Around 70-80 attempts total to get it done...and the weirdest part is that I had got an A-Rank in it before because of a stellar run with a retry in Rainbow Road - but forgot to turn on cheevos, and when I did the No Retry run, got an A-Rank run again...and now for some reason the game isn't giving me the [A-Rank or better in all 150cc normal cups] cheevo. Nice.
Otherwise, gonna leave that cup alone for the time being - I unlocked Extra Special 150cc in a run before that [was stacking coins so I didn't get deterred by retries] and...oof, the tracks are claustrophobic even when playing in MKSC.
First four cups cleared in 150cc with 36 points Star rank no retries [Mushroom and Flower I could do with first attempts, but Lightning and Star took me several attempts between harder tracks and playing with Wario/Bowser]- and right now Special Cup too 36 points but with a B-Rank since I had to retry Rainbow Road once. OUGHHH RAINBOW ROAD I'LL GET YOU ONE DAY WITHOUT CHOKING THE FIRST ATTEMPT
Well, putting aside my building frustration at Special Cup after repeated attempts, it was night and day to maneuver the game compared to SMK - satisfying to hit drifts over several track turns without feeling claustrophobic. Gonna be a hassle to grind for the Extra Cups due to the coin + revisit requeriment, but it will be interesting to see how the SMK tracks stack up in the tweaked MKSC driving style.
I played it again. That's all.
Expanding a bit about that, it was neat to revisit - did more stages than the last time I played [30], had a few moments stuck brainstorming solutions [or not knowing how to lift blocks for that one of the first stages - but I found out when I checked the tutorial menus] rewarded with EUREKA when I got them done accordingly. Was playing with an unofficial translation as well, which reminds me it's weird that Nintendo dropped the game at Nintendo Switch Online without one. Oh well, at least the NSO port reminded me of the game in the first place, which is why I tried it out again [it also has RetroAchievements yippie]
So first, two days ago [Jan 24th] I got through the Star Cup in SMK 150cc - took me two hours and switching to Toad, but had good enough performance in the first three races to have enough buffer for the next two ones.
Then yesterday [Jan 25th], after ELEVEN attempts and one full run that ended with an A-rank instead of an S-Rank, I got the S-Rank in Sneaker Cup Grandmaster with Vectorman [up in the main YT channel]. Still considering as of writing this whether I should move into a more general [daily update] format instead of specifically just a game log to be able to update more frequently...and thus not forget to do so if I have something else to talk about.
Extremely belated update, but amongst the games I can mention I gave a lick, would be more Ring Racers Grandmaster, DKR Adventure 2 [only Dino Domain atm - playing with T.T. this time], Risk of Rain 2 for the first time, Mario Kart Wii Retro Rewind [it's so cool it works online with Dolphin even without NAND], and as of writing this right now, just did the lap at 150cc Special Cup 3-Star in MKDS.
I am surprised that it didn't take me as much stress to do as the 100cc equivalent, although I did get two runs that got one and two stars [plus a few early restarts because bots got greedy at Wario Stadium], but I locked in much more consistently and wasn't getting frustrated as fast - probably because I could tell it was just getting things stable while hoping for sprinkles of luck. I think I got either one or no Blue Shells at me in the winning 150cc run, so perhaps call that a load of luck too.
Adventure Two someday, but for now, the DKR Adventure is done [aside from still having to unlock T.T.]. Below is the Future Fun Land run - I recorded each world [did both Dragon Forest and Future Fun Land today] but didn't want to link those every single time I did an update of those to not clog the Game Log...but it is done now, so, woe, tiptup upon ye [and the rest are on that same channel if you want to look at those]
yeah, that's the update today, did all of dkr Sherbet island in one go because Ring Racers Grandmaster broke a plate over my head and needed to unwind [the boss was surprisingly tame compared to the walrus lmao]
oh yeah and I also did a quick outrun 2006 run [or2 course] cause i wanted to give it a go again
And nothing else happened today. Aside from my Mushroom Cup run accidentally not getting logged in RetroAchievements cause I forgot to turn it on in Bizhawk before doing the run...
I also played a bit of SRB2Kart for a while, then jumped into Ring Racers again to try the Grandmaster challenge. Did Ring Cup with S-Rank, got A-Rank in Sneaker Cup by FOUR POINTS, and dipped out for the night in Spring Cup because I think I was already exaggerating with how much I really wanted to endure in a single night when I had already grinded MKDS and often got punked in that session at SRB2Kart.
EXCEPT FOR BEATING THE FROSTY VILLAGE DEVELOPER TIME AT DIDDY KONG RACING WITH TIPTUP THE TURTLE [more on that tomorrow cause it's 3AM and I should be sleeping RIGHT NOW]
Played through Dino Domain and half of the ice world in DKR with a friend [co-op adventure], then got him to play Ring Racers with me [Relaxed, Ring Cup] and funnily enough he seemed to have enjoyed that more. Later, I played all of Dino Domain again but alone [RetroAchievements had a subset for Multi, so I had to redo it for the main one], then ended the night with 100cc Shell and Banana Cup 3-star'd in Mario Kart DS. Quick and dirty update, but that was basically the gist of it. Oh, except for beating VF2 Genesis on the PSP with Jacky [I somehow beat Dural] before dipping into MKDS again lol
GO LUIGI - The Star Cup took me several retries just to not screw up unecessarily in DK Pass but got it locked in once I cleared that track. Special Cup though took me SIX attempts, because in the first five, the game was throwing me Blue Shells PER RACE - in one attempt I even got to see FOUR BLUE SHELLS in Rainbow Road. The winning run at Special Cup was thanks to only getting ONE blue shell in three out of four races [was spared from one at Bowser Castle], dodged the one at Peach Garden, and ALMOST died to Rainbow Road because of it...but thankfully I didn't.
Last time I played it, the game had around four or five levels [I think] in the Early Access state it was [back in 2022] - revisiting it now, not only it has talking characters just like Star Fox, but also I can see that there's more features and levels abound [Mouse Aiming is super cool with the right keybinds]. I got surprised by what the Data item you may find in levels actually gives you - won't tell you much but it is definitely a super fun nod to another thing that I didn't expect to see here. S-Ranked Ignice on my first try too :D
It has a RetroAchievements set, so I decided to give it a run as Yugo the Wolf in Arcade mode. There's cheevos for each character completion in arcade mode, so I may or may not get into getting all of those whenever I feel like it.
The fella that showed up yesterday returned and with another old friend, and after a good while of messing around with PMEX Remix once again [Deathborn is hilarious, but even more hilarious is playing as X in the Les Vagas stage because of the huge screen size while the boundaries can save you a handful of times from dying lol], I pulled out Hotshot Racing, which I hadn't tried in a good while but had remembered after one of them was talking about Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing having similar drifts to Outrun 2 [since it was developed by the same studio], and that's because HR is also made by the same devs at Sumo Digital.
There were no Burnout style takedowns, but it was REALLY funny most of the time [as in, when I wasn't getting sent into a fence] when either AI cars or just any of us were pushing violently any cars into the fence and causing them to crash out. We actually played through all 5 cups in one sitting in Normal difficulty with how it had us hooked, although the AI in the final cup gave 'em even more trouble than usual.
I also did try the Expert GPs in single player - I barely got Gold in the first GP between a succesful first place in the first track...and then stumbling along the other three tracks but the AI deciding to play nice for me to keep the GP lead. Didn't have the same luck in GP 2 [got Silver] and GP 3 [Already hard from the get go - mess up in a critical moment of any race and that may be goodbye for ya], but will probably give it another shot another day.
An old friend showed up out of nowhere at like 5pm with a controller, so we ended up playing a good chunk of PMEX Remix [he was mentioning many times how several of the new characters he used to play or know had some funny differences], then we tried this Shrimp Game on Roblox after I showed him a funny clip we found, as he could play on his phone [After a few attempts, I eventually got a win lol] - and then I ended up spending quite a bit trying out this other roblox game, Superstar Racers, as he mentioned was cool when he noticed it was on the frontpage.
He was right - the game SHREDS for being in Roblox, when the game lets you run around to gain momentum, do a mid-air jump and dive, and the dives bump you upwards a bit if you hit a wall or platform. So you can imagine how inventive you can be with the controls when you get a handle of what it lets you do - and more so when the practice levels available at the start if you aren't looking into multiplayer yet take full advantage of that. I did try several times to get to the end of the Medium Practice course until I eventually got a run where, while had a delayed start and end, at least made it to the second to last platform that I always missed to reach in previous attempts.
Initial confusion in Cannon Core aside [Figuring out proper timing for that one Tails wall where you have to destroy it while hovering over nothing, looking up how to get the Air Necklace to actually explore with Knuckles's section, that sand slide with Sonic], it was cool to see a final gauntlet like that followed by the Biolizard fight as Shadow [good thing you can return to it even if you lose all your lives] and the final LIVE AND LEARN. So yeah, that's Sonic Adventure 2 finally completed on my book for good without a shadow of a doubt.
On one hand, I had started SA2 on PC the morning before I went to watch the third Sonic movie at December 30th, leaving it up to Death Chamber [I think], then retaking Hero Story today up until I completed it - and then went through the entirety of Dark Story in one sitting. So yeah, now Last Story is the last one remaining, but on the flipside I was paying visits to the Chao Garden between most levels to tune up my Chao with the stuff I obtained on them.
It is always funny to sometimes come back to this game and have a blast - which seems to depend of the server. At least in 2fort, the vanilla game rules make it so that there's a funnily higher chance to frontrun - although on the flipside, if you get PUNKED too hard early or right near the end, you're screwed lol [It's hilarious when I get benefitted by the vanilla odds though - triple sneakers in second place my beloved]