Cheap special effects. Over-the-top violence and gore. Hokey acting. Gratuitous sexuality. These are the hallmarks of the classic Halloween staple: The B-Horror Movie, where high concepts, low budgets, and mid-range actors band together to produce certified schlock for the silver screen! In an interesting parallel however, we have the mid-budget late 90s video game, which has the same kind of soul we find in B-cinema: ambitious ideas, middling budgets, and acting of dubious quality. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed the common ground there, and so, enter stage right Crazy Games and their loving send-up to B-Horror, Illbleed.

Illbleed is a virtual horror house all about exploring different attractions based on in-universe B-Movie horror films; in which you focus on disarming traps, fighting monsters and making it to the end of each stage without bleeding yourself dry, giving yourself a heart attack, or just flat-out biting the dust. From Psycho to Child's Play to Tremors, Illbleed wears its influences loud and proud, but in the same breath, it's not afraid to poke fun at itself, its influences, and the very nature of the B-Horror. In between some horrific monster design and genuinely unsettling moments of terror, there's moments where the game will peel the curtain back a bit to reveal the inner workings of the setting and poke fun at itself, from employees complaining about malfunctioning equipment in the park, to some stages flat out requiring you to break the rules of the universe to proceed. It's all incredibly surreal and bordering on full-blown Dadaism, but it all works in Illbleed's favor, lending the game this enjoyably irreverent tone throughout.

Illbleed can be hard to parse at the best of times, and the first level will test your patience like no other, but much like any B-Horror film, if you can stick with it past its rocky start, you'll be in for the ride of your life. Illbleed is a cult classic for good reason: It's a loving homage to B-Horror and an unabashedly earnest celebration of the medium and it's influences that isn't afraid to revel in the absurdity of it all.

(This is part of a series of party game reviews for party games that I messed around with alongside a good friend in a weekend. I'm writing them with time inbetween each review to avoid flooding so I can still have friends after this.)

Basically, grown up Monopoly. Imagine Monopoly but with stocks, investments, and salaries, and that's Fortune Street. It's surprisingly very fun just investing and buying stocks and watching your prices go up, and unlike most Monopoly games, I felt like progress was consistently being made due to how much more money can fluctuate and change hands. I also appreciate the ability to buy out your opponents' properties for 5x the price to get sections of the board that you really need/want if you can afford it or feel like betting it all to circumvent stubborn players that refuse to trade.

A few minor complaints though. Some of the boards are somewhat cancer (I'm thinking of that one board where the Club was accessible on its own island that kept changing positions by 90 degrees whenever someone landed on the switch) so try not to choose a board that leaves the suits for promotion up to chance. I also kind of wish that the dice roll was bigger for boards in general (1-12 would be great), so that it would be much faster to traverse the boards to get all the suits and promotion more quickly for more action. Finally, I do wish that there were more opportunities for minigames/chance time games as part of the Mario Party appeal of Fortune Street, and that there were some more minigames included. And it would be a lot more convenient if there were an option somewhere to skip watching opponents' turns if they were CPUs, as I found them taking up a lot of time during multiplayer sessions with others. Give Fortune Street a shot if you're just looking for a chill wealth accumulation board game and feel like being the Wall Street for a day.

no other game experiments with diegetic rhythm gameplay like space channel 5 part 2. eschewing the opaque freestyle gameplay of the similar parappa series, space channel 5 instead presents easy-to-grasp rhythms conveyed via creative visual cues. the call-and-response challenge paradigm is accented with twists that extend beyond pure memorization: long strings of inputs may be symbolized by the movements of a boss robot's appendage, or panels featuring dance poses lighting up in time with the backing beat. once basic concepts are established, the designers throw curveballs to screw with the player and add some much-needed challenge to the experience. you may have to single out an out-of-place opponent who sings the wrong input, or carefully count spores crashing down from a gargantuan mutated plant. as each stage goes on the music gets progressively faster and the commands begin demanding better reflexes all the way up until a climatic motif that ends each stage. even with its simplicity it's an absolute ball to play.

the game also oozes a retro sci-fi style that showcases go-go boots, smooth curved architecture, and rave-tinged big band tunes. I absolutely need to shout out director yumiko miyabe, who created the original design for protagonist ulala in the first game as well as having art/CG credits on other sega staples like panzer dragoon saga and NiGHTS. it's obvious that she was a primary influence on the game's unique vibrance and campy encounters. this game also boasts fully 3D environments that vastly outdo the crunchy FMV backdrops of the first game. there's a much heavier focus on environment interaction in this one given that elements can change on the fly much more quickly, and towards the end it segues into some truly abstract areas filled with gripping tessellations. these combined with the extensive choreography and the eclectic musical themes work fuse in a way that absolutely screams "Dreamcast."

the game is not long, but at the very least they added some neat extra content on to satiate those wanting to squeeze more out of the campaign. there's a pseudo hard-mode that's unlocked after finishing the main story; I wouldn't call it a true hard mode since not all sections have more challenging patterns, but at least they tried to stretch it as far as they could. there's also a special survival mode with a hand-selected set of rhythms that will truly test a player's mettle given that a single mistake will send you right back to the start. setting high scores on the main stages and getting far in survival mode will unlock extra costumes, which functionally serve as a proto-achievement system. to add an extra layer of complexity, there are also multiple hidden inputs in each stage that can be subtly noticed by additional accents present in the backing tracks even when left unsaid in actual gameplay. that commitment to unorthodox ways to extend the replayability of these short titles is exactly what I expect from a sega title, and part 2 absolutely leapfrogs the first in that respect.

it helps that this is the only one available on modern platforms, as the aforementioned FMV backdrops of the original have seemed to let it fade into obscurity. this is the superior game by any metric anyway, so stream it live with your friends. revel in the charmingly awkward localized singing and cheerful grooves present throughout. indulge in one of the best early console rhythm titles available!!

I don't think I will ever be able to forgive the West for robbing us of the Mado Monogatari series and its way more successful spin-off franchise , Puyo Puyo. While I will always have a nostalgic fondness for Mean Bean Machine (the first Puyo Puyo I experienced as a kid that weirdly tied a puzzle game with a cartoon whose dubious quality satiated my obsession with the blue blur at the time), the Arle gang and its mythological aesthetic were and always will be the perfect coat of paint to contextualize the absurd premise of competitive block puzzle gaming.

Thanks to the Sega Ages collection, it's now possible to experience Puyo Puyo translated in its glorious original form. Do you get much more out of it that you wouldn't by playing the untranslated version? Not really, besides some cute quips and banter that you can now understand at the start of each battle. But man, do these characters look and sound fantastic in 16 bit. Considering how the franchise would later evolve its presentation and gameplay, the original Puyo Puyo holds a certain quaintness and simplicity to it that makes it such a fun weird little title to revisit.

It's also a stark reminder of how a seemingly simple change to a concept can tremendously improve it and establish a formula for the rest of the series to iterate upon. This little change wouldn't happen until its revelatory sequel tho, Puyo Puyo Tsu, who introduced the ability to counter your opponents attacks, a mechanic the original Puyo Puyo lacked and would devolve every single battle into a "who is the quickest to make a combo that will fill the opponent's screen with a mountain of garbage puyos impossible to eliminate" match.

Better things would come for the Puyo Puyo series, but this is nice, isn't it?

https://youtu.be/FVe1Y6TcARc