LEGObrionicle
2011
Was going to go into a whole thing about this really being a tool meant to simulate a game’s system, and normally you wouldn’t classify that as a game, but the way this has almost replaced actually playing Pokémon games for a subsect of a subsect of this giant fandom just goes to show you that competitive Pokémon battling has evolved (long ago (also pun unintended)) into something so anti-thetical to the experience these games are supposed to create. Also, I think it’s a larger symptom as to why some modern games in this series are lackluster: that because more and more of its design is bending around the gravitational pull of this realm of Pokémon that, instead of trying to replicate the feeling of what battling in this game’s world is like, is instead just giving visuals to what is essentially a text battle that includes less skill, but more awareness and knowledge of how many dice rolls to take into account with each encounter, which, Showdown, thusly, perfectly captures the spirit of with its mostly text-and-calculations gameplay and minimal visuals. But, uh, then I thought I was getting too serious about this.
As a Kirby: Canvas Curse enjoyer, this was another hit for me! Like, if you can count on anything it’s the Kirby series utilizing a motherfuckin’ peripheral. I’m a sucker for cool cartridges, and I’ve always eyed this game on eBay in hopes my copy of WarioWare Twisted would have a buddy. Lucky for me this got added to the NSO Game Boy player pretty quickly, and it’s a great addition because it utilizes, 20+ years on, an under-utilized Nintendo peripheral: the freakin’ joy-cons!
Although the game definitely is clunkier on the Switch than I’d imagine it’d be on a Game Boy Color, shaking around the entire machine in handheld mode is a bit much, but with modern motion controls, the game was really smooth to play. It’s Kirby’s Super Monkey Ball, but instead of you moving around a board within a 3D space, the Game Boy is the board and real life is the 3D space. It’s a really interesting approach to handheld gaming; the way a console can be free floating, and the screen is not tied down by wires or weight.
The game is also very fair. It’s so easy to have a physics game like this be so frustrating, and this game can be, but it’s also fair. Levels are short because the playtime is lengthened by you replaying the same tough sections over and over. I often found that once I got over certain humps, my player instincts told me that there was going to be so much left, only for the goal to be within reach. One would also think ‘game over’s would be frequent, but this game gives out a lot of lives. It’s easy to get 1ups, but not too easy. At least for me, it felt like I was getting a very balance and proportional amount of extra lives based on how many times I needed to try a level. I only did get a ‘game over’ on a very, very tricky boss that I was not being patient enough to figure out.
To some, these games may seem like gimmicks, but also, when you look at the entire Kirby series, these games are kind of a big part of our favorite little pink sphere! This, Canvas Curse, Epic Yarn, Kirby games have a real knack for having fun with a console’s whole thing. This game has a lot of charm and works amazing for an early motion-control-cartridge game. Has a lot of really great Kirby sprite work, too!
Although the game definitely is clunkier on the Switch than I’d imagine it’d be on a Game Boy Color, shaking around the entire machine in handheld mode is a bit much, but with modern motion controls, the game was really smooth to play. It’s Kirby’s Super Monkey Ball, but instead of you moving around a board within a 3D space, the Game Boy is the board and real life is the 3D space. It’s a really interesting approach to handheld gaming; the way a console can be free floating, and the screen is not tied down by wires or weight.
The game is also very fair. It’s so easy to have a physics game like this be so frustrating, and this game can be, but it’s also fair. Levels are short because the playtime is lengthened by you replaying the same tough sections over and over. I often found that once I got over certain humps, my player instincts told me that there was going to be so much left, only for the goal to be within reach. One would also think ‘game over’s would be frequent, but this game gives out a lot of lives. It’s easy to get 1ups, but not too easy. At least for me, it felt like I was getting a very balance and proportional amount of extra lives based on how many times I needed to try a level. I only did get a ‘game over’ on a very, very tricky boss that I was not being patient enough to figure out.
To some, these games may seem like gimmicks, but also, when you look at the entire Kirby series, these games are kind of a big part of our favorite little pink sphere! This, Canvas Curse, Epic Yarn, Kirby games have a real knack for having fun with a console’s whole thing. This game has a lot of charm and works amazing for an early motion-control-cartridge game. Has a lot of really great Kirby sprite work, too!
F-Zero is so cool. I tried GP Legend a while back and just didn’t have the discipline or patience to get used to the controls, which require a lot more conscious input than I expected a fantasy racing game to have. Adds a lot of depth that caught me off-guard. Even the different ‘machines’ actually feel so different. You don’t notice that shit in Mario Kart. Maybe a competitve player does, but in F-Zero each machine feels different and also can be picked based off of a player’s style and expertise.
F-Zero is so cool! The environments in this game are so awesome; there’s a simplicity to this world that really works in its favor. You aren’t just racing cars on a track, you are racing space machines on space courses on different planets with cool names like “Empyrean Colony” and “Ancient Mesa.” There’s not a lot of lore given in-game, there’s not even any characters shown that go with each machine, but what the setting gives is a pretty coat for to make this cool racer really stylized, and that gives a game a lot of character!
Unlockables are set up so you just naturally unlock them all as you play each and every mode and level in this game, as you improve and try harder difficulties. Such a satisfying racer. Great machine designs, great environment designs, great controls for such a simple hardware, just really so fun.
I really wanted to finish the last series on ‘Expert’ difficulty, but that second course has a lot of jumps, and your machine takes damage every jump, and I just can’t crack it, and I’d rather my play with this end on a less sour note than me trying to conquer what I think is the only unfair moment in this game.
F-Zero is so cool! The environments in this game are so awesome; there’s a simplicity to this world that really works in its favor. You aren’t just racing cars on a track, you are racing space machines on space courses on different planets with cool names like “Empyrean Colony” and “Ancient Mesa.” There’s not a lot of lore given in-game, there’s not even any characters shown that go with each machine, but what the setting gives is a pretty coat for to make this cool racer really stylized, and that gives a game a lot of character!
Unlockables are set up so you just naturally unlock them all as you play each and every mode and level in this game, as you improve and try harder difficulties. Such a satisfying racer. Great machine designs, great environment designs, great controls for such a simple hardware, just really so fun.
I really wanted to finish the last series on ‘Expert’ difficulty, but that second course has a lot of jumps, and your machine takes damage every jump, and I just can’t crack it, and I’d rather my play with this end on a less sour note than me trying to conquer what I think is the only unfair moment in this game.
2008
Since I’ve gotten on this site I’ve been meaning to dip my wings into Anna Anthropy’s catalog. Before this, I only knew of the titular Jill from her cameo in Super Meat Boy, a title that I played a lot of. I’ve played a lot of indie platformers, considering platforming has never really been my thing. As in, I’m not very good at them. Mighty Jill Off is a game about platforming games; the desire we have for punishing challenge, all for a satisfaction we sometimes cannot even define. No matter how grueling the task or the obstacle, there is an end point that we so desire the company of.
“And what happens after you get to the end?”
“I don’t know… I guess, I’ll just do it again.”
“And what happens after you get to the end?”
“I don’t know… I guess, I’ll just do it again.”
That breeze of this time of year; the one where you know spring is turning into summer, something about it turns back the clock. For me, it always brings me back to Pokémon on the Game Boy Advance. I’ve been wanting to go through this game again, and feeling that breeze, really made me want to go home. Sometimes I feel silly about this being my favorite game, ‘cuz it’s just a Pokémon game, nothing cool or out-there, and it’s just FireRed Version, to boot: the first remake of the first game. But, this game is so special to me and I think is so well designed and feels like the team at Game Freak were trying to show that they can do this.
Before I get into it all, I just wanted to touch on something that I never realized. Something I did was set LR to “Help” for the first time. Pokémon comes really naturally to Pokémon players. There are fundamentals that define this series that we all know so well, just like there are fundamentals to all video games. Though, Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen have a mission statement, that they want everyone to enjoy this adventure to the fullest. They state that is “our” goal in a note of text that appears before the player even before Professor Oak introduces the world of Pokémon. This little thing at the beginning is not something that stuck with me every other playthrough, but this time I realized that they not only want new gamers to try Pokémon, but they want new people to try video games. When you press the L or the R button, you are allowed to ask the game nearly any question you can think of, from “What do I do now?” to “What is the Dark-type good against?” It was interesting, up until the first badge, reading through all the copies that were written to explain adventure RPG games.
It’s this nice little companion that FireRed and LeafGreen have because, no matter how much a player needs their hand held, whether it’s because they’re young or because they don’t play a lot of video games, the designers want so badly for as many people as possible to enjoy the entire adventure of Pokémon. to explore every town, every cave, every forest, and meet as many Pokémon as they can.
And that’s what I’ve been trying to do lately. The past few years, I’ve been trying to take my time in Pokémon games by getting into the role of a kid out on their own adventure for the first time. What this has allowed me to do is really appreciate how each Pokémon games’ scenarios are laid out. I think it’s Game Freak’s biggest strength in these early games to design a game scenario that really gets a player to each corner of the map in a non-linear way. In a recent playthrough of Crystal Version, I found myself rebuking the common pacing critique of that generation, finding that it is perfectly paced if you properly explore the world as the Hidden Moves you unlock open it up more. every single Pokémon game, even the new ones, are built around “HMs.” Once you get a new overworld move, the world opens up more and there are new people to meet, places to explore, and of course, Pokémon to catch. Talking to NPCs, walking into every building, it allows the world to sink in so much more than if you just play Pokémon so passively, just going from
necessary objective to necessary objective. It’s what the game is designed around, and it makes these games fit in with other JRPGs of this era.
My final was…
Campfire the Charizard, met in Pallet Town
Lemontart the Jolteon, met in Celadon City
Rageroom the Primeape, met on Route 22
Yachtclub the Lapras, met in Saffron City
Drumstick the Marowak, met in Pokémon Tower
Flowershop the Vileplume, met on Route 24
I picked Charmander, just like I did for the first time. Good ol’ Kyle. I always like planning out my teams, and this time i felt like planning out a character. I chose ‘GIRL’, like I have been for, like, nearly a decade, now, but also named myself ‘RED’. Just a little trans girl leaving home like all kids do, nervous to go out on an entire journey dressed as herself. Pokémon, at its core, is about the first time you feel like you’re growing up. This feeling that the first step to becoming an adult is doing things yourself for the first time. This rite of passage is told through the story of a kid going on an errand, that turns into an adventure, and stumbling into a situation that adults usually handle, and takes it on alone. But, of course, they’re not really alone. They have their Pokémon, and that’s what Pokémon is about: growing up, and leaving the house, can be really scary, but you’re never as alone as you feel.
I love getting to the end, facing down your rival. That Champion battle is pretty tough in set mode, but for the first time, with a team of six, I didn’t have to do any grinding before my league challenge. Whenever I use Jolteon, they always are a shining star on my team. Didn’t even need Thunderbolt, Shock Wave + Toxic helped get rid of Pidgeot, Blastoise, and Alakazam. It came down to my Charizard versus his Arcanine, and my boy clutched it out (with the help of my fourth Max Potion used, the last I’d be comfortable using while keeping my dignity).
There’s just something about the Kanto region’s vibe that I love. Half of me wishes Pokémon kept going the route of “this is basically the real world but with little freaks in capsules.” there’s an NPC in Pewter’s museum that tells you about how he remembers the moon landing from 1969. Compre that to when you play Omega Ruby and you go to space on the back of Mega Rayquaza and fight Deoxys. I don’t know, it just gives Kanto this specific feel to the region that can be easily overlooked, but after playing this and Yellow Version back-to-back, I’m very interested in the world of Pokémon where the “great Pokémon war” that Lt. Surge and other lore refers to is just, I don’t know, the fucking Vietnam War.
Before I get into it all, I just wanted to touch on something that I never realized. Something I did was set LR to “Help” for the first time. Pokémon comes really naturally to Pokémon players. There are fundamentals that define this series that we all know so well, just like there are fundamentals to all video games. Though, Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen have a mission statement, that they want everyone to enjoy this adventure to the fullest. They state that is “our” goal in a note of text that appears before the player even before Professor Oak introduces the world of Pokémon. This little thing at the beginning is not something that stuck with me every other playthrough, but this time I realized that they not only want new gamers to try Pokémon, but they want new people to try video games. When you press the L or the R button, you are allowed to ask the game nearly any question you can think of, from “What do I do now?” to “What is the Dark-type good against?” It was interesting, up until the first badge, reading through all the copies that were written to explain adventure RPG games.
It’s this nice little companion that FireRed and LeafGreen have because, no matter how much a player needs their hand held, whether it’s because they’re young or because they don’t play a lot of video games, the designers want so badly for as many people as possible to enjoy the entire adventure of Pokémon. to explore every town, every cave, every forest, and meet as many Pokémon as they can.
And that’s what I’ve been trying to do lately. The past few years, I’ve been trying to take my time in Pokémon games by getting into the role of a kid out on their own adventure for the first time. What this has allowed me to do is really appreciate how each Pokémon games’ scenarios are laid out. I think it’s Game Freak’s biggest strength in these early games to design a game scenario that really gets a player to each corner of the map in a non-linear way. In a recent playthrough of Crystal Version, I found myself rebuking the common pacing critique of that generation, finding that it is perfectly paced if you properly explore the world as the Hidden Moves you unlock open it up more. every single Pokémon game, even the new ones, are built around “HMs.” Once you get a new overworld move, the world opens up more and there are new people to meet, places to explore, and of course, Pokémon to catch. Talking to NPCs, walking into every building, it allows the world to sink in so much more than if you just play Pokémon so passively, just going from
necessary objective to necessary objective. It’s what the game is designed around, and it makes these games fit in with other JRPGs of this era.
My final was…
Campfire the Charizard, met in Pallet Town
Lemontart the Jolteon, met in Celadon City
Rageroom the Primeape, met on Route 22
Yachtclub the Lapras, met in Saffron City
Drumstick the Marowak, met in Pokémon Tower
Flowershop the Vileplume, met on Route 24
I picked Charmander, just like I did for the first time. Good ol’ Kyle. I always like planning out my teams, and this time i felt like planning out a character. I chose ‘GIRL’, like I have been for, like, nearly a decade, now, but also named myself ‘RED’. Just a little trans girl leaving home like all kids do, nervous to go out on an entire journey dressed as herself. Pokémon, at its core, is about the first time you feel like you’re growing up. This feeling that the first step to becoming an adult is doing things yourself for the first time. This rite of passage is told through the story of a kid going on an errand, that turns into an adventure, and stumbling into a situation that adults usually handle, and takes it on alone. But, of course, they’re not really alone. They have their Pokémon, and that’s what Pokémon is about: growing up, and leaving the house, can be really scary, but you’re never as alone as you feel.
I love getting to the end, facing down your rival. That Champion battle is pretty tough in set mode, but for the first time, with a team of six, I didn’t have to do any grinding before my league challenge. Whenever I use Jolteon, they always are a shining star on my team. Didn’t even need Thunderbolt, Shock Wave + Toxic helped get rid of Pidgeot, Blastoise, and Alakazam. It came down to my Charizard versus his Arcanine, and my boy clutched it out (with the help of my fourth Max Potion used, the last I’d be comfortable using while keeping my dignity).
There’s just something about the Kanto region’s vibe that I love. Half of me wishes Pokémon kept going the route of “this is basically the real world but with little freaks in capsules.” there’s an NPC in Pewter’s museum that tells you about how he remembers the moon landing from 1969. Compre that to when you play Omega Ruby and you go to space on the back of Mega Rayquaza and fight Deoxys. I don’t know, it just gives Kanto this specific feel to the region that can be easily overlooked, but after playing this and Yellow Version back-to-back, I’m very interested in the world of Pokémon where the “great Pokémon war” that Lt. Surge and other lore refers to is just, I don’t know, the fucking Vietnam War.
Very hilarious of me to not close this log back when I first tried it out thinking I would have the energy or desire to really put in multiple sessions into it. What can I say? I don’t play horror games and I did not grow up with adventure games, but I did think this was a wacky title to be a part of Nintendo Switch Online’s Game Boy player right on launch. Though, after playing it, I understand why they might want it alongside hits like Kirby and Mario Land. This game is one of those 2001 Game Boy Color games that really stretches the limits of what a handheld can do. Definitely really interesting to see how the resolution on this handheld is handled when adapting this type of game. While I think it doesn’t work at all at the end of the day, mainly because of how it handles combat (quick time events I think would’ve been better, lol), this definitely deserves to be a part of a little showcase of what the Game Boy Color tried to do.
I just cannot get enough of Dragon Quest. It’s a series I got into as a kid, especially on the DS. I still have the copy of Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime that I got as a kid, but I also had VI, Monsters: Joker, and this game, which I got around its initial release. Though, a couple of years ago when I beat Dragon Quest III on Switch, I hadn’t beaten a Dragon Quest game. So all of those games I had, save for Rocket Slime, were all left shelved until I got rid of the games one way or another. As I got into the series again this past year, this was the game I wanted most to revisit from those childhood years.
There wasn’t much I remembered about this game. Remnants of the battle system and the customization floated around in my head, but other than that, this was nearly an entirely new experience. The first thing I noticed is that this game is begging to be on the 3DS. This series ruled on the DS, and while I haven’t played the remakes of VII and VIII on the 3DS, it’s clear this series made a home for itself on these consoles, and IX feels like it’s fighting with its hardware a little bit. Important characters are 3D models, while every other NPC is a 2D sprite, not to mention navigating a 3D space with eight directional inputs when the world wasn’t made for only eight directions is a little tough (though the touch screen navigation is nice, menus, oddly enough, don’t feel good with touch controls). These are, admittedly, tiny things, but they make it obvious to a player a struggle within hardware that, for me, makes me dock a game’s score only because this is not this game’s full potential.
But, and I’ve said this before, it’s Dragon Quest. When the story takes off, these tiny things fade away, especially as you get used to them with playtime, they become an after thought, and the charm that this series oozes completely enraptures the game.
I want to say, I don’t want it to make it seem like I am knocking this game’s 3D sprites, because they’re amazing. Customizing party members and dressing them up in armor suited to their little jobs and seeing the armor on them in the overworld and in battle is such an amazing little twist that I really liked here.
Dragon Quest games have always been littered with ghosts. Here and there, the spirits of the dead roam these worlds to warn you, guide you, or sometimes they just grieve to you. Sentinels is the first one in this series I played that really felt like a Ghost Story, capitalized, and trademarked, too! Every single situation you encounter in this game revolves around a ghost who died with unfinished business. Maybe they left behind a loved one, or left before they could guide someone they left behind…
Or maybe they just need to say ‘sorry’.
There wasn’t much I remembered about this game. Remnants of the battle system and the customization floated around in my head, but other than that, this was nearly an entirely new experience. The first thing I noticed is that this game is begging to be on the 3DS. This series ruled on the DS, and while I haven’t played the remakes of VII and VIII on the 3DS, it’s clear this series made a home for itself on these consoles, and IX feels like it’s fighting with its hardware a little bit. Important characters are 3D models, while every other NPC is a 2D sprite, not to mention navigating a 3D space with eight directional inputs when the world wasn’t made for only eight directions is a little tough (though the touch screen navigation is nice, menus, oddly enough, don’t feel good with touch controls). These are, admittedly, tiny things, but they make it obvious to a player a struggle within hardware that, for me, makes me dock a game’s score only because this is not this game’s full potential.
But, and I’ve said this before, it’s Dragon Quest. When the story takes off, these tiny things fade away, especially as you get used to them with playtime, they become an after thought, and the charm that this series oozes completely enraptures the game.
I want to say, I don’t want it to make it seem like I am knocking this game’s 3D sprites, because they’re amazing. Customizing party members and dressing them up in armor suited to their little jobs and seeing the armor on them in the overworld and in battle is such an amazing little twist that I really liked here.
Dragon Quest games have always been littered with ghosts. Here and there, the spirits of the dead roam these worlds to warn you, guide you, or sometimes they just grieve to you. Sentinels is the first one in this series I played that really felt like a Ghost Story, capitalized, and trademarked, too! Every single situation you encounter in this game revolves around a ghost who died with unfinished business. Maybe they left behind a loved one, or left before they could guide someone they left behind…
Or maybe they just need to say ‘sorry’.
So, I have this local game store a few towns that I love going to. They are a great little store because they have visuals up on their walls for every console in existence, with the console itself and the box it was released in up there almost like a tiny museum. It's very nice to walk around and feel like I'm in a Video Game Store. The problem is, like most retro media stores, they price the old media they get turned/traded in at whatever the average price is up on eBay, or what have you. This means if you go in looking for a GameCube game or a DS game that is priced a little unfairly, you're not going to have any luck in person, either. What you're better off doing is hoping you find an old gem, something from your childhood that isn't priced at $100 for just the disc because it only really means something to you.
This was my first Game Boy Advance game. Along with two original, purple Game Boy Advances, my brother and I each got our first games. My brother got Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (the same copy that I still have to this day), while I got this game. I was really into Battlebots as a real wee one (I was 3-5 years old during its original airing), and even though I would only rarely get to stay up long enough to watch it, I was obsessed. So, it was only fitting that my parents picked this out for me.
I have more memories of the TV show than I do of this game. I have maybe one flash of a childhood memory of playing this game around when I first got it, but I still remember it enough that when I walked into this local game store and saw that they not only had this game in stock, but had it complete-in-box. And, not only did they have it complete-in-box, but it was $14.99! A gem hidden amongst all of the $100 Pokémon and GameCube games. I brought it home, excited, honestly, to just hold one of those nice paper boxes that GBA games came in. Packaging that I missed going to KB Toys and seeing on the shelves behind the electronics section's counter...
Of course, however, the game sucks absolute balls and shaft. There's a career mode, where, as one could infer from the game's title, you build your own little robot. The thing is, this game doesn't exactly take from established racing and robot fighting genres in order to make customization intuitive and easy to understand, but is more like a proper Battlebots simulation. You have to make weight, and also make enough money to fix your robot, or just replace the parts, in a UI that is not easy on the eyes, or the brain. Its biggest crime, really, though, is you can't feel the hits, or the scrapes, or the shocks. The sound design plays like it just took from a factory stock of old sound effects that easily fit on a cartridge of a game with a third-party licensed IP budget, so it never feels like you smashing two cool ass fucking robots together! Which, now that I think of it, all of the different weapons are inconsequential because of this. Buzzsaws, hammers, pincers, the cast of Battlebots is so diverse but, in this game, you are just aiming a sprite at another sprite with tank controls. In face, it's a game of tank with bumper cars instead of tanks.
Also, why was every other fucking GBA game isometric 3D? What's up with that, huh?
This game, however, did spark some joy after abandoning the career mode for the VS. mode that has some all-star (robot) names that actually surfaced some subconscious memories, which was really nice. Unfortunately, it's another one of those Game Boy Advance games that I play once as a little goof and then let it sit in my collection forever. At the very least, it will sit in a box :)
This was my first Game Boy Advance game. Along with two original, purple Game Boy Advances, my brother and I each got our first games. My brother got Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (the same copy that I still have to this day), while I got this game. I was really into Battlebots as a real wee one (I was 3-5 years old during its original airing), and even though I would only rarely get to stay up long enough to watch it, I was obsessed. So, it was only fitting that my parents picked this out for me.
I have more memories of the TV show than I do of this game. I have maybe one flash of a childhood memory of playing this game around when I first got it, but I still remember it enough that when I walked into this local game store and saw that they not only had this game in stock, but had it complete-in-box. And, not only did they have it complete-in-box, but it was $14.99! A gem hidden amongst all of the $100 Pokémon and GameCube games. I brought it home, excited, honestly, to just hold one of those nice paper boxes that GBA games came in. Packaging that I missed going to KB Toys and seeing on the shelves behind the electronics section's counter...
Of course, however, the game sucks absolute balls and shaft. There's a career mode, where, as one could infer from the game's title, you build your own little robot. The thing is, this game doesn't exactly take from established racing and robot fighting genres in order to make customization intuitive and easy to understand, but is more like a proper Battlebots simulation. You have to make weight, and also make enough money to fix your robot, or just replace the parts, in a UI that is not easy on the eyes, or the brain. Its biggest crime, really, though, is you can't feel the hits, or the scrapes, or the shocks. The sound design plays like it just took from a factory stock of old sound effects that easily fit on a cartridge of a game with a third-party licensed IP budget, so it never feels like you smashing two cool ass fucking robots together! Which, now that I think of it, all of the different weapons are inconsequential because of this. Buzzsaws, hammers, pincers, the cast of Battlebots is so diverse but, in this game, you are just aiming a sprite at another sprite with tank controls. In face, it's a game of tank with bumper cars instead of tanks.
Also, why was every other fucking GBA game isometric 3D? What's up with that, huh?
This game, however, did spark some joy after abandoning the career mode for the VS. mode that has some all-star (robot) names that actually surfaced some subconscious memories, which was really nice. Unfortunately, it's another one of those Game Boy Advance games that I play once as a little goof and then let it sit in my collection forever. At the very least, it will sit in a box :)
2012
A really good thing about this website is through following people and interacting with the network of users I've found on here, I'm reminded of all the smaller games that completely evaporate from memory because of how passive my interaction with them was. Super Hexagon was a phone game I spent a lot of time on maybe one month out of my teen years and thanks to its inclusion on a random user's random list of games, I've found myself playing it again.
This game is basically a simple concept that so well captures and executes a lot of the simple, foundational concepts of video games. You are but a little shape avoiding bigger shapes, using precise, twitchy movements to avoiding obstacle courses. You get used to these movements and obstacles the more you play and you can naturally feel yourself improve the more you play. I adore it; one of the best ways to twiddle your thumbs that exist.
This game is basically a simple concept that so well captures and executes a lot of the simple, foundational concepts of video games. You are but a little shape avoiding bigger shapes, using precise, twitchy movements to avoiding obstacle courses. You get used to these movements and obstacles the more you play and you can naturally feel yourself improve the more you play. I adore it; one of the best ways to twiddle your thumbs that exist.
2013
Just utter genius. So well plotted and designed to properly convey political anxieties and frustrations. Maybe one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played; so many times the past couple of days I found myself worrying about things that the dear border agent is stuck thinking about. The immersion is very tactical, too. No matter what your political leanings are in real life, you will find yourself feeling satisfied to catch a discrepancy and stamp a big red mark onto passports. A game about beauracracy where the routine actions of scanning documents meet the firing synapses of call-and-response interaction. Ugh.
The fact that your family are just circles of their status; you only know as how much trouble they’re to cause you, how much money they’ll cost. On my first run, I found myself constantly having to sacrifice heat or food because of my beginner performance, and on my second run I found myself not having to worry about money at all up until the end.
Beaucracy is inherently discompassionate, anti-thetical to human connection and relation. Documentation as absolute truth, under rule that is absolute, it only begets a shedding of everything that makes you human. You are only the sum of your government approvals; under authoritarian capitalism, the government gives you existence, and labor gives you purpose. The way to gain back your humanity is to be humane. Chances to be compassionate, to be empathetic, even when it’s not allowed. Even when it might cost you.
The fact that your family are just circles of their status; you only know as how much trouble they’re to cause you, how much money they’ll cost. On my first run, I found myself constantly having to sacrifice heat or food because of my beginner performance, and on my second run I found myself not having to worry about money at all up until the end.
Beaucracy is inherently discompassionate, anti-thetical to human connection and relation. Documentation as absolute truth, under rule that is absolute, it only begets a shedding of everything that makes you human. You are only the sum of your government approvals; under authoritarian capitalism, the government gives you existence, and labor gives you purpose. The way to gain back your humanity is to be humane. Chances to be compassionate, to be empathetic, even when it’s not allowed. Even when it might cost you.
Understands what is so cool about Sonic Adventure 2's aesthetic and vibe and builds on that with an equally, and sometimes superior, world and environment that is really nice to look at and explore. Though, I'm not sure if it totally fixes and improves on what can be overwhelming and frustrating about Sonic Adventure's gameplay.
I should preface this with the fact that I always struggle with 3D platformers and Sonic Adventure 2, in particular, is a game that infuriated on a recent play. The thing is, Sonic Adventure 2 has this weird knack of being cool as all fuck despite being arguably a poorly designed game.
Spark is incredibly cool, I love this game's vibe, but it's just not for me. Though, I don't want to abandon it; I feel like if I go back and try Spark 1 I might appreciate this enough to move forward with it.
I should preface this with the fact that I always struggle with 3D platformers and Sonic Adventure 2, in particular, is a game that infuriated on a recent play. The thing is, Sonic Adventure 2 has this weird knack of being cool as all fuck despite being arguably a poorly designed game.
Spark is incredibly cool, I love this game's vibe, but it's just not for me. Though, I don't want to abandon it; I feel like if I go back and try Spark 1 I might appreciate this enough to move forward with it.
2001
Bought this second-hand because it’s a game from my childhood that doesn’t cost a kajillion dollars for an authentic copy, and it was a game I absolutely sucked at as a kid. For most of my life, in fact, I have been really bad at video games. Especially if an important part of the game is “finding out where to go.” Coincidentally, this game’s most glaring issue is that it DOESN’T HAVE A MAP. Areas are pretty big, and feel even bigger when you’re galloping from end-to-end trying to find that last gem to collect, or the last enemy to defeat, or the last bit of a task a character gave you.
Though, the game definitely tries its best to make it up to you. In each stage is an interactable marker that you can use as a way to know where you’ve already been. Flying in an isometric space is hard, so not only does Spyro have an obvious shadow, but also different heights on each stage are designed to be different enough where you know better how high a platform is by its terrain. A platform you can fly to will also always be in view from where you’re standing, too. Now, while these things doesn’t all add up to a flawlessly-executed platformer, I can see the game design underneath what a lot of people might’ve dismissed as soon as this game got frustrating.
Which, it sure can be frustrating, to be fair. One of the most insufferable segments are the Sparx sections, where you play as Spyro’s little dragonfly buddy in a tank-battle-esque, top-down shooter. These levels were mostly unbearable; not so hard to navigate but trying to navigate the enemies with the limited movement is annoying as hell. Again, though, they make up for it by giving you unlimited lives. So, eventually once you’ve found where to go, you can kind of spray-and-pray from the checkpoint and through the boss of the stage and get through it.
Even with its plentiful misgivings, this game did give me the same bemusement for Spyro that I had in the years following my child-self playing this game. Alas, I was not much of a Playstation child (it was the first console I had… but also the first console I broke…), so my actual interaction with Spyro still begins and ends here, on the Gameboy Advance. It’s like Shrek; fairytale creatures, but with that same kind of “isn’t this weird?” wink to camera that Shrek has. I will come back to this game once more before I die, but I sure got my fill of it for the time being (actually getting past the first section).
Though, the game definitely tries its best to make it up to you. In each stage is an interactable marker that you can use as a way to know where you’ve already been. Flying in an isometric space is hard, so not only does Spyro have an obvious shadow, but also different heights on each stage are designed to be different enough where you know better how high a platform is by its terrain. A platform you can fly to will also always be in view from where you’re standing, too. Now, while these things doesn’t all add up to a flawlessly-executed platformer, I can see the game design underneath what a lot of people might’ve dismissed as soon as this game got frustrating.
Which, it sure can be frustrating, to be fair. One of the most insufferable segments are the Sparx sections, where you play as Spyro’s little dragonfly buddy in a tank-battle-esque, top-down shooter. These levels were mostly unbearable; not so hard to navigate but trying to navigate the enemies with the limited movement is annoying as hell. Again, though, they make up for it by giving you unlimited lives. So, eventually once you’ve found where to go, you can kind of spray-and-pray from the checkpoint and through the boss of the stage and get through it.
Even with its plentiful misgivings, this game did give me the same bemusement for Spyro that I had in the years following my child-self playing this game. Alas, I was not much of a Playstation child (it was the first console I had… but also the first console I broke…), so my actual interaction with Spyro still begins and ends here, on the Gameboy Advance. It’s like Shrek; fairytale creatures, but with that same kind of “isn’t this weird?” wink to camera that Shrek has. I will come back to this game once more before I die, but I sure got my fill of it for the time being (actually getting past the first section).
smh, more anti-public transport propaganda (it’s adorable!).
I thought it was interesting how immediately more fleshed out Dragon Quest II is compared to the first one, I wasn’t expecting an experience so much closer to III after playing the original for the first time. Some of the scenario beats are annoying, or scatterbrained, or really annoying, but I also may have been rushing a little bit. Though, I still did have a blast despite some moments of frustration. Dragon Quest is one of my favorite series, I think, even though I’m only really getting into it for real recently. I’ve been reading recent reviews of this installment and I not only disagree with people saying this is “obviously better than the first,” but also the people who think this is a sophomore slump. It definitely is the Erdrick trilogy’s middle child, though; not the perfectly short and sweet game like the first and not one of the best RPGs of all time like the third. I could say it’s “just another Dragon Quest game,” but do mind the fact that “just Dragon Quest” is fuckin’ gooooooood.
Wanted to give both versions a try before posting a review, but I’ve mostly been playing Blue Rescue Team on my DSi that I loaded up with ROMs of Pokémon spin-offs. Specifically Pokémon spin-offs from those weird in-between eras of generations, like that era between Emerald Version and Diamond & Pearl Versions where the DS was fully out and about, but Sinnoh Pokémon could nary be involved in the fun shenanigans of the older Pokémon who have been basking in the sunlight. It’s such a funny thing to have two versions on the Game Boy Advance and on the DS (which is very clever considering the DS could play both so any consumer could enjoy these no matter if they’d upgraded or not). I had Red Rescue Team as a kid, and despite wanting to get into this series more as it went on I never actually did, and going back to play both Red & Blue Rescue Team has me feeling the same “welp,” feeling that these games all give me once I get passed finding out what Pokémon I am.
Nevermind the fact that going from the DS version to the GBA version feels very much like you’re playing on the older console. Though, besides some crunchy-ass sound files and less menu/UI options, it’s only just barely the less optimized version. And as much as I love the feeling of getting out of a monster house, I think what I don’t like about these games are merely slights against how everything is set up. The Pokémon in this world have an economy and somewhere on the same planet, humans still capture Pokémon? Whatever (unless I’m missing something from not having finished this game ever lol)! My biggest gameplay gripe is the friends you find along the way never feel like a real part of your rescue team. Having my little buddy Houndour have to leave every time and me have to ask them back before each outing just didn’t feel right. Seems like a tiny thing but to me it feels like it’s counter-intuitive to Pokémon’s whole thing!
I may try Explorers of Sky just to cross off the one that everyone goes nuts about, but after whiting out in Sky Tower two times and losing all my money and items, I think I might let this series lie for a while.
Nevermind the fact that going from the DS version to the GBA version feels very much like you’re playing on the older console. Though, besides some crunchy-ass sound files and less menu/UI options, it’s only just barely the less optimized version. And as much as I love the feeling of getting out of a monster house, I think what I don’t like about these games are merely slights against how everything is set up. The Pokémon in this world have an economy and somewhere on the same planet, humans still capture Pokémon? Whatever (unless I’m missing something from not having finished this game ever lol)! My biggest gameplay gripe is the friends you find along the way never feel like a real part of your rescue team. Having my little buddy Houndour have to leave every time and me have to ask them back before each outing just didn’t feel right. Seems like a tiny thing but to me it feels like it’s counter-intuitive to Pokémon’s whole thing!
I may try Explorers of Sky just to cross off the one that everyone goes nuts about, but after whiting out in Sky Tower two times and losing all my money and items, I think I might let this series lie for a while.