Compared to my last review I’ve spent a decent amount of hours at one of the arcades in my area playing this game, I genuinely wanted to in a sense defeat how blunt I was in that but even just meeting the game on its terms and practicing I just get frustration more than anything.

While I can squint and see the outline of games like Tekken existing because of this if you think about this existing a year after Street Fighter II dropped and this was developed by the second biggest video game company at the time you add up something that feels gimmicky rather than what it is, innovative.

For starters, there is no cohesion between 2d fighting and the 3D space fundamentally. When you’re off the axis your opponent is on you are essentially caught in the stream of wherever you can move until the game eventually corrects itself. This one fundamental piece crumbles the house of cards this game is built off of, if I can die because my opponent can be in a space I cannot reasonably counter (or because the resources this game provide me do not teach me these mechanics), what good is the 3D space if I can’t utilize it besides being a way to sidestep the entire genre I’m playing?

It’s one thing to develop technology that changes everything (I imagine it was incredibly hard for them to even make the hit boxes as decent as they are here which rival even most 2D fighting games at the time), but it’s another thing if the game you’ve made just doesn’t feel good and the art of game design is making the compromise between fun and technical.

Summary: I wanna see how the other games improve upon this

I have a question for you: Do you have a "happy place" game? When you have had a bad day, nothing's gone right, and you feel dead to the world, do you have a game that you just turn on and suddenly everything suddenly feels like it's going to be okay? Donkey Kong Country is that game to me. Every Donkey Kong Country has that effect on me, but it's most keenly felt with this one.

The story is pretty simple. One dark and stormy night, King K. Rool has stolen Donkey Kong's banana hoard and locked Diddy Kong in a barrel. It's your job to save Diddy and the banana hoard. It is admittedly light on story, but most of the game's emotions are carried in the moment to moment gameplay. This is an incredibly challenging game for first-timers. Sure, I can beat it now no problem, but that's because I have over 20 years of experience playing it. Its difficulty actually enhances the quest. With how high stakes the atmosphere of the levels make it, combined with David Wise's frankly haunting soundtrack, it really feels like a quest into danger more than a simple platforming romp. Some nights, I will just put on Aquatic Ambience from the soundtrack and just contemplate my place in the world. The music and atmosphere of this game make me feel wonderful things that I am not sure I can even put into words.

The platforming itself is a ton of fun. An incredibly high skill ceiling means that it is always engaging, and there is enough mechanical variation to keep you entertained through the whole journey. The same can arguably not be said about the stage variety. They could have called this game "Donkey Kong Cave" for how much time you spend in them. This is one aspect where its sequels have it beat admittedly, but it never really bothered me personally. The same can be said of the bosses. Of all the various bosses in the game, only King K. Rool himself stands out as memorable. Fortunately, the final fight with him is arguably one of the best the Super Nintendo has to offer.

It should also be noted that this game arguably saved the Super Nintendo from losing to the Genesis in North America. While the Sega Genesis did still beat the Super Nintendo in sales in 1994 and 1995, it would prove to be the years that a Sega console would ever be on top in the region. Sega would move on to the Saturn in 1995 in America, more or less abandoning the Genesis, allowing the Super Nintendo to catch up and eventually surpass it in sales globally. The Donkey Kong Country games were a major reason why, and it all began with this one. This game would prove to be the second best-selling game for the SNES, with Donkey Kong, for a few years at least, supplanting Mario as Nintendo's most popular character. A lot of that had to do with the graphics. No one had ever seen graphics like this before. When you play this game on a CRT TV now, they still hold up. With the right filters on an emulator, you can get a similar effect.

This game was a risk that paid off. I am not sure modern Nintendo would trust a third party to handle one of their biggest IPs in such a way. Perhaps they should. With its colorful graphics, interesting and challenging platofrming, excellent animation, and amazing soundtrack that elevates the whole experience into something that is emotional and poignant, Donkey Kong Country is simply one of the finest platforming games ever made, and my "happy place" game. Give it a shot and who knows? It just might become your "happy place" game, too.

I might’ve said this in my review of the PSP remake but the sad truth with this game is it was made to be an ambitious and bold experiment in an era of looking forward for the future of Megami Tensei. This has become evident to me (a “megaten maniac”) with the fact that no video game company nowadays would throw away a system they built upon to make a spinoff that boldly would try and do something so risky like being cinematic (based on interviews this seemed to be the main goal). Sadly this creates a tedious gameplay experience that hides a genuinely good story and one I feel like is the most “wow I need to go outside and live my life now” Persona game I’ve played honestly. Whether it’s having the best use of a hidden video game character for legitimate thematic relevance, the crawling darkness of peering deeper into the mind, the absorbing darkness and coolness of the music, or the inner reflection on loneliness in a genre that’s kind of all about playing a long as game by yourself. I think Megami Ibunroku Persona was a great and interesting experiment.

https://youtu.be/2DYqwhSTeGQ?feature=shared

While Persona 1 is a game that has its place in history for spawning one of the greatest JRPG series of all time (thanks to MegaTen as well), it's a flawed game. I really enjoyed the stories of both routes, the cast, the music, the visuals, and everything else...except the gameplay. It's a little...clunky and while I was able to adapt to it, it definitely feels a little awkward. As a MegaTen fan, though, the first-person dungeon-crawling was fine and the exploration was serviceable. It's overall an interesting game that I wouldn't say is bad, but more or less is just a game that's aged with time. As a Persona fan, you'll ever love it or hate it. As someone who's played a few RPGs in their day, it's alright for what it is and wouldn't say I hated my time with it.

As 2023 folded into 2024 I sat thinking about what new experiences I could have that I've missed out on and then uh I suddenly was like "wow I want to replay Shin Megami Tensei 1" so here I am and I finally played through the GBA port that fans graciously worked to have the only official script the game has had so far from Atlus and I put this on my 3DS of all systems just to add onto this.

Shin Megami Tensei 1 is the most influential video game I have played so far in my life as someone who likes to make games to be quite honest, back when I got into the series I initially started the SNES version of this game after years of wanting to play it (and the iphone version) when I was 15 but I was too much of a anti-fun baby to sit down and just get all the stuff set up. After playing this game I immediately made my own game that took a bunch of ideas from this one to the point that I'd say it's a clone, my imagination was just blown wide open by how this game combined horror and dungeon crawling beautifully and 5 years later I'm still in love with it frankly.

The best way I can describe what makes this game good is that it's a JRPG set in a metropolitan setting, buildings and traversing the city and world itself are confusing and you could very well end up being stuck down a winding path that could kill you if you take a bad turn. Shin Megami Tensei is a game that thrives in a Super Famicom-era sense of maturity with not only this very realistic setting but also an almost David Lynch-esc obsession with creating a dream-like situation blended with very apparent Akira and Devilman elements. I haven't really played a lot of PC games but looking at those games at the time and playing even a bit of Wizardry, what I can say is rather than Dragon Quest being simplification for home consoles of a dainty adventure in a mystical world Shin Megami Tensei takes very direct RPG elements and weirdo PC gameplay ideas for the home console (or in this case now ported to portable) experience.
That being said the weakest aspect of this true RPG by the numbers design comes down to alignments, a system determining which specific faction in the game you side with which can determine what enemies you can recruit and what options you have in the story even but is determined by story actions and battle-to-battle situations, which this port alleviates (at least based on my memory of the SF original). Another minor flaw that only crept into this replay is that the game is very easy to break once you know a few tricks to where I'd say this was the smoothest SMT experience I have which is kind of funny. I genuinely believe that (spoiler for mechanic that you can exploit here) the use of stunning enemies with ice and electric attacks was probably something that made the later Press Turn system exist so in of itself SMT1 is rough and very early but man yeah idk SMT Nocturne really kind of flipped everything in this era of the franchise on its head yet I still find the archaic aspect of this era in the franchise very appealing (Soul Hackers is indeed the most addicting megaten game in my opinion).

Going to this port now, wow besides having the GBA sound chip this is a stupidly good port and from all the evidence I've gathered this was based on the Playstation 1 port so maybe just play that one instead lmao. What's added only on this version of the game (that I still don't know how to use) is small story content you get from defeating bosses which is very cool and jarring if you've only played the Super Famicom version like I did lmao.

Overall: I am still a Shin Megami Tensei maniac lol

An insane amount of content for only $10, Genius Sonority proves that they can make quality original titles and should be allowed to do so more often. The whole game has this offbeat, electronically-themed charm to it (assisted particularly by the soundtrack, featuring heavy use of these quirky-sounding synths). The overworld is a ton of fun to explore and there are a lot of optional things to do. There's even an online PVP mode if you're interested in that kind of thing!

The gameplay, story, and characters follow your typical JRPG tropes, but as previously mentioned, the charm of the game's presentation make them fun and memorable. Plus, it's always cool to find a Denpa Man in the wild with an antenna you haven't seen before, unlocking new abilities for combat. My only real problem with the game is that it has an admittedly massive grinding problem; you have to grind a lot in this game, and so it asks for a lot of your patience, but I think the rest of the game largely makes up for it.

I might be a bit biased, since this game was pretty much my introduction to traditional-style JRPGs (now my favorite genre) but in my opinion, this game is the true hidden gem of the 3DS's library, and it'll be a shame when it becomes widely unavailable once the eShop closes. Hopefully one day Genius Sonority will be allowed to go back to making games that aren't just mobile Pokémon spin-offs.