Postcards from Virtual Spaces

On 04/18/2020 at 10:39 PM by KnightDriver

It's not easy to share screen shots from Xbox. I have to capture video to get a shot that isn't greyed out at the bottom like it is for screenshots. Now i see they've also obscured the bottom section of the video with the progress bar. What on earth are they doing? Anyway, as best as I could, the screenshots I gathered from today's gaming.

Doughlings Arcade. I wish you could see the muscle bound character I was using, but MS wants to format things in annoying ways. Well, I got stuck on level 25, so I went back to the first five levels and got three stars on each. I'm going to try and get all stars.

DoughlingsArcade

Journey to the Savage Planet: I managed to beat that eye/flower thing. I moved fast and avoided it's eye by hiding in tall "grass". But I'm now stuck in an area where you have to put giant nuts into holes to block gasses, presumably to melt these amber pillars. I closed all the gas spewing holes, but nothing happened. I'll have to look up a guide, I think. Below is an image of a flying tetrafin tropical fish. They're not deadly. They just poo on you.

Savage Planet

Life Force: If I get the pulse laser I can beat those "violent antibiotics". I finally beat the first boss. The action switches to vertical after that, and it surprised me, so I didn't get far enough. I am at 150k. I just need 50k more.

Life Force

The King of Dragons: I ran all 16 levels as a wizard and beat Gildess, the dragon. I finally figured out how to do special attacks. There's nothing like a wizard battle, though.

King of Dragons

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest: This game has a day/night cycle and NPCs to talk to. Kinda neat except I got stuck on the screen shown. The jump is just makeable but the monster there almost always knocks you off into the damaging pool.

Simon's Quest

Dante's Inferno: I got past the "lust storm", into the city of Dis and beyond to the ring of the greedy. It's interesting how they've pulled stuff from the epic poem and told a different story with it. There are a lot of great visuals in the game too. The screenshot below is from the ring of glutony.

Dante's Inferno

That's the highlights from my vacation in cyberspace.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

04/19/2020 at 12:08 AM

On the nes version of Lifeforce, you can use the Konami code and get 30 lives. Helps out a lot!

KnightDriver

04/19/2020 at 10:13 PM

Ooo, the NES version of Lifeforce. I might have to see if that is affordable to get.

Super Step Contributing Writer

04/19/2020 at 12:30 AM

Shooters are brutal. I've only gotten through half of the third level (you can choose what level to start with, but I just go with the one the game automatically starts with) in Thunder Force III.

04/19/2020 at 10:15 PM

I just want to adjust your ship's ability to take damage. You shouldn't die, like I do in Lifeforce all the time, just by grazing the borders of the screen.

04/20/2020 at 02:44 AM

Oh, Thunder Force III has you dying touching the borders of objects on-screen, which I guess is theoretically better, but means even less manuever space.

Cary Woodham

04/19/2020 at 08:32 AM

The Doughlings graphics look pretty good.

I always enjoyed playing LifeForce when I was a kid. I mostly rented it on the NES, but I did see it in the arcade once.

My friend and I rented and beat Castlevania II: Simon's Quest when we were kids. But when I tried to play it again recently...ugh, horrible.

04/19/2020 at 10:17 PM

The more I playe Doughlings, the more I like it. It does have a lovely art style. They do another game based on Space Invaders with similar art.

goaztecs

04/20/2020 at 11:40 AM

As easy it is to save a snapshot on the Switch, there are times when it refuses to let me do it. It's a pain. I am glad you got to share some pics from the 360, and I found the image for Savage Planet hilarious because you have this weird but cute fish like creature and you're point a weapon and what looks to be like bomb detonator.

I liked Dante's Inferno but at times it got frustrating because it felt like the controls were not as responsive as they should have been.

04/20/2020 at 10:15 PM

Xbox One used to not let you capture video or screenshots from 360 games, but now they do.

That's the extractor device in my left hand. It does look like I'm about to explode the fish, doesn't it.

So far, I've been fine with the controls in Dante's Inferno. I mostly use this dash move with my cross for bigger foes that works really well since I improved it with relics and skill boosts.

PixlBit