YOU AIN'T GONNA GET ME, SHERIFF! GET BACK OR I'LL BLOW 'EM AWAY! EAT LEAD! YOU AIN'T GONNA GET ME, SHERIFF! DON'T SHOOT! YOU AIN'T GONNA GET ME, SHERIFF! EAT LEAD! YOU AIN'T GONNA GET ME, SHERIFF!
This Mega Drive port of Lethal Enforcers II is very proud to have voice clips. It has about four of them, and they play each time an enemy pops up. I had this game as a kid, and I give my deepest sympathies to anyone who was within earshot at the time. It has about as many on-screen colours, too, and they're all brown.
On the other hand, it's nice that unlike the first game, you aren't made to replay each 10-minute level if you shoot a single 'Innocent Victim', and I'm glad to know my Justifier still works.
There's some fun had with the wild west setting, and a certain satisfaction to blasting away a gang of hoodlums as they pop up on the screen. You can gain different weapons throughout the campaign, and firing off a full artillery cannon in the saloon is a particular highlight.
Some enemies take multiple hits, which can throw you off, as you're often on to the next target once you've shot them, giving them an easy opening. The bosses are particularly miserable, as you develop cramp from shooting so rapidly, but the second boss soaring from his wagon is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
This Mega Drive port of Lethal Enforcers II is very proud to have voice clips. It has about four of them, and they play each time an enemy pops up. I had this game as a kid, and I give my deepest sympathies to anyone who was within earshot at the time. It has about as many on-screen colours, too, and they're all brown.
On the other hand, it's nice that unlike the first game, you aren't made to replay each 10-minute level if you shoot a single 'Innocent Victim', and I'm glad to know my Justifier still works.
There's some fun had with the wild west setting, and a certain satisfaction to blasting away a gang of hoodlums as they pop up on the screen. You can gain different weapons throughout the campaign, and firing off a full artillery cannon in the saloon is a particular highlight.
Some enemies take multiple hits, which can throw you off, as you're often on to the next target once you've shot them, giving them an easy opening. The bosses are particularly miserable, as you develop cramp from shooting so rapidly, but the second boss soaring from his wagon is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
2023
This review contains spoilers
What are we doing here? You know the Resi 2 remake was only made because the fans were begging for everything to play like Resi 4? Resi 4 already is Resi 4. What is this?
Resident Evil 4 (2005) isn't its story. It isn't its setting or characters. It doesn't have much interest in them and abandons any notion of reverence towards them within the first couple hours. It's a tightly defined ruleset explored thrillingly through a riotous campaign that jumps the shark, then proceeds to jump over Fonzie, and then jumps over the guy who jumped over Fonzie. New areas weren't added out of any consideration for the story, but because the team were having too much fun coming up with things to put in the game. It's a million little ideas that all complement each other. I think a big part of what made me so emotional when I played Breath of the Wild is that I'd given up on there ever being a new game like Resident Evil 4; a radically new and invigorating approach to an old formula, where each component felt beautifully designed and embraced by the surrounding framework. A game you were just dying to pick up the controller and be a part of. Nothing between 2005 and 2017 gave me that gut punch. Trying to inject modern game design standards into its structure would be missing the point of what that game was.
Frustratingly, Capcom haven't really proven my case here. The Resident Evil 4 remake is a well-considered endeavour that expands on curious ideas that the original may have glossed over too soon, and celebrates the game's most loved qualities with the right balance between taste and wreckless abandon. The current-day Resi staff are talented designers and incredible technicians. It shouldn't be a surprise that when they took on a project as prestigious as Resident Evil 4, they made a good game. It's clear that the remake was created by people who genuinely like the original and think about it often. I'm reticent to admit that they got away with it, but shit, man. The game's good.
That demo really rubbed me the wrong way, though. All of my worst fears were realised in front of me. That initial villager who approaches you with his neck already impossibly broken, instantly washing away any thought that maybe these are just regular people, long before the classic transformation scene. The hideous tonal clashes between the gritty new environments and Leon jumping through windows and quipping about bingo. The glowing reverence for the village's structure while adopting gameplay that fundamentally changes its purpose. It felt pointless, stupid, and ignorant of what made the original game work so well.
Prior to that, while I wasn't keen on the principle of remaking Resident Evil 4, what I was expecting was a good game that I'd have a litany of massive frustrations with. After I played that demo, I was expecting a bucket of shite. I'd only be playing it so I'd have something to say if I was ever asked about it. Just miserable.
It's odd, because the game I received was pretty much in line with my initial expectations. I liked it more than that, even. It's embracing me as an endlessly devoted Resi 4 lover and presenting a game that I'd enjoy.
I still hold up the 2002 Gamecube Resident Evil as the best remake ever made, and subsequent remakes in the series have been conscious of what it achieved. The little surprises that work more effectively because of the fans' familiarity with the original. There's clever wee moments in the Resi 4 remake that work the same way. The thudding as you approach Luis for the first time isn't the sound of him struggling to force his way out of a cupboard, but a villager hammering down nails in the trap door he's detained under. It's not a massive jumpscare, but an effective subversion of your expectations if you've played through Resi 4 about twenty times. Wee things like that. The old insta-knife defence seems to be the connective mechanic through all the remakes. The way it works here helps justify the controversial knife degradation, and while I'm not a big fan of that, I'll give anything a pass if it reminds me of the single Mikami-directed remake.
A big point in the game's favour is how they've handled Leon. Even a single oneliner that seemed either a bit too cool or too much like Will Ferrell bullshit, and I'd have taken a hammer to the disc. I can see a version of this game that set out to meme. I'm delighted to say that it just feels like they've continued writing more dialogue for Resi 4 Leon. He's a delight. He's survived Raccoon City, so he thinks he's the shit, but he has all the wit and self-awareness of an 8 year-old who's just watched Die Hard. Leon seeing a 20 foot hammer and sarcastically retorting "good luck finding someone big enough to use that" had me completely sold. I love this man to pieces.
There's directions that the remake takes that I don't like, too. It frequently lifts iconic environments from the original with only the barest of tweaks, and that clashes against the more aggressive AI and greater range of movement. They often just feel too cramped here. The Resi 2 remake's more dramatic shift in design gave the designers the opportunity to play around with the scale to complement these changes, whereas 4's locations often feel like they've been dragged and dropped into a DeepLearning upscaler. You're constantly dogpiled upon in corners, just hoping for a lapse between the attack animations to push your way through. It feels clumsy and due some further revising, but they've like-for-liked big stretches of a game that played dramatically differently. I died countless times on the siege with Luis, but one-shotted my way through the Big Cheese fight that takes place soon afterwards, because they had the sense to make the barn about twice as wide this time. I don't know.
Oh- don't play on Hardcore. This experience may have been the thing that dropped this from a 9/10 to an 8. I always pick Normal for my first time with a game, but telling me that it was the mode for those in the audience who had played Resident Evil 4 was such a coy ruse. It's not the game. It's the bullshit Challenge version of the game. The one that had me play through the whole of the Regenerators' chapter with zero ammo. It's not tense, it's not scary, it's not a challenge. It's the software not functioning properly. It's seeing elaborate new locations and knowing you won't really get to play a game there, because you've just got to run through it until they decide you're allowed another bullet. Whoever presented that as the mode for established fans deserves a fucking hanging.
If this tars my reputation, I'll accept it, but I think QTEs can be good. When used well, they can add a sense of personal stakes to moments that can't be replicated in regular gameplay. Shenmue fans know this (though the sequel's Yellow Head Building can fuck right off), and Resident Evil 4 had some good ones. I bring it up constantly, but the Resident Evil 2 remake really ought to have utilised it to make the alligator chase something more dynamic than the half-hearted Crash Bandicoot horseshit we were given. The new developers have taken a hardline stance against QTEs, and I don't support it. Many of those big moments remain, but they're just cutscenes, and they fall flat without the risk of death. The Krauser knifefight always felt like an odd choice to present as QTEs in the original, and the biggest point of dread for QTE skeptics, and the boss fight that replaces it is okay here. Just okay. You can hammer away at L1 to parry everything, and there's little skill or strategy to it, but fine. What were they supposed to do?
I played this game while in the middle of moving house, packing endless boxes with every single item I own. Please forgive me for using the auto-sort function in the inventory screen. I honestly didn't mean to, but I accidentally activated it once, and when the arrangement of my items lost any sense of personal touch, my inventory was effectively dead to me. It's a welcome tweak for less patient players, but it undercuts an aspect of the game that was widely loved. Something that made item management more playful. I'm a Tetris fan, so I've always been fond of it, but I guess some folk will be coming to this from Gears of War, so I understand the compromise.
I'm kind of mixed on the "crafting" system. I did not welcome them abandoning the old "combine" terminology to appeal to the Markus Persson generation, but given the new complexity of the system, it's justifiable. The game's full of different weapons, and players will find their own combinations of problems and guns, so it makes sense to give the player a hand in the kind of ammo they end up with. There's a little risk/reward dynamic in whether you cash out immediately for shitty pistol shots or save up for shotgun shells and grenades. It's Resi 3 stuff, but it's not absurd to suggest it can work in 4. I don't know how much I like it in effect, though. I didn't have a problem with the old ammo system. It encouraged making better use of the full range of your arsenal and gave you something to sell to the merchant if there was a gun you just plain didn't find useful. Now, I've got to visit a window and make a decision every time I run out of bullets. I don't love it, but I can see its utility.
I did encounter a few technical hiccups in my playthrough. Character models deforming under gunfire, and Ashley slipping through the environment constantly until my next "You Are Dead" screen. Leon even slipped through the gameworld and died in the middle of the last boss. I know Digital Foundry have had harsh words for the PS5 port's presentation. It doesn't really bear making a point of. A game like this is going to be patched in about an hour, and the launch issues will only remain in funny videos. We can pretend it's not there, because it almost certainly won't be for long.
The tone is really uneven early on. I'd likely hold more against it, but they've done such a good job giving Resi 4 Leon more stuff to do and say that I'll give them a pass on how awkwardly the one liners and Jackie Chan bullshit clashes with the sight of young women's bodies hacked away on bloody altars. There's an attempt to explore the subject of murderous cults with some degree of seriousness, but it doesn't work when they're busy filling their homes with whimsical clockwork nonsense. I didn't want the fun taken out of Resi 4, so I'm glad that they stuck the landing on that, but the grizzly, grim stuff sticks out very uncomfortably in the middle of it. Like someone taped over 5 seconds of Roger Rabbit with videocamera footage of themself masturbating. Thankfully, the game forgets this intention as soon as you get to the castle, and it's back to funfair.
Ashley has been changed significantly, and in ways that I expect will rile up some oldheads. The representation of female characters is something that has been dramatically reconsidered since the mid-2000s, and while the intentions are positive, I'm not convinced she needed to be a more competent and less bratty character. I do welcome them making the power dynamic between her and Leon a little more even, but I don't expect a president's daughter to jump into being a pro Resident Eviler against her will. The series had already established a range of likeable, capable women before Ashley. Many of the biggest fans of the early games I know are women, and I don't think they'd be nearly as keen on them if Jill and Claire had been presented as regressively as many typical PS1 heroines. Regardless, I quite like the new Ashley. When she's actively coming up with ideas and getting Leon out of trouble, I'm quite warmed by it. It feels like she's grown up a little. She just feels a little more boring without her old personality flaws. 2005 Ashley was somebody that was quite fun to pair against the cocksure buffoon, Leon Kennedy. I don't think they had to get rid of her identity in order to show respect for her gender.
In relation to that, I quite like how they've played up the threat of Ashley's contamination. It does a better job of highlighting the baddies' intentions than just having her fall into mechanical traps and shit. There's effective dramatic stakes, and I think it's one point that the remake does a better job at than the original. Good work.
Ramon Salazar used to be the pinnacle of the game's absurd high camp. I guess he still is, but that doesn't really seem to be the case until his boss fight, which he berates Leon throughout. It's a relief when he drops back into his old familiar bullshit, but there's so much noise masking his distorted voice from the rooftop, I had to switch on the subtitles to understand anything he said. It's a good laugh when he drops his high-fulluton nonsense about scriptwriting and gives it the old "Die, you bastard". He never hijacks the comms line from Hunnigan this time, though, and it's all a bit much when it's condensed into one boss fight. I don't know if those who haven't played the original will think much of him. He's just a big, noisy boss. Bit of a shame. It's a fun boss, at least. One that I used to save a rocket launcher to skip, it actually feels kind of like a Metal Gear boss now. All the running around and reading attack patterns. Scratches an itch.
They easily could have overegged the famous moments and totally ruined them, but I think it mostly delivers them fairly well. The beautiful, divine white dog emerging to save the day from a mountaintop, accompanied by a lightning strike really worked for me. There are moments that were determined to be too stupid to reappear without some tweaking, but there's little references in easter eggs and the trophy list that show the team is fond of that stuff too. In the broader context of the remake, I'm kind of glad the bingo line's still here. It'd be a shame to lose it.
If anyone was holding out for me to give this game a thorough slagging, here's some quick points about things I really didn't like:
THE STEALTH KILLS: Wishy washy shite. They're nothing. There's nothing natural about their incorporation into the game. Just occasionally, you'll come up to some enemies who are locked into a very artificial patrol route, and you'll have the opportunity to stab them from behind to conserve your ammo and make the inevitable swarm of bodies easier to deal with. It's like the stealth bits in GTA: San Andreas; Really fucking crap. And they've put them in a game called "Resident Evil 4". It's like they put tailing missions in Burnout.
FALLING THROUGH WOODEN FLOORS: It's a trick that could be scary. It's rubbish, irritating, and they do it multiple times. Having to scrap your old plans and reorient yourself in an instant is a surprise that could work in a scary action game like Resi 4, but redoing the flimsy wooden boards with no prior indication of their fragility is just crap. Have a big man pick up Leon and chuck him out a window or something. Have a monster pop up from beneath the floorboards and drag Leon down, fine. Hell, just present a surprise and don't do it a bunch of times. Just crashing through perfectly good timber again and again is crap.
SPOOKY GRAFITTI: This is an element of environmental horror design that I just hate. Bloody writing on the walls, talking about death. It's rubbish. Unless you're doing Danny Torrance or something, where an innocent is possessed into writing something fucked up, there's just nothing to it. There are far better, subtler ways to indicate that something horrible has gone on than having a monster man write "Grr, I'm going to kill you!" on their front door. It's the kind of shit that The Evil Within 2 ought to be too good for. What do they think they're doing putting it in Resi 4?
CHECKPOINTS: The game encourages going back to find equipment and treasures you missed, but only sets a new checkpoint the first time you enter a new location. This lead to me assuming I had done jobs or got equipment, and only realising that the game hadn't counted it once I couldn't go back. It's the kind of oversight I think might get addressed in a patch, and it's only a temporary issue, but it's something I feel I have to warn people about, for now.
THE GAME IS TOO KEEN ON ME KILLING THE ANIMALS: You've always been able to kill crows and fish for quick bonuses in Resi 4, but you were never explicitly encouraged to. Now the merchant has a bloodlust for rats, and I'm the mercenary weighing up whether I care more about the ethics of blasting apart virtual vermin or gaining exclusive weapon upgrades. Sometimes I'll kill them on the assumption that I'll be asked to go back for them later, and it doesn't pay off. And what the fuck is up with setting the cow on fire? Have some fucking decency, Resident Evil.
SHOOTABILITY: This is probably going to be a little tough to explain, but the original Resident Evil 4 was a very shootable game. If you fired a shot, it probably did something. Breaking down doors to fire at swarming enemies on the other side, or shooting down the chain holding up the drawbridge. Leon was approaching gun ownership with the same level of restraint as Homer Simpson. That stuff just isn't in the remake. Usefully breakable items are typically covered in yellow paint now to grab the player's attention. That drawbridge now asks you to damage a couple of weights covered in yellow paint. It's helpful, but it loses that sense of fun. Not that I wanted to piss around experimenting with gunfire when the ammo is so punishingly scarce, but it feels far less visceral and exciting when playing around with your guns solves fewer problems.
Leon does sidle through a lot of narrow passageways, but I think that's just a prerequiste if you want to submit your game to be verified for release on PlayStation 5. Maybe that would upset you, and I can already see the sarcastic YouTube compilations, but it didn't really bother me.
I think the most upset I can get with this game is if I think about those who will opt to play this and never touch the original, but those "newer=better" folk would never touch the thing anyway. I'm not really worried about how the remake will affect Resi 4's legacy beyond that. It's an adaptation. It's merchandise. It's a big, loud reason that a million people are talking about Resi 4 again, and the right folk aren't going to stop loving the original because of it. Why would I ever care about the assertions made in a fucking IGN review?
I feel untouchable now. Go ahead, remake Metal Gear Solid again. God Hand. Turn Super Mario World into a crap touchscreen mobile game with microtransactions. Whatever. I can't be hurt anymore. Nothing is sacred. They put lipstick on Jesus Christ's corpse, and I frenched him.
Resident Evil 4 (2005) isn't its story. It isn't its setting or characters. It doesn't have much interest in them and abandons any notion of reverence towards them within the first couple hours. It's a tightly defined ruleset explored thrillingly through a riotous campaign that jumps the shark, then proceeds to jump over Fonzie, and then jumps over the guy who jumped over Fonzie. New areas weren't added out of any consideration for the story, but because the team were having too much fun coming up with things to put in the game. It's a million little ideas that all complement each other. I think a big part of what made me so emotional when I played Breath of the Wild is that I'd given up on there ever being a new game like Resident Evil 4; a radically new and invigorating approach to an old formula, where each component felt beautifully designed and embraced by the surrounding framework. A game you were just dying to pick up the controller and be a part of. Nothing between 2005 and 2017 gave me that gut punch. Trying to inject modern game design standards into its structure would be missing the point of what that game was.
Frustratingly, Capcom haven't really proven my case here. The Resident Evil 4 remake is a well-considered endeavour that expands on curious ideas that the original may have glossed over too soon, and celebrates the game's most loved qualities with the right balance between taste and wreckless abandon. The current-day Resi staff are talented designers and incredible technicians. It shouldn't be a surprise that when they took on a project as prestigious as Resident Evil 4, they made a good game. It's clear that the remake was created by people who genuinely like the original and think about it often. I'm reticent to admit that they got away with it, but shit, man. The game's good.
That demo really rubbed me the wrong way, though. All of my worst fears were realised in front of me. That initial villager who approaches you with his neck already impossibly broken, instantly washing away any thought that maybe these are just regular people, long before the classic transformation scene. The hideous tonal clashes between the gritty new environments and Leon jumping through windows and quipping about bingo. The glowing reverence for the village's structure while adopting gameplay that fundamentally changes its purpose. It felt pointless, stupid, and ignorant of what made the original game work so well.
Prior to that, while I wasn't keen on the principle of remaking Resident Evil 4, what I was expecting was a good game that I'd have a litany of massive frustrations with. After I played that demo, I was expecting a bucket of shite. I'd only be playing it so I'd have something to say if I was ever asked about it. Just miserable.
It's odd, because the game I received was pretty much in line with my initial expectations. I liked it more than that, even. It's embracing me as an endlessly devoted Resi 4 lover and presenting a game that I'd enjoy.
I still hold up the 2002 Gamecube Resident Evil as the best remake ever made, and subsequent remakes in the series have been conscious of what it achieved. The little surprises that work more effectively because of the fans' familiarity with the original. There's clever wee moments in the Resi 4 remake that work the same way. The thudding as you approach Luis for the first time isn't the sound of him struggling to force his way out of a cupboard, but a villager hammering down nails in the trap door he's detained under. It's not a massive jumpscare, but an effective subversion of your expectations if you've played through Resi 4 about twenty times. Wee things like that. The old insta-knife defence seems to be the connective mechanic through all the remakes. The way it works here helps justify the controversial knife degradation, and while I'm not a big fan of that, I'll give anything a pass if it reminds me of the single Mikami-directed remake.
A big point in the game's favour is how they've handled Leon. Even a single oneliner that seemed either a bit too cool or too much like Will Ferrell bullshit, and I'd have taken a hammer to the disc. I can see a version of this game that set out to meme. I'm delighted to say that it just feels like they've continued writing more dialogue for Resi 4 Leon. He's a delight. He's survived Raccoon City, so he thinks he's the shit, but he has all the wit and self-awareness of an 8 year-old who's just watched Die Hard. Leon seeing a 20 foot hammer and sarcastically retorting "good luck finding someone big enough to use that" had me completely sold. I love this man to pieces.
There's directions that the remake takes that I don't like, too. It frequently lifts iconic environments from the original with only the barest of tweaks, and that clashes against the more aggressive AI and greater range of movement. They often just feel too cramped here. The Resi 2 remake's more dramatic shift in design gave the designers the opportunity to play around with the scale to complement these changes, whereas 4's locations often feel like they've been dragged and dropped into a DeepLearning upscaler. You're constantly dogpiled upon in corners, just hoping for a lapse between the attack animations to push your way through. It feels clumsy and due some further revising, but they've like-for-liked big stretches of a game that played dramatically differently. I died countless times on the siege with Luis, but one-shotted my way through the Big Cheese fight that takes place soon afterwards, because they had the sense to make the barn about twice as wide this time. I don't know.
Oh- don't play on Hardcore. This experience may have been the thing that dropped this from a 9/10 to an 8. I always pick Normal for my first time with a game, but telling me that it was the mode for those in the audience who had played Resident Evil 4 was such a coy ruse. It's not the game. It's the bullshit Challenge version of the game. The one that had me play through the whole of the Regenerators' chapter with zero ammo. It's not tense, it's not scary, it's not a challenge. It's the software not functioning properly. It's seeing elaborate new locations and knowing you won't really get to play a game there, because you've just got to run through it until they decide you're allowed another bullet. Whoever presented that as the mode for established fans deserves a fucking hanging.
If this tars my reputation, I'll accept it, but I think QTEs can be good. When used well, they can add a sense of personal stakes to moments that can't be replicated in regular gameplay. Shenmue fans know this (though the sequel's Yellow Head Building can fuck right off), and Resident Evil 4 had some good ones. I bring it up constantly, but the Resident Evil 2 remake really ought to have utilised it to make the alligator chase something more dynamic than the half-hearted Crash Bandicoot horseshit we were given. The new developers have taken a hardline stance against QTEs, and I don't support it. Many of those big moments remain, but they're just cutscenes, and they fall flat without the risk of death. The Krauser knifefight always felt like an odd choice to present as QTEs in the original, and the biggest point of dread for QTE skeptics, and the boss fight that replaces it is okay here. Just okay. You can hammer away at L1 to parry everything, and there's little skill or strategy to it, but fine. What were they supposed to do?
I played this game while in the middle of moving house, packing endless boxes with every single item I own. Please forgive me for using the auto-sort function in the inventory screen. I honestly didn't mean to, but I accidentally activated it once, and when the arrangement of my items lost any sense of personal touch, my inventory was effectively dead to me. It's a welcome tweak for less patient players, but it undercuts an aspect of the game that was widely loved. Something that made item management more playful. I'm a Tetris fan, so I've always been fond of it, but I guess some folk will be coming to this from Gears of War, so I understand the compromise.
I'm kind of mixed on the "crafting" system. I did not welcome them abandoning the old "combine" terminology to appeal to the Markus Persson generation, but given the new complexity of the system, it's justifiable. The game's full of different weapons, and players will find their own combinations of problems and guns, so it makes sense to give the player a hand in the kind of ammo they end up with. There's a little risk/reward dynamic in whether you cash out immediately for shitty pistol shots or save up for shotgun shells and grenades. It's Resi 3 stuff, but it's not absurd to suggest it can work in 4. I don't know how much I like it in effect, though. I didn't have a problem with the old ammo system. It encouraged making better use of the full range of your arsenal and gave you something to sell to the merchant if there was a gun you just plain didn't find useful. Now, I've got to visit a window and make a decision every time I run out of bullets. I don't love it, but I can see its utility.
I did encounter a few technical hiccups in my playthrough. Character models deforming under gunfire, and Ashley slipping through the environment constantly until my next "You Are Dead" screen. Leon even slipped through the gameworld and died in the middle of the last boss. I know Digital Foundry have had harsh words for the PS5 port's presentation. It doesn't really bear making a point of. A game like this is going to be patched in about an hour, and the launch issues will only remain in funny videos. We can pretend it's not there, because it almost certainly won't be for long.
The tone is really uneven early on. I'd likely hold more against it, but they've done such a good job giving Resi 4 Leon more stuff to do and say that I'll give them a pass on how awkwardly the one liners and Jackie Chan bullshit clashes with the sight of young women's bodies hacked away on bloody altars. There's an attempt to explore the subject of murderous cults with some degree of seriousness, but it doesn't work when they're busy filling their homes with whimsical clockwork nonsense. I didn't want the fun taken out of Resi 4, so I'm glad that they stuck the landing on that, but the grizzly, grim stuff sticks out very uncomfortably in the middle of it. Like someone taped over 5 seconds of Roger Rabbit with videocamera footage of themself masturbating. Thankfully, the game forgets this intention as soon as you get to the castle, and it's back to funfair.
Ashley has been changed significantly, and in ways that I expect will rile up some oldheads. The representation of female characters is something that has been dramatically reconsidered since the mid-2000s, and while the intentions are positive, I'm not convinced she needed to be a more competent and less bratty character. I do welcome them making the power dynamic between her and Leon a little more even, but I don't expect a president's daughter to jump into being a pro Resident Eviler against her will. The series had already established a range of likeable, capable women before Ashley. Many of the biggest fans of the early games I know are women, and I don't think they'd be nearly as keen on them if Jill and Claire had been presented as regressively as many typical PS1 heroines. Regardless, I quite like the new Ashley. When she's actively coming up with ideas and getting Leon out of trouble, I'm quite warmed by it. It feels like she's grown up a little. She just feels a little more boring without her old personality flaws. 2005 Ashley was somebody that was quite fun to pair against the cocksure buffoon, Leon Kennedy. I don't think they had to get rid of her identity in order to show respect for her gender.
In relation to that, I quite like how they've played up the threat of Ashley's contamination. It does a better job of highlighting the baddies' intentions than just having her fall into mechanical traps and shit. There's effective dramatic stakes, and I think it's one point that the remake does a better job at than the original. Good work.
Ramon Salazar used to be the pinnacle of the game's absurd high camp. I guess he still is, but that doesn't really seem to be the case until his boss fight, which he berates Leon throughout. It's a relief when he drops back into his old familiar bullshit, but there's so much noise masking his distorted voice from the rooftop, I had to switch on the subtitles to understand anything he said. It's a good laugh when he drops his high-fulluton nonsense about scriptwriting and gives it the old "Die, you bastard". He never hijacks the comms line from Hunnigan this time, though, and it's all a bit much when it's condensed into one boss fight. I don't know if those who haven't played the original will think much of him. He's just a big, noisy boss. Bit of a shame. It's a fun boss, at least. One that I used to save a rocket launcher to skip, it actually feels kind of like a Metal Gear boss now. All the running around and reading attack patterns. Scratches an itch.
They easily could have overegged the famous moments and totally ruined them, but I think it mostly delivers them fairly well. The beautiful, divine white dog emerging to save the day from a mountaintop, accompanied by a lightning strike really worked for me. There are moments that were determined to be too stupid to reappear without some tweaking, but there's little references in easter eggs and the trophy list that show the team is fond of that stuff too. In the broader context of the remake, I'm kind of glad the bingo line's still here. It'd be a shame to lose it.
If anyone was holding out for me to give this game a thorough slagging, here's some quick points about things I really didn't like:
THE STEALTH KILLS: Wishy washy shite. They're nothing. There's nothing natural about their incorporation into the game. Just occasionally, you'll come up to some enemies who are locked into a very artificial patrol route, and you'll have the opportunity to stab them from behind to conserve your ammo and make the inevitable swarm of bodies easier to deal with. It's like the stealth bits in GTA: San Andreas; Really fucking crap. And they've put them in a game called "Resident Evil 4". It's like they put tailing missions in Burnout.
FALLING THROUGH WOODEN FLOORS: It's a trick that could be scary. It's rubbish, irritating, and they do it multiple times. Having to scrap your old plans and reorient yourself in an instant is a surprise that could work in a scary action game like Resi 4, but redoing the flimsy wooden boards with no prior indication of their fragility is just crap. Have a big man pick up Leon and chuck him out a window or something. Have a monster pop up from beneath the floorboards and drag Leon down, fine. Hell, just present a surprise and don't do it a bunch of times. Just crashing through perfectly good timber again and again is crap.
SPOOKY GRAFITTI: This is an element of environmental horror design that I just hate. Bloody writing on the walls, talking about death. It's rubbish. Unless you're doing Danny Torrance or something, where an innocent is possessed into writing something fucked up, there's just nothing to it. There are far better, subtler ways to indicate that something horrible has gone on than having a monster man write "Grr, I'm going to kill you!" on their front door. It's the kind of shit that The Evil Within 2 ought to be too good for. What do they think they're doing putting it in Resi 4?
CHECKPOINTS: The game encourages going back to find equipment and treasures you missed, but only sets a new checkpoint the first time you enter a new location. This lead to me assuming I had done jobs or got equipment, and only realising that the game hadn't counted it once I couldn't go back. It's the kind of oversight I think might get addressed in a patch, and it's only a temporary issue, but it's something I feel I have to warn people about, for now.
THE GAME IS TOO KEEN ON ME KILLING THE ANIMALS: You've always been able to kill crows and fish for quick bonuses in Resi 4, but you were never explicitly encouraged to. Now the merchant has a bloodlust for rats, and I'm the mercenary weighing up whether I care more about the ethics of blasting apart virtual vermin or gaining exclusive weapon upgrades. Sometimes I'll kill them on the assumption that I'll be asked to go back for them later, and it doesn't pay off. And what the fuck is up with setting the cow on fire? Have some fucking decency, Resident Evil.
SHOOTABILITY: This is probably going to be a little tough to explain, but the original Resident Evil 4 was a very shootable game. If you fired a shot, it probably did something. Breaking down doors to fire at swarming enemies on the other side, or shooting down the chain holding up the drawbridge. Leon was approaching gun ownership with the same level of restraint as Homer Simpson. That stuff just isn't in the remake. Usefully breakable items are typically covered in yellow paint now to grab the player's attention. That drawbridge now asks you to damage a couple of weights covered in yellow paint. It's helpful, but it loses that sense of fun. Not that I wanted to piss around experimenting with gunfire when the ammo is so punishingly scarce, but it feels far less visceral and exciting when playing around with your guns solves fewer problems.
Leon does sidle through a lot of narrow passageways, but I think that's just a prerequiste if you want to submit your game to be verified for release on PlayStation 5. Maybe that would upset you, and I can already see the sarcastic YouTube compilations, but it didn't really bother me.
I think the most upset I can get with this game is if I think about those who will opt to play this and never touch the original, but those "newer=better" folk would never touch the thing anyway. I'm not really worried about how the remake will affect Resi 4's legacy beyond that. It's an adaptation. It's merchandise. It's a big, loud reason that a million people are talking about Resi 4 again, and the right folk aren't going to stop loving the original because of it. Why would I ever care about the assertions made in a fucking IGN review?
I feel untouchable now. Go ahead, remake Metal Gear Solid again. God Hand. Turn Super Mario World into a crap touchscreen mobile game with microtransactions. Whatever. I can't be hurt anymore. Nothing is sacred. They put lipstick on Jesus Christ's corpse, and I frenched him.
1989
BOMB JACK ROM HACK
The hero of videogames - our 1-UP Boy - appropriated into the world of sloppy, accidental 80s platformers. Mario can be anything, and here he proves that includes "a bit shit".
Super Mario Land plays like a joke aimed towards anyone who's ever felt something significant about a Mario game. When you get a Starman - the McGuffin of Universal Pictures' current megahit - it plays kitty kitty cancan. You idiot. You fool. They should have packed dunce caps in every box.
In territories where the NES/Famicom never really took off, this game served as many peoples' introduction to Mario, subsequently inspiring many people to either get really into Tetris or submit fanart to Sega Power of Sonic and Tails commanding a firing squad against the man. This is the game Sega thought they were up against when they made Alex Kidd.
Once you swallow the bitter medicine, get the Galaxy and World out of your head and start viewing this in the context of stupid old platformers like Dangerous Dave and B.C.'s Quest for Tyres, you can start to appreciate what Mario Land has to offer. A game with sphinxes who turn around on the spot when you run past them, and big bouncing flies. OH! DAISY
Is it any wonder that Shigeru Miyamoto personally commissioned the tie-in rap single and had the music video shot in Chessington World of Adventures? Hip Tanaka's soundtrack's a stone cold groove, man. The shift to minor chords on the third bar of 2-1 before the resolve? That's fear and romance. That's adventure. Beauty itself. What better accompaniment for jumping over firebreathing seahorses?
There's something enjoyably pathetic about the Superball. How it bounces off the ground, one step from Mario, and uselessly flies off into the air forever. Yes, it has unique utility, but those flubbed shots are very funny. The ozone layer over Sarasaland cluttered with petrol station footballs. Seeing them bounce around uselessly in the bonus rooms while the universally-recognised "look at this fucking idiot" themesong plays is grade A stuff.
The shmup levels interject themselves into the game just to reassure you there's no interest in making an actual Mario game, here. They're more welcome than SMB1's water levels, and the goatbleat sound effect when you shoot the bosses is a lot of fun.
The game feels horrible. Enemy hitboxes are fuckin' anywhere, and you drop like a rock when you let go of the d-pad. There is no chance the game would be elevated above a Sunsoft cartoon license if not for the fondness gamers have for the jumping man. It does retain a funny charm, though. Where else are you going to see Mario fight against jiangshi? All fans have to subject themselves to this 40 minute running time, and see how that distorts their impression of The Children's Hero. Nintendo are too embarassed to put this on NSO and have players compare it to Jelly Boy, and honestly, I sympathise with them. It's probably right that new audiences will have to go digging before they can play this version of Mario.
You have to, though. "There ain't no place like Super Mario Land."
The hero of videogames - our 1-UP Boy - appropriated into the world of sloppy, accidental 80s platformers. Mario can be anything, and here he proves that includes "a bit shit".
Super Mario Land plays like a joke aimed towards anyone who's ever felt something significant about a Mario game. When you get a Starman - the McGuffin of Universal Pictures' current megahit - it plays kitty kitty cancan. You idiot. You fool. They should have packed dunce caps in every box.
In territories where the NES/Famicom never really took off, this game served as many peoples' introduction to Mario, subsequently inspiring many people to either get really into Tetris or submit fanart to Sega Power of Sonic and Tails commanding a firing squad against the man. This is the game Sega thought they were up against when they made Alex Kidd.
Once you swallow the bitter medicine, get the Galaxy and World out of your head and start viewing this in the context of stupid old platformers like Dangerous Dave and B.C.'s Quest for Tyres, you can start to appreciate what Mario Land has to offer. A game with sphinxes who turn around on the spot when you run past them, and big bouncing flies. OH! DAISY
Is it any wonder that Shigeru Miyamoto personally commissioned the tie-in rap single and had the music video shot in Chessington World of Adventures? Hip Tanaka's soundtrack's a stone cold groove, man. The shift to minor chords on the third bar of 2-1 before the resolve? That's fear and romance. That's adventure. Beauty itself. What better accompaniment for jumping over firebreathing seahorses?
There's something enjoyably pathetic about the Superball. How it bounces off the ground, one step from Mario, and uselessly flies off into the air forever. Yes, it has unique utility, but those flubbed shots are very funny. The ozone layer over Sarasaland cluttered with petrol station footballs. Seeing them bounce around uselessly in the bonus rooms while the universally-recognised "look at this fucking idiot" themesong plays is grade A stuff.
The shmup levels interject themselves into the game just to reassure you there's no interest in making an actual Mario game, here. They're more welcome than SMB1's water levels, and the goatbleat sound effect when you shoot the bosses is a lot of fun.
The game feels horrible. Enemy hitboxes are fuckin' anywhere, and you drop like a rock when you let go of the d-pad. There is no chance the game would be elevated above a Sunsoft cartoon license if not for the fondness gamers have for the jumping man. It does retain a funny charm, though. Where else are you going to see Mario fight against jiangshi? All fans have to subject themselves to this 40 minute running time, and see how that distorts their impression of The Children's Hero. Nintendo are too embarassed to put this on NSO and have players compare it to Jelly Boy, and honestly, I sympathise with them. It's probably right that new audiences will have to go digging before they can play this version of Mario.
You have to, though. "There ain't no place like Super Mario Land."
2023
I can't emphasise it enough. Lunark is totally fucking ruined by its Kickstarter reward integration.
The game follows hot on the trail of Another World and (much more so) Flashback. Quiet, sombre games that stranded us on strange, desolate alien planets. Imagine if in the first 20 minutes of Star Wars, C3PO and R2D2 had to have conversations with the full investors board of 20th Century Fox, learning about their hobbies and the names of their pets. It's like when there's a free mobile version of an old game, but you have to watch an advert every minute.
Lunark's tone is all over the place, and it really strips out all potential investment I might have put into it. It's a game that went into production because a talented pixel artist got an enthusiastic response when posting gifs on Twitter. The game looks great, no doubt, but the nightclub and alien furries are eyecandy that really clash against the thrust of the story. It's a tribute to cinematic platformers, but a dishearteningly uncinematic one. The weak jokes and constant tonal swerves undercut any worldbuilding aspect it ever feigns interest in. I bawked a little when I saw Fumito Ueda listed in the Special Thanks credits.
There's also aspects of the game that I will address as unquestionably "dated", like the save functionality. Lunark's levels are often long, complex and challenging. You're often overwhelmed by it, and quite relieved when you overcome a tricky sequence. There's often well-placed checkpoints, but those aren't saves. You only save when you finish a level. Until you do, your console is locked into Lunark until you either get past the bullshit that caused you to turn it off in the first place, or you sacrifice all your mid-level progress for a go on Splatoon or something. There's no need. I'll defend the original SNES Super Mario World's use of infrequent save points, as replaying levels is quick, fun, and builds your momentum towards the next challenging checkpoint spot, but it's got no place in a 2023 indie game. I don't think much of its audience are going to stick around to see the ending.
At its best, Lunark occasionally works as a Flashback fangame for Flashback fans. It's when it elaborates on its gameplay and offers complementary level concepts and enemy types. It's kind of refreshing to see something with such reverence for Flashback's gameplay, when so many players bemoan having to actually adopt its restrictive controls and logic patterns. I wouldn't care a tenth as much about Flashback if I didn't love how it played, and I was pleased with a lot of the things Lunark added to it. Setting off security drones to explode over targets and timing your movement for overhead obstacles atop a speeding train. I thought it was pretty cool. I'd have loved to have seen these things in a game that felt like a cohesive adventure, with tangible stakes and a logical progression of events.
I'm not someone who typically prioritises story, but it's so central to why these games work. It's what makes Oddworld haunting and fascinating, or why breaking out of the cage in Another World feels like more than just pressing left and right repeatedly. If I don't feel a connection to the character's situation, I'd rather they didn't waste my time pretending there was a world to take interest in.
I really wanted to like Lunark. Us Flashback guys ought to stick together. We're a dying breed. It just feels like the guy was taking on jobs that he wasn't suited for. The art and gameplay are good, but the project ought to have had a director with a clear vision. As it is, it's going to sit on ten-thousand Steam libraries with fifteen minutes of logged activity.
The game follows hot on the trail of Another World and (much more so) Flashback. Quiet, sombre games that stranded us on strange, desolate alien planets. Imagine if in the first 20 minutes of Star Wars, C3PO and R2D2 had to have conversations with the full investors board of 20th Century Fox, learning about their hobbies and the names of their pets. It's like when there's a free mobile version of an old game, but you have to watch an advert every minute.
Lunark's tone is all over the place, and it really strips out all potential investment I might have put into it. It's a game that went into production because a talented pixel artist got an enthusiastic response when posting gifs on Twitter. The game looks great, no doubt, but the nightclub and alien furries are eyecandy that really clash against the thrust of the story. It's a tribute to cinematic platformers, but a dishearteningly uncinematic one. The weak jokes and constant tonal swerves undercut any worldbuilding aspect it ever feigns interest in. I bawked a little when I saw Fumito Ueda listed in the Special Thanks credits.
There's also aspects of the game that I will address as unquestionably "dated", like the save functionality. Lunark's levels are often long, complex and challenging. You're often overwhelmed by it, and quite relieved when you overcome a tricky sequence. There's often well-placed checkpoints, but those aren't saves. You only save when you finish a level. Until you do, your console is locked into Lunark until you either get past the bullshit that caused you to turn it off in the first place, or you sacrifice all your mid-level progress for a go on Splatoon or something. There's no need. I'll defend the original SNES Super Mario World's use of infrequent save points, as replaying levels is quick, fun, and builds your momentum towards the next challenging checkpoint spot, but it's got no place in a 2023 indie game. I don't think much of its audience are going to stick around to see the ending.
At its best, Lunark occasionally works as a Flashback fangame for Flashback fans. It's when it elaborates on its gameplay and offers complementary level concepts and enemy types. It's kind of refreshing to see something with such reverence for Flashback's gameplay, when so many players bemoan having to actually adopt its restrictive controls and logic patterns. I wouldn't care a tenth as much about Flashback if I didn't love how it played, and I was pleased with a lot of the things Lunark added to it. Setting off security drones to explode over targets and timing your movement for overhead obstacles atop a speeding train. I thought it was pretty cool. I'd have loved to have seen these things in a game that felt like a cohesive adventure, with tangible stakes and a logical progression of events.
I'm not someone who typically prioritises story, but it's so central to why these games work. It's what makes Oddworld haunting and fascinating, or why breaking out of the cage in Another World feels like more than just pressing left and right repeatedly. If I don't feel a connection to the character's situation, I'd rather they didn't waste my time pretending there was a world to take interest in.
I really wanted to like Lunark. Us Flashback guys ought to stick together. We're a dying breed. It just feels like the guy was taking on jobs that he wasn't suited for. The art and gameplay are good, but the project ought to have had a director with a clear vision. As it is, it's going to sit on ten-thousand Steam libraries with fifteen minutes of logged activity.
1996
No. You can't make me approach PaRappa with any degree of objectivity.
Let me tell you what PaRappa the Rapper is.
The PlayStation was such a revolutionary console, and not just because it did 3D pretty good. It was the first significant challenge to Nintendo's vision of the industry. Sega, SNK, NEC, whoever - they were just trying to adopt the established playbook for another audience. Sony didn't want to do that. They had a reputation to uphold. They were a gateway between music, film and art into the household. They'd follow through on that trajectory on their first dedicated videogame platform. They wouldn't only seek out innovative, talented game developers in Japan, Europe and America to define the console. Music and art would need to play a substantial role in shaping the PlayStation.
Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Alan Greenblat were two weirdos who could only have been who they were in nineties Tokyo and New York. Experimenters, producing quirky little projects with no obvious utility or market, and selling them to whoever could be convinced to put them in shops. Nothing speaks to how different the PS1 was to the PlayStation brand of today more than the fact that they not only funded PaRappa's production, but published it in Japan, America and Europe.
PaRappa can't compete against the pounding thrill of modern rhythm games. Its gameplay is very rudimentary. Just copy the phrases your teacher says. The feedback on what you did right or wrong isn't well illustrated, especially since the game encourages you to experiment with your own rhythms. Buttons are displayed on a phrase bar, and there's little on-screen indication of when you're jumping to the start of a new bar. It doesn't really matter how badly you do throughout each level, as long as you nail the last couple of bars. There's a ton of trial and error in PaRappa, and I can't blame anyone for finding it too frustrating to stick with. In a way though, that's part of the charm, and that's everything that the game has going for it.
The game's sense of humour is incredibly tame, and equally weird. Visions of toilets flying out the car stereo, and the pump over here coming with a truck. It provokes a reaction from anyone, and for me at this point, it's pure love.
PaRappa is an idyllic vision of summer in young adulthood. Sitting outside the donut shop, planning birthday parties. Sitting on the hill in sunset. All incredibly innocent, benign and lovely. PaRappa's journey of being taught to repeat single phrases, until he's eventually performing entirely original phrases, on stage. It warms my heart.
You can't overlook the overwhelming sense of 1996 weirdness in its visual presentation, either. It's odd to see PS1 textures with varying line thickness at all, instead of rigid pixels, but the pre-rendered stuff invokes the game with a sense of scruffy, handmade breeziness. They've crammed as many different kinds of objects as they could into the cutscenes, with (then) high-poly, shiny models, the flat characters, low-resolution backgrounds and even a cut to live action footage of a rocket launch as PaRappa shits himself. It's fiercely distinct. Uncopyable. Other aspects of the follow-ups and rereleases have improved different aspects of PaRappa's formula, but none have come within a mile of the PS1 game's charm.
It's not a game worth taking seriously, and I love it more for that.
Let me tell you what PaRappa the Rapper is.
The PlayStation was such a revolutionary console, and not just because it did 3D pretty good. It was the first significant challenge to Nintendo's vision of the industry. Sega, SNK, NEC, whoever - they were just trying to adopt the established playbook for another audience. Sony didn't want to do that. They had a reputation to uphold. They were a gateway between music, film and art into the household. They'd follow through on that trajectory on their first dedicated videogame platform. They wouldn't only seek out innovative, talented game developers in Japan, Europe and America to define the console. Music and art would need to play a substantial role in shaping the PlayStation.
Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Alan Greenblat were two weirdos who could only have been who they were in nineties Tokyo and New York. Experimenters, producing quirky little projects with no obvious utility or market, and selling them to whoever could be convinced to put them in shops. Nothing speaks to how different the PS1 was to the PlayStation brand of today more than the fact that they not only funded PaRappa's production, but published it in Japan, America and Europe.
PaRappa can't compete against the pounding thrill of modern rhythm games. Its gameplay is very rudimentary. Just copy the phrases your teacher says. The feedback on what you did right or wrong isn't well illustrated, especially since the game encourages you to experiment with your own rhythms. Buttons are displayed on a phrase bar, and there's little on-screen indication of when you're jumping to the start of a new bar. It doesn't really matter how badly you do throughout each level, as long as you nail the last couple of bars. There's a ton of trial and error in PaRappa, and I can't blame anyone for finding it too frustrating to stick with. In a way though, that's part of the charm, and that's everything that the game has going for it.
The game's sense of humour is incredibly tame, and equally weird. Visions of toilets flying out the car stereo, and the pump over here coming with a truck. It provokes a reaction from anyone, and for me at this point, it's pure love.
PaRappa is an idyllic vision of summer in young adulthood. Sitting outside the donut shop, planning birthday parties. Sitting on the hill in sunset. All incredibly innocent, benign and lovely. PaRappa's journey of being taught to repeat single phrases, until he's eventually performing entirely original phrases, on stage. It warms my heart.
You can't overlook the overwhelming sense of 1996 weirdness in its visual presentation, either. It's odd to see PS1 textures with varying line thickness at all, instead of rigid pixels, but the pre-rendered stuff invokes the game with a sense of scruffy, handmade breeziness. They've crammed as many different kinds of objects as they could into the cutscenes, with (then) high-poly, shiny models, the flat characters, low-resolution backgrounds and even a cut to live action footage of a rocket launch as PaRappa shits himself. It's fiercely distinct. Uncopyable. Other aspects of the follow-ups and rereleases have improved different aspects of PaRappa's formula, but none have come within a mile of the PS1 game's charm.
It's not a game worth taking seriously, and I love it more for that.
2002
Some poor bastard 8 year-olds must have had Herdy Gerdy bought for them, and they must have fucking hated it.
It's maybe somewhat maudlin to mourn the loss of the UK's dominance in game development, because when they had that position, they were putting out shite like this. Core Design came off the PS1 feeling like king of the world, and jumped into the PS2 with newfound ambition. They quickly announced Tomb Raider's edgy new sequel, Angel of Darkness, four-player co-op action game, Project Eden - the most boring game I've ever played - and Herdy Gerdy.
Herdy Gerdy's like a Peter Molyneux game. That sums it up pretty well, actually. It's some wanker's dream game, but he's not much of a designer. Any concept can work as a game, but it's all in the execution. The inspiration from both Ocarina of Time and Banjo-Kazooie is pretty clear, but they've got no idea why those games worked. This is, ostensibly, a whimsical herding sim, with fantastical cartoon creatures and large, open environments. It's boring, irritating, and nothing works right. You chase little cartoon animals into pens and shield them from predators. I wish that was all it was, actually. Half the time, you're running around painfully quaint villages, talking to NPCs who take far too long to make a point. It's all voice acted, with that odd Molyneux blend of regional English accents and English voice actors adopting broad, obnoxious American ones. There's a late-90s Disney influence in the character models, looking something between Tarzan and Treasure Planet, and intricate expressive animation, but they stretch threadbare material over the whole game, awkwardly repeating elaborate 2-second loops in contexts that don't really fit.
Environments are fairly large, and that's a negative when movement doesn't feel fun. There's no combat and it doesn't play like a platformer. You probably don't remember what shite PS2 games from 2002 felt like, but imagine someone ported Banjo-Tooie's content to GTA3, stripping out all the guns and vehicles. That's nearly how bad this feels. There's plenty of Core's "innovative" controls too though, with three different perspectives to shift between and a button to shift the camera behind you in case you haven't got the hang of dual-analogue controllers yet. The thing chugs like fuck and takes ages to load. They've included a 60Hz option in the PAL version, but there's little point when it's running at 12 frames per second most the time.
Imagine this game, with all its technical issues and design oversights, and you've got to go fucking herding in it. You know herding? You've played Twilight Princess, right? That's this game's focus, and it doesn't feel nearly as robust here. The creatures are given twee names, but am I fuck remembering them. Doops and Goozers or some shit. I don't care. Sometimes a Doop will get stuck on a collision model and lose the rest of the pack. Sometimes the refresh rate plays havoc with their logic, and you'll run right through them. Sometimes you'll trap a Goozer in the wrong spot and they'll eat the already-penned Doops, and the game can fuck right off if it feels like introducing intentionally irritating aspects on top of the rest of this shit.
Most grating of all are the bells. There are 100 bells hidden in each "level" (again, these aren't platforming levels. They're patches of mostly flat, rustic countryside). If you leave a level, your bell count will reset. Collect them all and you'll unlock a behind the scenes video, inviting your admiration as you witness how a room full of wankers made Herdy Gerdy.
Fuck British game developers, man. I hope they're all bought out by heartless Chinese conglomerates.
It's maybe somewhat maudlin to mourn the loss of the UK's dominance in game development, because when they had that position, they were putting out shite like this. Core Design came off the PS1 feeling like king of the world, and jumped into the PS2 with newfound ambition. They quickly announced Tomb Raider's edgy new sequel, Angel of Darkness, four-player co-op action game, Project Eden - the most boring game I've ever played - and Herdy Gerdy.
Herdy Gerdy's like a Peter Molyneux game. That sums it up pretty well, actually. It's some wanker's dream game, but he's not much of a designer. Any concept can work as a game, but it's all in the execution. The inspiration from both Ocarina of Time and Banjo-Kazooie is pretty clear, but they've got no idea why those games worked. This is, ostensibly, a whimsical herding sim, with fantastical cartoon creatures and large, open environments. It's boring, irritating, and nothing works right. You chase little cartoon animals into pens and shield them from predators. I wish that was all it was, actually. Half the time, you're running around painfully quaint villages, talking to NPCs who take far too long to make a point. It's all voice acted, with that odd Molyneux blend of regional English accents and English voice actors adopting broad, obnoxious American ones. There's a late-90s Disney influence in the character models, looking something between Tarzan and Treasure Planet, and intricate expressive animation, but they stretch threadbare material over the whole game, awkwardly repeating elaborate 2-second loops in contexts that don't really fit.
Environments are fairly large, and that's a negative when movement doesn't feel fun. There's no combat and it doesn't play like a platformer. You probably don't remember what shite PS2 games from 2002 felt like, but imagine someone ported Banjo-Tooie's content to GTA3, stripping out all the guns and vehicles. That's nearly how bad this feels. There's plenty of Core's "innovative" controls too though, with three different perspectives to shift between and a button to shift the camera behind you in case you haven't got the hang of dual-analogue controllers yet. The thing chugs like fuck and takes ages to load. They've included a 60Hz option in the PAL version, but there's little point when it's running at 12 frames per second most the time.
Imagine this game, with all its technical issues and design oversights, and you've got to go fucking herding in it. You know herding? You've played Twilight Princess, right? That's this game's focus, and it doesn't feel nearly as robust here. The creatures are given twee names, but am I fuck remembering them. Doops and Goozers or some shit. I don't care. Sometimes a Doop will get stuck on a collision model and lose the rest of the pack. Sometimes the refresh rate plays havoc with their logic, and you'll run right through them. Sometimes you'll trap a Goozer in the wrong spot and they'll eat the already-penned Doops, and the game can fuck right off if it feels like introducing intentionally irritating aspects on top of the rest of this shit.
Most grating of all are the bells. There are 100 bells hidden in each "level" (again, these aren't platforming levels. They're patches of mostly flat, rustic countryside). If you leave a level, your bell count will reset. Collect them all and you'll unlock a behind the scenes video, inviting your admiration as you witness how a room full of wankers made Herdy Gerdy.
Fuck British game developers, man. I hope they're all bought out by heartless Chinese conglomerates.
2023
Murtop is a neat little Dig Dug clone that's just gone up on the eShop. You're a sweet little bunny who has to fight angry moles. Instead of a pump, you drop bombs that explode in straight lines, just like in Bomberman. You can still crush them with rocks for the biggest payouts, too.
I think I should warn you that it doesn't really play all that much like Dig Dug. There's only one enemy type that will chase you, and just until they get bored. Rocks drop instantly, so you can't keep them held up until the perfect opportunity emerges below you. And unlike Bomberman, you don't drop bombs directly where you're standing. They fall a square behind you. It can play havoc with your strategies early on. On top of this, there's a pretty tight time limit to each level. This changes the dynamic quite dramatically. The levels are less a playground to try to squeeze the highest scores out of, and more a puzzle to attempt to solve as efficiently as possible. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just disarmingly different when the game presents itself so unashamedly as a Dig Dug clone.
There's also bonus levels every few levels, where you try to collect falling carrots and avoid the rocks. A bit like Flicky or Balloon Fight. Unlike those games, you can't get a perfect score. The positioning is randomised, and you can't physically run from one side of the screen to the other in time to get everything. I don't love that, especially when older designers worked so diligently to make these stages play like clever puzzles. I guess those old traditional values are gone today.
The game really tries to seem authentic to the era. There's even a boot sequence and an Insert Credit button. I don't think the game could totally pass for an eighties arcade game, though. The character designs look pretty modern, and definitely aware of the bold, colourful presentation of late 90s/early 2000s arcadey stuff like Mr Driller and Pyoro. The promo artwork was definitely drawn digitally. The game also refers to dropping bombs as "pooping". That kind of profane language may fly today, and I'm sure it's all the rage with the youngsters on Tick Tock, but would never appear in a game they were hoping to sell to restaurants and hospitals.
Once you get the hang of it, and stop trying to force your Dig Dug strategies into it, the real game emerges. It plays a bit more like Pac-Man Championship Edition, or something. You can see the enemies, and you know what they'll do when you appear before them, but your traps are never all that elaborate. It makes the game feel a little punchier, though. There's still plenty of appeal for fans of old arcade games. It's refreshing to see the indie space celebrate stuff older than Mega Man. It's neat, it's a fiver, I don't think there's a chance in hell you're ever going to buy it, but I'm happy to show it some support.
I think I should warn you that it doesn't really play all that much like Dig Dug. There's only one enemy type that will chase you, and just until they get bored. Rocks drop instantly, so you can't keep them held up until the perfect opportunity emerges below you. And unlike Bomberman, you don't drop bombs directly where you're standing. They fall a square behind you. It can play havoc with your strategies early on. On top of this, there's a pretty tight time limit to each level. This changes the dynamic quite dramatically. The levels are less a playground to try to squeeze the highest scores out of, and more a puzzle to attempt to solve as efficiently as possible. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just disarmingly different when the game presents itself so unashamedly as a Dig Dug clone.
There's also bonus levels every few levels, where you try to collect falling carrots and avoid the rocks. A bit like Flicky or Balloon Fight. Unlike those games, you can't get a perfect score. The positioning is randomised, and you can't physically run from one side of the screen to the other in time to get everything. I don't love that, especially when older designers worked so diligently to make these stages play like clever puzzles. I guess those old traditional values are gone today.
The game really tries to seem authentic to the era. There's even a boot sequence and an Insert Credit button. I don't think the game could totally pass for an eighties arcade game, though. The character designs look pretty modern, and definitely aware of the bold, colourful presentation of late 90s/early 2000s arcadey stuff like Mr Driller and Pyoro. The promo artwork was definitely drawn digitally. The game also refers to dropping bombs as "pooping". That kind of profane language may fly today, and I'm sure it's all the rage with the youngsters on Tick Tock, but would never appear in a game they were hoping to sell to restaurants and hospitals.
Once you get the hang of it, and stop trying to force your Dig Dug strategies into it, the real game emerges. It plays a bit more like Pac-Man Championship Edition, or something. You can see the enemies, and you know what they'll do when you appear before them, but your traps are never all that elaborate. It makes the game feel a little punchier, though. There's still plenty of appeal for fans of old arcade games. It's refreshing to see the indie space celebrate stuff older than Mega Man. It's neat, it's a fiver, I don't think there's a chance in hell you're ever going to buy it, but I'm happy to show it some support.
1993
It's times like this, I realise how far I've sunk into the rabbit hole. Depending on your perspective, playing Yoshi's Safari on original hardware in 2023 is either a sign of thoroughly cultivated taste, or a cry for help. I'm struggling to determine what my stance on the matter is. I guess I'm just feeling especially self-conscious about the decisions I've made right now.
In a way, it's healthy that I bought a much cheaper Japanese copy ("Yoshi no Road Hunting"). On the flip side, I blew out my SNES's power intake while experimenting with a dubious unbranded import adaptor, and had to send it away for an expensive modding procedure. It's for the best. I value the ability to play Super Famicom carts. I feel that is a characteristic I want to see in myself.
Yoshi's Safari is a Super Mario World spin-off designed for the Super Scope/Nintendo Scope; a toy bazooka you point at your CRT television. You play as Super Mario, riding Yoshi and shooting Bowser's minions. Princess Peach has asked you to visit Jewelry Land to rescue Prince Pine and King Fret. "Please, Mario. They are my friends!!"
This is an R&D1 game, and fairly representative of their work. Dr Mario, Wario's Woods, Mario Clash. It's "that" kind of Mario game. Everything's just a little bit off. Muted colours, slightly off-model designs, fairly boring gameplay.
Yoshi runs around a series of Mode 7 tracks, looking very like F-Zero or Super Mario Kart. You aim at incoming enemies and hold the fire button until the rapidfire meter runs out and you have to wait a second for it to recharge. Sometimes you have to jump, but not very often. You can get power-ups, but I'm not really sure what they do half the time. Levels all take less than five minutes to complete, and you can pick from the first seven in any order you like. You might as well just go in chronological order though, because that's how the difficulty curve goes. There's sometimes an option of which path to take, but it all plays and looks about the same. Some of the bosses take ages to beat because they decided to try something clever with the design, and it didn't really work. The game's really easy, and you'll be struggling to pick out highlights in its monotonous campaign.
I'm adding half a star because Bowser looks really sad while you're hurting him.
In a way, it's healthy that I bought a much cheaper Japanese copy ("Yoshi no Road Hunting"). On the flip side, I blew out my SNES's power intake while experimenting with a dubious unbranded import adaptor, and had to send it away for an expensive modding procedure. It's for the best. I value the ability to play Super Famicom carts. I feel that is a characteristic I want to see in myself.
Yoshi's Safari is a Super Mario World spin-off designed for the Super Scope/Nintendo Scope; a toy bazooka you point at your CRT television. You play as Super Mario, riding Yoshi and shooting Bowser's minions. Princess Peach has asked you to visit Jewelry Land to rescue Prince Pine and King Fret. "Please, Mario. They are my friends!!"
This is an R&D1 game, and fairly representative of their work. Dr Mario, Wario's Woods, Mario Clash. It's "that" kind of Mario game. Everything's just a little bit off. Muted colours, slightly off-model designs, fairly boring gameplay.
Yoshi runs around a series of Mode 7 tracks, looking very like F-Zero or Super Mario Kart. You aim at incoming enemies and hold the fire button until the rapidfire meter runs out and you have to wait a second for it to recharge. Sometimes you have to jump, but not very often. You can get power-ups, but I'm not really sure what they do half the time. Levels all take less than five minutes to complete, and you can pick from the first seven in any order you like. You might as well just go in chronological order though, because that's how the difficulty curve goes. There's sometimes an option of which path to take, but it all plays and looks about the same. Some of the bosses take ages to beat because they decided to try something clever with the design, and it didn't really work. The game's really easy, and you'll be struggling to pick out highlights in its monotonous campaign.
I'm adding half a star because Bowser looks really sad while you're hurting him.
I don't know if any new game release carries the same sense of weight as a new Zelda. I've remembered the release of each new mainline title as a marker of a significant new point in my life, and I know I'm not alone in that view. For anyone who's ever fully bought into the setting, story and "legend" of any of the games, there's a sense of sanctity to the series, and there's little that can match it for that. The godesses and rituals and sacred artifacts that the games fill themselves with plays into this sense of sacredness, but frequently, it's how earnestly the stories and themes have connected with fans that have gained it such a passionate and devoted following. And unlike most long-running franchises, there's a vague, fleeting chance that its best days could be ahead.
There's a cautious optimism that goes into approaching any new Zelda. It's almost certainly going to be really, really good, but there's also a chance it could underwhelm. That some aspect of the formula won't really connect, and you'll cling tighter onto the seemingly-forgotten qualities you hold so dearly about the personal favourite, wondering if they'll ever be able to recapture that.
Tears of the Kingdom really wants to earn its status as The New Zelda Game. Breath of the Wild dared to shed off a lot of recent series conventions to single-mindedly devote itself to freedom and exploration, but Tears of the Kingdom tries to dial that back, with big dramatic story beats and elaborately decorated dungeons. As much as I loved BotW, there was always some ennui with how muted the Proper Zelda Stuff was. TotK attempts to remedy this, but it's mostly focused on exploring the potential of BotW's gameplay. Structure is loose and hands-off. It's a quality that has the potential to either give players a deeply personal sense of satisfaction, or undercut any sense of classical adventure.
I struggle to view Tears of the Kingdom as its own thing. It's really easy to adopt a cynical perspective on how much content they've repackaged. You can't really do Breath of the Wild again. Can't recreate that initial shock and overwhelming sense of liberation. A million little distractions over a huge map, and each one of them, Industrial Strength Zelda. Ultrahand, Recall and Ascend are abilities that Tears of the Kingdom utilises as if they were standard Zelda items, but they offer so much freedom to Play The Game Wrong. Yes, I did the Fire Temple, but climbing up the walls and gliding down to each gong feels like the kind of thing I'd be locked out of a Platinum Trophy for in any other game. I want Zelda to be more firm with me. To pay attention. To show it loves me as much as I love it.
That was kind of what I liked so much about Breath of the Wild, though. Its unwavering devotion to freedom. How you could vanquish centuries-fabled demons by throwing mushrooms at them if you wanted. By attempting to compromise, Tears of the Kingdom never really commits to either the theatrical pageantry of old or the sense of wild discovery that's been introduced. You're warping around the map, doing things in the wrong order, and not really connecting to any part of it as much as you feel you ought to. Breath of the Wild often put you into hopeless scenarios, miles from safety, creating personal stories of overcoming desperate conditions through grit and ingenuity. Link's new God Hand is so concerned about not boring returning players that you're only ever a couple menu clicks from warping back to the Poké Center and getting a full recovery.
That's probably enough moaning. I really, really liked Tears of the Kingdom.
The sense of confidence that the team have gained from Breath of the Wild's reception has spurred them on to do a deep dive into the history of Hyrule, the ambitions of Ganondorf, and Zelda's resolute devotion to her kingdom. It reshapes the audience's view of the world and characters, and it's stuff I'm going to be thinking about as I replay Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker or Zelda 1. It takes big swings, and when it works, it really works. It feels like a weird old folktale, and that's what I think The Legend of Zelda ought to be. I loved what they were willing to do here.
There's so many things Tears of the Kingdom does that I just love. It brings back that old N64 scariness. There's stuff in this game I know is going to give kids nightmares, and I've just got to stand up and applaud them for that. Knowing that young audiences will be as petrified of the power this game holds over them as the earlier titles did for me when I was their age makes me feel alive. The fact that this game will serve as the next stop on the Nintendo bus for a bunch of children coming off Mario Odyssey... I can't explain how excited that makes me. The scariness is all handled very carefully. There's nothing traumatic here, but there's places in the game that they will just not want to go to. It's kind of Minecrafty, actually. I don't know if grown-ups appreciate how well that game deals with horror for younger players, but we've all seen a 6 year-old in a Creeper t-shirt. Man, that's just how ReDeads made us. Terror is back, baby.
Sidequests are a bigger part of the formula here. It's where you get a sense of what life in post-Calamity Hyrule is actually like. There's some really good stuff covering Gerudo culture, which is more interesting for how it reflects on the one male of their race, Ganondorf. The strict, authoritarian doctrines that run through the lives of otherwise relatable, likeable characters, and how they integrate into a more inclusive society. Again, it's how these these things shift my perspective on some of my favourite games that I really like. It's not like going back to earlier Metal Gear games and attempting to determine what Cipher's objectives were as they manipulated every action behind the scenes. I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo consulted decades-old internal documentation about how Hyrule works before writing a single line of fetch-quest dialogue. This is the game that the series' core fans are seeing that casual audiences can't appreciate.
I always like a horse in a game, but Zelda's horses are special. Galloping across unknown plains and delicately navigating treacherous cliff faces. That's a vision of adventure that really resonates with me. Breath of the Wild loved its horses, but Tears of the Kingdom goes further. There's so many sidequests about the horses, and so many NPCs who love the horses too. We're past the vision of cold, masculine reliance on animals as tools on our grand quests. We want to feed them and pet them and treat them with love. I find old men talking about beauty of their steeds very sweet. These people have earned their protection from the Demon King.
I've reflected on the decision to call the big new mechanic "Ultrahand". That was the name of the extending grabber toy that got Gunpei Yokoi hired by Nintendo, before going on to create the first handheld game console. Handhelds have always kept Nintendo going, even when their home consoles failed to build enough of an audience to support the business. The Switch's success is largely owed to the groundwork Yokoi laid. The Game & Watch was essentially a fun new use for cheap calculator components, and the Switch took the same kind of approach with the global ubiqity of mobile hardware in the 2010s. Ultrahand in Zelda doesn't have all that much in common with the original toy, but it's a fitting tribute to the man to get the term trending on Twitter as it spearheads the company's biggest game in years.
Repurposing the old locations is a mixed bag. While the diversity and complexity of locales doesn't bring the same sense of awe as they did in 2017, the process of discovery brought back a lot more of the emotion felt on that first playthrough than any of the subsequent discourse and merchandise did. Seeing the familiar mountains, that have now been hollowed out for elaborate Link's Awakening-style mini-dungeon caves, remembering all the other locations that seemed so significant in Breath of the Wild, and rushing over to see what they've done with the place. I think revisiting the previous game's environments kind of cheapens both titles, but the team seem aware of that risk, and it's hard to argue against Aonuma's suggestion that more could be done with this huge world. The developers are keen to make up for any sense of disappointment that the new Zelda game might not seem new enough.
It's all so subjective though. I'm a bitter old bastard who thinks that Zelda will never feel quite as perfect without a set of C-Buttons for quick item access and ocarina manipulation. Something I cherish about my experience with Ocarina of Time was that I was much older when I eventually finished it than I was when I first tried it. Reflecting on how my life had changed in those intervening years greatly complemented my appreciation for the story and themes. It's easy to picture the 11 year-olds who played Breath of the Wild at launch may have the same level of investment in Tears of the Kingdom as they approach adulthood. I don't know if Zelda could ever mean as much to me as Ocarina of Time does, but I'm glad to see Nintendo continue to make these precious memories for people.
This one didn't totally work for me, but they've got so much right here, I'm still open to the idea that the next one might.
There's a cautious optimism that goes into approaching any new Zelda. It's almost certainly going to be really, really good, but there's also a chance it could underwhelm. That some aspect of the formula won't really connect, and you'll cling tighter onto the seemingly-forgotten qualities you hold so dearly about the personal favourite, wondering if they'll ever be able to recapture that.
Tears of the Kingdom really wants to earn its status as The New Zelda Game. Breath of the Wild dared to shed off a lot of recent series conventions to single-mindedly devote itself to freedom and exploration, but Tears of the Kingdom tries to dial that back, with big dramatic story beats and elaborately decorated dungeons. As much as I loved BotW, there was always some ennui with how muted the Proper Zelda Stuff was. TotK attempts to remedy this, but it's mostly focused on exploring the potential of BotW's gameplay. Structure is loose and hands-off. It's a quality that has the potential to either give players a deeply personal sense of satisfaction, or undercut any sense of classical adventure.
I struggle to view Tears of the Kingdom as its own thing. It's really easy to adopt a cynical perspective on how much content they've repackaged. You can't really do Breath of the Wild again. Can't recreate that initial shock and overwhelming sense of liberation. A million little distractions over a huge map, and each one of them, Industrial Strength Zelda. Ultrahand, Recall and Ascend are abilities that Tears of the Kingdom utilises as if they were standard Zelda items, but they offer so much freedom to Play The Game Wrong. Yes, I did the Fire Temple, but climbing up the walls and gliding down to each gong feels like the kind of thing I'd be locked out of a Platinum Trophy for in any other game. I want Zelda to be more firm with me. To pay attention. To show it loves me as much as I love it.
That was kind of what I liked so much about Breath of the Wild, though. Its unwavering devotion to freedom. How you could vanquish centuries-fabled demons by throwing mushrooms at them if you wanted. By attempting to compromise, Tears of the Kingdom never really commits to either the theatrical pageantry of old or the sense of wild discovery that's been introduced. You're warping around the map, doing things in the wrong order, and not really connecting to any part of it as much as you feel you ought to. Breath of the Wild often put you into hopeless scenarios, miles from safety, creating personal stories of overcoming desperate conditions through grit and ingenuity. Link's new God Hand is so concerned about not boring returning players that you're only ever a couple menu clicks from warping back to the Poké Center and getting a full recovery.
That's probably enough moaning. I really, really liked Tears of the Kingdom.
The sense of confidence that the team have gained from Breath of the Wild's reception has spurred them on to do a deep dive into the history of Hyrule, the ambitions of Ganondorf, and Zelda's resolute devotion to her kingdom. It reshapes the audience's view of the world and characters, and it's stuff I'm going to be thinking about as I replay Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker or Zelda 1. It takes big swings, and when it works, it really works. It feels like a weird old folktale, and that's what I think The Legend of Zelda ought to be. I loved what they were willing to do here.
There's so many things Tears of the Kingdom does that I just love. It brings back that old N64 scariness. There's stuff in this game I know is going to give kids nightmares, and I've just got to stand up and applaud them for that. Knowing that young audiences will be as petrified of the power this game holds over them as the earlier titles did for me when I was their age makes me feel alive. The fact that this game will serve as the next stop on the Nintendo bus for a bunch of children coming off Mario Odyssey... I can't explain how excited that makes me. The scariness is all handled very carefully. There's nothing traumatic here, but there's places in the game that they will just not want to go to. It's kind of Minecrafty, actually. I don't know if grown-ups appreciate how well that game deals with horror for younger players, but we've all seen a 6 year-old in a Creeper t-shirt. Man, that's just how ReDeads made us. Terror is back, baby.
Sidequests are a bigger part of the formula here. It's where you get a sense of what life in post-Calamity Hyrule is actually like. There's some really good stuff covering Gerudo culture, which is more interesting for how it reflects on the one male of their race, Ganondorf. The strict, authoritarian doctrines that run through the lives of otherwise relatable, likeable characters, and how they integrate into a more inclusive society. Again, it's how these these things shift my perspective on some of my favourite games that I really like. It's not like going back to earlier Metal Gear games and attempting to determine what Cipher's objectives were as they manipulated every action behind the scenes. I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo consulted decades-old internal documentation about how Hyrule works before writing a single line of fetch-quest dialogue. This is the game that the series' core fans are seeing that casual audiences can't appreciate.
I always like a horse in a game, but Zelda's horses are special. Galloping across unknown plains and delicately navigating treacherous cliff faces. That's a vision of adventure that really resonates with me. Breath of the Wild loved its horses, but Tears of the Kingdom goes further. There's so many sidequests about the horses, and so many NPCs who love the horses too. We're past the vision of cold, masculine reliance on animals as tools on our grand quests. We want to feed them and pet them and treat them with love. I find old men talking about beauty of their steeds very sweet. These people have earned their protection from the Demon King.
I've reflected on the decision to call the big new mechanic "Ultrahand". That was the name of the extending grabber toy that got Gunpei Yokoi hired by Nintendo, before going on to create the first handheld game console. Handhelds have always kept Nintendo going, even when their home consoles failed to build enough of an audience to support the business. The Switch's success is largely owed to the groundwork Yokoi laid. The Game & Watch was essentially a fun new use for cheap calculator components, and the Switch took the same kind of approach with the global ubiqity of mobile hardware in the 2010s. Ultrahand in Zelda doesn't have all that much in common with the original toy, but it's a fitting tribute to the man to get the term trending on Twitter as it spearheads the company's biggest game in years.
Repurposing the old locations is a mixed bag. While the diversity and complexity of locales doesn't bring the same sense of awe as they did in 2017, the process of discovery brought back a lot more of the emotion felt on that first playthrough than any of the subsequent discourse and merchandise did. Seeing the familiar mountains, that have now been hollowed out for elaborate Link's Awakening-style mini-dungeon caves, remembering all the other locations that seemed so significant in Breath of the Wild, and rushing over to see what they've done with the place. I think revisiting the previous game's environments kind of cheapens both titles, but the team seem aware of that risk, and it's hard to argue against Aonuma's suggestion that more could be done with this huge world. The developers are keen to make up for any sense of disappointment that the new Zelda game might not seem new enough.
It's all so subjective though. I'm a bitter old bastard who thinks that Zelda will never feel quite as perfect without a set of C-Buttons for quick item access and ocarina manipulation. Something I cherish about my experience with Ocarina of Time was that I was much older when I eventually finished it than I was when I first tried it. Reflecting on how my life had changed in those intervening years greatly complemented my appreciation for the story and themes. It's easy to picture the 11 year-olds who played Breath of the Wild at launch may have the same level of investment in Tears of the Kingdom as they approach adulthood. I don't know if Zelda could ever mean as much to me as Ocarina of Time does, but I'm glad to see Nintendo continue to make these precious memories for people.
This one didn't totally work for me, but they've got so much right here, I'm still open to the idea that the next one might.
I should state that anything I say about a new Taito game should be viewed with the understanding of how rabidly supportive I am of them. They broke out of the late 2000s-early 2010s dark ages for mid-sized Japanese developers, abandoned the security of the Square Enix partnership, and said goodbye to mobile games. They're now attempting to survive on console projects in a crowded marketplace, begging for their tiny, scattered fanbase to carry them through this challenging period.
I think everyone likes Puzzle Bobble. It's one of the most straightforward puzzle games out there. If you haven't been told how to play Tetris or Puyo Puyo, it takes a couple of games to figure out what you're supposed to do, and to become confident enough to start getting better, but Puzzle Bobble's pretty easy to grasp if you have even the barest idea of what a puzzle game is. Match the colours. Point and shoot. There's advanced techniques, with wall bouncing and everything, but it's almost Space Invaders levels of simplicity. It makes sense for Taito to focus on this as their big game for the year, but there's a lot of alternatives these days, and a bunch of the earlier titles that are just as readily available for less. It's hard to pin down what a new game ought to be.
Everybubble strives to appeal to that core fanbase. The people who have opinions about individual entries in the series. I don't know if there's a lot of us, but I can appreciate the intention. We're getting a full brand revival, digging into the most recognisable iconography of both Puzzle and Bubble Bobble, and presenting that as the face of the franchise. The effect is something of a New Super Mario Bros approach, with very on-model representations of the characters, while sacrificing a lot of the weirdness and scruffy charm of the earlier games. On top of this, we've got modes focused on appealing to the most dedicated players, with online versus, a ranked endless mode and a lengthy, challenging campaign, exploring a lot of the game's advanced techniques.
Everybubble comes off a little confused. The presentation is quite stiff and saccharine, while the gameplay focuses almost exclusively on high-level players. It's neat to see rival characters from Bust-A-Move 2 make a return, since the series has never really held onto any of its theming in previous sequels, but lacking that weirdness of the nineties games, they're a little unrecognisable in their new toddler-friendly forms. The series has held onto its jointed 2D rigs for character animation as introduced in 2010s mobile releases of Puzzle Bobble (as well as the odd chibi "Miniroon" characters that I've never been all that fond of), and hold nothing of the personality or human touch of the peppy, exciting animation seen in the early games. I understand every decision made here, but I don't know if it's very effective in appealing to any branch of the audience. It's kind of sweet to see Taito insist on hanging onto cartoony character names established in old NES manuals for their western localisations, but few folk who are this into Puzzle Bobble won't know what the Japanese names are.
It's digging past that unimposing facade and seeing who the game was really made for where you can find its value. This is the big new Puzzle Bobble platform, with its most devoted players in mind. This isn't a vanilla reboot of a legacy franchise. It's a distinct, interesting new entry that treats the fans who may have bought dozens of Puzzle Bobble games already.
The central campaign doesn't play all that much like a standard single-player puzzle game. There's not a lot of space for varied techniques. I call on this comparison too frequently to describe a branch of games design, but they play like VR Missions; strictly defined levels that rely on a deep understanding of each of the game's mechanics to get through. You have to figure out how the game wants you to play them before you can make your way through them. Wall-bounces, special bubbles and bombs all play a crucial part in these levels, though you're never explicitly told which approach you'll need to adopt. It adds an extra layer of puzzle to the proceedings, as you attempt to interpret the designers' intent in each level design. Not bad at all, just maybe not necessarily what you're looking for. It doesn't really feel like it ought to be the central mode in a friendly-looking puzzle game, but there's moments of great tension, strategy and surprise throughout the generous campaign, and the new special bubbles give the game additional depth and variety.
Those looking for a more classic Puzzle Bobble experience will likely have a better time with the Versus mode. There's a local mode that allows you to play against friends or a CPU rival, though it's fairly limited in scope, and doesn't feature the customisation options of a more robust game, or the sense of drive and character of a dedicated arcade mode. Online games are fun, cut-throat and fast, with the board changing dramatically within seconds. It's my favourite mode in the game, and it's great to finally get an idea of how well I do against other dedicated players. Games are formed of best-of-three matches, and there's a great balance of trying to keep your cool, while scouting out the opportunities on the board as your opponent floods you with garbage. There's also a ranking attached to your profile, and a display of your current win streak, further encouraging long-term investment. Matchmaking at launch has been surprisingly easy, given how niche a game this is. I'm a little anxious about the game's ability to hold onto an active online playerbase, months into the future, and temporarily opening up the playerbase to those trying out the free demo gives a false impression of its long-term viability.
Despite its muddled attempts at approachable appearance, the soft-reboot approach is filled with deeplore references for Taito buffs. Taking place on Rainbow Island, saving Chack'ns, and as stiff as the dialogue is, it's at least built on character traits established in Bubble Symphony promotional material. The game's pleasant aesthetic also reins in a lot of Zuntata's ambition for the soundtrack, with mainly twee, forgettable BGM, though there are more exciting tracks buried in the later sections.
Everybubble isn't ideal. 90s Taito fans are going to want something weirder and edgier. Sadly, I think a lot of that stuff is stuck in the past. That charm that came from artists just throwing something in because they had an idea and it made the devs laugh. I can't picture what the development of a modern Parodius would look like. Can't see anyone putting a secret Dog Ending onto a new triple-a horror game, or filling a Nintendo device with scribbled-on photos of the staff. It's all sanded-down, and market focused. Everybubble is the sanitised future of Demolition Man. Sensible and practical, but I want Bub to smoke a cigarette.
I think everyone likes Puzzle Bobble. It's one of the most straightforward puzzle games out there. If you haven't been told how to play Tetris or Puyo Puyo, it takes a couple of games to figure out what you're supposed to do, and to become confident enough to start getting better, but Puzzle Bobble's pretty easy to grasp if you have even the barest idea of what a puzzle game is. Match the colours. Point and shoot. There's advanced techniques, with wall bouncing and everything, but it's almost Space Invaders levels of simplicity. It makes sense for Taito to focus on this as their big game for the year, but there's a lot of alternatives these days, and a bunch of the earlier titles that are just as readily available for less. It's hard to pin down what a new game ought to be.
Everybubble strives to appeal to that core fanbase. The people who have opinions about individual entries in the series. I don't know if there's a lot of us, but I can appreciate the intention. We're getting a full brand revival, digging into the most recognisable iconography of both Puzzle and Bubble Bobble, and presenting that as the face of the franchise. The effect is something of a New Super Mario Bros approach, with very on-model representations of the characters, while sacrificing a lot of the weirdness and scruffy charm of the earlier games. On top of this, we've got modes focused on appealing to the most dedicated players, with online versus, a ranked endless mode and a lengthy, challenging campaign, exploring a lot of the game's advanced techniques.
Everybubble comes off a little confused. The presentation is quite stiff and saccharine, while the gameplay focuses almost exclusively on high-level players. It's neat to see rival characters from Bust-A-Move 2 make a return, since the series has never really held onto any of its theming in previous sequels, but lacking that weirdness of the nineties games, they're a little unrecognisable in their new toddler-friendly forms. The series has held onto its jointed 2D rigs for character animation as introduced in 2010s mobile releases of Puzzle Bobble (as well as the odd chibi "Miniroon" characters that I've never been all that fond of), and hold nothing of the personality or human touch of the peppy, exciting animation seen in the early games. I understand every decision made here, but I don't know if it's very effective in appealing to any branch of the audience. It's kind of sweet to see Taito insist on hanging onto cartoony character names established in old NES manuals for their western localisations, but few folk who are this into Puzzle Bobble won't know what the Japanese names are.
It's digging past that unimposing facade and seeing who the game was really made for where you can find its value. This is the big new Puzzle Bobble platform, with its most devoted players in mind. This isn't a vanilla reboot of a legacy franchise. It's a distinct, interesting new entry that treats the fans who may have bought dozens of Puzzle Bobble games already.
The central campaign doesn't play all that much like a standard single-player puzzle game. There's not a lot of space for varied techniques. I call on this comparison too frequently to describe a branch of games design, but they play like VR Missions; strictly defined levels that rely on a deep understanding of each of the game's mechanics to get through. You have to figure out how the game wants you to play them before you can make your way through them. Wall-bounces, special bubbles and bombs all play a crucial part in these levels, though you're never explicitly told which approach you'll need to adopt. It adds an extra layer of puzzle to the proceedings, as you attempt to interpret the designers' intent in each level design. Not bad at all, just maybe not necessarily what you're looking for. It doesn't really feel like it ought to be the central mode in a friendly-looking puzzle game, but there's moments of great tension, strategy and surprise throughout the generous campaign, and the new special bubbles give the game additional depth and variety.
Those looking for a more classic Puzzle Bobble experience will likely have a better time with the Versus mode. There's a local mode that allows you to play against friends or a CPU rival, though it's fairly limited in scope, and doesn't feature the customisation options of a more robust game, or the sense of drive and character of a dedicated arcade mode. Online games are fun, cut-throat and fast, with the board changing dramatically within seconds. It's my favourite mode in the game, and it's great to finally get an idea of how well I do against other dedicated players. Games are formed of best-of-three matches, and there's a great balance of trying to keep your cool, while scouting out the opportunities on the board as your opponent floods you with garbage. There's also a ranking attached to your profile, and a display of your current win streak, further encouraging long-term investment. Matchmaking at launch has been surprisingly easy, given how niche a game this is. I'm a little anxious about the game's ability to hold onto an active online playerbase, months into the future, and temporarily opening up the playerbase to those trying out the free demo gives a false impression of its long-term viability.
Despite its muddled attempts at approachable appearance, the soft-reboot approach is filled with deeplore references for Taito buffs. Taking place on Rainbow Island, saving Chack'ns, and as stiff as the dialogue is, it's at least built on character traits established in Bubble Symphony promotional material. The game's pleasant aesthetic also reins in a lot of Zuntata's ambition for the soundtrack, with mainly twee, forgettable BGM, though there are more exciting tracks buried in the later sections.
Everybubble isn't ideal. 90s Taito fans are going to want something weirder and edgier. Sadly, I think a lot of that stuff is stuck in the past. That charm that came from artists just throwing something in because they had an idea and it made the devs laugh. I can't picture what the development of a modern Parodius would look like. Can't see anyone putting a secret Dog Ending onto a new triple-a horror game, or filling a Nintendo device with scribbled-on photos of the staff. It's all sanded-down, and market focused. Everybubble is the sanitised future of Demolition Man. Sensible and practical, but I want Bub to smoke a cigarette.
2001
In the early 2000s, Mario was weird. This was before the Great Unification era, heralded by the launch of New Super Mario Bros. The rules were loose and ill-defined. Miyamoto had his own, concrete ideas of what Mario was, but he wasn't insistent upon them. If a team took on a Mario project, it was theirs'.
Super Mario Advance is, far and away, my favourite of these outliers. Often dismissed by Serious Mario Adults as a noisy, redundant remake of SMB2, which isn't even a "real Mario game" because of Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic and Fuji TV and Mario is just reskinned Imajin and -- SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!! -- Mario 2 was one of the core foundations upon which Mario was built. It's the first game in the series that didn't just spread through word of mouth, but pre-release hype for Mario. In America, you'll struggle to find 80s Mario merchandise that isn't themed around SMB2. It's the game that the Super Mario Super Show was based on. When Japan canonised it as a proper Mario game, they brought it out on a peppy pink Famicom cartridge and went straight to work remaking it for inclusion alongside its siblings on the Super Mario Collection. Mario 2 is so fundamentally important to the series. I want to take screwattack.com's badfaith arguments and forcefully hold them underwater until they become cold, limp and grey.
Super Mario Bros. 2 was always quite cruel and unfocused, though. You really had to hope lady luck was on your side with the slot machine minigame, or you'd be out of lives by World 3-2. Super Mario Advance recognises that human beings are supposed to play this game. And they're supposed to enjoy it. SMA is always rewarding you. Throw a big baddie against the floor, and you get a heart. Collect five cherries, and you get a starman. Kill enough baddies with a projectile, and you'll get a 1-up. Collect five red coins, and that's another 1-up. You're really encouraged to poke around and discover all the secrets. Removing SMB1's time limits puts more focus on exploration and puzzles. The levels themselves don't feel too toned-down from their old NES versions, and having less chance of encountering a Game Over screen doesn't dampen the excitement (at least for me). Advance is an easier version of the game, sure, but each new power-up requires a little ingenuity from the player, and these opportunities have been injected into the game with careful consideration.
I love the voices. I really love the voices. I can't emphasize enough that I love Super Mario Advance's voices. Birdo in the spin-offs has generally been portrayed as some kind of burbling monster thing. In Advance, she's pompous, camp and very annoyed that you keep killing her. She's brilliant. So much fun. The whole Mario crew are having so much fun, too. It's a delight to hear Peach's exclamations as she picks up items and big turnips, after having spent so much time locked up. Players loved how much fun and character was expressed in Mario 64's voice clips, and Advance takes that to the next level. Each time you encounter a boss, you're giddy with excitement over how these weirdos are going to taunt you. Charles Martinet saw Super Mario and had a great voice up his sleeve for Nintendo, and he approaches Mouser and Tryclyde with exactly the same sense of whimsy. He and Jen Taylor do such a great job finding pairing these designs with voices, and they really sound like they're having a great time in the delivery. The voice clips are plastered all over the game, and I'm smiling all the time. It feels like a completely natural elaboration upon Mario 2's inherent silliness. The team have exactly the same view of what this game is as I do.
I just love Mario 2, and Advance is such a great celebration of its appeal. The game has always felt great. I think there's a kind of secret sauce to how good diagonal attacks feel in games. I've always loved the Red Hot Kick in Viewtiful Joe. Throwing items in Mario 2 always feels like that. A consistent, satisfying force. The logic of being able to stand on a flying egg and pick it up. It's great to play around with, and it pairs well with the game's seaside promenade-inspired presentation. The curtains and ragtime. Coconut shy stuff. Classic, whimsical fun.
If I had to criticise Advance - you know, if I was really pushed - I might... maybe... say that the scaling of the level design for the GBA is sometimes a little unfortunate when it means it's one tile short of holding the full horizontal space of the vertical sections on-screen without scrolling. I don't know what kind of threat you'd have to hold against me before I ever mentioned that, though.
I even have a lot of affection for the washed-out colours. Admittedly a curious presentation choice that some early GBA games adopted, I think it really works for Mario 2. It's supposed to be a dream, and I find the haze adds to that. I just find pastels kind of cute, as opposed to All-Stars' relatively garish vibrance.
I just love Super Mario Advance. 2001 is one of the big gaming years for me, and I find it very fun that this is the Mario game paired alongside GTA3 and MGS2. It's such a goofy little game, but it's a great showcase for the enduring sense of fun that was cultivated on the NES. Silly, wholesome and really stupid. Mario Advance is what games is. A concentrated vat of the stuff. Step right up, if you're ready to get... toasted.
Super Mario Advance is, far and away, my favourite of these outliers. Often dismissed by Serious Mario Adults as a noisy, redundant remake of SMB2, which isn't even a "real Mario game" because of Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic and Fuji TV and Mario is just reskinned Imajin and -- SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!! -- Mario 2 was one of the core foundations upon which Mario was built. It's the first game in the series that didn't just spread through word of mouth, but pre-release hype for Mario. In America, you'll struggle to find 80s Mario merchandise that isn't themed around SMB2. It's the game that the Super Mario Super Show was based on. When Japan canonised it as a proper Mario game, they brought it out on a peppy pink Famicom cartridge and went straight to work remaking it for inclusion alongside its siblings on the Super Mario Collection. Mario 2 is so fundamentally important to the series. I want to take screwattack.com's badfaith arguments and forcefully hold them underwater until they become cold, limp and grey.
Super Mario Bros. 2 was always quite cruel and unfocused, though. You really had to hope lady luck was on your side with the slot machine minigame, or you'd be out of lives by World 3-2. Super Mario Advance recognises that human beings are supposed to play this game. And they're supposed to enjoy it. SMA is always rewarding you. Throw a big baddie against the floor, and you get a heart. Collect five cherries, and you get a starman. Kill enough baddies with a projectile, and you'll get a 1-up. Collect five red coins, and that's another 1-up. You're really encouraged to poke around and discover all the secrets. Removing SMB1's time limits puts more focus on exploration and puzzles. The levels themselves don't feel too toned-down from their old NES versions, and having less chance of encountering a Game Over screen doesn't dampen the excitement (at least for me). Advance is an easier version of the game, sure, but each new power-up requires a little ingenuity from the player, and these opportunities have been injected into the game with careful consideration.
I love the voices. I really love the voices. I can't emphasize enough that I love Super Mario Advance's voices. Birdo in the spin-offs has generally been portrayed as some kind of burbling monster thing. In Advance, she's pompous, camp and very annoyed that you keep killing her. She's brilliant. So much fun. The whole Mario crew are having so much fun, too. It's a delight to hear Peach's exclamations as she picks up items and big turnips, after having spent so much time locked up. Players loved how much fun and character was expressed in Mario 64's voice clips, and Advance takes that to the next level. Each time you encounter a boss, you're giddy with excitement over how these weirdos are going to taunt you. Charles Martinet saw Super Mario and had a great voice up his sleeve for Nintendo, and he approaches Mouser and Tryclyde with exactly the same sense of whimsy. He and Jen Taylor do such a great job finding pairing these designs with voices, and they really sound like they're having a great time in the delivery. The voice clips are plastered all over the game, and I'm smiling all the time. It feels like a completely natural elaboration upon Mario 2's inherent silliness. The team have exactly the same view of what this game is as I do.
I just love Mario 2, and Advance is such a great celebration of its appeal. The game has always felt great. I think there's a kind of secret sauce to how good diagonal attacks feel in games. I've always loved the Red Hot Kick in Viewtiful Joe. Throwing items in Mario 2 always feels like that. A consistent, satisfying force. The logic of being able to stand on a flying egg and pick it up. It's great to play around with, and it pairs well with the game's seaside promenade-inspired presentation. The curtains and ragtime. Coconut shy stuff. Classic, whimsical fun.
If I had to criticise Advance - you know, if I was really pushed - I might... maybe... say that the scaling of the level design for the GBA is sometimes a little unfortunate when it means it's one tile short of holding the full horizontal space of the vertical sections on-screen without scrolling. I don't know what kind of threat you'd have to hold against me before I ever mentioned that, though.
I even have a lot of affection for the washed-out colours. Admittedly a curious presentation choice that some early GBA games adopted, I think it really works for Mario 2. It's supposed to be a dream, and I find the haze adds to that. I just find pastels kind of cute, as opposed to All-Stars' relatively garish vibrance.
I just love Super Mario Advance. 2001 is one of the big gaming years for me, and I find it very fun that this is the Mario game paired alongside GTA3 and MGS2. It's such a goofy little game, but it's a great showcase for the enduring sense of fun that was cultivated on the NES. Silly, wholesome and really stupid. Mario Advance is what games is. A concentrated vat of the stuff. Step right up, if you're ready to get... toasted.
1993
Pop'n TwinBee is very cute. Unlike Parodius, Harmful Park and all that ilk, the priority seems to be on bright, appealing presentation over filling a shooter with a bunch of mad shit. It's a really pretty little game, and a very fitting mid-transition point in Konami's history between their cartoon licences and Tokimeki Memorial. It's from the era when 2-player co-ops were really targetted at couples, and they wanted to make something that would appeal to girls more than Contra and Commando.
I'm not a big vertical shooter guy, but there's a lot of shared lineage with personal favourite, Parodius. The series staple of juggling bells until they turn the desired colour is straight out of TwinBee. TwinBee's much more restrained and less funny, though. There's not a lot to laugh at, though shooting a procession of parading babies is pretty good. Cuteness is the focus, and the little animated interstitials between levels are especially nice. Like the animations they'd play at either side of the ads in early 90s anime. The vintage is definitely part of the charm.
The game plays a little like Xevious, with the ability to both shoot in front of you, and bomb targets on the ground. Pop'n seems to forget about this for long stretches, though charitable players might suggest this adds to the game's sense of variety. There's stackable power-ups, including clones of your ship, much like the "Option" from Gradius. It's got enough going on to keep you interested.
The biggest knock against the game are the few duff levels. One has you flying over an airship, targetting turrets with bombs. It seems to go on forever, as you fly aside it, without much change to the background. There's no real checkpoint system either, and if you die on the boss after a level that might have gone on for ten minutes, you'll have to go right back to the start to try it again. I didn't actually finish the game, because I died twice on the last boss, so I just turned my SNES off and watched the explosion on YouTube.
Pop'n TwinBee is available on Nintendo Switch Online, and I'd recommend that anyone interested try it there, as the ability to make your own saves could really be a godsend for some of the longer levels. It is a game that looks really great on a CRT, though. There's some really nice waving and transparency effects on the underwater level that I don't think can be captured nearly as well on a modern display. That old Konami vibrance really shines here. A nice summer evening, drinking beer and playing the SNES.
I'm not a big vertical shooter guy, but there's a lot of shared lineage with personal favourite, Parodius. The series staple of juggling bells until they turn the desired colour is straight out of TwinBee. TwinBee's much more restrained and less funny, though. There's not a lot to laugh at, though shooting a procession of parading babies is pretty good. Cuteness is the focus, and the little animated interstitials between levels are especially nice. Like the animations they'd play at either side of the ads in early 90s anime. The vintage is definitely part of the charm.
The game plays a little like Xevious, with the ability to both shoot in front of you, and bomb targets on the ground. Pop'n seems to forget about this for long stretches, though charitable players might suggest this adds to the game's sense of variety. There's stackable power-ups, including clones of your ship, much like the "Option" from Gradius. It's got enough going on to keep you interested.
The biggest knock against the game are the few duff levels. One has you flying over an airship, targetting turrets with bombs. It seems to go on forever, as you fly aside it, without much change to the background. There's no real checkpoint system either, and if you die on the boss after a level that might have gone on for ten minutes, you'll have to go right back to the start to try it again. I didn't actually finish the game, because I died twice on the last boss, so I just turned my SNES off and watched the explosion on YouTube.
Pop'n TwinBee is available on Nintendo Switch Online, and I'd recommend that anyone interested try it there, as the ability to make your own saves could really be a godsend for some of the longer levels. It is a game that looks really great on a CRT, though. There's some really nice waving and transparency effects on the underwater level that I don't think can be captured nearly as well on a modern display. That old Konami vibrance really shines here. A nice summer evening, drinking beer and playing the SNES.
2007
"?? MYSTERY BAG ??" review - Part one of eight
Today, I attended PLAY Expo Glasgow 2023. They rent out a hockey rink and fill it with a load of arcade machines, old home computers and vendor booths. I didn't have a lot of time to spend there, but I'd regret it if I didn't go, and it was nice to have a shot of Dragon Wang on the Sega Mark III. One of the vendors was selling a £10 "?? MYSTERY BAG ??", adorned with Google image search results for "Sega", "Nintendo", "Xbox" and "PlayStation". I'm such a mark for these things.
I have fond memories of a subscription service called "My Retro Game Box" that ran during the height of Loot Crate's popularity. They'd ask which consoles you owned, which games you had for them, and what kinds of games you'd like more of. You got your fair share of stinkers, sure, but it's also the service that gave me Super Mario Advance, Kirby's Dream Land and Skate or Die: Bad n Rad. A wee surprise each month, and even the rotters were a good laugh for 20 minutes. The folk running it were real champs, and they got nothing but grief from cunts on Twitter complaining about being sent games like Shenmue and Ristar. It was unsustainable, and I don't think they kept it running for even a whole year.
That allure still sits with me, though. The games you didn't know you wanted to play.
I opened my bag.
TouchMaster for the DS is a collection of 23 touchscreen-based games from Midway. Despite their history of arcade hits such as Mortal Kombat, Rampage and NARC, they've opted to fill this with simple puzzle and card games. This was their pitch at the Touch Generations market, and there's little to draw the interest of gamers. It's also very skewed towards an American audience. There's a trivia game here, which asks you how many stitches are on a baseball and which sitcom Haley Joel Osment was on in 1997. There's an attempt at a Tetris-like puzzle game, but it's about coloured balls with numbers on them, and you can match three balls by either their colour or number, and it's really ugly and boring.
Those looking for action will be most drawn to "Hot Hoops", where five identical basketball players in #81 jerseys stand in a line as a hoop moves left and right at a constant speed. Touch each player in time and they will throw the ball at the hoop. Find the rhythm, and you'll play a perfect game.
I'm committed to reviewing each one of these eight games, to find some value in the £10 I spent on my bag.
I do not recommend TouchMaster.
Today, I attended PLAY Expo Glasgow 2023. They rent out a hockey rink and fill it with a load of arcade machines, old home computers and vendor booths. I didn't have a lot of time to spend there, but I'd regret it if I didn't go, and it was nice to have a shot of Dragon Wang on the Sega Mark III. One of the vendors was selling a £10 "?? MYSTERY BAG ??", adorned with Google image search results for "Sega", "Nintendo", "Xbox" and "PlayStation". I'm such a mark for these things.
I have fond memories of a subscription service called "My Retro Game Box" that ran during the height of Loot Crate's popularity. They'd ask which consoles you owned, which games you had for them, and what kinds of games you'd like more of. You got your fair share of stinkers, sure, but it's also the service that gave me Super Mario Advance, Kirby's Dream Land and Skate or Die: Bad n Rad. A wee surprise each month, and even the rotters were a good laugh for 20 minutes. The folk running it were real champs, and they got nothing but grief from cunts on Twitter complaining about being sent games like Shenmue and Ristar. It was unsustainable, and I don't think they kept it running for even a whole year.
That allure still sits with me, though. The games you didn't know you wanted to play.
I opened my bag.
TouchMaster for the DS is a collection of 23 touchscreen-based games from Midway. Despite their history of arcade hits such as Mortal Kombat, Rampage and NARC, they've opted to fill this with simple puzzle and card games. This was their pitch at the Touch Generations market, and there's little to draw the interest of gamers. It's also very skewed towards an American audience. There's a trivia game here, which asks you how many stitches are on a baseball and which sitcom Haley Joel Osment was on in 1997. There's an attempt at a Tetris-like puzzle game, but it's about coloured balls with numbers on them, and you can match three balls by either their colour or number, and it's really ugly and boring.
Those looking for action will be most drawn to "Hot Hoops", where five identical basketball players in #81 jerseys stand in a line as a hoop moves left and right at a constant speed. Touch each player in time and they will throw the ball at the hoop. Find the rhythm, and you'll play a perfect game.
I'm committed to reviewing each one of these eight games, to find some value in the £10 I spent on my bag.
I do not recommend TouchMaster.
1990
As you may be aware, I recently got my SNES modded. Recapped, retrobrited and regionless. This thing I bought out of a plastic tray, packed with VHS tapes at the Orkney Auction Mart and kept in my mate's garage for months, is now a superSNES. This thing that had been forced to run games slightly slower, and in weird, squashed formats, is now compatible with the full range of Super Famicom games. The pain of being shackled to Europe's voltage regulation standards finally pays off with how good RGB SCART looks on NTSC/J games. Running PAL games in 60Hz mode is a bit of a crapshoot though, with some games running too fast or producing graphical errors, depending on how thoroughly the code was altered for their European releases. It became a pressing issue that I didn't own a Super Famicom copy of Super Mario Bros. 4: Super Mario World. I'm relieved to say, this problem has now been resolved.
I'm not strictly an original hardware guy. I've been through the wringer. I've completed games via substandard ports and smartphone emulators, and enjoyed it. I really want to undercut any sense of elitism, when it comes to how you opt to play games. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the premium options, though. The classic core Mario games have been explored so thoroughly by so many people, they've become kind of shapeless. I think that's the appeal of the original Japanese releases of Japanese games for me. They're the genuine article. Everything else is some kind of adaptation. If you play a SNES cart, that's a version that's been altered for a western audience. I want to remove as many artificial barriers between Takashi Tezuka and myself as possible.
The big thing about Super Mario World for me is how confidently it introduces concepts and how delightfully it plays around with them, with invention and good humour. No ability seems gimmicky or out of step with the surrounding design, but an entirely natural extension of Mario's moveset. Climbing on fences, kicking held items vertically above you, flying with the cape, and of course, riding Yoshi all feel like logical extensions of the Mario 3 gameplay. I still think it's the best Mario has ever felt. Like Resi 4 and Tony Hawk's 2, it's one of those key games that are so mechanically rich and satisfying that you've got to come back to them again and again. The abstract ways it allows you to express your intentions. You need to come back and speak this language again.
There's so much fun in the character designs and concepts. How level designers wanted to present challenges and opportunities, and how the artists presented that idea through a really big mole in sunglasses or fire-breathing triceratops on a ferris wheel. It's so fucking good, man. No tropes or clichés. Just a team of brilliant, delightful people making something brilliant. Mario World doesn't attempt to explore a familiar theme or fantasy. Its theme is "fun game", and every design consideration has been made with the intention of delivering that. It plays more into this dynamic than ever before. The very first level, where the game is establishing the world for the first time, getting players comfortable with the kinds of things they can expect to see, ends with a fucking American football guy charging at you. Coherence is out the window. We're here for fun. Players don't aspire to be a funny wee man running around with a moustache, but regardless, they love being that guy. That's pure videogames. I love Mario.
Each level serves multiple purposes, and the incentives to replay them help justify the "World" branding. Stuffed with secrets and multiple exits that lead to completely different routes through the world map. There's a newfound depth to these levels, and your interactions with them are instantly more interesting than anything in the previous games, as you question if there's some wild new secret hiding behind each point of suspicion. The Forest of Illusion is quite a divisive aspect of the game. The most obvious level exits are often the wrong ones, and you'll have to dig a little harder if you want to make your way to Chocolate Island. It's insisting the player approach the levels a little differently. You'll need to replay these levels and try different things to progress, but quietly, the whole game has been playing with these hidden routes and secret items. Your eyes are open to the possibilities now. It's prodding you to go back and discover Star Road and the Switch Palaces. You might not have to do the Forest of Illusion at all, if you find the right secrets.
That playfulness is in the soundtrack too. The eerie arrangement of the main theme for the Ghost Houses, or the soundchannel reserved for a bongo line if you ever find a Yoshi during a level. Music written with real appreciation for how Mario runs and jumps around the TV screen. As with the great film composers, Kondo fully understands the vibe of the material and expresses it in a way that fully communicates that to the audience. Nintendo's composers are every bit as consequential as their designers, programmers and artists.
Super Mario World is so accomplished, it's bulletproof. In Mario 3, or 64, or Galaxy, you can see the oversights and compromises. The ideas that looked great earlier in development, but didn't really fit when implemented into the game. The little issues that cropped up because of technical limitations or time constraints or whatever. They're just not here. When other SNES teams were attempting to showcase a new technology, they put that front and centre in the design. F-Zero, Star Fox, Pilotwings. They're almost a little utilitarian in how explicit their tech demo appeal is. Super Mario World wasn't made with that intention, which had many comparing it unfavourably to Sonic the Hedgehog's more flashy presentation, at the time. It just wanted to use the technology tastefully, to make the best Mario game they could, and it's become timeless as a result. The game will never become redundant due to some new technological achievement. It doesn't play from that rulebook. It's just a funny wee game with a funny wee man. There will never be a better version of this.
There's a degree of subjectivity to all this, though. You know with comedy and music and stuff, that some stuff completely works for you, and you know there's people you can show it to and feel confident that they'll get it just as much as you do. Sometimes you're wrong, and they'll be numb to it. That's not a mark against their intelligence or morality or cultural depth. It's disappointing, but you can't hold it against them. Super Mario World totally 'gets' why I love games this much. It is the game. I know not everybody feels so passionately about it as I do. I insist to myself that they're not wrong for being like that, and they don't have to. I do want them to know every reason I love it so much, though. To be aware of the things they're denying themselves. I'm just going to leave this Big Boo on the table. It's up to you whether you get a tattoo of it or not.
I'm not strictly an original hardware guy. I've been through the wringer. I've completed games via substandard ports and smartphone emulators, and enjoyed it. I really want to undercut any sense of elitism, when it comes to how you opt to play games. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the premium options, though. The classic core Mario games have been explored so thoroughly by so many people, they've become kind of shapeless. I think that's the appeal of the original Japanese releases of Japanese games for me. They're the genuine article. Everything else is some kind of adaptation. If you play a SNES cart, that's a version that's been altered for a western audience. I want to remove as many artificial barriers between Takashi Tezuka and myself as possible.
The big thing about Super Mario World for me is how confidently it introduces concepts and how delightfully it plays around with them, with invention and good humour. No ability seems gimmicky or out of step with the surrounding design, but an entirely natural extension of Mario's moveset. Climbing on fences, kicking held items vertically above you, flying with the cape, and of course, riding Yoshi all feel like logical extensions of the Mario 3 gameplay. I still think it's the best Mario has ever felt. Like Resi 4 and Tony Hawk's 2, it's one of those key games that are so mechanically rich and satisfying that you've got to come back to them again and again. The abstract ways it allows you to express your intentions. You need to come back and speak this language again.
There's so much fun in the character designs and concepts. How level designers wanted to present challenges and opportunities, and how the artists presented that idea through a really big mole in sunglasses or fire-breathing triceratops on a ferris wheel. It's so fucking good, man. No tropes or clichés. Just a team of brilliant, delightful people making something brilliant. Mario World doesn't attempt to explore a familiar theme or fantasy. Its theme is "fun game", and every design consideration has been made with the intention of delivering that. It plays more into this dynamic than ever before. The very first level, where the game is establishing the world for the first time, getting players comfortable with the kinds of things they can expect to see, ends with a fucking American football guy charging at you. Coherence is out the window. We're here for fun. Players don't aspire to be a funny wee man running around with a moustache, but regardless, they love being that guy. That's pure videogames. I love Mario.
Each level serves multiple purposes, and the incentives to replay them help justify the "World" branding. Stuffed with secrets and multiple exits that lead to completely different routes through the world map. There's a newfound depth to these levels, and your interactions with them are instantly more interesting than anything in the previous games, as you question if there's some wild new secret hiding behind each point of suspicion. The Forest of Illusion is quite a divisive aspect of the game. The most obvious level exits are often the wrong ones, and you'll have to dig a little harder if you want to make your way to Chocolate Island. It's insisting the player approach the levels a little differently. You'll need to replay these levels and try different things to progress, but quietly, the whole game has been playing with these hidden routes and secret items. Your eyes are open to the possibilities now. It's prodding you to go back and discover Star Road and the Switch Palaces. You might not have to do the Forest of Illusion at all, if you find the right secrets.
That playfulness is in the soundtrack too. The eerie arrangement of the main theme for the Ghost Houses, or the soundchannel reserved for a bongo line if you ever find a Yoshi during a level. Music written with real appreciation for how Mario runs and jumps around the TV screen. As with the great film composers, Kondo fully understands the vibe of the material and expresses it in a way that fully communicates that to the audience. Nintendo's composers are every bit as consequential as their designers, programmers and artists.
Super Mario World is so accomplished, it's bulletproof. In Mario 3, or 64, or Galaxy, you can see the oversights and compromises. The ideas that looked great earlier in development, but didn't really fit when implemented into the game. The little issues that cropped up because of technical limitations or time constraints or whatever. They're just not here. When other SNES teams were attempting to showcase a new technology, they put that front and centre in the design. F-Zero, Star Fox, Pilotwings. They're almost a little utilitarian in how explicit their tech demo appeal is. Super Mario World wasn't made with that intention, which had many comparing it unfavourably to Sonic the Hedgehog's more flashy presentation, at the time. It just wanted to use the technology tastefully, to make the best Mario game they could, and it's become timeless as a result. The game will never become redundant due to some new technological achievement. It doesn't play from that rulebook. It's just a funny wee game with a funny wee man. There will never be a better version of this.
There's a degree of subjectivity to all this, though. You know with comedy and music and stuff, that some stuff completely works for you, and you know there's people you can show it to and feel confident that they'll get it just as much as you do. Sometimes you're wrong, and they'll be numb to it. That's not a mark against their intelligence or morality or cultural depth. It's disappointing, but you can't hold it against them. Super Mario World totally 'gets' why I love games this much. It is the game. I know not everybody feels so passionately about it as I do. I insist to myself that they're not wrong for being like that, and they don't have to. I do want them to know every reason I love it so much, though. To be aware of the things they're denying themselves. I'm just going to leave this Big Boo on the table. It's up to you whether you get a tattoo of it or not.
1999
"?? MYSTERY BAG ??" review - Part two of eight
You want Freak on a Leash in your intro? Your search is over.
Look, I don't know anything about football, and that will become abundantly clear as I review this game. I like Taito's Football Champ/Hat Trick Hero and Monkey Football in Ape Escape 2, but that's about the extent of my appreciation for the sport.
My primary point of interest is that Sunsoft had some involvement with the production of this game. They made Hebereke on the Famicom, you know. How did they get here? Maybe I've been too quick to dismiss Puma Street Soccer. There's some outside chance of seeing overhead birds taking swirly dogshit dumps on the players.
The big thing I like about Puma Street Soccer is how limited its commentary system is. Any interaction with the ball comes with a one-second low bitrate transatlantic comment. Like a Cary Grant HitClip. "Great move!" "Don't let him get away!" "What a skill!". It's kind of a shame when a genre is so dominated by two competing franchises, the wartier outliers get totally forgotten, but charity shop bargain bin fodder doesn't often come as amusing as this.
You fumble around for a while, not knowing how to play a football game, and then the "Super Shot" comes in and knocks you sideways. Somehow, players can make a red energy bar come out of their kicks, and the ball goes double the speed. I don't know how you do this. I did not receive a Puma Street Soccer manual. There is a "CONTROLS" option in the pause screen, but it simply lets you decide which controller will operate either team. Super Shots are a mid-game surprise, akin to Aerith's death.
Despite the high-energy, no rules version of the game that's being portrayed, I don't think there's a tackle button in Puma Street Soccer. I don't know how to get the ball when the other team has it. I was just trying to stand in the middle of their passes.
In fact, I don't know how to do anything in this game. All my shots go well over the goal, and the opponents just keep kicking at my goalie until they get in. I'm being made a fool of. One of the victory celebrations is the Ally McBeal oogachaka baby dance though, so that picked me up.
After what feels like all fucking day, my game ends.
SCOTLAND - 2
ENGLAND - 20
Goodbye from the timeline of events in my life, Puma Street Soccer.
You want Freak on a Leash in your intro? Your search is over.
Look, I don't know anything about football, and that will become abundantly clear as I review this game. I like Taito's Football Champ/Hat Trick Hero and Monkey Football in Ape Escape 2, but that's about the extent of my appreciation for the sport.
My primary point of interest is that Sunsoft had some involvement with the production of this game. They made Hebereke on the Famicom, you know. How did they get here? Maybe I've been too quick to dismiss Puma Street Soccer. There's some outside chance of seeing overhead birds taking swirly dogshit dumps on the players.
The big thing I like about Puma Street Soccer is how limited its commentary system is. Any interaction with the ball comes with a one-second low bitrate transatlantic comment. Like a Cary Grant HitClip. "Great move!" "Don't let him get away!" "What a skill!". It's kind of a shame when a genre is so dominated by two competing franchises, the wartier outliers get totally forgotten, but charity shop bargain bin fodder doesn't often come as amusing as this.
You fumble around for a while, not knowing how to play a football game, and then the "Super Shot" comes in and knocks you sideways. Somehow, players can make a red energy bar come out of their kicks, and the ball goes double the speed. I don't know how you do this. I did not receive a Puma Street Soccer manual. There is a "CONTROLS" option in the pause screen, but it simply lets you decide which controller will operate either team. Super Shots are a mid-game surprise, akin to Aerith's death.
Despite the high-energy, no rules version of the game that's being portrayed, I don't think there's a tackle button in Puma Street Soccer. I don't know how to get the ball when the other team has it. I was just trying to stand in the middle of their passes.
In fact, I don't know how to do anything in this game. All my shots go well over the goal, and the opponents just keep kicking at my goalie until they get in. I'm being made a fool of. One of the victory celebrations is the Ally McBeal oogachaka baby dance though, so that picked me up.
After what feels like all fucking day, my game ends.
SCOTLAND - 2
ENGLAND - 20
Goodbye from the timeline of events in my life, Puma Street Soccer.