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Showing posts from May, 2022

Milon's Secret Castle: A baffling action-puzzler

Milon's Secret Castle is an action-puzzler from Hudson Soft. It stars a boy named Milon, who must wend his way through a labyrinthine castle, attacking enemies with bubbles. According to the manual, he seeks to rescue Queen Eliza, who has been imprisoned inside the castle by a warlord. The castle is navigated by doors on the outside. Behind each door is a small stage, shop, or boss fight. Stages are standard platforming fare, with many blocks. Some of these blocks disappear when shot with a bubble. A few leave behind money, which can be collected only once. However, one stage on the third floor regenerates its hidden money, enabling you to get as much as you need later in the game. Enemies continuously spawn in stages. They can be destroyed by bubbles, often leaving behind a heart to refill a point of Milon's health meter. Occasionally they drop an umbrella, which increases the firing rate of his bubbles. You must be careful, though: Milon can be hit repeatedly by the same enem

Metroid: Hunting aliens and haunting music

I loved Super Metroid as a child, but I never had a chance to play the original Metroid until the 3DS Virtual Console. When I finally did, I fell in love with it. Metroid is the sister game to Kid Icarus . It uses the same combination of vertical-scrolling and horizontal-scrolling sections. You control Samus Aran, a legendary "bounty hunter" (she's only called this in the West and doesn't collect bounties) hired by the Galactic Federation to recover flying jellyfish called Metroids. These are dangerous, life-sucking creatures thought to be responsible for the destruction of the civilization of the planet SR-388. The space pirates who stole the Metroids have set up a base on the planet Zebes, where coincidentally Samus finds power-ups compatible with "his" cybernetic suit. The main power-ups are held by mysterious statues of unknown bird-people. If you beat Metroid fast enough (under five hours), Samus removes "his" helmet to reveal that she was a