What's this? A sequel to my all-time favourite Gamecube game? All I could think when I first heard about it was "hell yes". I picked up the game as soon as I could and started playing it immediately. And it was a lot of fun. I will say, however, that despite all of the hype I had for it, the game did not click with me initially. It took some time to get used to everything new that the game added visually and in terms of the mechanics. I actually did take a hiatus from playing the game for a while 'cos I lost interest, but was all-in when I went back to it. I do not like this game as much as I did the first one, but it was still enjoyable overall. Maybe someday I will return to it.

Here we are with Smash 4. This was my first experience with Smash 4, but I had not become competitive with Smash yet. I still had no one to play with so I was stuck just playing it on my own like with the others. Smash was still just something I played on few occasions and without a story mode like Subspace I had no real reason to play it extensively. Hell, I didn't even know Smash attacks were a thing. The character I did best with, SOMEHOW, was Little Mac. Yes, I mained Little Mac in Smash 4 on the 3DS. Fuckin' sue me. Anyway, Smash 4 is almost my least favourite of them, be it 3DS or Wii U. I couldn't go back to this one even if I wanted to. My copy fucked off somewhere and I have no idea where it could be.

Super Mario 3D Land. An attempt to breathe even newer life into a formula that had started to die off in popularity that for the most part worked, if only temporarily. Following the popularity of New Super Mario Bros, Nintendo would continue to make games in a similar style with some minor changes between games. The popularity was slowly dying down, so in an attempt to reinvent the style for another time and take advantage of the 3D gimmick of the 3DS, Super Mario 3D Land came to be. Adding a z-axis did just the trick. 3D Land is a lot of fun and different enough to stand out against the "New" series.

New Super Mario Bros 2. Despite this name, it is the 4th game in the "New" series, and it should've been the last. Nintendo was milking the popularity hard and released too many of these things. The coin gimmick was an attempt to make this game different from the others, but being by and large the same, it doesn't really work. I still have not finished it. Any time I work up the desire to play, I lose interest after a couple of levels. It just is not different enough and is just more of the same. It appears I am far from the only person to feel this way. I cannot say with any level of certainty if I will ever finish it. Don't worry, I'm sure the 3D Land/World trend will fare better...right? (Nervous laughter) Right?

This is the third entry in the Shantae series, and is a damn good one. It may very well be my favourite one. It follows the Metroid-like gameplay style of its predecessors but still keeps things fresh with a slightly different art style and different mechanics as far as abilities are concerned. Like the other Shantae games, there are different endings depending on how quickly you beat the game and if you collect everything or not. The game looks nice and plays well. Jake Kaufman does a great job with the music as always.

Metroid: Samus Returns returns (haHAA) us to the classic Metroid style, which was a long time coming, no doubt about that. The decision to reimagine Metroid II was an interesting and welcome one. Metroid II was...not great, let's just say. It seems like AM2R put forth the idea of how well a Metroid II remake would do and how much fans miss the classic style. The aeion abilities added fun and interesting mechanics while also doing interesting things with the usual abilities. I had much fun with this one and I do place it highly within my favourites.

The Metroid game that started it all. This game has not aged well, and it shows. Especially if you try to compare it to the later ones. Despite this, I still enjoyed it. It actually was the first Metroid I played, so I did not have the bias of later games holding back the experience. I actually had fun making my own maps, which added to the experience for me. I feel like I enjoyed the game more by doing that. So yeah. Though I enjoyed the game, it is not free of issues and regardless of how I feel, I recognise it is not the greatest. Music was still solid, though.

Castlevania is a series that I had recently fallen in love with. As usual when it comes to a game series, I start with the first and work my way up from there. Castlevania is one of those series (at least as far as the classic Castlevanias go) that follows the notorious difficulty that many NES games have as a hold-over from arcades where the games were made difficult to squeeze every last quarter out of you. The difficulty of Castlevania games is something Konami did for another purpose which I will discuss when I talk about Castlevania III. Controls are stiff and mid-air directionality cannot be controlled. If you jump, you must commit. This is intentional and adds to the difficulty. It may feel unfair at times, but it isn't really. Not to me, at least. It is difficult within reason, and if the player fails, it is on the player, not the game. 'Tis a challenge, and a fun one at that.

Ah, Simon's Quest. An infamous one. Those who were around in Youtube's early years will remember things like the AVGN review or Egoraptor's Sequelitis. The game definitely has problems. From minor annoyances such as WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE and THE MORNING SUN HAS VANQUISHED THE TERRIBLE NIGHT every few minutes to more problematic issues such as the rubbish translations leading to extremely cryptic hints for where you need to go and do. There is a reason there are emulator patches to make the translations no longer cryptic. Much like Zelda II, this game took a different approach to the gameplay and became an RPG. though the combat itself was mostly unchanged from what Castlevania had always been before the Igavanias. Having different mansions to go to to acquire the parts of Dracula was an interesting change. The game controls well enough and I do not have any complaints in that department. The game is not as bad as it is made out to be, and having a walkthrough actually makes it playable. It still is not that good. I enjoyed my time with it, but it is not among the best. I'd say give it a go, but do not go in with your expectations too high. One good thing to come from this game that no one would argue against is the legendary Bloody Tears. Castlevania games always have fantastic music, and Simon's Quest is no exception to that.

Okay. This one seems to stand out among the games I've played and those who know what I've played may understand why I say that. For those unaware, this is the Japanese version of Castlevania III, and it is the version I played. One may find it strange that I played the Japanese version of this and the NTSC versions of the others, and via the Switch no less. Allow me to explain. The Castlevania Anniversary Collection has the Japanese versions of all of the games (with the exception of Simon's Quest) in addition to the North American releases. As I already stated, I played the Japanese version of Castlevania III. Please permit me to explain why. This is already getting pretty lengthy and I haven't even reviewed the game yet, but please bear with me.
The Famicom version has a chip in it that the NES does not have called the VRC6 chip. What this chip did was allow for better music and in some cases better graphics. One reason I played the Japanese version was so that I could listen to an even better version of the music which was already incredible to begin with. The other reason is that the game is not brutally unfair. What I speak of is the fact that the NTSC version of Castlevania III was intentionally made harder. Konami, and Nintendo sometimes as well, despise the American video game rental system. As a way to retaliate against it and discourage renting the games over buying them, they would unfairly ramp the difficulty.
Now to actually review it. After Simon's Quest, Konami returned to the original style. This time, you play as Trevor Belmont (or Ralph Belmond in my case with it being the Japanese version), a distant ancestor of Simon. In addition to Trevor, there are three other characters the player can play as depending on the path the player takes, 'cos that's a thing I forgot to mention. There are multiple paths you can take. You have Grant with his higher jump and ability to climb walls and ceilings, Sypha Belnades has attack magic, and Alucard can transform into a bat and fly at the cost of hearts. Though the difficulty on the Japanese version is noticeably easier than the NTSC version, it is by no means easy. Castlevania III is the most difficult of the Castlevania games regardless of the localisation one plays. Regardless of the difficulty, I had a lot of fun with the game and place Castlevania III as my 3rd favourite of the classic Castlevania games.