[played on original SNES hardware as Mega Man]

I think it’s fair to say that Mega Man & Bass is probably the most disliked Classic MM game by a wide margin. It’s gained quite the reputation for being an incredibly tricky and punishing experience, and in a series that’s known for being difficult, that’s saying a lot. When I was going through the series last year, I wasn’t initially planning on playing through MM&B, but eventually did give it a go as Bass and stopped right at the penultimate stage out of frustration. But something funny happened recently. I got the urge to play the first few stages as Mega Man just to see how he felt, and it ended up really clicking! A few days later, I made my way through the whole thing in just a few sessions, and had a pretty good time! And now I’m gonna talk about why this incredibly challenging game was a whole lot of fun for me.


Mega Man as a franchise was already solidified by 1998, but MM&B makes a few changes and additions to help it stand out. The first of which being that you get to play as someone besides the Blue Bomber: his rival, Bass! Instead of having a slide and charge shot, Bass gets a MMX-like dash, double jump and a rapid-fire arm cannon that can be aimed in any direction, although it can’t initially shoot through walls and does pitiful damage against bosses. The other big feature of MM&B is that, like I said at the start, it’s really difficult. But honestly, I thought it was still fairly manageable! I’ll get more into specifics when I talk about the levels, but there’s quite a few elements that can help you tip the scales, the first of which being Auto’s shop. It’s an interesting fusion of how it was in 7 and 8; bolts have returned to being enemy drops, but a lot of the items you can buy are equipable, and they include enhancements like taking less damage, saving more energy when using Robot Master weapons and dealing double damage when you’re near-death. These can really come in handy, and given that you’re able to swap between them at any time, switching things up when the situation calls for it can help a bunch.

Another useful asset comes in the form of the various Robot Master weapons, which are a really solid bunch! Ice Wall’s a great mobility tool, Wave Burner’s an excellent close-ranged option for weaker enemies, Spread Drill and Remote Mine do plenty of damage, Copy Vision can help reduce button-mashing and Magic Card’s useful for snatching goodies from hard-to-reach places. Overall, it’s an excellent selection of weapons, and due to how the stages are laid out (in a grid system where beating one unlocks the path to another), you get more of an opportunity to use them since you’ll be guaranteed to have them for certain levels.

Now we get onto the stages, which I thought were really good! They’re certainly challenging, but they never feel impossible as either character; so long as you use a bit of patience, memorization and utilize everything in your arsenal, you should be able to get through most of them without much issue. It also helps that they’re not too long, so getting a Game Over doesn’t feel like a massive setback (and for me, it helps me become even better at remembering the layouts and obstacles so I can smoothly get through next time). And in traditional Mega Man fashion, there’s a ton of variety which makes every level feel distinct and unique, which is an element of the series I really enjoy!

Unfortunately, there’s quite a dip in quality when you get to the Fortress stages. I don’t think they’re as bad as people say, but they feel a lot sloppier and way more frustrating than the regular levels. It feels a lot closer to the type of game I hear MM&B be described as, which is a shame.

Now it’s time for the presentation, and I’m probably gonna gush a lot because I adore how this game looks and sounds! You can tell Capcom really had a grasp of the hardware by 1998, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. The graphical style definitely takes cues from Mega Man 8, but it doesn’t even look like that much of a downgrade; everything’s still colourful and immensely detailed. In fact, I’d say it’s on-par with a lot of the Sega Saturn’s 2D games in terms of fidelity, which is really impressive for a console that was first released in 1990! The soundtrack’s also great like usual, with a ton of catchy and melodic tunes. My personal favourites are probably the Robot Museum, Cold Man, Magic Man, Tengu Man and Pirate Man themes.


Despite the general reception, I really liked MM&B! I guess it’s not too surprising given my love of intense difficulty, but I’m so glad I found this much to love, and as such, I think this is a new favourite in the series for me! I’ll have to do a proper playthrough as Bass someday (and find all those data CDs), but that probably won’t be for a while. Overall, if you’re fine with really hard games and are patient enough, I think you might find something to appreciate in this one!

"'It's peak,' as they say" - Aigis, probably.
This might sound cheesy, but every time I play a new Persona game I feel like I learn something new about myself. This time around we tackle themes of death, nihilism, the impermanence of everything, and what it means to truly live. Nothing lasts forever, people die and they're gone for good, this is absolute.
I'm at the point in my life now where loved ones dying is starting to become more of a common thing. As goofy as it sounds, stories like P3 help you recenter and contemplate on this concept.
Philosophy aside, the game is pretty solid. I'm a bit torn on how I feel about their faithfulness to the originals, but I think ultimately they made great choices to improve the QoL and overall experience of the game. I say this as someone who never played any original version of P3, but am familiar with that era of Persona via playing P4G. If anything I wish they had been maybe a little less faithful and tried something new.
It's hard for me to say, but I think P3 has my favorite cast....? Regardless, it's very close to P4 in that area. Interacting with Koromaru is definitely more enjoyable than interacting with Teddy or Morgana at least. The other party members also feel more grounded and mature. I'll also cautiously say that I think P3 has some of the best music out of any Persona game overall, especially when it comes to battle music. Sorry P5 fans, the jazz is great and all but I prefer Mass Destruction and It's Going Down Now. Colour Your Night absolutely slaps, Changing Seasons slaps, When the Moon's Reaching Out Stars is bubbly and upbeat to contrast the melancholy and nihilism. And when the music and tone shift in the last month... that whole month was a gut punch.
Pacing at the beginning of the game is a little strange, but in hindsight I understand why it has to be that way for story purposes. I liked the way P4 handled broaching the main subject of the story with all of the mystique surrounding Personas and the world inside of the TV. P3 felt a little weird in contrast because you move to a new school and suddenly everyone's like, "Sup? we fight Shadows in Tartarus during the Dark Hour with our Personas. You start Monday, welcome to the team." It made the first couple areas of Tartarus feel much less impactful than the dungeons and palaces in other Persona games which were obviously specifically tailored around the relevant character.
Even knowing how the game would end, it still wrecked me. Memories of You hits really hard, it's the kind of shit that makes you want to call your mom or some close friends.
Now do this, but with P4G.

Before having actually played Mario: The Music Box, most of what I knew was that it was a fairly standard RPG Maker horror game… which made the strange decision of starring the Super Mario Bros, of all people. Having now been able to play it myself, I have to say… yeah what an absolutely baffling choice. Like, way to just completely undercut the serious horror tone you’re going for. It’s hard to take the descriptions of all your gruesome fates so seriously when the main character is making Mario noises as he gets impaled through the throat. It’s hard to really read the interactions between you and the very edgy and serious original characters the way the developer intended when they’re anime OCs and Mario is precisely half their size. Maybe if it leaned into the premise a little and treated it in more of a… black comedy sort of way (watch Mario die over and over and over and over-) but as it stands it’s… caught in a little bit of a catch-22: Mario being the main character undercuts everything the tone is going for, but were Mario not in this game at all… there wouldn’t really be much notable about this, honestly.

The plot follows Mario, of the Super Mario Bros as he investigates an abandoned house on the edges of the Mushroom Kingdom. Upon finding a mysterious music box, Mario soon finds zombie ghosts converging in on him, and he now cannot leave this place. Now he, Luigi, and The Third Mario Brother Byakuya Togami a stranger named Riba must find a way through the horrors of the house, with danger lurking along every corner the game explicitly warns you not to go down. Amidst it, one particular entity places its sight on Mario, and what follows is a conflict: one for Mario’s body, and one for Mario’s sanity………………………………………………………..

I’ll give this game credit: there’s an insane amount of effort put into it. That’s not a “you tried” sort of thing: the production value in this game is insane. Every story event, ending, and death has multiple hand-illustrated CGs visually depicting whatever’s happening. There are precisely 559 of these — multiple for each event — and they do a lot to show what’s happening, beyond the limits of what you can do with RPGmaker (unless you’re really good at sprite animation) and helping make each death feel, theoretically, that much more impactful. The sprite art, both for the characters and the general environment, is fairly aesthetically pleasing, even if the low saturation made seeing certain things sort of a pain. There are also, like, just straight-up custom animations made in the same style as the CG, both for… a Kingdom Hearts or When They Cry-esque opening video and also for a fully stylized RPG boss fight in one of the endings. Even with games such as Ib or The Witch’s House, most of what they had was limited to pixel art and ways to play around RPGMaker limitations. This… goes on a whole different level in terms of production value, and you can really tell that this game was made by an artist.

…You can also tell, however, that this game wasn’t made by a writer. This goes beyond the whole “story expects to be taken deathly seriously while also starring Mario” thing. For as much as the art works to make the many deaths you suffer feel evocative, the writing… does the opposite. Characters just matter-of-factly describe the way they die, and the sameyness (and also clunkiness) of these descriptions does a lot to undercut how varied and sometimes visceral these death sequences can be. Maybe if they were shorter, and leaned towards the visuals rather than the written, then they’d be more effective, but as stands most of them felt drawn out and kinda clunky. The plot, too, for as seriously it takes itself, has… issues. There’s a lot of characters (and also through this a lot of characters who just… drop out of the narrative) a lot of re-explanations of things the game forgot it already told the player, and a lot of cases where… the narrative doesn’t really have the effect it’s intending. Like, yes, this person who murdered their entire extended family because she wanted to be immortal like her boyfriend sure is actually a sympathetic victim of society. The titular music box… sure does matter a lot in the story. Ultimately, like, yes, it is incredibly silly that this story stars the Mario Brothers… but even if that wasn't there to undercut everything I really don't think this plot and story would be able to stand on its own.

And game-design wise… it’s no Ib or Witch’s House. The area design… leans linear, but areas are large enough that at points it’s easy to get lost on what you’re meant to do next. Puzzles… are mostly the sort of bread and butter “put a key in this keyhole to put a key into another keyhole-” that… doesn’t really feel all that unique or fun to play out — honestly, most of the puzzles I saw here were already things I’d seen in other games. Deaths are… very telegraphed: rather than the sudden, brutal ends you’d receive even if you thought you were going the right way, you’re kind of blatantly suggested that you shouldn’t go down this path and if you do then you get an overtly prolonged description as to why the obvious mistake was, in fact, a mistake. They’re also a little samey in that regard: literally every time you deal with a possessed person the answer is to violence the ghost out of them. Every time you're given the option to try to jump — y'know, like Mario is oft to do — it fails and you die. In terms of RPGMaker horror games it’s on the less ingenious end, and that could be fine… but I think the specific horror gameplay tropes they lean into are kind of the more irritating ones to deal with.

And in the end, when… a lot of the individual elements don’t really hold under scrutiny, and the only thing that particularly stands out in the first place is the strange decision to use Mario as the main protagonist, it’s easy to tell how this game has the little bit of infamy it has. And while there would be a way to make these particular ideas work, here… they don’t. Not in the way the developer intended. 4/10.

This is a fascinating work of fanfiction insofar as I can't believe it exists, but obviously it just doesn't work on a conceptual level. Mario's contrast to the anime-style visuals borderlines on the comedic such that any tension the games setting can evoke is completely undermined. He is unceremoniously transplanted into a totally different kind of game; the plot itself being a standard Sen-style RPG Maker horror (think Misao or Mad Father). The "creepypastas" that would define mid 2010s internet culture- Sonic.exe, Ben Drowned, etc. worked on some level because they were appropriating the original games' context. The game world itself is being corrupted with the presence of the horror. By contrast, Music Box is just taking Mario and putting him in a Victorian-style mansion and having him deal with a setting completely unfamiliar to the actual games. I guess Luigi's Mansion would be the closest thing tonally, but Mansion didn't have anime characters running around.

Mario's personality in this game wavers between passive observer and tortured soul; which I guess is okay, because if you think about it, what really is Mario's personality? The Music Box simply wouldn't work if Mario was just the ceaseless automaton he is in other games. Problem is, Mario is... Mario. He's a plumber in a red hat and overalls, with a huge moustache and nose. You can't divorce that iconic look from the memories it evokes of playing the Mario games. As a result, watching Mario brood and grimly comment on some mutilated dead bodies is impossible to take seriously. It is just impossible not to laugh or find it amusing.

Music Box also runs into the problem that the games its based on aren't particularly good as "games." What endeared people to Sen's games was atmosphere and worldbuilding- something that this game fails at right from the start. Take that away and you're stuck with the extremely mediocre gameplay these titles have. The clunky exploration sequences and endless backtracking to solve puzzles bored me out of my mind. In true RPG Maker horror fashion, there are multiple red herrings that lead to you immediately dying and having to reload your save. These were mostly hilarious, but many of them are impossible to predict; meaning you need to save every time you reach a new area or you risk losing a bunch of progress.

For the reasons I have outlined, the game is very tedious if you can get past the absurdity of the concept. I played through to the first ending I could reach (of which there are multiple), which was this really strange rip-off of Puella Magi Madoka Magica before I called it quits. I don't think I'll ever revisit it; even though the game has a huge, branching storyline that encompasses multiple timelines and a sequel.

I will end this review on a positive note by saying "Immortal" is a banger and the game gets an extra star just for the opening music video.

Como integrante dos confederados do estado de Minas Gerais, vós digo que esse julgo é um ultraje para nossa cultura!

Ele é feito porcamente e usa de bordões como "aiaiaiaiai", "pimentinha", "pizza maluca", "franguinho", "isso aiiiii".
Tudo isso para manipular a grande massa do público e mascarar a complexidade do jogo que será abordada no próximo tema.

Mineirinho não é só um jogo, é um estilo de vida.
O jogo ter uma dificuldade anormal (mais difícil que dark souls) não é só uma falta de programação decente pro jogo... Existe todo um significado por trás e que compõe e constrói mais ainda o universo do jogo, lhe proporcionando ainda mais imersão numa obra tão bem ambientada é única.

Mineirinho é uma história de superação, uma história de motivação e comoção com o próximo.
O jogo começa com nosso protagonista saindo de uma casa, que pode muito bem ter sido assaltada pelo mesmo.
O nosso protagonista é mineirinho, e ele tem duas habilidades fundamentais que você percebe logo de cara:
1 - Ele consegue lançar o seu chapéu de palha supostamente caipira, o que consegue destroçar todos os seus inimigos. (Ou quase todos)

2 - Mineirinho quando desliza por um objeto, produz o som de um desodorante sendo usado. Pode parecer bobo e ridículo, mas, na verdade isso é claramente uma representação da puberdade de mineirinho e de que ela está chegando... Pois os hormônios estão a flor da pele e isso muda completamente o odor produzido por ele. Uma clara referência ao coming of age que está por vir.

E então você desliza sobre uma rampa que parece um pedaço de rolo de papel higiênico recortado ao meio (o que pode claramente fazer uma referência a condição do nosso protagonista) e continua sua jornada.
A Jordana de mineirinho tem obstáculos, os primeiros deles são os Mike Wazowski, uma clara referência a começar a gostar menos das coisas infantis que gostava antigamente.
Logo ali ele encontra a sua fonte de comida, o "hamburgão".

Quando mineirinho pega tal alimento, ele perde completamente os seus sentimentos humanos e morais e começa a desistir de lançar seu chapéu, uma clara forma de demonstrar respeito... Mas agora ele simplesmente faz um arroto supersônico que desmembra os Mike Wazowski.
Mineirinho então segura em frente e vê corações pelo chão, uma referência ao amor que mineirinho recebeu ainda quando criança e que agora já não é mais o foco da família dele.
Mineirinho então aceita as memórias daquele amor, e segue em frente.
Mineirinho então encontra uma estrutura de que gera energia pela água. Isto é um simbolismo pelo trabalho que é passar pela adolescência e pela instabilidade e falta de atenção dos pais.

Mineirinho consegue ultrapassar tal obstáculo e chega numa montanha cheia de pula-pula, que o impulsionam para dois caminhos.
Aqui chega uma escolha difícil de mineirinho, se entregar ao amor de sua família negligenciado é viver com a verdade ou ir para o caminho mais fácil e utilizar drogas pesadas.
Neste caso escolheremos o caminho do amor negligenciado.
Mineirinho mata mais exemplares de Mike Wazowski e finalmente chega num outro rolo de papel higiênico cortado ao meio, porém ainda mais fino que o interior. Mesmo assim ele continua firme em sua decisão de descer em direção a verdade de sua vida e seu objetivo de crescer como ser humano.

Nosso Protagonista de depara com um "FRANGUINHO!!" nas palavras dele. O tal franguinho pode até mesmo mudar o percurso dele e derrubar ele, mesmo que teoricamente um frango não pudesse fazer isso, porém este pode.

Após certa tempo, mineirinho passa por todos os obstáculos e encontra um castelo, o que representa uma forma de mineirinho passar finalmente pela transição de sua pre-adolescência e a adolescência de fato.
Subindo as escadas ele encontra um dragão, uma metáfora para sua própria família.
Tal dragão tem que ser derrotado a todo custo pois ele representa perigo ao nosso protagonista e ao seu crescimento como ser humano. Algo que jamais pode acontecer.

Mineirinho então, consegue derrotar o dragão e seguir num túnel dentro do castelo... O túnel da de cara com várias pedras que caem conforme o protagonista pisa em cima. Isto não amedronta o mesmo, pois ele já tinha passado por algo muito pior agora pouco.
ele finalmente passa de fase, ele finalmente consegue se encontar e agora começa a se questionar sobre questões sociais e sobre si mesmo... Porém, isto não cabe aqui.

Agradeço a você, caro leitor.
Lhe agradeço por ter me acompanhado nesta análise de mineirinho e sobre como ele é o maior coming of age já produzido.

Monster Legends já foi um jogo MUITO massa. Sempre achei melhor que Dragon City devido a maior diversidade de personagens e estratégias de combate subsequentes, sempre reforçando muito bem o desejo de avançar no jogo. Entretanto, o óbvio aconteceu.

Pouco a pouco, o Pay To Fast foi se tornando Pay To Win de uma maneira bem desestimulante. Começou com o sistema de runas, depois foram lançando monstros exclusivamente pagos (Warmasters, seguidos dos VIPs). Daí em diante, não demorou para chegar "passe de batalha", e ainda monstros cada vez mais complexos no quesito de combate — e que diminuiu bastante a antiga diversidade e estratégia que você encontrava no multiplayer.

Basicamente, se você não tem nenhum monstro recente, você está fora. Se antes a coisa mais louca que você poderia encontrar era um VoltaiK resetando turnos a cada ataque, hoje você encontra monstros com habilidades absurdamente quebradas (como aplicar 3 efeitos aleatórios em todos os inimigos, curar 60% de todos os aliados e ter 50% de chance de ganhar turno extra). Evidentemente, não é especificamente assim, mas é nesse nível... e claro, isso seria um monstro que você não pode obter de outra maneira que não seja desembolsando 60 reais. Foi-se o tempo que dava para jogar isso com um bom espírito.