Super Adventures in Rat-Infested RPG Cellars

Anyone who's played a few RPGs knows that one of the first things a level 1 newbie hero has to do is go sort out someone's rodent problem. There are rats in the cellar, rats in the basement, rats in the storeroom and rats in the larder, and clearing them out is a job for the least experienced of adventurers.

At least, that's the cliché, and it's as infamous as having to go see the village elder, or collect 10 wolf pelts. But how common is this trope in reality? When did games start treating it like a joke? Where did it even come from?

Today I'm going through RPGs I've played from the newest to the oldest on a quest to see how deep this rat cellar goes. It's not going to be an exhaustive list, I haven't played that many RPGs, but if rat quests are really as ubiquitous as advertised then by the end I'm going to be exhausted.

This will include SPOILERS for any games that do something interesting enough with their rat quest for it to be worth spoiling.

Super Adventures: Game Awards 20X4

This week on Super Adventures, I'd like to take a moment to look back at 2024 and give some well-earned kudos to the AAA megahits and the indie instant classics that brought me the most joy over the last year.

But I can't! I think the only 2024 game I got around to was probably Core Keeper and that's been playable in Early Access for ages. So instead, I'm looking back at three other years ending in '4' to see if I can come up with some games that have been worthy of awards in the past. Here's how this is going to work:

• I'll be giving out 6 awards for each year, so that's 18 awards in total.
• I'll be using each game's earliest release date anywhere in the world.
• I won't be limiting myself to games I've written about for Super Adventures.
• If any worthy games are missing, that's because I'm leaving them for you to mention in the comments.

In fact, I'll even throw in a bonus award: Best Game I've Played From 2024. And the winner is... Core Keeper! Nice job Pugstorm, thanks for giving me hours of co-op fun in a cave.

Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2024

This year on Super Adventures, I got a little busy with stuff and wasn't able to cover as many games as I would've liked. It's a bit frustrating actually, as I'd put a hundred hours into a epic RPG trilogy (DLC and all) and I was about to get to work on an article about the third one when my focus was pulled elsewhere... for 6 months. I'm sure I'll be able to remember some of it though.

Anyway, you might be thinking that there's no point in me writing an article showing off my favourite screenshots of the last year when I only played 11 games, and I can definitely follow your line of thinking. In fact, you're starting to talk me out of it. But it's what I do at the end of every year and I'm fast running out of December, so I'm just going to get on with it.

Besides, some of those games are absolute classics. And one of the other ones is Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, so expect to see an exploding skeleton at some point. The GIF's a bit graphic.

Super Adventures 'Next Game' Challenge

This week on Super Adventures, no one was able to identify what game's coming up next from the tiny cropped clue at the bottom of the last article, and that almost never happens. Someone always seems to figure out what it is and I don't know how you do it.

I mean look at this microscopic image. How did anyone identify the game from this? I mean I know what it is, it's from Mortal Kombat, but I have a massive unfair advantage seeing as I'm the one who played the games, took the screenshots and made the clues. Then again, there are about 1300 games on the site right now and it's been ten years since I played some of them, so maybe it won't be quite so easy for me to go back to the older clues and work out what game they're hinting at.

You know what? I'm going to put the next game on hold for a bit, seeing as no one even knows what it is, and I'm going to see how many of these tiny pictures I can get myself. Just to make it trickier I'm replacing the filenames with random numbers so there will be no clues for me there. In fact, it's probably going to take me a bit of work to look up what the games are after I'm done guessing. But I once I find the correct answers I'll go back through and hide them underneath each clue, to be revealed with a click. I'll also hide my guesses in spoiler text, so you can play along yourself and see how well you do.

Super Adventures: Game Awards 20X3

This week on Super Adventures, it's the start of 2024, so it seems like the right time for me to look back at 2023 and hand out some awards to the games that stood out and impressed me the most. Unfortunately I've barely played anything released last year and I can't just give all my awards to Octopath Traveler II and a bunch of boomer shooter demos. Well I suppose I could, but I'm not going to.

My second idea was to do the Super Adventure Game Awards 1993, because you can't go wrong with the 90s, but then I thought about all the poor 2003 and 2013 games that I'd be missing out and decided to give those years awards as well. Not 1983 though, because no one loves it. So I'll be giving out 8 awards each year, but they'll be repeated 3 times, for a total of 24 awards. I hope that helps you form a mental image of how long this is going to be.

I won't be limiting myself to games I've played for Super Adventures, as to be honest I forgotten most of the games I've written about. Power Piggs of the Dark Age and Fausseté Amour might be worthy of all kinds of awards, but I haven't got the faintest idea. I will be using the earliest release date in any region, so Seiken Densetsu 3 would be from 1995 not 2019, for example.

Also, I only know about games that I know about, and I only like the games I like, so if you're wondering why an incredibly deserving game didn't even make my shortlist, its because I'm leaving that one for you to mention in the comments.

Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2023

It's that time of year again when I have to update that picture up there to change the number. You've reached my annual Super Adventures Screenshots of the Year 2023 article, where I look back through the hundreds and hundreds of screenshots I've taken over the past year to find the absolute best. Or the least rubbish, depending on your point of view.

I have to be honest, this isn't the best selection I've put together as I just didn't cover many games this year. It was easy to find something worth showing off back in 2011 when I had 500+ games to draw from, but it's been a lot more challenging for me in a year with only 500+ screenshots on the site.

Uh, what I mean is that this is going to be an awesome article full of amazing pictures and they'll even have writing underneath. Plus some of them will be GIFs!

Super Adventures: Game Over - Continued

This week on Super Adventures, I'm back with another set of game over pictures that weren't quite good enough to make the cut when I wrote my first Game Over article!

Yeah, I know it seems like filler, and it kind of is. But I worked really hard getting all the pictures! You think it's easy to lose in this many games? I had to train for years to be this bad. Also it's been three years since the last Game Over article and like three months since my last post on the site, so I feel like I've left you waiting long enough for this.

Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2022

It's that time of year where people look back over what they've been up to over the last year and post about it on the internet. Even Steam's doing it now with their new Steam Replay feature. But I've been revisiting the last 12 months of screenshots at the end of the year since 2011, so you're probably not surprised to be reading yet another Super Adventures Screenshots of the Year!

I've gone through every post this year, skimmed through 700 images and picked out the shiny ones that caught my eye. There'll be nothing new here if you've been keeping up, but the screenshots are the best part of my site and this time there'll be fewer words underneath to distract from them. Though if you do want to go back and read the full write up, you can click the game's name to be teleported over there.

Super Adventures in the itch.io Bundle for Ukraine

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Super Adventures with a look at just a few of the billion games included in a new charity bundle hosted by itch.io. Here, have a link to the bundle so you know what I'm talking about:

Bundle for Ukraine

The description on the site claims that there's almost 600 video games here and it seems that about half of them have never appeared in any previous itch.io charity bundles. I had a scroll through to see if there were any names I recognised and I saw things like SkateBIRD, Baba is You, Backbone, GNOG, Wandersong, A Short Hike, CrossCode, Celeste, Superhot, Minit, Glittermitten Grove, Super Hexagon, Sundered: Eldritch Edition, 2064: Read Only Memories, and GoNNER. Here, you can check for yourself with this handy website that someone smart made: randombundlegame.com.

Fortunately guest poster mecha-neko has volunteered to do half of the writing here, so the article will be covering more games than I actually have time to check out! I mean seriously, the bundle ends in just a couple of days and I need to get this published while there's still time for anyone to buy it.

Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2021

There are two Super Adventures traditions that I give a damn about: the site always begins a new year on January 30th and it always ends a year with screenshots. And sometimes GIFs. Maybe even graphs if I'm feeling statistical. This is the last article of 2021 so that means it's time for another Super Adventures clip show!

I'm a little worried about the screenshots this time though to be honest. It's been months since I played most of these games, I can't remember what screens I took, but I do know that I played a lot of mainstream critically-acclaimed mega hits this year and it's possible that the images are going to be a bit... I dunno, normal. Mundane. Humdrum. There has got to be a few good ones in there though, surely. I guess I'll see what I can dig up.

If you want to go read a game's original article you can click on the highlighted game title, and clicking the images will sometimes open a slightly bigger version to look at/collect/post on Discord to give me free advertising etc.

Super Adventures in Face Editors III

This week on Super Adventures, it's been exactly one year since my second article about video game character creators and six years since the first, so this feels like the right time to bring the trilogy to its epic conclusion.

But this time around I'm not going to write paragraphs of text for each game going on and on about what sliders they have and how many hairstyles they include etc. You can check out the other two articles if that's what you're after:

Super Adventures in Face Editors I - Making Solid Snake
Super Adventures in Face Editors II - Making Lara Croft

And I'm not going to spend ages trying to accurately recreate a specific character either, getting each of the shapes and proportions exactly right. No, this time I'm just going to push the sliders to their limits and make some aliens! Or monsters. I'll take whatever I can get.

Well that's my plan anyway, but how many character editors actually have the power to create a truly alien looking creature? I'll need colourful skin tones, excessive proportions, weird hairstyles, pointy ears, bumpy foreheads... I predict Oblivion's going to do well.
 

Super Adventures in Pinball

This week on Super Adventures, I felt like writing about pinball games. A whole lot of pinball games.

Actually all I really wanted to do was stitch some screenshots together and show off lots of giant-sized images of virtual pinball tables, but I really have to write something underneath them. It's a bit awkward though, as I don't really know anything about pinball, plus I suck at it. I don't even know what I'm going to type for all these games, seeing as every single one of them is going to be about using flippers to smack a ball into targets. But I can at least tell whether or not I'm enjoying something and sometimes I can even pin down why that is.

I'll be writing about 23 pinball games in total, spanning 1980 to 1997 (to be honest I was aiming for 15 and missed), and they'll arranged in chronological order so they'll get prettier as you scroll down... theoretically. They certainly won't look any worse than the first game does.

The History(s) of Video Games

This decade on Super Adventures, the site has covered around 1300 games, and I don't think I've spent enough time thinking about all the ways I could make lists with those games. Just imagine, instead of spending hours playing games, choosing screenshots, writing what happened in them etc. I could just put a bunch of game titles in a column and call it an article!

I need to put the games in some kind of order though, so I've decided for this article I'm going to sort them chronologically. This is going to be a big long list of years. Though they're not going to be the years the games were released in, they're going to be the years the games take place in.

This article is basically going to treat the games like they all take place in the same shared timeline where all the events happened, especially the ones that contradict each other. Because judging by how the number of characters added to each new Smash Bros. sequel keeps increasing, in a few decades all these games will all take place in the same universe. Unfortunately I can't mention events without mentioning events, so there may be a few minor SPOILERS here. But I'm not going to go ruining the plot of games or anything like that... hopefully.

Super AiG Screenshots of the Decade: 2011-2020

This week's Super Adventures is going to be the last this year I'm afraid. In fact there'll be no more games until the end of January.

But seeing as this is the end of Super Adventures's 10th year, I figured I should expand the scope of my annual screenshot showcase to cover the entire first decade of the site! Every picture and GIF that's ever been posted here is eligible for entry, even this sketch of a cute bunny I drew for my Toonstruck post six years ago:

But it's bad enough that I inflicted my art on people the first time, so I'm mostly going to stick to the game screenshots.

I'm fortunate that I already did all those Screenshot of the Year articles and chose my favourite screens from each year, as it dramatically reduces the amount of images I have to look through here. But screw that! This is a special occasion, so I'm going to look through all 40,000 or so images in my archive and pick the ones that stand out to me in the blur of intense scrolling. With any luck I might find something to write about them as well.

I should mention that clicking on a highlighted game title will open up the original article, so you can visit the screenshot's home and find it hanging out with its friends. And if you come across a game released in the last 20 years then clicking the image itself will probably give you a bigger version to glare at. Not that big though I'm afraid.

Super Adventures in the Humble Choice Bundle

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about some games from the Humble Choice bundle (formerly known as Humble Monthly). Not because I'm getting any money for it, in fact they're not even from the current bundle. I just felt like writing about a few games at once and needed a theme to tie them together. It seemed like a better idea than "games with 11 letters in the title" or something, plus this way there's more chance you already own some of these games and haven't gotten around to trying them yet.

I'll be showing off seven games, but I assure you that I played each of them for as long as I usually do; they got a full hour, sometimes even two! You might not think that this is long enough to properly judge a game and I don't really disagree, but it was long enough to finish a couple of them. So I'll be able to give you a proper opinion on those two at least.

Super Adventures in Face Editors II

This week on Super Adventures, I've decided that what my site really needs is more screenshots of faces. It's been exactly five years to the day since I published my Super Adventures in Face Editors article comparing different character creators in video games, so I figured it was time for a sequel. Last time I tried recreating Metal Gear Solid protagonist Solid Snake in games like Skyrim, Dark Souls and Mass Effect, but this time around I've got brand new games and a brand new video game star: Tomb Raider hero Lara Croft.

I don't mean the pointy polygon-head Lara with the painted-on face, I mean the more realistic version you can see in the picture above. Though I'll be going through the games in chronological order again, to observe how the visuals and the editors become more sophisticated over time, so you'll be seeing a horrifying low-poly head soon enough.

Super Adventures: Game Over

Bad news, you just lost the game. It's all over, you've failed, the princess is dead, humanity is doomed, and you'll never get all your bananas back. But it's not all bad, as video games often include special exclusive content that can only be accessed by screwing everything up. Game over screens, continue screens, excessively well-animated death scenes, sometimes even a catchy song.

So this week's Super Adventures is going to be a celebration of bad endings! Mostly because they're far easier and quicker to get a screenshot of than good endings, and also much less spoilery! Oh, I realise the picture up there's a bit ominous, but the site itself isn't ending any time soon. Not permanently anyway, though I am taking another break after this for a few weeks.

You may be thinking 'How is this any different to one of those "Top 30 Game Over Screens" posts you'd find on other sites?' The answer is... it's not any different. It's exactly that. I have no shame. Though I might be the first site not to include Total Distortion's "You Are Dead" song... except that's a YouTube link I just gave you, so I suppose I kind of did. I won't be including Chrono Trigger's "But... the Future Refused to Change" screen either, because it's not really much to look at. It's just really grey.

Super Adventures in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality

Super Adventures is finally back, a little later than planned. That's partly because my internet broke, partly because I've been really busy, and partly because even looking through all the games in this new itch.io bundle took forever:

Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality

There's 742 1000 1427 1509... at least 1637 DRM free games, asset packs, books, soundtracks, tools, etc. in it! It's like one of those 1000+ game compilation CDs they used to make, except here it's not just stuff you've never heard of.

It includes games like Celeste, Nuclear Throne, Pyre, Receiver, Cook Serve Delicious 2, Heavy Bullets, Minit, A Short Hike, Night in the Woods, Glittermitten Grove, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, Paranautical Activity, Oxenfree, Pikuniku, 2064: Read Only Memories, Super Win the Game, Octodad: Dadliest Catch and They Bleed Pixels. Not saying that I played any of those ones specifically for this article, but they're in there. I already wrote about They Bleed Pixels a while back though, it's good. Minit too.

I've been meaning to write about some of the games you can find on itch.io for ages, so I'm glad this is finally motivating me to do something. Speaking of motivating people to finally do things, it's also raised $5,000,000 (so far) for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Community Bail Fund to help support the Black Lives Matter movement in their efforts to get things moving. So if I sound like I'm trying to advertise this bundle and persuade you to donate money to get it, that's because I am.

But that means I have to get this written and published while the bundle's still for sale, so I'm feeling a little bit rushed here! I did the maths, and it turns out I don't have time to download, play and review 900 or so games, so I've narrowed it down to 7. I don't have time to properly play and review them either to be honest, but I can definitely give you some hastily typed words about the 30 minutes I tried them for. Plus I've got a bonus review from a friend to show off an extra game and boost the word count a little, so you've got that to look forward to as well.

Super Adventures with the Xbox Game Pass, Part 4

This week on Super Adventures, I hope you don't mind that I'm still writing about all these games I played with my month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate last November, because I'm on the last part now and I'm not quitting until it's done.

Once again I should point out that I only played most of these games for an hour or so, long enough for me to get distracted by something else and turn them off, but not long enough for me to accurate assess the majority of their content or the intricacies of their gameplay. I'll also point out that these aren't just Xbox games! I played most of them on PC, and a lot of them can be played on lots of systems.

You can find part 1 here: Part 1.
Part 2 is here: Part 2.
Part 3 is here: Part 3.

Super Adventures with the Xbox Game Pass, Part 3

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still writing about the games I played last November when I bought a month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. I'm up to part 3 now because it turns out you can play a lot of games in one month if you really rush. You probably shouldn't write about them though, because you likely won't have played them enough to come to grips with the gameplay or get a proper impression of the content.

But I'm doing it anyway because I want to show some games off and I'm hoping someone reading these will discover something new they end up playing and loving, even if I didn't love it myself.

You can find part 1 here: Part 1.
And part 2 is here: Part 2.

The final part is coming tomorrow!