Gecko 1993

Coming Saturday, August 23 at 6 P.M. EDT...
we're going to the land of Down Under, Mate! 🪃

1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 8

Gecko 1993

Apparently ‪@mylifeingaming‬ is streaming Ape Escape—just RIGHT AFTER I finished it last night!
Go check them out over here: youtube.com/live/v-66fKfjYmo?si=wqTqVGkqHRr_ECCB, and give them some support!

1 week ago | [YT] | 2

Gecko 1993

Throughout the month of August, we are going to at long last tackle a series I have heard of, but never really taken the time to play…
It’s Ape Escape. See you all there Saturday at 6 P.M. EDT

1 month ago | [YT] | 15

Gecko 1993

Going to be starting at 6:30-ish tonight. Let’s just say we had to call Mario due to a plumbing problem.

1 month ago | [YT] | 8

Gecko 1993

For the record, I want to let everyone know: I have beaten Gex Trilogy (all 19 Steam Achievements; but I wish that there could have been more). And if anyone is going to ask me for a review, I’ll give it to you right here. If ANYONE wants me to make this into another video for the Gextravaganza, please do not hesitate to let me know:

For starters, I’m actually not being sponsored or paid by ‪@LimitedRunGames‬ to revew this game—I’m giving you my judgment about the games as a lifelong Gex fan. Of course, there will be SOME bias, but I’ll do my best to be fair and balanced (just like with every other game I stream on Saturday 6 PM E.D.T.). We have to address the obvious elephant in the room… it’s about the price: $30.00 is steep, yes, but if you take into consideration you get 3 games. Do The Math (and I don’t mean in Atari Jaguar terms, either): $30 for 3 games. Each game is worth $10, yes. However, there IS more than just three 90’s Platformers—you’re given access to official artwork, interview questions from Dana Gould (Gex’s voice in the USA), access to the game’s soundtrack (but not all the songs are here and accounted for—there ARE a bit of music tracks missing), even exclusive artwork (and showing how aged the original cover artwork of the first Gex by Peter Bellinger is presented, why didn’t they restore it?). So, considering how expensive Nintendo Switch 2 games have gotten ($30 for 3 games valued at $10 versus how you would buy games for much more on eBay—let alone get a game like Mario Kart World on Nintendo Switch for $80), this is practically a nonissue here. I’ve bought more expensive—NeoGeo AES games and accessories, anybody?

Second is the games. When it was first announced, people were asking if Gex Trilogy is going to include the Game Boy Color ports of Gex 2 & 3. In regard to Enter The Gecko, it’s not on there (THANK GOD); but neither is Deep Pocket Gecko. These are all the original 5th-Generation, Mid-to-late 1990’s Animal Mascot Platformers you’d play on console. Of course, we are also blessed with tremendous artwork to make the package more unique (gotta love the Best Game on 3DO award in Gex’s living room in the Game Selection Screen—never mind the 3DO had more games than just Gex. Samurai Shodown, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, D, Casper The Friendly Ghost, Road Rash, and even Return Fire should be worth mentioning—and I DON’T even like that game system!).
With all that out-of-the-way, let’s at long last actually talk about the games bundled with this package. Bear in mind, I preordered the Tail Time Edition (don’t worry, an unboxing of it will come down the road—count on it!) and mine won’t come to me until toward the TAIL-end of Q1 2026 (see what I did there?).

The Good: Gex has been given some quality of life improvements: from the new rewind feature, to a unique save system that parodies the Persona games (which Gex 3 outsold—bear in mind, Persona; or rather Shin Migami Tensei if you want to go by it’s original Japanese name—didn’t catch on until later on in more modern times. RPGs as a whole wouldn’t exactly catch on until the advent of Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation.). The inclusion of widescreen in the 3D games is something that was needed. I appreciate my viseage being more available, and the framerate has been boosted from 30 to 60–effectively removing the framedrops from what you’d find on the Sony PlayStation releases. As of this post, you can ACTUALLY switch regions between the UK, and the United States… but not Japan (Spintail, anyone? Then again, given how much was removed in ETG’s Japanese release… yeah, nothing of value was lost)! The controls in the 3D games had been given a MAJOR upgrade. Gone are the two strutted steps before running, and Gex slipperily not being able to turn on a dime. Gex in 3D now controls like a DREAM! Not exactly Super Mario 64-tier (Gex still has two levels of analog sensitivity—versus Mario’s fluidity with the N64 Analog Stick), but you can ACTUALLY control him in full 360 degrees of movement! This makes platforming more manageable; but as a veteran of the Gex games, its nice to have the option of better controls—which brings me to…

The Bad: Options for modifying the controls in Gex 1 (like the infamous dash on the left shoulder button) have been removed—in fact, you cannot modify each game’s controls individually—you also cannot even remap your controllers buttons! Yes, you could remap the keys on your keyboard; but why not your controller (funnily enough, I played through the entire game with a Sony PS5 controller; but the game registers it as an XBox controller). With the level design, I wish that the draw disatance fog was removed in favor of mipmapping. Banjo-Kazooie, and Spyro The Dragon which came out later allowed you to look out into the distance of their levels, so why can’t the 3D Gex games get that same kind of treatment? Now, to be fair: ROM hacking for Gex is in it’s infancy, and I WILL cut some slack. However, I want to talk about TWO MAJOR faults: The Emulator: Carbon Engine, and How Much Gex Talks. Carbon Engine is a VERY mixed bag. On one hand, it is solid for 2D video games (I look at Clock Tower, and Shantae those games were great!); however, in regard to 3D… do I have to remind everyone about the TRAVESTY of what happened to Glover? Thankfully Gex didn’t get the same treatment Glover did when being re-released, but something about Carbon Engine doesn’t work well with PlayStation—not in the graphics (textures still worble—complete with Z-Buffer errors: a commonality with PlayStation games) but in the audio! Some sounds play too quietly, or too loud. Sound effects like the Tank in Army Channel, and the elevator at the beginning of Mazed & Confused are the worst offenders—they’ve been put through the wringer in terms of fidelity (they are EXTREMELY bitcrunched—it almost reminds me of Amiga ports of Atari ST games with albiet corny samples—R-Type II, anybody?). Gex is still quite the locquacious lizard you know him as—for better or worse. In the original releases you COULD AT LEAST shut him up if he got on your nerves; but LRG didn’t even bother including that option! Why not? One final complaint I have with this package is it’s just… it. Some improvements are there, but it isn’t really an overhaul—segwaying into…

The Ugly: This is a “Warts In All” package with, again, SOME quality-of-life improvements. SOME. And for those who are “offended” by the jokes, well… why not log off, shut down your computer, and I dunno: go socialize a bit? It was the 1990’s, we didn’t give two iotas about “Political Correctness” nor it’s final form we are TOLERATING, and seeing on it’s way out the door: Wokeness. The low-poly aesthetic, I can handle (I even own an Atari Jaguar for corn flakes!) I mean, it was the 5th Generation. There wasn’t much that could have been done. Don’t come into this package expecting something like Crash N. Sane Trilogy, or Spyro Reignited—instead, it’s more like Jak & Daxter Legacy Collection or Super Mario 3D All-Stars (Gex Trilogy is NOWHERE NEAR a slap in the face as that package was on Nintendo Switch… I’ll explain in a bit). The commericals were an interesting inclusion; albiet censoring out the logos (why not go the Gextra Mile, and include that one dude’s face that censored every reference in Gex 3’s Bonus Ending for some added humor-sake?).

Now, people are going to be asking me why I got this—more specifically: the Steam release? It’s for three reasons: I bought the Tail Time Edition with a download code from “L.R.G. for some G.E.X., baby!” I wanted to show Square Enix, and even Crystal Dynamics that Gex is worth reviving (oddly enough, Crystal itself is HARDLY mentioned in logos—outside the start of each game in the package; barring Gex 3, of course.), and since this IS Steam……. MODS! I have already begun modding my copy of Gex Trilogy; but this is only the beginning—all the aforementioned issues that I had mentioned can EASILY be corrected (I’m even learning how to extract .pak files included to replace SOME artwork like Gex 1’s unrestored cover artwork with my own restoration, and potentialy replacing Carbon Engine with DuckStation—will Widescreen still work on that emulator? I wonder…). It’s up to us as a community to step it up, and stick it to the man—just like with Sonic Adventure 2/Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on Steam. I know with Games “Journalism”, it may be an uphill battle, but with how much it’s reputation has been desicrated with what has been going on (buttering up Triple-A release scores to help them sell more, DEI & the ironically named SBI, I can go on), it’s our turn to really pick up the slack, show these studios that though these games are gone, they are FAR from forgotten.

What do you all think? Is it worth $30 for 3 games? Did you enjoy Gex Trilogy—Warts In All? Are there any improvements you wish were included in Gex Trilogy? I don’t know about all of you fine people, but this artwork by Yoshitaka Amano of Final Fantasy fame is Fricking AWESOME!

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 10

Gecko 1993

Happy 4th of July—whether its having some good cooking, or enjoying the fireworks—however you celebrate the 250th Birthday of the U. S. of A, let freedom ring!

1 month ago | [YT] | 12

Gecko 1993

Going to be running late this goaround. ‪@SuperAllison20‬ has College homework to complete.

2 months ago | [YT] | 5

Gecko 1993

On this day, I have turned 32 Years-Old!
Shocking, isn’t it?

2 months ago | [YT] | 16

Gecko 1993

To give a little bit of context, allow me to explain:
Mega May was a disaster mainly due to unfamiliarity with the game in-question--on both of our ends.
As such, I took hiatus away from streaming for a little recollection. Originally, I was going to stream the new patch to Metroid Prime: that being in the form of ‪@FallenAngel34‬'s Classic Revisited. Due to my lacking of how to patch GameCube games (I BARELY have any luck with patching Super Mario World ROM's with Lunar Magic--it's a literal coin toss), I decided to put Classic Revisited on the backburner.
So...
what happens next?
After taking time away to refueling my tanks, ‪@SuperAllison20‬ and I have been thinking on this, and we are going to stream a sequel to one of it's previous installments I streamed last year. Just so everyone knows: it's going to be one of my BIGGEST streams to last practically the whole summer...

2 months ago | [YT] | 4

Gecko 1993

No stream tonight. ‪@granthaleyanimationandcomi243‬ wasn’t up for streaming, so I canned it to make the sotuation less awkward than an Anime fan on Prom Night.

3 months ago | [YT] | 6