A very impressive recreation of a long-lost demo! As someone who knows a ton about the various iterations of LM, this is accurate to the point I can’t really pick out any differences between the E3 demo and this, with amazingly closely recreated music, models and animations. I really don’t have much else to say due to it being a literal 9~ minute demo recreation, I just would like to bring attention to this as a really cool act of preservation/recreation of a long since unplayable version of Luigi’s Mansion.

While I appreciate grezzo's consistently pretty good efforts at all the remasters they do, Luigi's Mansion just does not work on the 3ds. While everything in the game is basically intact here, nothing was really butchered at all, the controls just get hit so hard. The circle pad just does NOT work like an analog stick of any kind does, and having to tilt the system to aim up and down is decently annoying. For reference I'm able to consistently get gold frames on every single ghost on the regular mansion (except for Luggs and Weston, who are kind of impossible to consistently gold frame on anything but hidden), but on the 3ds they were a rarity. It doesn't even feel that good to use the circle pad for this either. Definitely go for the gamecube original first, literally any controller with an analog stick (and analog triggers if you can get em) works better than this does. Still don't hate this version, but it's not gonna be one I play frequently in the slightest.

Let’s get a bit personal, shall we?

I’m not at all happy with my journal/review I made last year. It was hopelessly optimistic. Don't get me wrong, I still am optimistic about a ton of things in my life, but I think it says a lot that about a month after writing it I went through an awful period of my life due to my arm injury that I still haven’t fully recovered from, mentally or physically. A lot of the sentiments just don’t reflect what I felt even a month after the review, and sure don't reflect me now. So let’s try this again.

This is really one of the only games I can say I’ve played dozens of times without speedrunning or randomizers as a strong motivator. I love it to death. Luigi’s humming to the haunting main theme, the mansion’s sprawling layout, the ghosts shouts as they startle the man in green, and each and every room are all sights and sounds forever ingrained in my memory. Every playthrough I try to learn a new little something to add to my bag of tricks, or memorize a couple new treasure or speedy spirit locations (though admittedly I’ve run out of those to memorize). It’s partly all these in combination with the fact that you can get through the whole thing in an afternoon that keeps me coming back again and again. However, that's not the main factor. Long story short, I am where I am in part due to Luigi’s Mansion. Despite my first interaction with the game being fear at 3 years old which resulted in the game being hidden in a garage out of my reach and eventually sold, it went on to be a major part of my life ever since, from making weird powerpoints of renders from the game as a child, to it being a game I played all the time starting from the beginning of high school, a major low point in my life for a great many reasons that continued until at minimum until my graduation and some continuing to today. Luigi’s Mansion has been a great source of joy throughout darker periods of my life and even now I keep playing. And y’know what, me from a year ago? Fuck you, that’s fine. I don’t need to grow past this game. It’s not something I should be moving on from, really ever. Because life isn’t just going to keep going up for me forever. Life’s a lot like a roller coaster. It goes up, sure, but also down, and every other direction. And as the still love of my life MJ says, “You’re never on a roller coaster alone”. But the people on that roller coaster don’t have to necessarily all be people. They can also be objects of sentimental value, pieces of media, or anything else you hold dear. That’s what Luigi’s Mansion is for me. A precious item that I’ve taken with me on this roller coaster of life, and hell if I ever let go of it. Even while I improve myself and my situation in life, I think it’s okay to keep this with me. To, ironically, keep coming back to these haunted halls for comfort and support even when I’m by all means mostly doing great! Because, of course, life isn’t that damn simple.

Just to end this off in a similar way to the last one, I’d like to record how I’m feeling about my life here. I’m certainly not at my lowest, but not my highest either. I’m working hard at college even though it's a struggle, and I’m about to transfer between colleges anyway. I’ve been attempting to recover from my arm injury through nearly a year of physical therapy and 2 surgeries under my belt, and it's going alright. I now have a second partner to love with all my heart along with MJ, who is still as important to me as ever. My interests have grown further in number in games and I’ve also been trying to branch out to other forms of media, which has gotten me into Revue Starlight, which is becoming/has already become the most important piece of art to me in a very long time. And I played Luigi’s Mansion a couple times this year. Because when I’m feeling either down or up, great or awful, it’s there as a place I can go when I need comfort and support, or even simply just for some fun ghostbusting.

OUTDATED: I have since beat the game but I'll leave this up. I think the replies are very valuable to anyone having as much trouble as I did.
This is not a review, but a cry for help.
you know what? i'm gonna write this this out of total frustration with myself. i cannot grasp this game. i'm completely and totally aware of my skill issue, but i got stuck and filtered on operation wallclimb and after like 4 hours of pushing to beat it i am just done. I cannot wrap my head around how to effectively change parts to fit the current mission and at this point i am done trying for now. This is where the cry for help comes in. if i get some good advice from someone i promise i will reinstall the game and give it another honest shot. I really REALLY badly want to enjoy this but its been so difficult for me to get my head in the game here. i dont want to leave this game that so many people are liking with a bitter feeling in my head but thats where its heading rn, and so i would really appreciate advice on how to actually play the game, because i clearly cannot find out for myself at this point...

I dunno, maybe I’m being too harsh but while this is impressive technically, I didn’t get that much more out of it. Viewfinder has some great ideas, but it barely develops them. It’s also really, really easy. Like, I didn’t have to think that much on any of these. This would be much more bearable if the vibe and dialogue of the game wasn’t just so uninteresting to me. Take Superliminal I guess, that game also has trouble developing its ideas and also is very easy. But that game has a sense of comedy that defines it, and so I still had a great time with it! Viewfinder on the other hand, really doesn’t have much for me. These all come together to create an experience that had me with my own music playing instead of what I found to be a very uninteresting soundtrack, breezing through every puzzle and occasionally saying “wow how’d they do that” while the game proceeds to abandon that cool thing that it just did. Definitely admire the basis for the game, again it is quite impressive on a technical level, but just kinda makes me sad.

Here’s a question literally nobody would ever ask, why did I even want to play A Link to the Past? This right here is the answer. Pure randomizer goodness baby, except when the seed I played was total trash. Seriously, who expects me to do suitless Maridia to get to Mama Turtle without hi-jump because fuck you, the answer is me and I did it just to prove myself and I feel SO damn good about finishing that seed. I’m just that amazing at Super Metroid.

I seriously love randomizers. Over the past couple months I’ve been playing tons of Super Metroid randos, solo and multiworld. SMZ3 always interested me and thanks to a certain friend invading my home, I finally forced myself to play A Link to the Past. Good game on its own, but I think it shines most in randomizer, especially when paired here with Super Metroid. It deepens both games immensely, not just because items from Super Metroid can be in ALTTP and vice versa, but also due to the routing opportunities it creates. Sometimes to get to where you want to go in Super Metroid, it can be faster to go through ALTTP for example. Or the fact that you can get to Misery Mire through Lower Norfair, negating the need for the Flute or the Titan’s Mitts. This is a huge rec if you’re at all experienced with both of these games, turning both on their head and giving a really fresh experience both randos alone might not provide.

Rest of this is a sort of diary on how my first seed of this went, so if you’re uninterested you can stop right here!

For reference, my settings were hard logic for Super Metroid, sword and morph anywhere, and 4 crystals needed to open Ganon’s Tower. If you’re a Super Metroid veteran like I am, these are the best settings for you and might even give you a nice challenge as it did me! Also, definitely use a tracker. A link to the past is insanely difficult to deal with without one.

The game always starts in super metroid, and I really didn’t get much there, so off it was to ALTTP. And so began an hour and a half long hunt for Morph, which I found at the buried flute spot, one of the last places I could have checked. Past this dogshit start (as my friend in call with me at the time called it), it was pretty smooth sailing for a bit. That was until I ran out of checks to do in both Super Metroid and ALTTP, or so I thought. My only choice was one I hadn’t considered, being Maridia, suitless and hi-jumpless. And so began my hour of pain, trying to get to Mama Turtle while freezing crabs and fish and doing precise springball double jumps to climb to the top of Main Street. Once I got there, grabbing the Magic Mirror was trivial. What wasn’t trivial, however, was the exit from mama turtle. Only having 75 health and no gravity suit, any hit would kill me, and considering plasma was behind the Master Sword check (hilarious by the way), I had no ability to kill the pink pirates. Needless to say, I died. A lot. Spending so long trying different jumps to get out of the literal hole I was stuck in. Finally, I escaped the hole and at that point, I was basically in go mode. All I had to do was find a couple more items, which all happened to be easily accessible behind the Magic Mirror. Finding Gravity Suit was basically the last big hurdle to get over, and it was found quite easily once I had Speed Booster from King’s Tomb in ALTTP. I finished Super Metroid first, and then finished ALTTP. I’m seriously proud of myself for pulling through that suitless maridia bullshit, I didn’t know I had that level of skill at SM, and being able to realize that was honestly great, and I felt really accomplished when I finished the seed after like. 8 hours. Here are my results if you're curious!

I don’t like the sentiment that this game was “What Xenoblade 3 Should Have Been”. This game feels largely like a nostalgia-fest-y victory lap while also trying to be a full fledged game (and it succeeds in that!), and quite honestly I feel like wanting this first would have gone very much against Xenoblade 3’s message of moving on from the “Endless Now”. Thankfully aside from that one gripe with the sentiments, I’m by no means immune to nostalgia-fests! Every little reference and location and nod warmed my heart, and speaking of heartwarming SHULKDAD!!!! God I loved seeing the parents interact with their kids, even Rex who I’m not especially fond of elsewhere, I was pretty fond of in this game. Matthew and A are a fantastic duo as well as great characters individually, I love how Matthew is this sorta dumbass (lovingly) hyperactive guy, love him so much. A is my genderfuck monarch and I love A with all my heart, perfect char. Nikol and Glimmer as said earlier, in addition to being great in their own right, I loooove their relationships with Shulk and Rex so damn much. Great story of course as well, even if I feel like it could have used a bit more room to breathe. Combat I feel is pretty alright as well, they did a pretty good job differentiating it from 3’s, which was something I was a bit worried about. Major issue with it is that the defense classes can’t keep aggro for shit, especially with how overpowered Rex is (SPIN TO WIN). But yeah! Overall I loved this dlc, it stands pretty well among its peers in the series and despite how I felt for a bit in the middle, it worked its way into my heart pretty dang well. Love you, Xenoblade <3

Intensely conflicting game for me… I had (and still do have) a deep love for Little Big Planet when I was a kid that would play it with my brother all the time for a couple years. So seeing Sackboy placed on what’s a “just okay” 3D platformer kinda set me off at first. But at the same time, god this has the feel I really wanted it to! It really does feel like an LBP story mode, something that's been severely lacking in the world ever since LBP3. It has that soul of the series there, at least a little bit. The world is of course amazingly crafted, and it definitely does feel like an LBP game… one without creative aspects outside of character customization. I guess I just want a Little Big Planet game again, and this at least kinda looks and feels like an LBP story… but that’s really the only big positive.

Writing this from the UK where I’ve been on a spring break trip for the past week or so, today I went to the Science and Industry museum in Manchester and they had a video game thing, so of course I wanted to go to that. Turns out among many better and cooler games, they had a Phillips CD-i running Hotel Mario and you know I had to play that. I can now finally say, even though everyone already knew this, this really does suck! Gay Luigi, Toasters, and Lotsa Spaghetti aside, the actual game really feels like it drags on, with each hotel being so much longer than it has any right to be. Mario, when jumping on enemies, just feels irritatingly out of my control. Just a slog of an experience aside the cutscenes. Moral of the story, don’t play Hotel Mario but I do recommend the museum I played it at. Power Up is super cool.

One of the only pc port projects I have genuine praise for over official releases. Its revolutionized how I play randomizer specifically, and I HIGHLY recommend trying it out if you play as much randomizer as I do. Especially with support for Darunia's Joy, the only downsides to using this over the n64/wiivc rando is inability to use custom voice clips/models. In addition to the customization options on display, it's a really great way to play OoT and especially OoT randomizer.

However, if you play this at 60fps or above I do not trust you and depending on how far above you go I may just shake you in order to try and bring you back to your senses seriously this game looks even worse at 60fps than it does at 20

Nintendo seems to love surprising me with Metroid at the most unexpected times! Similarly to when I cried when Dread was announced, I was probably the loudest I’ve ever been during a direct when this got shown off, and even more so when the announcer just came out and said “Later Today”. Metroid is thriving and I could not be happier. With this and Dread coming out within the past 2 years, and with a version of every single 2D Metroid soon to be playable on the Switch and the other 2 Prime games and Zero Mission likely to come, I’ve never been more excited for the future of a series. Anyway, about Prime, every time I play this game it keeps getting better and better, especially this time thanks in no small part to the amazing work that was done for this remaster. The remastered visuals are gorgeous, while keeping the original feeling of the gamecube original, and the new control choices (ESPECIALLY Dual Stick) bring a convenience with controlling Samus that makes this already extremely good-feeling game to play feel better than ever before. Shoutout to the color assist and other accessibility options, as a colorblind person it makes me so happy to feel that I’m being cared about thru these options. I’m so so ecstatic that Metroid is back, and it really does feel like it’s here to stay this time!!