US Saturn Release #008 - Myst

Played on a real American Sega Saturn with the Fenrir ODE

Myst knows how to truly immerse you quickly and efficiently. Even if you have a hard time getting into the puzzles and the general game loop, I think you'll appreciate how it feels.

On those puzzles though, they really vary in fun factor. Some of them are really easy, some are tricky nut actually fun to do and make you feel smart for accomplishing, and others make you drag out the ol' notebook. That's not necessarily bad but I wasn't exactly expecting it so I wasn't too happy about it.

This is a game you really need to play with the shuttle mouse (or on emulator with your regular PC mouse). Playing with the controller is just kind of slow and annoying for the most part, really draggin stuff out making you not want to go through some puzzles the intended way just due to how much playing with controller tanks it.

So I guess overall, Myst is an ok game for the Saturn, though, I don't really know why you would play this on Saturn and not on PC.

6/10

Yoshi's Island kind of blows me away. It doesn't feel like a game that looks and sounds like this should be able to play well on a 16-bit console, but it does. It felt a lot like playing a Sega Saturn platformer, actually, with that console's insane power for 2D. In the end the game really shows just how much you can do on the SNES.

And still, the game holds up if you look beyond the art and the sound. At its core this is just a really fun platforming game, one that provides plenty of fun mechanics (primarily egg throwing) to keep the long runtime fun, and a good scoring system to keep the game challenging at all times. I found myself picking this up every time I had nothing to do.

So obviously, this is a must-play, must-own SNES game.

8/10

This game is painfully middle of the road. It's by no means horrible but there's a lot wrong here like how your health doesn't replenish upon level completion, or how the screen is cropped in a way that makes it hard to see what's coming, or how insane some difficulty spikes get later on. At its core the actual platforming and stuff is fine and functions well but the issues I mentioned hold back the good stuff from being great at all. It's just a passible middle-of-the-road platformer that is easily skipped.

6/10

I haven't played this game in like a decade so getting back into it was a little tough, thankfully the starter fights are good for getting you back into that groove. The fights really ramp up in difficulty but it's pretty easy to learn what to do when if you give it some time. There's still tough execution but when you know what to do when it's a lot more comfortable, and I really like that. At the end of the day this is just really fun boxing game, one that pretty much anyone can get into, like the NES one.

8/10

Actually a perfect game. I swear, ever since I was like 7 playing this for the first time on my Retro Duo, this game has just gotten better, and better, and more and more fun with every playthrough. I think part of that has to do with all the cool moves you can do and how all the abilities and power-ups make for a different experience every time you run through a stage. I think it's also due to how much fun finding all the exits and unlocking all the secret levels is. It's probably also due to the perfect sense of difficulty throughout, where things are indeed challenging but never frustrating.

I honestly cannot thing of even one flaw. This is one of the greatest games of all time.

10/10

I feel like Pac-Attack is really underrated. It's one of those Pac-Man games that gets really overlooked simply because it's not Pac Man or Ms. Pac Man. Probably even more because it's not even one of those maze games, but something a little closer to Tetris or Puyo Puyo. It's honestly a really chill experience playing this. It's easy to just turn your brain off and keep going for a solid half-hour game, and there's lots of fun to have there. I'd also say the skill ceiling can be pretty high, as the ghosts add a lot to that. That's about all I can really think of saying here. It's just a really solid puzzle game, one that I recommend picking up (should be really cheap, and it's on the Pac Man Collection on steam, and the old one on 360 if you happen to still have it like I do).

7/10

7/10

I was really really excited to play this through since I bought it, and the game certainly never disappointed. There's just enough new stuff to the Mega Man formula to catch the interest of people who got bored of the classics (I don't know how you would, but that's just me being obsessive) and there's just enough of the old formula to get people like me into this rather easily. I really loved going back through the levels and collecting all the hearts and armor upgrades. While hidden goodies in the stages was nothing new for Mega Man at this point, it was never a big focus unlike how it is here, where upgrading is a central focus.

I didn't put a lot of time into using all the weapons (I wanted to stick with the buster a lot to re-awaken my classic mega man skills) but they felt really useful for when I whipped them out. They'll make for a lot of good experimentation on future playthroughs.

X's new abilities compared to Mega Man were honestly kind of hard to get used to but I think by the end I got used to it. I've played Mega Man Zero before so I kind of understood it already, just needed to get used to how this game in particular works. Even if it took me a bit it was always fun.

This is definitely a must play must own SNES game. I'd love to own the other X games on SNES and Mega Man 7, but those seem to be very very expensive.

9/10

I haven't played Link to the Past in quite a long time so I was scared that I wouldn't be having as much fun as my last (and first) playthrough, but I loved it just as much, maybe more. I used a guide to find the specific secrets but I was able to remember where most of the important collectibles where, and I traversed the dungeons on my own, cause those were just a lot of fun to figure out.

I really like that most items are used at some point in the game. I feel like the only critique I have about the first title is that sometimes you collect items you don't really need or ever really use (at least for someone like me who's super familiar with the game. I'm sure newer players gets good use out of every item).

Absolutely spectacular game that everybody with a Super Nintendo must play.

9/10