It’s that time of year, again! The holiday season is upon us, what with everyone sporting the traditional post-apocalyptic garb, hosting reenactments of savage war and the destruction of civilization, grandparents sitting around the fire and telling tales of how the Earth’s axis shifted and all creatures became mutated only a short 100 years ago. The real reason for the season!
Isn’t that how everyone celebrates The END DAY? ‘Cola fans may recall that we celebrate the anniversary of The END DAY every year on October 1st, in memory of one of the staff’s favorite outside-the-mainstream games, Phoenix Wright Hatoful Boyfriend Crystalis.
Don’t feel ashamed if you’ve never played Crystalis yourself—some of the staff had never played the game, either! That’s why we decided that this year should be an introduction for all those uninitiated among us. Six daring GameCola staff members tried their best to survive the first half hour of the game in order to retrieve Akahana’s statue. They stabbed tiger men. They stabbed sleeping men. They stabbed windmill machines and ice walls and vampire bosses. Only one, however, made it to the statue and lived to tell the tale!
Who was the triumphant winner?! Watch the video as Anna Bryniarski, Mark Freedman, Dan Castro, Robyn Tyrfing, Joseph Martin, and editor emeritus Paul Franzen stab and die their way through Crystalis in order to be crowned as this year’s winner! Alex Jedraszczak, Nathaniel Hoover, and Matt Jonas officiate.
I tried so hard to defeat that boss. I thought the ROM you gave out was a hack where it was impossible to beat the boss. I thought this was a cruel social experiment to see how long someone would go trying to beat an impossible enemy before giving up.
In the end, I was doing well at evading the boss to the point…
But really, what sick bastard would design the game this way? This is why I was trying so hard to break down that ice wall, thinking there was some item I needed to defeat the boss. So if I had a rocket launcher at level 2, I couldn’t beat him, but bare fisted at level 3, no problem.
I’d be curious to see how things would have been different if I hadn’t emphasized the race/time constraint aspect. Without the need to rush through, I feel like everyone would have spent more time talking to people and leveling up and stuff, and everyone would have done better in the end.
It’s also interesting to see a game through the eyes of a new player. The game is so ingrained in me at this point…I know what the “invincible” sound effect means and I don’t even think about the ice wall. I’d be really curious to see a full Let’s Play by one of the participants. Maybe for next year’s The END DAY…?!
I think I can endure not keep playing it until next year, if that what you’re saying… 🙂
Yeah, I kept hammering that ice wall becuase:
1) The guy implied that my power could attack it. I assumed it was blue due to a limited pallete, like how goombas are blue in underground levels in SMB1.
2) I thought that behind that wall was the tool/weapon I needed to defeat the boss.
Awesome job on that video, btw. I’m curious what tools you used to create the 6 video windows like that.