What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Lander]

The anime cut scenes started with X3, but I actually mostly enjoy the storyline through X5.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten the PS1 version of X3 - that curious period of cross-gen 16bit games that got interesting bells and whistles in the transition to CD. And terrible loading times.

The 4 / 5 arc was solid, hammy VA aside; some extra drama and stakes to spice up the usual formula. Heck, I even lapped up 6, being a total Zero fanboy BITD, though the fix the orbital cannon or whatever format did start to wear thin by that point.

I got hooked to Zelda 1 this weekend. Aside from some cryptic elements, that game is SO good. Earlier NES titles really are some masterpiece blueprints.
But, I guess I really can't even put down it's cryptic nature because I'm assuming that part of the experience was in line with the culture of the time. I would love another game this tightly made with more storied theming to it's levels. From anyone. Not just Zelda. Closest is Tunic.

OG Zelda is really cool for the mystery. There are few games so hands-off with allowing the player to independently discover the tools they need.

Though, just wait 'til you reach the later dungeons packed with Darknuts that do gonzo damage. I may or may not have put a handheld through a wall on their account, back in my hotter-headed teen years

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten the PS1 version of X3

I'm not sure how the load times on the console ports were, but I managed to find a copy of X3's Windows port at a store and it was really, really good. The best way to play it I think, I actually prefer the soundtrack over the SNES's instrumentation. I generally liked how the NES games sounded vs the instrument choice in the SNES versions too.

OG Zelda is really cool for the mystery.

Agreed, there's just enough letting you get lost and explore, some early ways to get quite powerful, and enough esoteric mystique to make it a classic. The only negative I can say is finding places to bomb and use the candle on is clunkier than it need be. The Red Candle addresses this nicely, and the GB Link's Awakening eventually figured out how to eliminate the whole having to bomb every random wall by letting you poke walls with your sword to figure out if they're bombable (unless you were deaf, there's no visual indicator).

The second quest, played after beating the game once (or immediately if you enter your name as ZELDA) is also a blast, though is much, much harder. There's several new gimmicks in it to spice things up in dungeons, and the dungeons are far nastier with enemies, at least early on.

[Sima Tuna]

I actually played in an Outrun cab that had a tilt function when steering. It felt very odd and jarring and I would've rather it not tilt since it didn't feel at all like an actual car and was more distracting than anything. O_o

The thing is we've had a million quality ports of Outrun of varying degrees of arcade accuracy, but nobody's bothered to even try and port Outrunners aside from the ambitious but flawed (due mainly to technical limitations) Genesis port.

Yeah. There are some other scaling racers that haven't been ported either. OG Hang-On. Cool Riders. Road Rash 1 and 2. Cruis'n. I think the Top Gear stuff was ported not too long ago, but I don't know how that porting job went. Some mario kart clone (Rider's Spirits) was recently ported to Switch.

[XoPachi]

Agreed, there's just enough letting you get lost and explore, some early ways to get quite powerful, and enough esoteric mystique to make it a classic. The only negative I can say is finding places to bomb and use the candle on is clunkier than it need be. The Red Candle addresses this nicely, and the GB Link's Awakening eventually figured out how to eliminate the whole having to bomb every random wall by letting you poke walls with your sword to figure out if they're bombable (unless you were deaf, there's no visual indicator).

The second quest, played after beating the game once (or immediately if you enter your name as ZELDA) is also a blast, though is much, much harder. There's several new gimmicks in it to spice things up in dungeons, and the dungeons are far nastier with enemies, at least early on.

What I appreciate about Metroid/Zelda/Mario 1 is how focused they are in making sure nothing is useless.
Unless you're Tom Votova or Arcus and can just be balls to the walls, you want every little bit these games give you to ensure success.

Zelda specifically, the gloves come off by level 3. You really want every heart container and defensive item when they become available to you. There's a reason to explore beyond "I want to". Bombs are precious. You also don't want to be taking too many hits because you don't have any revive options and you only get 2 heals which are expensive. Like Likes are a huge threat in this game once Wizzrobes make their appearance. I was always cautious in making sure I had at least 90 rupees so there's real incentive to actually kill everything you come across. And the combat limitations always make that fun.
You can't really be terribly passive about your exploring. There's just a lot to always be thinking about because death is a serious setback that is very easy to find yourself in. It's a super balanced experience. Nothing is fluff.

[Air Master Burst]

Yeah. There are some other scaling racers that haven't been ported either. OG Hang-On. Cool Riders. Road Rash 1 and 2. Cruis'n. I think the Top Gear stuff was ported not too long ago, but I don't know how that porting job went. Some mario kart clone (Rider's Spirits) was recently ported to Switch.

Road Rash 1 and 2 got what I remember being solid PSP ports on one of those EA collections.

[Sima Tuna]

Yeah. There are some other scaling racers that haven't been ported either. OG Hang-On. Cool Riders. Road Rash 1 and 2. Cruis'n. I think the Top Gear stuff was ported not too long ago, but I don't know how that porting job went. Some mario kart clone (Rider's Spirits) was recently ported to Switch.

Road Rash 1 and 2 got what I remember being solid PSP ports on one of those EA collections.

Shame my PSP is kinda not working great right now. Anyway, ports pre-HD era should really get a re-port.

[XoPachi]

Kid Icarus 1 is fun as fuck. People always dunk on this one, but this game is great.

[Sima Tuna]

Kid Icarus 1 is fun as fuck. People always dunk on this one, but this game is great.

Who? All I've ever heard about Kid Icarus is it kicks ass. I haven't played it but never heard anyone bag on the game. Some people will argue its one of their favorite nes games.

[XoPachi]

Who? All I've ever heard about Kid Icarus is it kicks ass. I haven't played it but never heard anyone bag on the game. Some people will argue its one of their favorite nes games.

I find myself very regularly around modern gamer crowds in person that tend to sling mud at NES games for being "clunky" or "aged". Kid Icarus is a common punching bag, especially after Uprising.

[Steven]

Actually, what options are there for modern versions of Out Run

Not sure if you're just asking about clones, but if not the Sega AGES version of Outrun on Switch is probably the definitive version. I haven't played the JP Saturn version though, so I don't know if the arrange soundtrack puts that version over the top. But if not, Driver's Megamix on the M2 port actually sounds like what the modern internet seems to think Outrun sounds like.

Yes, clones. I'm not expecting any of them to beat the real Out Run/Sega Rally/Daytona/etc., as even reaching that standard is difficult and surpassing it is not something that I'd expect, but if they did reach or surpass them it would be nice.

I'll check out some of the suggestions that have been mentioned so far, so thanks everyone.

[vol.2]

I just ran through "Beneath a Steel Sky" for the first time. It's a Revolution Software title from the mid 90s, the same guys who did Broken Sword a couple years later. It is a dystopian future adventure game written and drawn by Dave Gibbons, who some of you may know from his work at 2000 AD comics, most notably Rogue Trooper, but also for other random collaborations with Alan Moore like Watchmen.



The overarching story of BASS is pretty fantastic, with lots of interesting sci-fi twists and turns and some really nice creepy-ass scenes. The main character and a few of the supporting cast are well written and the puzzles are not overly cryptic. I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys sci-fi short stories.

It's definitely not a perfect game though. The outline of the story is a good one, but the characters are not fleshed out very well, and the game is simply too short. I think it could be completed in 20 minutes without speedrunning techniques if you knew what to do already. As it was, I took my time and played it over the course of a day while doing other stuff and it took me maybe five hours to finish, and that includes a lot of trying items on other items and so on.

And that's what you'll be doing a lot of, trying items on people and things. Some adventure games have a better designed puzzle ecosystem where you can try every option to solve a problem, but there is typically one particular option that makes more sense than all the others (often in a humorous way). BASS doesn't do that very well; the actual solutions to the item puzzles are not often substantially more sensical than the half a dozen other options, and I found myself just going through and trying whatever might make sense until I struck the correct answer. Sometimes I got it on the first shot, sometimes it was last, but I was consistently surprised that I was expected to figure it out by reason or logic; it was typically just an exercise in persistence.

Then there's the pixel hunting of course. It's not nearly as bad as the worst offenders, but there were at least a few items that are so seamlessly blended with the background that the only way to find them is to slowly swirl your mouse cursor over every screen in the game until you stumble upon them. Where BASS does come in last is the hit detection; the cursor doesn't line up with the pixel you are triggering, and the cursor is janky and laggy. All of that makes the pixel hunting a real chore.

All of that stuff is tolerable in the short game they created, and what's there is compelling enough to check out for what it is. However, I can't help but feel that it was a wasted opportunity. They had a great writer on tap, and there could have been a lot more depth to the character interactions, and the game could have really been fleshed out a lot more, especially in the middle parts which felt kind of empty. Most of the story takes place at the beginning and the end of the game in intensely packed areas, and the middle is just whittling time, running around the small game world, doing what amounts to fetch quests disguised as puzzles. The CD version of the game add speech, and a cool comic book style intro by Gibbons which makes it feel more premium, but the game isn't any different.

[Sengoku Strider]

Kid Icarus 1 is fun as fuck. People always dunk on this one, but this game is great.

Who? All I've ever heard about Kid Icarus is it kicks ass. I haven't played it but never heard anyone bag on the game. Some people will argue its one of their favorite nes games.

Here you go: I kinda hate it and always have. All the difficulty is front loaded. Your character is useless, generally uncool and totally overmatched to start out. The levels go on forever. The game world and systems are totally obtuse. Because of the ratchet scrolling all kinds of things are missable.

If this didn't say Nintendo on it nobody would ever hear about it, certainly nobody talked about it back in the day. It's basically Metroid done wrong.


...I'm sorry XoPachi don't mind me, have fun with your game.

[Lemnear]

maybe it's because every evening there is a European Football Championship match, so i tried The Ultimate 11 (NeoGeo)... it made me burst out laughing, the animations, the celebrations, the coach's face when the team goes badly! Players who go berserk!!! the injured !
I recommend it if you can play it with 2 especially very fun

Spoiler

Ape Escape 1 (i've already completed 2...nearly), like every summer i'll take a few more monkeys until i get to 100% then i'll start 3...and at that point i think i'll also replay the entire Project Zero trilogy (PS2).

BomberMan World during the 5pm tea break, as always sipping with this music in the background
in fact there are some games i have NEVER stopped playing >_>

[XoPachi]

Here you go: I kinda hate it and always have. All the difficulty is front loaded. Your character is useless, generally uncool and totally overmatched to start out. The levels go on forever. The game world and systems are totally obtuse. Because of the ratchet scrolling all kinds of things are missable.

If this didn't say Nintendo on it nobody would ever hear about it, certainly nobody talked about it back in the day. It's basically Metroid done wrong.


...I'm sorry XoPachi don't mind me, have fun with your game.

Makin me sick, Strider.
Makin me SICK!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Here you go: I kinda hate it and always have. All the difficulty is front loaded. Your character is useless, generally uncool and totally overmatched to start out.

And somehow the environment just didn't feel as fun to explore as in Metroid. I dunno, I played Kid Icarus too, I wasn't wowed by it. Also the eggplant thing is a nuisance.

[Sengoku Strider]

And somehow the environment just didn't feel as fun to explore as in Metroid. I dunno, I played Kid Icarus too, I wasn't wowed by it. Also the eggplant thing is a nuisance.

It felt kinda cheap and unrealized, you're just going through brick platforms on a spare black background throughout all the time it takes you to get through that pretty tough opening world. Which is weird because it was originally a Famicom Disk System game, so background tile storage should have been less of an issue. The character designs are memorable and have plenty of charm, but the environment itself has nothing on the atmosphere of Metroid despite Kid Icarus coming out 4 months later, and only 1 month before Zelda II. Maybe the underworld wasn't the place to set the first part of that game, something more cheerful might have felt less at odds with the upbeat music and cheerful character, and thereby more motivating. As it is it feels like you're dropped into a video game backroom instead of something that establishes a world that builds on the character. That sort of thing worked perfectly with the alien sense of isolation Metroid was going for, but here not so much. I'm sure most players gave up before ever discovering the variety the game has to offer later on.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, good background art can really add to the atmosphere of a game. In Metroid NES and Metroid II GB, the hardware limitations and use of black backgrounds worked because it was meant to be a claustrophic underground area. I don't think it worked as well for Kid Icarus which was meant to feel more cartoony and upbeat. The backgrounds in Mega Man for instance really helped make the atmosphere of many stages stand out, even when they were relatively simple having just a bit of colour or background elements now and the made a huge difference.

[Sengoku Strider]

The backgrounds in Mega Man for instance really helped make the atmosphere of many stages stand out, even when they were relatively simple having just a bit of colour or background elements now and the made a huge difference.

Yeah man, OG Mega Man blew me away when I first rented it, and that was after beating 2. Its Tezuka Osamu inspired world felt so strange and unique, the music paired perfectly with it to create this upbeat but whistful and strangely longing atmosphere. I've beat that game a couple of times, including back in the day before I knew the Yellow Devil trick existed...and now that I think about it, forward in the day on Mega Drive where I don't think that trick works IIRC. There's a bunch of stuff they wouldn't get sorted until later in the series, but I've never understood why people bag on that first game, its vibe is right up there for an NES game.

[vol.2]

I don't think it worked as well for Kid Icarus which was meant to feel more cartoony and upbeat.

I'm not sure it ever was. Of all the early crop of NES games, Kid Icarus creeped me the hell out more than any other. The eggplant wizards that turned you into an eggplant, the grim reaper, the floating Lovecraftian eyeballs and all the other weird monsters did not feel "cartoonish" or upbeat to me at all.

Idk, maybe it was just me.

[Lander]

I had an improptu crack at Motocross Maniacs 2 on Game Boy Color recently - a forgotten Konami gem once borrowed from a school friend way back.



It's a nifty 2D stunt bike game with surprising depth; think flat-plane Excitebike, but with big open multi-tier tracks that have an almost Sonic-like stage design, down to including wall rides, loop-de-loops, and various stage gimmicks.



At first it looks overly simple - just hold accelerate, boost off slopes, do some flips for style - but that belies depth in routing, bike control, powerup management and secret discovery that combine to result in a really tight little time attack game.



The rest of the series is worth acknowledging as a curiosity; it got a sequel in Motocross Maniacs Advance for GBA, which is well served for modes and player choice, but they didn't know what they were working with. Boosting and flipping becomes uncontrollably squirrelly, the view is zoomed in enough to impair spatial awareness, and it's been given a bland rendition of the World Warrior international mascot championship aesthetic that ends up less charismatic than the anonymous helmeted mad lad from the earlier titles.

Maniacs 1 is essentially a rougher monochrome version of 2 - same set of tracks, but there's less to do on them, and the physics aren't quite up to the job. In that sense, 2 is a great sequel - it takes an ambitious but flawed idea, and executes it with enough polish to meet its potential.

Very much recommended if the idea of Freeform Excitebike piques your interest.

I'm not sure how the load times on the console ports were, but I managed to find a copy of X3's Windows port at a store and it was really, really good. The best way to play it I think, I actually prefer the soundtrack over the SNES's instrumentation. I generally liked how the NES games sounded vs the instrument choice in the SNES versions too.

Nice, I'll have to put that on the curiosity bucket list. There's nothing like archiving a nice definitive version

Though it sounds like there's a caveat in the Godkarmachine 0 Inary fight, where the game will crash with a stack overflow if you jump behind the boss and trigger its electric ball projectiles, which seems oddly specific.
Oh, for a good assembly debugger and unlimited curiosity-satisfaction time

Agreed, there's just enough letting you get lost and explore, some early ways to get quite powerful, and enough esoteric mystique to make it a classic. The only negative I can say is finding places to bomb and use the candle on is clunkier than it need be. The Red Candle addresses this nicely, and the GB Link's Awakening eventually figured out how to eliminate the whole having to bomb every random wall by letting you poke walls with your sword to figure out if they're bombable (unless you were deaf, there's no visual indicator).

I have a lot of love for Link's Awakening, though it still manages its fair share of esotery despite the refinements and helpful owl tips. First game I ever called a hint line for, and the answer was Rabbit, Bat, Man.
That particular spot in Tal-Tal Heights where you have to lob a bomb into a raised hole (maybe from a cliff above?) sticks in memory, stumped me all over again when the remake came out.

It's a curious balance of its own - the Face shrine stopped me dead BITD, but I breezed through it without a hitch on revisit, and still don't know what the owl means by The walls have eyes (or was it ears?)

I just ran through "Beneath a Steel Sky" for the first time.

The press was BANGING and WHEEZING like an asthmatic dinosaur in mating season

Cool game. As you say, great atmosphere, though I remember it coming off as quite unforgiving. Very much worth a go for the setting and vibe despite that.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

First game I ever called a hint line for, and the answer was Rabbit, Bat, Man.

Level 2 right? Sneaky room that if you didn't find the bit you needed for the hint!

Fun game. It had a really rich game world for a GB game, a really great achievement. I wished it had been a bit more challenging like the first Zelda game, with something like a second quest to it, but it's understandable that it was made how it was.

I just ran through "Beneath a Steel Sky" for the first time.

Great game! I was exposed to Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender as a kid. Fun point and click adventure game, but not very age appropriate!

[BrianC]

And somehow the environment just didn't feel as fun to explore as in Metroid. I dunno, I played Kid Icarus too, I wasn't wowed by it. Also the eggplant thing is a nuisance.

It felt kinda cheap and unrealized, you're just going through brick platforms on a spare black background throughout all the time it takes you to get through that pretty tough opening world. Which is weird because it was originally a Famicom Disk System game, so background tile storage should have been less of an issue. The character designs are memorable and have plenty of charm, but the environment itself has nothing on the atmosphere of Metroid despite Kid Icarus coming out 4 months later, and only 1 month before Zelda II. Maybe the underworld wasn't the place to set the first part of that game, something more cheerful might have felt less at odds with the upbeat music and cheerful character, and thereby more motivating. As it is it feels like you're dropped into a video game backroom instead of something that establishes a world that builds on the character. That sort of thing worked perfectly with the alien sense of isolation Metroid was going for, but here not so much. I'm sure most players gave up before ever discovering the variety the game has to offer later on.

There was talk about Kid Icarus on a Discord forum recently. I heard it was rushed and much of the difficulty was put into the first area.

[Sengoku Strider]

I don't think it worked as well for Kid Icarus which was meant to feel more cartoony and upbeat.

I'm not sure it ever was. Of all the early crop of NES games, Kid Icarus creeped me the hell out more than any other. The eggplant wizards that turned you into an eggplant, the grim reaper, the floating Lovecraftian eyeballs and all the other weird monsters did not feel "cartoonish" or upbeat to me at all.

Idk, maybe it was just me.

I can understand if it weirded you out, but the key art for the game is undeniably cutesy, and that theme song is pretty upbeat.

[Daytime Waitress]

I don't think it worked as well for Kid Icarus which was meant to feel more cartoony and upbeat.

I'm not sure it ever was. Of all the early crop of NES games, Kid Icarus creeped me the hell out more than any other. The eggplant wizards that turned you into an eggplant, the grim reaper, the floating Lovecraftian eyeballs and all the other weird monsters did not feel "cartoonish" or upbeat to me at all.

Idk, maybe it was just me.

I can understand if it weirded you out, but the key art for the game is undeniably cutesy, and that theme song is pretty upbeat.

The "rockman" made me pause for a giggle, and so I actually took a look at some of the names and I admit I might be reaching here, but am I the only one seeing コメト as (小)メトロイド aka Li'l Metroid-kun?

Also, derivative in as many similar ways as it might well be (returning to Ithaca on a ship crafted by Toriyama), this kind of playful, understated manga style just hits different - a time when humanoid characters could be as plain as day (Palutena) or a bloated house frau (Medusa) instead of Generic Anime Fucktoy.

[XoPachi]

Genuinely not a fan of the modern Kid Icarus style from Smash.

[Sengoku Strider]

Generic Anime Fucktoy.

There was always sex in anime, but it got extra gross in the 2000s when the whole industry seemed to start infantilizing its characters. It always stands out to me how much taller and more grown up the characters tend to look in 80s/90s stuff even if they're meant to be the same age. Then in the 2010s girls' chest sizes keep inflating and inflating...Senran Kagura is the thing that always comes to mind for me as like the archetypal example of Japanese visual design becoming degraded by market forces into a mechanical dopamine pump. The Vita library is full of stuff like that, but seeing it on 3DS was such a clear example of the difference between Nintendo then & now.

I don't want to go all "hell in a handbasket" though. With the anime style becoming internationalized and players like Netflix getting involved it's meant the market has expanded and allowed more room for variation to come back in.

But yeah, generic anime fucktoy.



I don't know how people can withstand looking at stuff like this in games for hours on end without becoming dopamine-depleted mind husks, it's just a constant unending attempt to overstimulate:

Spoiler

Or maybe they can't withstand it, they just go through with it anyway.

[Sengoku Strider]

In non-fucktoy gaming, the shop around the corner had a loose copy of Tommy Lasorda Baseball for $5. I'd kinda wanted to check it out for a while after years of hearing about it, and that was exactly the price I was willing to pay.

It's surprisingly fun. The last few retro sports games I've picked up haven't actually compelled me to play them for very long, but I spent a while with this. It's hard to get into though. My first game I lost 15-0. I had no idea what the number for the pitcher's stamina actually meant - is 100 low? Is 120 low? But the computer was ruthlessly crushing whatever I threw at it. At the same time, when batting the ball comes at you crazy fast and has some totally unfair movement on it. I'm still not used to hitting but a least I scored a couple of runs in my other games.

The fielding is pretty brutal though. After the ball is hit the announcer will call out which fielder you're controlling, but am I right? You can't manually change who that is? Lots of times the ball will dribble past my pitcher while he just stands there like a statue, because it's assigned me the short stop or 2nd baseman. The collision on your fielders picking up the ball is ridiculous, you have to be centred right on the ball; one pixel off even your glove side and you'll just run right past it. Then there's the outfield. The overlay showing the field map and the baserunner positions is a great feature, and the yellow region showing where a fly ball will land is better than what a lot of later 16-bit baseball games seemed to have. But sometimes it just doesn't appear on the map, how am I supposed to know where the ball is going? Then there are the errors - I left them on, but the effect isn't really telegraphed to the player. It looks like the ball just bounces over you or goes through you, but maybe I wasn't positioned right. I also seem to have dropped multiple fly balls I thought I was right under, but because the game doesn't actually score errors, I have no idea if it was an E or if I just wasn't positioned perfectly. I'll probably just have to turn them off, I picked Toronto and maybe they just have spectacularly bad fielding or something, but the rate they were happening at seemed absurdly high for a pro game.

But for all that, the game does have a lot of charm and a fair bit of depth & content to it compared to the rest of the early Genesis lineup. One thing I really appreciate is the number of music tracks which play during the game, later EA sports titles are very involved but lacking in similar charm in part because they don't have any sort of music playing, the Japanese design sensibility comes through here. I'd never have bough a sports game back in the day, they always seemed like a game with just the same level over & over. But I bet if I'd gotten a Genesis at launch and come home with this I would have really ended up enjoying it. I know this was Super League in Japan and got a sequel which was turned into Sports Talk Baseball here, and another on Mega CD which I believe stayed Japan only. Are they worth checking out?

[Lander]

Tits are good. But when everything is tits, nothing is tits.

A fact presumably lost on the target audience of such content until it's too late and they're fully desensetised, and one wilfully ignored by its peddlers.

Level 2 right? Sneaky room that if you didn't find the bit you needed for the hint!

Fun game. It had a really rich game world for a GB game, a really great achievement. I wished it had been a bit more challenging like the first Zelda game, with something like a second quest to it, but it's understandable that it was made how it was.

That's the one! And still not wholly helpful if you're a dumb kid who doesn't know the monster names I'm pretty sure I restarted my file on a couple of occasions to try and amend a missed owl beak, only for the confusion to persist.

I must try the Oracle games at some point; had a couple of brief goes at them, but they never stuck quite like Awakening did. Maybe it's the Pokemon Red / Blue factor...

[Sengoku Strider]

Tits are good. But when everything is tits, nothing is tits.

This might be the most succinct description of the hedonic treadmill I've ever read.

A fact presumably lost on the target audience of such content until it's too late and they're fully desensetised, and one wilfully ignored by its peddlers.

It's got to be even worse for the people making that stuff. At least the person playing/wanking to it can put it down and walk away after a bit. The devs are stuck staring at it 60-100 hours a week as it drains their souls one neurotransmitter molecule at a time.

[Sumez]

I must try the Oracle games at some point; had a couple of brief goes at them, but they never stuck quite like Awakening did. Maybe it's the Pokemon Red / Blue factor...

It's best not to think of them that way.
They are two complete and thorough games, entirely different from each other. And if you do the linking thing to play them on order, I really recommend starting with Seasons.
The reason being that you'll be a bit OP on the second game you're playing, and that would mitigate some of Seasons' strengths. Ages works fine with it.