Wow, if thats playable, then I'll have to look into that.

I do have another current gen game to showcase, but it will probably come next episode, and even this next one still has modern releases. As for the episode itself, there is a nasty bug going around the house right now, so I want to hold off on recording it until I can do so safely without sneezing or coughing all over it. I'm glad that people continue to show interest, so I'll keep at this, primarily to show playable games that not a lot of people are talking about. If my selection seems to lean towards the older side of things, its probably because I have found games to be less playable the newer they are, but that seems to be changing for the better, so we'll see as time goes by and I continue to get more titles.

Finally, if you have been holding off on snk vs capcom or any of the other neo geo pocket color games on the switch, you can now buy the neo geo pocket collection volume 1 from the Nintendo eshop for 40 bucks. It comes with 10 games, which includes everything released so far, and 4 games that are exclusive to this pack as of this writing. Most of the games in this pack are playavle, and all of them have a handy rewind feature that should make games like the 2 metal slug games manageable. I bought snk vs capcom on the switch a few weeks back and just figured out that if you press the minus button to go to the menu, the option to rewind is the first option, and pressing right will take you back a few seconds. Now I'm not usually one to cheese fighting games with save states, but having this option eliminates a lot of frustration and saves time on what would otherwise be wasted battles. Suffice it to say that every game in this collection will have that option just as I described.

Sony have announced that they are not shutting down the ps3 and psp stores, so we can still get the old games.

Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax

Hi, everyone!

Welcome to a brand new, and much long awaited episode of Kenshira Plays! Today, we are taking a look at the up and coming rerelease of Persona 4 Arena, Ultimax for modern platforms, includeing PS4, Switch and Steem.

Previously released for PS3 and xbox360 in the early 2010s, this series of fighting game spinoff of the Persona series picks up right where Persona 4 left off. The first in this spinoff was simply entitled Persona 4 arena, which itself was a 1 on 1 2d fighting game with a variety of offline and online modes. It had a lengthy story which one could experience in both the Story Mode and Arcade Mode. In both instances, one could play through the story from the perspective of each character.

Not long after, we were graced with a sequel, entitled Persona 4 Arena, Ultimax, who's story picked up right where Persona 4 Arena left off. The Arcade Mode of Ultimax now lets you play through the story of the second game from the perspective of each character, while the new Story Mode follows groups as they face the challenges ahead of them. The new game introduced several new characters, added Shadow types to most characters, and updated everyone's move list. Similarly to the first game, P4A Ultimax also had a variety of offline an online modes to play through, and both games have a gallery full of immages, voices and short movies to view at one's leasure. You can also head over to the sound settings and listen to all of the game's wonerful mix of jazz and j-pop style music, similarly to how the music in Guilty Gear XX Reloaded was presented. If you missed out on the first game, you can buy the Persona 4 Arena story to play from within Story Mode for $10 US, in addition to a few other DLC characters, one of which has his own story mode.

For years, These games have been stuck on the previous generation of consoles, and apparently have been one of the most requested of their developers to bbe brought to modern consoles, and so it shall be! You can purchase Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for the PS4, Switch and Steem starting on the 17th of march, 2022. Judging from the trailor, and based on what I've heard from others, this will be the definitive version of the game, which will hopefully include the stories of the first and secondd p4a games. Now those who missed out on it when it was out 2 console generations ago can play it for themselves, and it will offer hours and hours of content, both in terms of story and gameplay.

AS for my own experiences with the games, it was actually my brother who brought p4a to my attention when it came out. I was already familiar with Persona 4 Golden from watching him play through a bit of it on the Vita. I can't remember whether it was before or after I played the p4a games that I watched the Persona 4 animation, but that got me all caught up with the characters and their situations. I had played through a little bit of Persona 4 Arena before I got distracted with a whole bunch of different things. The same is true of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, so I never really got around to finishing them until very recently, like within the same year of me writing this, so it's all very fresh in my head.

During my time away from the game, we had moved on from the ps3 and gotten new consoles, so all of our old games, including these 2, were shelved until I finally found space to reconnect the PS3 along with a few other legacy consoles up in my room. Somewhere during that time, the disk for Persona 4 Arena got lost, but fortunately, I still had Ultimax to play, and thankfully, the DLC story following the first game was still available to purchase on the PSN. I bought the DLC and proceeded to drown myself in the game, having finally found time to do so recently. It's a pretty good story, fully voiced in english with lots of humor, and the voice actors generally do a good job at delivering their lines. These are the same voice actors that did the animation and the first game, so they should feel very,  familiar if you're coming off of either of those. The Arcade Mode also has quite a lot more story than what is generally found in the arcade modes of other fighting games, and I thought that was pretty cool!

It was a ton of fun to come back to this game, even after having finished it recently, and I am thrilled that Ultimax  is coming out for a new generation of gamers to enjoy. Thus, I really wanted to capitalize on this opportunity to demo it for those of you who haven't played it for whatever reason. Console accessibility has come a bit of a ways since the ps3 days, and though that probably will not do much to improve on this already very playable game, at the very least, more blind and visually impaired people should be into mainstream gaming now than there would have been back in the early 2010s.

AS for the game's playability, it is possible to play through all of the game's modes. The story has this thing going on where you move the curser around an area and click on icons once you hover  over them, but the icons make noises when you enter and leave them, so that at least is helpful to have. Once you unlock them, you can use the shoulder buttons to change to different sections of the story mode. Another helpful thing to note is that the curser does not wrap while you're moving around the field in story mode, and a few other menus if you hold the arrow.

You will probably need OCR or a third party reading tool to do the tutorials and the dungeon mode which sees you leveling up your character and developing their stats, but it isn't anymore demanding than what's common in other games these days. In terms of playability, I have no real complaints except that I only wish it was all in stereo, and I know that can be a make or break thing for some people. Hopefully when it comes out in march, it will be, but even if not, I encourage you to give this a try if you haven't already yet, especially if you enjoyed games like BlazBlue and Under Night, as this one has a very similar presentation style in terms of its story.

In the demo below, I will be playing the PS3 version of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. A few of the cast members will help me explain the gameplay, then I will play through arcade mode to the end with one of the characters. I'm using a diferent speaker setup this time around. I think it is of lower quality than what I normally have, but hopefully it all comes through, and the audio should still be in stereo. The presentation is about 40 minutes in length. Without any further delay, here is the audio demo for persona 4 arena ultimax.

That does it for today's episode of Kenshira plays. If you have questions or comments about this or other games in this thread, feel free to post below. Please look forward to more episodes in the future, especially now that I have some of my old stuff back. They may not be as frequent as in 2020 given how busy I've been, vut there will be more demos to come, hopefully of stuff people haven't done already. Thank you all for tuning in.

Until next time!

Hi.
Wow. Thanks for this epic demo and the really great post about the game. I look very much forward to the 17th of March. I will buy this for my ps5 for sure.

Phantom Breaker Omnia

Hi, everyone! Welcome to a brand new episode of Kenshira plays! Today, we're going to cut our way through a story episode of the recently released Phantom Breaker: Omnia for Nintendo Switch, xbox one, ps4 and pc via steem!

Phantom Breaker is a fighting game that was exclusively released in Japan for the xbox 360 back in 2011. It eventually got an arcade release, then a followup called Phantom Breaker: extra, which was also exclusively released in Japan for xbox 360 and ps3. Not long after, a beat em up spinoff and cannonical sequel called Phantom Breaker: battlegrounds saw a wider release around the world for the playstation Vita, and later as a difinitive version for ps4, switch and pc. I will probably cover that one someday, but today, our focus is on the very next release in the series, which is Phantom Breaker: Omnia.

The game is an update to Phantom Breaker: extra, an includes the stories of phantom breaker and phantom breaker extra, and all the characters of both games, including 2 which are exclusive to this version, making this the definitive version of Phantom Breaker. It has a variety of modes beyond the story mode, which itself is presented in visual novel style, similarly to the Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena series. The single player modes include arcade: time attack, score attack an endless battle, while Versus and online make up the multiplayer modes. There is a training mode, records mode and a gallery mode where you can see the game's manual and unlockables. In the options, you can adjust things like which soundtrack you want to hear, the audio language, text language and a lot of other stuff. That's right! For the first time ever, you will be able to experience the series's story, and even the music in fully dubbed english. You will probably recognize some of the voice tallents such as the girl who does Noelle Vermilion in the Blazblue series.

In terms of gameplay, Phantom Breaker Omnia  is a 3 button fighter, with a light, medium and heavy attack, plus a button for specials. Everyone has 3 fighting styles. The Quick style specializes in fast combos and also lets you double jump at the cost of having lower health, and a hard style gives you more health, but takes away most of your combo abilities and quickness in exchange for attacks that deal more damage and the ability to absorb attacks. The third style, Omnia, which is the new feature exclusive to this game, grants you some of the abilities of each of the previous styles and serves as a kind of middle ground with an auto combo system. There are no complicated motion inputs like quarter circles or half circles to remember, making this extremely beginner friendly, but each of the different styles grant the characters different abilities to add a layer of depth to the game. Specials are performed by pressing left, down or right plus the special button. Pressing the special button by itself will perform a counter, and holding and releasing it will perform an unblockable attack. This game's version of a super can be performed by pressing heavy plus special when your gage is full, while blocking, crouching and jumping are  done by pressing back, down or up respectively.

Unfortunately, the combat is not in stereo and lacks some of the common audio cues found in other fighting games such as meter charge, jump or dash, but its not enough to make phantom breaker  unplayable, especially given how beginner friendly it is. You'll still be able to tell who's who and the way the match goes. Furthermore, the game also announces the main menu items as you choose them, in addition to the characters an style you choose, so you don't have to fumble around the menus trying to find what's what. The only things that don't read out are the obvious, such as the options items and manual instructions, but you can at least adjust the volume of the music, voice and sfx. You can even raise them 5 noches above the default setting if you like. This is especially handy for the switch port, since,  the switch's speakers in portable mode are not particularly loud. The music is awesome as always, but never intrudes in the audio during gameplay or story segments when at the same level as the sound.

The main menu is laid out in two rows and wrap, and so do the submenus that immediately follow. However, the character select screen, which is also laid out in two rows, does not wrap in any direction, and submenus within options, records and the manual do not wrap vertically, while most of the left-right sliders for them except for the music, sound and voice volumes do wrap. The story mode's items are arranged in a row and wrap, but once you choose your story, the vertically arranged chapters for the chosen story does not wrap, and you cannot choose a chapter which you have not yet unlocked. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to accurately capture the text of menu items and much of the readable content, but perhaps someone may have better luck.

I was first exposed to the Phantom Breaker universe when my brother picked up Battlegrounds for the Vita. Eventually when I had the means to read the subtitles, I got to learn about some of the characters in that game, and thankfully now, I get to learn a little more about where they came from and why their world was in such chaos. Battlegrounds had a really nice and catchy 8-bit electronic soundtrack, and you'll get to hear how they originally sounded in omnia before their demake, as well as their modern remixed counterparts. Omnia is extremely fun to play, and easy to get into. I'm guilty of auto comboing my way through the story of many fighting games, but because of the way this fighting engine is designed, I don't really feel guilty at all. Since its so easy to combo without mashing a single button anyway, I feel a little more confident in experimenting with different button strings. Speaking of experimentation, I often found myself experimenting with a newe character when I had to play with them in a story segment such as with Mortal Kombat, but that really wasn't the case here, since the button inputs for all of the characters were so similar. That's not to say that everyone plays the same, because they don't, but I don't have to learn like 10 different reliable combinations for each character either, which saves me a  lot of time and lets me enjoy more of the game quicker.

In the demo below, I will play through a character's story to the end in the Switch version of Phantom Breaker Omnia so you all get an idea of what the story and combat  is like. For whatever reason, the speakers I normally use wouldn't connect to the switch when I plugged them in, so the game's audio will come directly off the switch itself, which interrupted me a few times with low battery warnnings, but thankfully I was able to get to the end of the story and not have the console die on me. There's also some background noise, so appologies for that. It's mostly suddle, so it shouldn't interfeer with the dialog and gameplay at all. Anyway, without any further delay, here is my story demo of Phantom Breaker:  Omnia. The demo is about an hour long, so kick back and enjoy the show.

Phantom breaker omnia demo

I have been looking forward to this since late 2020, and I would have bought the game even without the english dub, but I'm glad the game turned out the way it did, and I'm glad I was able to share it with you all. I hope you guys enjoyed today's presentation, and I hope that you give this awesome game a try, either now, or whenever you're looking for new games to play. As always, feel free to leave any questions or comments about this, or any other presented game in this thread, and I will respond. Please look forward to more Kenshira plays in the future.

Until next time!

@slj, thanks. I've been playing this all weekend so got a good feel for the game now. A few  more tidbits, you can press y on switch controller on any story to see additional info on it. I presume it is x on xbox and square on Playstation. You can also click in the right stick on the characters select screen to perform a random select. Lastly, the arcade mode is crazy long! You must face off against every character to clear it, but you can at least do score or time attack if you just want to fight a shorter list of characters. The cool thing about arcade is that your character will say something directly related to your opponent after each battle, so thats reason to play through it at least. I have not cleared arcade yet, but I will. Been focused on the story. In regards to that, it seems like unlocking some story segments require specific conditions, vut I'll figure it out.

Congrats! Hope you like the gane.

@aron, thanks. Thats an oversight on my part. Omnia should be available on Xbox as well. I will make corrections to  the above post appropriately.

Wario ware inc: mega micro game$

Hi, everyone! After such a long time away, and since I habe some free time, I decided to present you all with a grand new episode of Kenshira Plays. Today, we will be checking out Wario Ware Inc. Mega Micro Game$ for the gameboy advance,  and yes, the game's title is really written like that.

This is the very first game im the Wario ware series, releasing back in 2003. A number of entries habe since been released for the gamecube, ds, wii, dsi, 3ds, and switch. These games are a collection of rapid fire 5 to 10 second micro games, with occasional boss, and endless minigames to break up the action. If you have played crazy party and made it to the intellectual world, this is where a lot of the music comes from. The team behind the first few wario ware games would later go on to make the rhythm heaven games. This one, however, is where a lot of their wacky ideas were first realized.

I discovered wario ware inc back in 2003/2004, during my studies at the orientation center for the blind. My cousin had given me a gameboy advance as a graduation present, and I took it with me everywhere as I discovered the internet, read about new games, made frequent inquiries during my trips to gamestop, and steadily built up my gameboy advance library, buying, selling, and trading many a title along the way. There were quite a few cartridges I bought that kept me up all night, of which this was one. I had read somewhere online about this crazy game that had a bunch of tiny simple games inside, and being on the hunt for compilation titles, this naturally caught my interest. It was not a compilation in the traditional sence, it had its own stories, characters, and it got a 9 out of 10 on GameSpot. Back then, I wasn't as concerned with whether a game was fully playable or not, so having a bit of money to spend, I was willing to experiment. Worse case scenario, i could watch my brother play, and we would both enjoy the game that way.

Thus, after I read about the game  and weird micro games that had you brushing your teeth, sniffing bugers, boiling eggs, flying paper airplanes, I had to give it a try, figuring that I wouldn't be the only one who found this to be fun. I was right; my sisters got a kick out of it as well. For days after scoring a copy of the game, I spent my free time reading about the different mini and micro games contained, and this is also how I was able to keep up with the story of the game.

Wario is Mario's opposite, so he is naturally greedy and has little regard for those around him. He wants to make a butt load of money fast. Suddenly he sees a game on TV that sold well, so he has this idea to start making games, but he can't do it alone. He gathers up a group of his friends, Jimmy, Mona, 9-volt, spits, dribble, katt, Anna, orbulon, and Doctor crygor. you can read the story descriptions, character story and descriptions, as well as a lot of other info on the game here. The game has over 200 micro games, and over a dozen minigames to discover and unlock, including three 2 player games that can be played together on 1 console.

The micro games themselves are relatively simple, often requiring just a well timed button press, button mashing, or alternating button presses, but there are other types of micro games also. There are a lot of music and sound cues that give you a hint on what to do. For example, one micro game asks you to count the frogs as they jump into a pond, and you can listen for their croaks, and tap a for every croak you hear. Another game places you in a boxing match, and you habe to dodge a punch, which you can hear, before you throw a counter punch with the a button. Yet another one tasks you with catching a falling stick, which you can hear as it drops. There's still a lot of guess work, but these are just a few examples of what makes this particular entry playable. The menus don't even wrap, and you can hear what character you are on before you choose them. There is even a section where you can practice every micro game and voss mini game that you have seen so far, at no cost. Eben though the menu for entering your name wraps left and right, the letters are listed in order from left to right, with the first row being capital letters, the second row being lowercase letters, the bottom row being numbers, and the curser stays on the  current letter or number after you click it. After that, you can choose your characters gender, boy on left, girl on right.

You will hear me going through the process of character creation as I attempt to beat the first level. Initially, there was 20 minutes of recording, but half of it was just me failing, so i edited most of that out. Since this is available to play on Nintendo switch online expansion pack, thats how I played the game. That itself makes the game very doable for us because of the emulators rewind feature. Indeed, I was able to beat the game and unlock almost everything this way. You will hear a bit of that rewind action towards the end, and I will be happy to explain how that and getting around in the various console apps for nso. For now, please enjoy this short demo of wario ware inc The gameboy advance had vocal tracks in some of the music of its games before, but I heard it for the first time im this game. Since the demo is so short, avout 7 and a half minutes, here is the song that plays during Katt and Anna's stage.

That does it for today's episode of Kenshira plays. Have you played this game before? Are you interested in playing, or habe questions or comments about the game? Sound off in the comments below. I'm hoping to do more demos in the future, just not sure of what and when yet, but more is on the way, so keep your eyes and ears out. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode.

Until next time!

Hey @Sade19821, thank you for your interest, and enjoy the rest of this thread and the games. Comment here if you wish about whatever and I will try to reply. More is coming, but if you want to directly talk games or whatever with me, I am _Kenshira om discord.

Picked up Phantom Breaker some time ago but haven't tried it yet.  Enjoyed both posts.