Lurker > UF8

a few more things i just thought about

Moco Moco Friends is a... well, relatively overpriced jrpg that i think is fairly cheap relatively compared to most of the full price releases anyway so idk maybe to also consider

Virtual Console has some neat stuff i guess like the gen 1 and 2 pokemans had online or something iirc, there was also some weird exclusive stuff like Murasame Castle and Summer Carnival 92 Recca (maybe first bullet hell). there's also just kinda rare stuff too like one of the Shining Force game gear games or the Legend of the River King gbc titles (fishing games with some light jrpg battle elements on the side worth the low price of admission imo)

I know you clarified you weren't looking for ones with physicals but i figured i'd add that stuff like Etrian Odyssey titles are dirt cheap in half of its cases (also megaten stuff) and all of those are already hell to get physically. This applies to 7th Dragon III too (and also Radiant Historia's enhanced ver).

Also I nearly forgot but Chase Cold Case Investigations is even cheaper (and actually eshop only)

Also also it's jank as heck and I haven't personally played it since it's also not available in my region (why did australasia miss out on a huge chunk of even the stuff europe got ugh) but Family Kart 3D is... a vastly inferior kart racer to MK7 and even Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed (which is quite not good on 3ds tbh) but not the worst out there probably and definitely on the very low end price-wise

Also also also I completely didn't even know it was a thing until right now but I guess arcsys made some other eshop racer that wasn't released in pal regions called VectorRacing too huh no idea if that's any good (it's also very cheap though)

yeah i really don't like 3D in a ton of 3DS games at all (every real 3D ace attorney game especially included) though it really shocked me there

Also seconding X-Scape which was mentioned on the dsiware front, there is so much good dsiware stuff out there though i'm personally not up to date on what's still there on the 3ds eshop nowadays (and there's no guarantee it's the same across regions anyway...) but that one I'm pretty confident about and it's worth it for sure (even if probably more for its historical noteworthiness than not)

I think it's on other platforms these days but Dark Void Zero is definitely a must pick up too

And a few others I kinda liked included Crystal Monsters (mediocre mobile game port pokemon clone with shadow hearts battle system) and AlphaBounce (a brick breaker that's also an rpg i guess). I think the states at least used to have some more escape type games from the devs of Parascientific Escape though that's one of those kinds of things I have no idea if it's still there on 3ds now for obvious reasons (damn region locking). They were under an "Escape Trick" series iirc?

Crescent-Moon posted...

Why is this

just a lot of small quality of life stuff, also the 3D is actually surprisingly good (subjective i know)

Mononoke

additionally, I'd like to throw in a mention or two for a few other eshop exclusives.

Apollo Justice's enhanced port is the definitive way to experience it if you didn't already fwiw.

They're rather hit or miss with mediocre translations but the Parascientific Escape series are decent enough pseudo-clones of Zero Escape. also most other games published by circle entertainment are generally pretty decent too, and quite cheap.

Sayonara Umihara Kawase aka. Yumi's Odd Odyssey on 3DS is overpriced as heck but good (there isn't really much reason to pick it over the vita or pc versions but hey).

Oh and if you liked liberation maiden, Iron Combat: War in the Air (or Rinkou no Lantse) is alright too. The devs of that also had a cute if barebones virtual on clone too but that wasn't localised unfortunately...

besides that, i guess there are some okay simulation games out there that are fairly cheap, mostly train sims

and yeah also seconding stuff like culdcept and any kirbies

besides Liberation Maiden and Aero Porter, you really should consider the rest of the Guild01 and Guild02 titles too! I'm personally a fan of Attack of the Friday Monsters, and Weapon Shop de Omasse and The Starship Damrey are alright too imo

Klonoa
Lunar
Heroes

by the way for future reference you can edit more images into the opening post after the topic is made since they're just urls after posting (and therefore no longer count towards the filesize or image count per post limits). overall you could probably get about 25 total that way, plus as many as you want that are just image links to begin with

KCF0107 posted...

I don't know how you could think I was talking about you.

i mean i did just do a bunch of paragraphs mostly about how there were like 20 other songs i wanted from A to retire over these (granted that only actually applies to stuff outside of A4 really) i assumed there had to be some people thinking i was talking shit

i'm not lamenting them did you even read my post, i'm just lamenting the fact that 50% of the bracket this year was stuff i could've picked through to retirement in past years

Secret of the Forest
Different World 1

sure it's round 5 but that 2nd match should still be considered illegal this early

also it's still funnily appropriate given endless desert's presence here and i know this is an objectively inferior link, but it would've been fun if this link for yu-no had been used instead, since it plays here rather than in that desert scene and it kills me it is not being acknowledged as a forest theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yRNQVH413o

whoops i slept in and failed to vote yesterday. at least they weren't matches where i had a terribly strong preference, though the ones i think i would've picked did lose... also wtf prophecy. what is with final song slamming directly into songs that can slay brackets out of nowhere and why this specifically

then again, i guess protease's performances against what should've been antivote magnets really were signs of clear weakness, it just didn't seem like it to me

anyway since i have rankings i guess i can actually see what i thought of this year's retirees overall

Secret of the Forest is a classic that I'm glad got finally promoted to a retired status. that said, there were 6 or 7 songs i was rooting for more in its division. At best I'd have only considered it my 5th favourite in A1 and it could've also been as low as 10th at this point (depending on mood, i can see myself voting ghost ship painting and great sea over it). Regardless though, still a great song.

Endless Desert is a song I think I like a fair amount, though I'm not entirely certain? I guess I'm kind of on the fence and it really varies by mood. Today for example where I'm having to compare it to something like SotF, it feels unavoidable that I end up viewing aspects of it as shortcomings I guess. I placed it as my 11th favourite in A2, though to be fair, and this honestly surprised me to see, there actually wasn't a single song in A2 I didn't like, to the point that it actually ended up with the highest average of all the quadrants this year. Having said that, unlike SotF, I also don't think it was ever really that likely for me to vote over anything else above it (that top 10 comprised of Soflan/IroniA/Night birds/Kusanagi/Dolphin/Hello/WBM/Dragon's Feed/Ancient Makes/Forest Investigation was nigh impenatrable to anything not on that list tbh, crazy thing is all of those were potential support level for me) and there was a realistic chance I could've voted any of the songs i ranked below it as well. Most of the time though, I enjoy it a lot and think this Todd Baker guy isn't half bad. I enjoyed endless desert a lot more than I thought I would in its first appearance (taking it to the cursed round (3) and having it lose to my ideal A4 "second chance" song which was a little known gem by the name of deoxyribose, a very unfortunate victim of would-be circumstance landing in the 4pack of snake eater in a year i was definitely very into snake eater. second chance was a cool but definitely unfortunate gimmick from a favs bracket perspective since it meant picking either endless desert, or my favourite song out of 10 songs picked out prior, and VGMC14 A4's then was one of the most extreme cases. of course even if A4's early washes were whatever it was also in the GOSU division so it's a bit of a moot point but still, I do like it and considered it a highlight by the standards of past years. Overall a solid song that earned the retiree spot I feel, even if I'm not all for any of the wins it claimed this year specifically.

Passing Through The Forest, or any of the titles this song uses, was at the last time I updated my rankings, my 2nd favourite song of A3 and a top 10 song of the bracket this year. For a while though it was only my 5th favourite in A3. Right now, I'd say it's 3rd. Either way though, it's a song i've realised i kind of love from a game I also kind of love. During noms when i was tasked with finding loop points, I got stuck on this one for quite a long time because i was too distracted by how much I enjoyed it. A3 is one of the quadrants here that has a lower average for me than usual, but is even more insane than usual at the top if the "top 10 in the bracket" status didn't make that obvious. My current #5 in A3 is a song i've picked to win (favs) brackets outright in past years and I was still very into it this time around (narrowly cut it from my nominations list this year purely because i had too many and didn't expect it to make it, was very surprised it got in regardless), so it kind of goes without saying that this is a retiree I am absolutely in support of. It's just unfortunate it just happened to be in the same place as several others i wanted to.

A4 isn't as insane buuuuut otherworld is without question my favourite song in it so there's that. How on earth did it actually retire.

i guess i'll continue later since i'm out of time oops

so true

Limitless Cinderella
Theme of D4

i like shadowverse, it's kind of more of a hot mess in terms of power scaling than others which is a problem but it's definitely easier there than elsewhere to just dive in f2p and make a viable deck with whatever cards you want from what i remember (mostly thanks to the unreasonably long single player) and builds are often pretty unique. like i have a mech vampire deck from a year ago or so even though only about 1% of the vampire cards are mech-related so it's barely a functional niche and i've still gotten that to pop off a few times. is pretty fun i would suppose.

considering its own geographical features are named Heaven and Hell it feels somewhat appropriate

Stadium
Torment

Kill Command
The Wind Calls to Shevat in the Blue Sky

Kill Command
8.25 (Rating) | 106/256 (Ranking) | 19/32 (R4 Ranking) | 6/16 (C3 Ranking)
Dark Pit
5.45 (Rating) | 238/256 (Ranking) | 32/32 (R4 Ranking) | 13/16 (C3 Ranking) (sheesh c3 had a lot of stuff i didn't like that much. i feel like i've been overly harsh on dark pit to be fair but it's like... as far as flamenco goes and as far as sakuraba goes it's just kind of there, so it only gets a moderately positive reaction from me hence the barely above average rating (yes 5 is still average to me blame vgmc for being good usually))

Aquatic Ambiance
8.45 (Rating) | 81/256 (Ranking) | 14/32 (R4) | 8/16 (C4)
The Wind Calls to Shevat in the Blue Sky
8.7 (Rating) | 48/256 (Ranking) | 8/32 (R4) | 2/16 (C4) (remarkable thing is that even though the highest song in c4 for me was only 8.85 (lower than average for a division), 11 songs were over 8 (and i still liked all but 1 of the rest). packed corner. still not the strongest div in C since C2 had blorb/cmyk/arceus etc and C1 wasn't far off too but still)

Wordle 429 5/6

El Dorado

if sushi is a sandwich then it's reasonable to count pies as sandwiches

in this poll? nobody should be allowed to

Heaven and
Hell

(the first is move me)

oh yeah i might as well put my stats to use again i admittedly forgot after the other day

Dragoon
Ogre

dang congrats desire for somehow holding up compared to para bellum and saga medley, both of which i've been suspecting might've been strong enough to take other quadrants given how much better they just did compared to champ ritual

i guess we'll see when bof progresses from this point

Wordle 428 3/6





like they say, haste makes waste

since it's probably guaranteed desire ends its run here i figured i'd go and link the proper ingame version of DESIRE since the album version in the video, while super nice and clean and good, does fade out early for whatever reason

in other words, i'm showing the ending with the ending since it's all ending

https://youtu.be/RqWkJ3o2aGw?t=1033

there may have been better quality uploads for this but static sounds aside this was the one i personally felt sounded the best from what playthroughs i noticed

Jupiter (long)
Desire (short)

Kaguya

Rayman Silvergun

oh that's cool, apparently my browser enabled a dark mode on the wordle page exclusively today and made it so correct letters didn't display differently at all

naturally i lost as a result...

THEMEX
6.85 (Rating) | 197/256 (Total Ranking) | 29/32 (R4 Ranking) | 14/16 (B1 Ranking)
Seashore War
7.45 (Rating) | 167/256 (Total Ranking) | 27/32 (R4 Ranking) | 9/16 (B1 Ranking)
The Apex of the World (Rain)
8.3 (Rating) | 102/256 (Total Ranking) | 17/32 (R4 Ranking) | 9/16 (B2 Ranking)
Argon Refinery
8.55 (Rating) | 67/256 (Total Ranking) | 12/32 (R4 Ranking) | 5/16 (B2 Ranking)

voats:
Seashore War
Argon Refinery

as you can probably tell comparing those seashore and apex rankings, b2 was a lot more stacked than b1 by a lot of personal metrics, though i would've voted sea of frozen crystals over all of b2... alas

finally got around to renewing my ratings and also decided to order them within their respective scores so i have rankings now too

figured i'd therefore go ahead and mention that of the songs in round 4, Southern Twilight ~ Dance on the Cape of Good Hope was my #1 song remaining (and 2nd overall now, at 9.2/10, tied with prime), and Passing through the Forest was now my #2 (and 8th overall, at a 9.1/10, tied with 3 other songs for 6th)

so yeah fuck that match lol

Different World 1 was actually my 3rd highest left (12th overall at 9.05/10 now), so strong day. -(PHENYLALANINE)- was a more reasonable 15th highest, at a "modest" 8.4/10 (placing it at 84th overall) and i still think it's super cool

i would say yes but it was 4 years ago now so not really

i just didn't think the old name was very good

Different World 1

Mind

Kaze
Dragon's Feed
D4

Shaun
Centimeters
Egg

i mean that is true

i'd say it's more of a visual novel than a game

i'm just glad d4 didn't die yet, i've been shocked how well it's been doing

very sad about most of the results lately but that is completely normal for vgmc at this point

Roche
Suite

Yesterday
Treasure

Wordle 423 5/6

ok time to artpost i guess

(Shin Megami Tensei IV - Infernal Tokyo Concept Art)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/1/AARWb-AADkIz.jpg

(Kid Icarus: Uprising - Temple Ruins Concept Art)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/2/AARWb-AADkI0.jpg

(Steel Assault - Sea Invasion stage mockup by 4tochkin (Konstantin Karpeniuk))
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/3/AARWb-AADkI1.jpg

(Donkey Kong Country - Ambient Depths by Noodlerelleh)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/4/AARWb-AADkI2.jpg

(Xenogears - The floating capital of Istan by kelzero) (ok this is just art inspired by shevat it isn't actually shevat but close enough)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/5/AARWb-AADkI3.jpg

(DoDonPachi DaiOuJou Black Label Extra - Piper by Oppai Fusoku)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/6/AARWb-AADkI4.jpg

(CARAVAN STORIES - Kishi no Aru Hitotoki by Ria S)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/3/AARWb-AADkI_.jpg

(Senko no Ronde Rev. X - Senko no Ronde Mika Mikuri by RiCO)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/7/AARWb-AADkI5.jpg

(Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - judgment by Hanokage)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/8/AARWb-AADkI6.jpg

(NEOTOKYO - Concept Art by pushBAK)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/9/AARWb-AADkI7.jpg

(Fate/Grand Order Waltz in the MOONLIGHT/LOSTROOM - Yume no Tsukiyo no Katasumi de by echo)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/0/AARWb-AADkI8.jpg

(Pokmon Super Mystery Dungeon - Cho Fushigi no Danjon no Kodomo-tachi by karasora)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/4/AARWb-AADkJA.jpg

and as for today's matches...

(D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die - in-game art by Hitoshi Okamoto) (i barely found any fan stuff at all for D4, so...)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/5/AARWb-AADkJB.jpg

(Punishing: Gray Raven - Forest Keeper by OrangEsw (Chen Zhao))
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/7/2/AARWb-AADkJI.jpg

(Little Busters! - Ritobasu Matome by Tsukako)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/6/AARWb-AADkJC.jpg

(Alto's Odyssey: The Lost City - fanart by Andrs Jaureguy) (regular alto's odyssey fanart sorry)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/7/AARWb-AADkJD.jpg

(The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC - -Ouroboros- I by swd3e2) (just kiseki fanart in general, sorry again)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/8/AARWb-AADkJE.jpg

(Super Mario Galaxy - Gusty Garden by Orioto (Mikal Aguirre))
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/9/AARWb-AADkJF.jpg

(reposted to fit on 1 message and to add credits)

so i don't run out of time this time...

d4
ring
savior

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JUdp9dYw8A very good stuff

Street
Mana

Hunchback
Night

pokemon

Battle - b2
Aquatic Ambiance
The Wind Calls to Shevat in the Blue Sky

maybe will look for fancy art later, to compensate here's some newly released free use bgm with pretty art https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvPGFzAp61Y (maybe i'll just pretend it's aquatic ambience fanart)