Micro Mages on an Anbernic RG351MP - an ARM-Linux handheld that's focussed on emulation and source-ports (this one is running the 351Elec custom firmware). However, I found that the best Linux experience for this game is to take the NES ROM that they provide you with and run it in your native emulator of choice - that way, you can make save-states between worlds instead of having to write down passwords. There isn't a native Linux version of Micro Mages, but the Steam release works fine with Proton. It's a vertically-autoscrolling platformer for up to four players who take on the roles of four brightly-coloured mages on a rescue-mission, and has the interesting twist of restricting itself to the capabilities of launch-window Famicom/NES games -, and doesn't use any memory-mappers or other on-cartridge hardware that allowed for fancier games.
However, there is something to buying a Megadrive cartridge in 2022, that cannot be matched with a simple "digital rom" download Very true! I still love seeing this sort of thing every time when it comes to the old cartridge-based systems, though the digital versions suit me better due to the convenience, these days.Īnd that brings me neatly to the game that I finished today:, which is a modern NES game, available on cartridge and also digitally from Steam and Itch.io (I grabbed it on Steam). The MegaDrive cartridge is a bit expensive, but I'm saving the page for later Hopefully the same studio's will offer a native Linux version, too - it sounds interesting so far. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the game - even the slightly frustrating ones trying to grab hard-to-reach fireflies so that I could get the good ending! This also slightly affects how the endgame plays out, so the events in a playthrough for the good ending aren't quite the same as those for the bad ending. As is typical of many of the games that inspired it, it has two endings - one that you get if you didn't grab all of the 168 collectible fireflies that are hidden throughout the game, and one that you get if you grabbed them all. The narrative is, as you would expect from a 16-bit game (which this is - though it has a native Linux release, it was actually designed for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, and comes with a ROM-file so that you can play it on real hardware or using an emulator of your choice), more-or-less silent, but personally I found this to be simple but effective. Tanglewood's protagonist, Nymn, takes a walk in the woods. You can almost feel the chill coming off of the wind sound-effects that accompany this stage. Handling is like a mascot-platformer rather than a realistically-weighted puzzle-platformer, and deaths are one-hit kills as is typical of the puzzle-platformer lineage - but you get infinite lives, and restart-points are well-placed and reasonable. It takes the audio approach of the former group of games rather than the latter, so it uses both silence and appropriately-timed music to set the tone (and the music is fab, too).
If you're not familiar with it: Tanglewood plays like what you would get if you combined 1990s puzzle-platformers (Another World/Heart of Darkness/Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee) with various 1990s mascot-platformer/action-game series (Sonic The Hedgehog/The Lion King/Ecco the Dolphin/Yoshi's Island/Kirby/Donkey Kong Country), but it never uses elements from these games wholesale - they're all given their own unique spin here, and it all mixes together very well as you play out the adventures of a lost and helpless wild animal who's looking for a way back home.
I bought the game on GOG.com, so I don't know if this also applies to the Steam or Itch.io releases. I had to make to get it running on Xubuntu 21.10. It's quickly become one of my all-time favourite games. I did two playthroughs - one for each ending. Quoting: PenglingMy most recently-finished game is.