Stumbling through Little Nemo

[davidn]

I cannot believe that the demographics of videos uploaded on Youtube are so heavily weighted that putting the innocent word "through" in a video title immediately throws up the tag suggestions "fire" and "flames".

Anyway. I tried another NES game, this time with an elaborate recording setup that I was playing about with all day that allows me to record my voice through the headset connected to the computer, while simultaneously running the game's audio to the guitar processor thing I use and recording it on that, then editing the two together at the end. So you can now hear both Little Nemo: The Dream Master and my reactions to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQItDEQn69Y

I'd never so much as seen the game before I started recording this video, but as it turns out, it's a game in which you hop around a dream world lulling monsters to sleep by throwing boiled sweets at them and then hijacking their bodies to get yourself around the level. It also turns out I'm dreadful at it, even though I was very proud of myself for getting to the second level.

The method I used for recording worked out rather well, but I'm confused by how out-of-sync the sound gets in Camstudio - it seems to play my voice and the video at normal speed, and yet the voice always drifts slightly ahead or behind the video over time. The process of resynchronizing them in iMovie just got more and more difficult as it went on, having to re-import the same file multiple times to split it up, having the Trim menu disappear entirely and with it preventing me from scrolling down to the last row of thumbnails on the video to edit the end - it came to be so excruciating that I found myself wondering insane things like whether Windows Movie Maker might actually be better at it.

Comments

[davidn]

Right... when I said that, I couldn't remember whether I'd dared try it with the lizard (I knew the mole wouldn't work because you can't jump). I think at some point in the video, I do manage to jump on a snail while a frog by accident, even though I said that it looked like the best thing to do was avoid them.

You really were expected to do a lot of experimentation for yourself in games then, even besides the issue of most things being explained in the manual rather than the game - I'm suddenly reminded of the Lolo games, where some squares the enemies regenerated on were very important, but you couldn't tell if they moved or not until you tried. Now, it's important that you're able to recognize a game's language and cues very quickly.

[kjorteo]

And all the attempts you'd spend scouting, sacrificing your life to collect each heart framer one at time even though you haven't even begun to make it safe to collect any of them, just to see which ones gave you shots! Because that was important information when figuring out the solution to actually get them all for real.

But those were the only real issues--everything else was just rules of the game you had to learn once, and then it was consistent from then on. If I see a screenshot of a Lolo level, I would need someone to tell me A) which, if any HFs give shots, B) how many HFs it takes to unlock the hammer/bridge/arrow powers (if you have any that stage,) C) if there are any spawn-blocking shenanigans, and D) whether the Don Medusae (if there are any) move horizontally or vertically. Once I know that, I could just study the screenshot and solve it in my head.

God, I love Lolo games. I really need to go back and finish Lolo 3 at some point....

[davidn]

Yes, the shots/heart framers issue was the other one I was trying to remember! "Heart framers", another of those wonderful terms that can only be acquired through a precisely-tuned level of dodgy translation. In older games, that period of experimentation is just... accepted, even though I would consider it a real problem if I ever put a powerup that wasn't immediately visible into something like Boxplode. Now I'm thinking about putting something like that into Boxplode. No, I won't.

I went on to the Backloggery for the first time in ages to check where I'd got with the Lolo games, and suddenly remembered that I'd stolen their circular U/B/C icon style for one of the later things I did at my last job. Strange what sparks memories. Anyway, yes, apparently I did complete the first and second, which feels like a bit of a feat to me given how impossible they sound. I think that I remember the exact layout of the first level that stuck me in the third game, and even though it wasn't linear like the others, that felt discouraging enough to put me off it. I'll have to load it up again.

[kjorteo]

There, my Backloggery profile was itself in the backlog for a while, there, but I went ahead and at least gave it as much of an update as I could with games that came to me off the immediate top of my head. I'm sure there's more if I brainstorm, but oh, well. Anyway, thanks a lot for making me think of that until I just had to go back and do it.

[davidn]

I haven't looked at mine for a very long time either - I made an attempt at trying to remember every game I'd played at around the same time you first showed me Lolo, which is why your mention of it reminded me of the site, but being unsure where to really stop what with the massive number of PC and emulated titles I have downloaded, the task quickly became impossible.

I think you more than deserve an M for Trauma Center 2, even if you're not using it anywhere else!

[kjorteo]

Cs are for 100% completion and Ms are for self-imposed challenge runs above and beyond that! Though I suppose it could be argued that actually XSing the X operations could be considered above and beyond....

[davidn]

If there's anything that's "above and beyond" the reach of most anybody, that is surely it. My measures are flexible for the games, but for that... "Beaten" would be finishing the game in any way at all without the insanity of the X-operations, "Completed" for clawing one's way through those as well.

I tended to use "Mastered" if I'd written a reasonably comprehensive guide to a game, though I haven't done that in a number of years now.

[kjorteo]

Well, all right, fine, there. :)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Though, if you look at the Frog's jump, the last thing you'd think is "my, that soft underbelly would be perfect for getting rid of those spiky snails..."

[davidn]

Yes, the visual cues this game provides are fairly misleading at various points! While being physically bigger does a lot to indicate that you're more powerful in some way, there's no way to really tell whether you're safe or not per creature. (Though like so many things at this point in game history, it could simply be a matter of seeing which ones are safe in the manual.)