#PastebinMonday 04/08/2019

Off to See the Wizard Edition

Hey guys, how’s it goin?

I started my pursuit of taking a certain record back nine months ago. I took a detour for a Tetris Attack tournament. I won that tournament. I took a detour to take back records in other categories. I took back those records. Through all that time, however, I had my eyes on the prize. On Friday, that prize was attained. The “best week ever” of Pokemon Puzzle Challenge speedruns ended with an Intense run time of 14:29, beating the previous Scroll Off record done in 2017 by 21 seconds. With this, all of the Scroll Off Challenge mode level records are back in my control. My next objective is to take those level records with Scroll On. Intense mode will be a fun exercise, in particular, because the large chains necessary to win require me to keep my stack full of panels at all times in order to get those chains the fastest. It is not something I’m used to having to do.

I thought that I was going to bring back a speedrun on Saturday, but Vyse and his Twitch bit farm had other ideas. He dropped 20,000 of them to have me play a JRPG on the DS based on a story that I never thought I would ever see or care to see. Thus, on Saturday, I started my playthrough of The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. You’re reading that right. Some Japanese developer took The Wizard of Oz story, twisted some details, and made an RPG about it.

I didn’t think I would care about it as I was playing it, but I’m liking some of what I see so far. It’s got Dragon Quest-like mechanics and interface, but I have also encountered some Shin Megami Tensei-type battles. The story is changed a bit, however. It’s turned into a power struggle between witches and wizards over control of the Land of Oz—er, Land of Magic. The environments are also full of uninteresting narrow corridors. You also move by dragging your stylus across… a trackball? But… why? I don’t think I’ve seen it in any other game and there’s a good reason why. In any case, this is probably the best Wizard of Oz game I’ve seen and there’s enough here to make me look forward to seeing what’s coming next.

That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, thanks for reading!

--Cards