We’re telling this tale on October 24, Break Dancing Day. Whip out the old cardboard and do the worm! Do the windmill! Do the helicopter! Do the bronco! Whoo-hoo!!
Previously on Wild Arms 3:
Come on grab your friends, we’ll go to very Faraway Lands.
With Asgard the Golem and Virginia the Human
The fun will never end, it’s Kizim Flame Time
Now let’s use that working elevator.
But the switch on the bottom floor isn’t working so well. Anybody have a clue on how to activate that bad boy?
How about we use a nearby platform to get a little height?
And then, after we drop on the switch…
This was Mega Man’s last chance to be a contender, but now Mega Man will always only be Mega Man.
And, as one would expect, this meant Mega Man became involved in several experimental titles. Mega Man could always be relied on to show up every Christmas with a handful of Robot Masters to rob and/or obliterate, but did you know that Japan saw Rock Board, featuring Mega Man’s two feuding daddies playing boardgames? Or that time 
In more ways than one, it is clear that The Misadventures of Tron Bonne was intended to be the experimental offshoot of the already fairly experimental Mega Man Legends. While Mega Man Legends went out of its way to confirm that this was the next generation for our blue hero, his “sister” Roll, and quasi-father Beard Guy, TMoTB barely made the most token of efforts to confirm it existed within the Mega Man universe. 8-Bit Mega Man appears in a random easter egg cameo, and… that’s it. No Dr. Wily boat rental here, and the concept of “Mega Man Legends” is barely even acknowledged on anything but the box copy. Beyond that, this is a story starring 
Or… maybe that isn’t completely accurate. The final battle is a fight like practically any other standard Mega Man title with patterns to recognize and weapons to utilize; but there is one significant difference: levels. Your final matchup is fought not by Tron, but her favorite servbot. And said servbot can be a complete weakling or a daring master of bazookas. What makes the difference? You are responsible for “raising” the servbots between other events, and their levels are wholly dependent on the amount of love, care, and torture you shower on your minifigs. This means that, if you ever want to succeed in this world of airpirates battling other airpirates, you must engage in some light Tamagotchi gameplay to keep your army growing apace with your pocketbook. It’s an action game! It’s a simulation! And if you overlook either side of the equation, you’ll be no more successful than a JRPG player that ignores every town’s equipment shop. You have to remember to upgrade your g(G)ear(s)! (Not that that problem ever occurred on the stream…)
The Mega Man Zero franchise was the obvious continuation of Mega Man 2-D gameplay, but from Mega Zero 1 to 
System: Playstation 1, because that is the system that could include a demo disc for Mega Man Legends 2 (coming soon!). A Playstation 3 PSN release is also available.
However, the concept that Tron is trying to earn a few extra bucks through releasing her own album is 100% congruous with a woman that would spend her day shuffling apple boxes for a meager payout. Karaoke is Plan R or so on the list.
I do not consider myself “good at videogames”. Despite playing the dang things for nearly my entire life (I believe I did take some time off while potty training), I still imagine myself as an “average” player. I do not hold any speed run records. I have never achieved some grand rank in a fighting game. There are several games in my collection where, the minute something got too hard, I gave up, and never looked back. Even some of my most beloved games, like titles in the Final Fantasy or Mega Man franchises, I have only completed by never deviating from priorly acquired knowledge (or, put another way, I’m not sure Heat Man’s stage can be beaten without Bubble Lead). In short, while I can definitely play videogames, I have never considered myself “good”, because there are people that literally define the best, and I am nowhere near their echelon.
To be more specific, my dear wife is not particularly good at action-based games. Every title I just named could best be described as a puzzle game or RPG. But once you get into games that are more based on bounding over pits or battling against bruisers, she’s out. We spent some time playing 
And, to get back to the relationship box of this article, I want to be clear that my wife and I are excellent problem solvers. We successfully designed and reconstructed a bathroom, so overcoming obstacles with a box or two ain’t no thang. Spoilers: my wife and I did complete the whole 2-player campaign in Boxboy & Boxgirl, and this article does not end with a pending divorce. We are good at working together. We are both good at solving “space” problems, and, given how my wife works a closet, I have no doubt she would be able to handle Leon’s inventory of ammo like a pro the likes of which Las Plagas has never seen.
So what is today’s lesson? Well, I suppose that even if you do not consider yourself “good” at videogames (like me!), maybe you should consider how good you really are. Years of experience have made you a different person with different skills that you would not have otherwise, and do not take that for granted. And, if you are dealing with someone that does not have the same understanding (maybe someone you are married to), be patient. Do not assume that everyone just has to practice to “git gud”, and realize that you may have decades of “practice” that you are completely discounting. Not everyone has spent their life pressing B to fire, or up to enter doors, and something even that simple is new information to about 90% of the population.
What does it mean when “difficult” equals “fun”?
And we’ve seen “the mountain is a metaphor” before on this very blog. There’s another game that sticks in this humble blogger’s head that used the exact same story framing: 
And, on a personal note, Celeste is the game I played most during the Spring Quarantine of 2020. The world was falling apart in drastically unprecedented ways, I personally had no guarantee whether or not I would have any kind of income from day to day (spoilers for anyone concerned: I made out okay), and there was the threat of a deadly virus striking seemingly at all times. Granted, as I write this article, things aren’t much better, but there’s now a certain kind of uncomfortable familiarity with the situation. Yes, leaving the house is still a gauntlet of social distancing not unlike attempting to dash through a hotel filled with malevolent and deadly energy, but at least it no longer feels like the whole of society is going to gradually slide into the nearest ocean (we have to wait for 2038 for that). Back in March, when everything was unknown and something as basic as “wear a mask” was reported with equal claims of it being our one saving grace and a way to instantly obtain a malady known as “fungus nose”, things were a lot more ambiguous. And, thinking back on that time, I can safely say that I was probably about thirty seconds away from a mental breakdown every moment. I won’t exactly say I was tangibly depressed, but it was more like I was… concerned. Perpetually concerned. Perpetually might-have-a-heart-attack concerned. In retrospect, it was a surprisingly gentle time, as most businesses were closed (so there was little reason to go outside and risk my life for a damn haircut), the concept that someone might be financially hurting was universally understood (extra unemployment and money from a government that was pretending to care about its citizens that week), and, give or take some supermarket meltdowns, people seemed unusually empathetic for a month or so (we’re all in this together!). Maybe it was just an illusion brought on by not having to directly deal with (much of) the public for a month or so, but, in retrospect, the general start of this COVID insanity seemed like it was the best part; something approaching a reprieve before we settled into 
the usual rhythms of watching our leaders toss more and more “essential” workers into the meat grinder. But when that “reprieve” was happening, it seemed like anything but, as I deal with uncertainty about as well as having a swarm of bees in my pants. March and April’s COVID situation brought me seemingly unlimited stress, and I chose to relax by… playing a game that is supposed to be stressful.
Remember those uncertain COVID times I mentioned earlier? In the Fall of 2019, I finally took the initiative, looked at my rainy day fund that hadn’t been touched for literally years, and cashed in on remodeling my ancient, remembers-the-fall-of-Napoleon bathroom. It was a lot of money, but I sat down with a ledger, looked at the past year’s profits and losses, and determined it would be a passable expense. I also consulted with my fiancée, who informed me she would leave me if she had to deal with a bathroom that involved a crankshaft toilet one more time. Wait, excuse me, she wasn’t my fiancée at the time. That came later, with the other major expense I picked up in February: 
And, when I think about it, this is why I play “hard games” when things are stressful. No matter how badly I mess up in Celeste, it’s not going to impact my life. No matter how many times I damn Vincent to death in Catherine, it’s not going to make a dent in my bank account. Every setback in Bloodborne might mean I lose some resources, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to lose my home. Calling a videogame hard is all well and good, but the fact that there are no consequences (maybe beyond losing a few useless hours of actual life) is what transforms “difficult” into “fun”. Drop any consequences for failure, and repeated failures are enjoyable.
Favorite Level: The hotel stage is my uncontested favorite. It has a decent moral, a quasi-boss battle, and I love me some little black ghosty things that don’t allow you to re-traverse certain edges. It all works together beautifully, and seems to encapsulate what’s great about Celeste.
