should allow me to experience the origins of the series for myself. I ended up adding IV when I found out that the version available on GOG is censored, so I wouldn’t get the full experience if I purchased it through there. Dragon Quarter has a mixed reception, but some people love it, and the roguelike nature of the game seems like it could be interesting. As a result, I decided to add the whole series.

I’ve got a couple other random standalone games tested and added to my backlog as well. I’ve heard great things about 13 Sentinels and was surprised to hear it never got a PC release. Conversely, I’ve literally never heard of Heavenly Sword before, but it looks like an OK PS3 launch title if nothing else.

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Ironheart Season 1 Episodes 1-6 (completed)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 3 Episode 6 (still watching, show ended)

·       Eyes of Wakanda Season 1 Episodes 1-2 (still watching, show ended)

·       Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Not much to say about this week. Ironheart was a mediocre Marvel TV show, an increasingly common occurrence unfortunately. My Little Pony was alright, but this episode was just setup for the final season. Eyes of Wakanda seems like a neat miniseries that I’ll probably forget about shortly after finishing it. Harry Potter, as the name implies, was only part one of a two-part finale. Was this the movie that kickstarted a bunch of franchises splitting their final part in two for no reason? I hate it when companies do that nowadays. The movie itself was fine, but it very much felt like half a story.

Conclusion/Upcoming

This was a bit of an odd week. I was hoping to get some Tales of Phantasia in, but no dice. That’s two hangouts in a row without playing ☹ We were just too busy with other stuff I guess. For some reason, I feel like I didn’t get a lot of emulation testing in either, but that might be because most of it was spent on just three franchises. There’s a lot of games in those franchises though, so I still got a lot done. Metroid: Other M in particular took forever to get working, since I had to figure out how to emulate a bunch of motion controls with my Xbox controller. That’s always a pain to pull off. The emulation list is very slowly going down. I was at 418 with my previous update and am sitting at 413 now. Like I mentioned in the last update, it didn’t go down much since a lot of series were being tested instead of individual games. That might change this week though. I have quite a few individual games or short series to get through before my next big series, that being the colossal Pokémon franchise. That will probably take at least a whole week just on its own, I have 26 games in my play order collection for that one 😅

My plan for this week will be similar to most recent weeks. I’ve got the other two episodes of Eyes of Wakanda to watch, which will likely be done the day I post this. After that, I can finally get to Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld which will be another quick watch at six third-length episodes. After that will be Raised by Wolves while I wait for Alien: Earth and Futurama Season 10 to finish airing next month. Once Eyes of Wakanda is done, I don’t really have any pressing shows I’m looking forward to in the near term. Raised by Wolves will get me through the week though, so I’ll cross that bridge in the next update maybe. I’ll also be watching the final Harry Potter movie on Friday so that I can finally cross that franchise off my list. Will I get to any Tales of Phantasia this week? Only time will tell. I do have an exciting update for gaming though that I haven’t alluded to yet. I’ll bring it up in my monthly post for August which should be up tomorrow. Have I piqued your interest 👀? See you all tomorrow!

Backlog total: 3,501 (+27)

Weekly Update #34: Who Buys Mobile Games These Days? (Me)

August 17-23, 2025

Not a lot happened last week. I was pretty busy, so I didn’t get to gaming or cataloging very much. This’ll probably be a shorter update as a result.

Game Acquisitions

So, this is kind of interesting. I have a decent chunk of Google Play credit from taking rewards surveys. I normally just spend it on in-game purchases on Pokémon Go, but this time I decided I wanted to get some actual games. After looking through some top-rated games available on Android and tracking app sales, I decided to make two “purchases” with the credit. The first was Slay the Spire, a game I’ve heard amazing things about but somehow haven’t acquired yet. I normally will buy everything on PC if it’s available there, but I made an exception since the experience for this particular game probably doesn’t change much between platforms. It was also on sale for $6.99 from $9.99 which seems like a good deal to me. I had over $30 of credit so I still have money left over.

My second “purchase” was for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. This one would play better on PC, but the mobile version does support a controller so the control scheme should be the same at least. It was discounted from $14.99 to $9.99, and Google gave me another $2 coupon bringing the total down to $7.99. This is much lower than the PC version has gotten so I figured this was a good deal as well. I’m not counting these as spending money since the Google Play credit has no monetary value and would just go towards Pokémon Go otherwise. It’s been a long time since I’ve purchased a mobile game and thought I never would again after some early purchases of mine have been deprecated so couldn’t be played on the phone I have now. Hopefully I will get to these soon enough for them to still be supported.

The other games I got this week were giveaways and Reddit trades. I traded away Say No! More and Lil Gator Game for both Fault visual novels. I’ve never heard of them before, but they have very good reviews on Steam so I’m looking forward to experiencing them! I also traded Descenders for Wolfstride which looks like another cool visual novel. I actually didn’t realize all my trades last week were for visual novels until I started writing this. Interesting! I’m more mixed on the giveaway games since they aren’t genres I’m typically into, but they were free, and the reviews are positive so hopefully I get some enjoyment out of them.

# of Games: 9

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

Like I said, I was pretty busy last week so I didn’t get around to cataloging nearly as many games as I was hoping for. Even so, I managed to add a few series to my list, including the rest of the Paper Mario games. I only planned to play the first three, but I was told the others are worth experiencing (at least Color Splash and Origami King anyway). I also decided that since I already own Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 4 on Steam, I might as well emulate 2 and 3 while I’m at it. For some reason, they’re both exclusive to the PSP, and 3 never released outside Japan. What an odd decision by the publisher. The last series I got around to cataloging this week was the Xeno games. This includes Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade Chronicles. They aren’t TECHNICALLY the same series, but I read they share similar themes and there are fan theories that they’re all connected through the multiverse or something so that’s good enough for me. I’ve heard great things about these games, I hope I can get into them. 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Season 2 Episodes 3-12 (complete)

·       Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

It’s hard to believe I got through the entirety of the Ghost in the Shell catalog in less than two months. There were some stumbles, but overall, I really enjoyed my time with it! I said this before, but I still recommend it to any anime fans that are into military action and/or cyberpunk aesthetics. Even 2045 is worth watching, I liked it more than the first two movies and Arise honestly. Maybe that’s a controversial take. I told my sister who’s a huge Harry Potter fan that I was going through all the movies when I just finished up Order of the Phoenix and she told me it’s all downhill from there 😭 Hopefully that’s just an exaggeration, or only something people who read the books think. Half-Blood Prince was alright I thought, and I only have the two-parter finale left.

Conclusion/Upcoming

So yeah, no gaming last week which was unfortunate. I wrote a lot more than I expected to in the game acquisitions section though which kinda makes up for it as far as the blog is concerned. I gotta say, I only played through act one in Slay the Spire for testing, but I was really enjoying it. I can see why it’s so highly regarded. It made me wanna keep going, but I must resist. I have my priorities! Now that Ghost in the Shell is done and dusted, I’m going to go through Ironheart next. It’s only six episodes so it’ll be a quick watch. Assuming I get through all of that, I have Raised by Wolves and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld on the backburner. As I just mentioned, I’m planning on watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 as my movie this week. Nothing on the gaming front unless another Tales of Phantasia session happens. Speaking of, Tales of Xillia Remastered was announced last week. I had recently tested the PS3 original through the RPCS3 emulator, so I removed it and added the new one to my backlog and play order collection instead. It’s a shame it won’t include both games though, I feel like that’s a missed opportunity. Still, it will be nice to play it on PC natively, and it won’t be taking up SSD space in the meantime. I mentioned last week that I would provide a status update for roughly how many emulated games/series I have left to add by stating how many lines are left on my “Emulated Games to Add to Backlog” text file. I was at 423 lines on the last blog post. Now I’m at 418. Not much progress, but to be fair, I was adding whole series to my backlog which takes a much longer time. That’s unlikely to change next week either as I see that I have my Castlevania and Metroid series coming up for testing. My work is never done it seems. Back in the testing mines for me. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,474 (+22)

Weekly Update #33: Let’s Fight Dhaos Again

August 10-16, 2025

That’s right, I got more Tales of Phantasia time last week. I also continued adding emulated games to my backlog as you’ll see below.

Game Acquisitions

Starting with the normal games, you can see that I didn’t add a whole lot. These were all giveaways through Stove, Epic, and Amazon. I don’t really have any big standouts here, but these all look like they could be fun in one way or another.

# of Games: 7

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

You can very clearly see the series on display here. I added Kirby, Fire Emblem, and Mario & Luigi to my backlog. A lot of Nintendo last week! I’ve actually beaten a couple Kirby games before (one through the Wii Virtual Console and one on my GBA). It’s a fun series; I’m excited to dive into it. I’ve heard of Fire Emblem before, but I’ve never played one. I love strategy RPGs though so I would be remiss if I didn’t give it a shot. I’m worried it might be above my skill level (especially the older games which tend to be less forgiving), but I’ll try my best! I never really heard of Mario & Luigi until Brothership was announced, but I went back to research the other games, and they look like something I’d be into. Here's every emulated game I've added since starting the emulation cataloging project. This only includes two weeks so far so not bad progress. I don't how long I'll be able to show a running total though, I'll probably have too many games to be able to get a legible picture from them soon enough. I still think it looks cool in the meantime though.

Game Recaps

Not a lot of time, but I did get some Tales of Phantasia in. Even in this short amount of time, we managed to go to the future and defeat Dhaos for the second time. Check it out! 

 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Season 1 Episode 3-Season 2 Episode 2 (still watching, show ended)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 3 Episodes 4-5 (still watching, show ended)

·       Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Oh no, SAC_2045 is a lot shorter than I was expecting ☹ It’s only 24 22-minute episodes so I’m breezing through it. It has a bad reputation, and a lot of fans say you should just skip it, but I’m kinda loving it. The 3D animation works way better for it than I expected it to. The only thing that’s throwing me off is that the art style looks similar to something you’d see on Disney XD like Star Wars Rebels, but it still has very adult scenes like people getting their heads blown off. It’s very jarring the first few times you see it happen. Aside from that though, it’s a good time. They even got a lot of voice actors from the original series back! Sure, it’s not as good as the original series, but it’s still very much worth watching. My Little Pony continues to be fine, and Harry Potter is still enjoyable. I don’t know how I managed to miss out on most of the movies for like 20 years.

Conclusion/Upcoming

It took me way longer than expected to test out all the Fire Emblem and Kirby games, so I didn’t get quite as many emulated games added to my list as I expected last week. The way I’m testing the games to make sure they work is by going through the first level to test that the mechanics work and there are no crashes. Shining Force in particular was bad about crashing near the end of fights which is why I want to test an entire level as well as an interlude/transition into a second level just to make sure. I think it was Genealogy of the Holy War that took me like an hour and a half to get through the first battle which is crazy. I noticed a few times in Fire Emblem that seizing castles would sometimes just not show up as an option and I would have to keep moving different characters in front of the door until one decided to work. It made ending battles very confusing and I hope that doesn’t become a regular thing. There was also an incident in the latest Fire Emblem game Engage where the cutscene that played at the end of the first battle completely tanked my framerate and I had to sit through a slideshow and reset the emulator to get it working again. It’s going to be very unfortunate if I have to do that for every cutscene as the story is one of the main reasons I’m interested in the series.

When testing the Kirby games, I was having a little bit of trouble getting the N64 emulator to work how I wanted. There would a thick black border around the whole thing (a remnant of overscan as the games were originally made to be played on a CRT) and a constant message at the bottom of the screen that wouldn’t go away. I ended up ditching Project 64 and moving my N64 games under Retroarch. Thankfully, I decided to come to this conclusion now when I only had two games set up under Project 64 (Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and Paper Mario), so it didn’t take too long to adjust them.

There weren’t too many hiccups with the other games, and I was able to get through all of Mario & Luigi on Saturday since a lot of the emulator kinks are slowly being ironed out. For this week, there’s a chance I might get through all of SAC_2045 and officially be caught up on everything Ghost in the Shell until the new show airs next year. If that’s the case, I have Ironheart, Raised by Wolves, and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld ready to go. Those shows will be my focus for the rest of the month. On the gaming front, unless another Tales of Phantasia session rolls around, it’s going to be more emulation testing. To give a sort of progress update on that, I have a text file I’m working off of that currently has 423 lines on it. Most of those lines are individual games, but some of them have entire series on them like the aforementioned Kirby or Paper Mario. As I test the games and add them to the backlog, I remove them from the text file so you kind of have an idea of how many I have left to do (spoiler alert: it’s a lot). I think I’ll update this number every week, that seems like a good progress report. I’ll be back with another update next week. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,452 (+45)