The e-Reader levels really highlight how much of a shame it is that Nintendo didn't make an original 2D Mario game on the GBA, basically the last chance we really had for a new sprite based Mario platformer. They're great levels with lots of unique and original ideas, and collectively are about as long as SMB3 itself is... just without the proper pacing of a fully structured game and also accessible only via an expensive peripheral and impossible to obtain cards. At least the Switch Online version has all the levels unlocked, though it comes with the unfortunate loss of the vegetable and fireball switches to add some extra variety to main game SMB3.

A truly Zappy game. Engage nails the Fire Emblem experience by putting me in scenarios that appear to be totally unwinnable until I stuff Yunaka in a bush to make her a god. Peak Fire Emblem is when my best plotted strategies completely fall apart due to bad luck and I'm forced to use obscure loopholes and idiotic bullshit to get myself out of a bind, and Engage gave me that in spades. While the writing is definitely more Saturday morning cartoon than Three Houses' enthralling shades of gray politics, it sold me early on that it knew exactly what it was doing by having the traditional Doomed Fire Emblem Parent ask Sigurd (the protagonist infamously killed in a fire before he can ever be a parent) for parenting advice. That said, my one gripe is that by being a self-referential celebration of the series, the world of Elyos is definitely far less fleshed out and nuanced feeling than most Fire Emblem worlds... but hey, it still manages to be more coherent than Fatesland, so I'll take it.

Babylon's Fall is a game where every level has you sprinting down ugly hallways that usually feature four brainless combat encounters where mindlessly mashing buttons as fast as you can is your best route to success. Just equip whatever makes your numbers higher and you'll win effortlessly, and if for some reason you don't you have 10 nearly full heals and you can even die 5 times in a level without losing anything other than the 30 seconds or so it takes to revive in exactly the spot where you died. There are no systems worth engaging with and the story sucks, filled with interminable music, forgettable characters, and pretty bad dialogue. It's a shame that it's going away forever in a few days, but on the bright side there's so little worthwhile going on in here that it will never be missed.

I think it's worth specifically pointing out that Super Mario Land 2 has an enemy kill counter, which may just be the weirdest part of what already is one of the weirdest Mario games ever made. Mario decides to buy a castle for some reason, and Wario is then invented specifically to steal it. You get eaten by a turtle to then get eaten by a whale, fight Jason from Friday the 13th alongside a bunch of yokai, and an entire set of levels is themed predominantly around ants. Super Mario Land 2 is bizarre and because of that I'll always have a soft spot for it. Just a nice easy breezy hour or two of platforming, what's not to love?

Solid little puzzle game, damn shame it's about to be gone forever in a few hours. Deus Ex Go is nothing super special but it's a well done puzzle distraction for its brief run time, it doesn't deserve being wiped off the map forever. Unfortunately there was a text glitch for me while I played and every line of text would stay where it was without going away during cutscenes, leading to every line overlapping and rendering the entire plot absolutely impossible to follow... so I don't know exactly what it is I did in this game. Guess I'll just remember this as Adam Jensen's time limited puzzle extravaganza.

A friend of mine foisted this on me as a joke years ago. He just passed away a week ago so in his honor I committed to the bit and played Dead Bits. This game is just the right kind of awful, a low effort indie game from the early 2010s when it was a bit more difficult for any old game to just show up on Steam. How did this mess manage to get on there? God knows - I mean, we do know how, it was Steam Greenlight, but how it managed to get the votes for that is beyond me. It's a time capsule to the worst excesses of 2013 - dubstep, zombies, and forced slowdown to make things look "cool". Fortunately it's only about an hour long, so if you're ever cursed with sudden ownership of Dead Bits at least the joke of playing through it won't be TOO torturous. Can't say I recommend it outside of the highly specific situation of honoring a friend's memory by playing an awful game they forced upon you, though!

Simultaneously the best and worst Pokemon game since Gen 5. As a Pokemon game it's by miles the most I've enjoyed playing a Pokemon adventure since Gen 5, even despite it being the coldest I've been in generations on the new pokemon roster (special shout-outs to Toedscruel/cool, Annihilape, Orthworm, and Klawf). As a game... the performance is just absolutely inexcusable. I had a great time with it, I really did! I hated Gen 8 (even despite loving the new roster of pokemon) and didn't care for Arceus, I slogged through the 3DS games to mostly lukewarm feelings... so it's a big change for me to finally ENJOY a Pokemon game again, I really was beginning to wonder if I'd ever have one click again. But it's a damn shame that it performed so awfully from beginning to end, the frame drops and stutter actually gave me headaches! The stories are actually very well written with lots of enjoyable characters (I wanna particularly highlight Arven, the best story Pokemon has had in years simply because it's a relatable charming tale about a guy who loves his dog rather than bizarre future energy crises or fashionistas inexplicably wanting nuclear armageddon) and exploring the (often textureless) open world to see what you can find is great fun. But boy you sure do have to chug through some of the most comically bad performance you've ever seen in a AAA release. Maybe someday we'll get a Pokemon game not marred by performance woes... but somehow it's gotten progressively worse with every mainline Pokemon release on the Switch, so I can't say I have my hopes up in that regard.