In 1904, game designer, writer, reporter, Georgist and feminist Elizabeth Magie patented The Landlord's Game: a scathing review of the contemporary trends of rent and land ownership (in the form of a board game). The idea was that players could understand the complicated web of "The Rich Get Richer" from a more simplified point of view. Fairness could be instilled in children when they play this game and realize how cruel the world could be if we let it. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, this did not work out. The world is still cruel because we have let it. Even more unfortunate for her, Parker Brothers made Monopoly in 1935, a game very much like The Landlord's Game, that quickly took the world by storm and became commonplace in American homes. Monopoly probably came to be due to some perfectly legal patent loopholes, but it's clear that a piece made to criticize greed eventually became a vehicle for it.

Perhaps Monopoly took off the way it did because The Landlord's Game is from the point of view of the owners of money and land. But what if it was from the point of view of someone who has no money?

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is a scathing indictment of greed and the acquisition of money, more ferocious and toothed than anything The Landlord's Game could conjure up. It is made to inspire the soul crushing feelings of a minimum wage 9-5 and it does it very well. Most games demand you grind to work your way up. Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland demands you grind to lift your pathetic leg up on the first rung of the ladder.
Everything, down to talking with npcs, costs money. And you, as the titular 35-year-old virgin Tingle, (who has very, very little to do with the series he originated in) have none of it. Want to look at things in a store? Want to ask someone a question? Better clock in and beat up some animals to do an imaginary coin flip to get an item so that you can sell it for a paltry sum of rupees.

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland works so much better as a piece of critical art than The Landlord's Game because it is terrible. It is boring, it is bland, it is repetitive, it is exactly what having a job is like. And brother? i quit this job after two days.

I hate this game. I recommend it to not only Zelda fans, but anyone who enjoys art.

There is a 30% chance that this game is enjoyable, but that percentage can be increased to 90% if the conditions are just right.

This review will be on the HD remake of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, but it will also encompass my experience with the original Wii version I played over a decade ago. My feelings about the one cannot be present without my feelings about the other.

I’m pretty sure 2011’s The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the first game I ever preordered with my own money (I still have the golden Wii remote that was packaged with it). A high school friend of mine and I would talk at exhaustive lengths about what we thought was going to happen in the game based off of the teaser art that was revealed featuring a swordless Twilight Princess-y looking Link standing back to back with a Wind Waker-y Great Fairy looking girl. The 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time had official art of Skyward Sword’s Link hidden throughout the world, which only further amplified my already bristling anticipation. Besides the previously mentioned remake of an already perfect game, Zelda had put out a few duds. It was time for a return to form. It was time for something with no strings attached. It was time for the classic Zelda experience.

And then I got the game.

Let it be known that there were some things I liked about Skyward Sword. Fi’s design, everything about Zelda herself, and of course Groose, stand out the most. The music is great as always and I like Kina the Pumpkin girl.

But those controls, man. For a game putting into practice what the Wii Motion Plus controller was capable of, it sure is a shame it never fully did exactly what I wanted to. It felt more like I was playing some carnival attraction.

I do not like them, Sam I Am.

Skyward Sword was kind of the last straw for me for a little while. In my petulant teenage eyes, The Legend of Zelda was no longer the proud sibling series to Mario, it was now the stupid gimmick series where they find new ways to play a game to justify their underpowered toyetic consoles to the world.

This opinion would of course change, but I still felt that way for a good few years. And regardless of which Zelda games came out afterwards, Skyward Sword was always my least favorite.

And then even more years passed. The game that was made to commemorate The Legend of Zelda’s 25th anniversary was ten years old. And to commemorate that, Nintendo released a high definition remake of the game, with the ability for buttons only controls.

Buttons only controls! I had to write it again just to feel the pleasure of putting it into words once more.

I got Skyward Sword HD at basically half price, and more than ever that feels like a steal. Buttons only mode elevates this game far, far above the original. It feels like I’m playing a video game! Every clumsy and misaligned action that Link could do before is now streamlined and precise. And they even give you the option to go back to motion controls and remind yourself how dire the situation was.

No longer is Skyward Sword a good Zelda game that is held back by how you interact with the world, it’s just a Zelda game now. And Buttons Only Mode actually makes that initial idea of intense sword combat Nintendo’s been chasing since Zelda 2 interesting to play! Sure, a lot of the combat has that shooting gallery feeling from the original where the enemy runs up to you and waits to be killed, but later on you fight more aggressive enemies that punish a missed input. And now that you have an interface that doesn’t miss an input half the time, it becomes an enjoyable challenge!

The world map is still small but without the Wii Motion Plus mosquito buzzing in my ear, I was able to understand that its constant reuse of the main three areas was a means of adding depth and richness to each of them, rather than laziness. I’d still like a snow area though. Or a beach area. Or both.

Skyward Sword HD taught me how to love again, and I, at the very least, really like Skyward Sword.

The ending is still kind of dumb. Spoiler alert for a 10 year old game but it retroactively makes my man Ganondorf feel less special. That’s some dumb shit.

I’ve played and 100%-ed The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword twice, once on each version, and I only recommend the second version. Button Only Mode is truly a game changer. Now, hopefully you will be as lucky as me and get this game for 20 bucks, but in the event that you won’t or haven’t, I still think it’s worth the marked retail price. It’s a good game with an endearing story with loveable characters, and now, interesting controls.

Fi is less annoying in the remake too.

If you can’t stand the sailing, you only want the first half of the action/adventure genre.

Even though Four Swords was released a year beforehand, Wind Waker is the game that put the overly expressive Toon Link on the map. This is the game that truly began his massive and storied career. They never shoulda called him Toon Link, they shoulda called him Link and every other iteration “Realistic Link”. Dude’s been in more games than any other Link. Put some respect on my man’s name.

But anyway,

With iconic visuals inspired by the 1963 animated movie: The Little Prince and the Eight Headed Dragon; what used to be the “too cartoony” Zelda game is now one of the most timeless of them all. Aside from some crunchy textures here and there, 2003’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker looks just as good as (or really, better than) its dubiously necessary 2013 HD remake. At just a glance, Wind Waker is a game for the ages.

Looking deeper than that glance, Wind Waker is a lot of things. It’s a game about exploring a vast ocean, and in doing so, make it feel smaller. It’s a story about being turned into a secret weapon during the last gasp of a long and drawn out war. Its a story about clawing for the present while important players around you can’t feel their fingers from clutching the past. It’s a bright and cheery time full of memorable and lovable characters. It is the post-apocalyptic continuation of an epic that will leave you hopeful for the harrowing future. It also feels like something is missing.

Wind Waker is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, but not Majora’s Mask. I mean this in both a story and a mechanical sense. There’s no three day timer here. But it’s not a full retread of what made Ocarina of Time what it is. The Hyrule Field of old has been flooded and your big open playground is now the even bigger, and more open Great Sea.

And that Great Sea is peppered with 49 islands with various things to do and folks to meet, like the soon-to-be cornerstone of Zelda: Beedle. You can chase after flatulent pigs under the shining sun or fight the shrieking undead in the darkest depths. You can collect more rupees than you were ever able to carry and spend it all on the local auction.

According to the game, the water in the sea is cursed and can’t bear any fish so I guess everyone has been getting by on eating those flatulent pigs, but it does them well because the people of this new Hyrule are as lively and memorable as ever.

But you have to get on your boat and set sail to meet them.

Now, the sailing is probably the biggest point of contention about Wind Waker. That honor used to go to the visuals but I imagine we’ve all grown past that. But I still hear talk of Wind Waker followed up with a smug but regretful “yeah, there’s just too much sailing in it” and while I personally don’t agree with that sentiment (you eventually get the ability to warp around the map), I can understand where they’re coming from.

There is more of a disconnect between how Link moves on foot and on boat than there is between Link and Epona the horse from previous games. Link can run, roll, jump and “hiyah” his way through the environment with ease and comfort. In Wind Waker, Link’s continuous rolling can gain a bit of momentum, making traversal even more fun and easy, not to mention how cartoonishly high his jump attack is. Both Epona and the King of Red Lions are focused on speed across long distances and not necessarily agility. And even though the boat is more fully featured than the horse that came before it (you can use all your long range items as well as bombs on the boat, at this point you could only loose arrows on horseback), sailing is more of a different Mode of play, rather than a choice to be made while playing. You could, if you wanted to, go through Ocarina of Time without riding Epona because you don’t like it. You have no choice but to sail in Wind Waker. Again, I don’t have a problem with this.

If sailing really is that big of a problem for you, I recommend the speed running trick called Sail Pumping. Repeatedly unfurling and putting away your sail in a rhythm takes advantage of the initial jolt of speed you get when you first take the sail out.

The only minor problem particular to sailing I have is that changing the direction of the wind with the titular Wind Waker baton takes a little bit longer than it probably should. The HD version speeds this up, which is a welcome change. That being said, I don’t necessarily believe that something like the HD Remake’s Swift Sail is a positive change. The sailing really didn’t need to be sped up like that. Its a part of the adventure. It’s some delightful Quiet Time. I suppose I phrased that a little erroneously, as half the time spent sailing will be backed by one of the best Zelda themes of all time.

It’s a Zelda game. The music is gonna be good, I don’t need to say much more than that.

If you really gotta complain about the boat in Wind Waker, complain about the salvaging. You can find yourself boating around in circles trying to fish up that treasure. It’s maybe my least favorite thing about the game.

If you aren’t a Zelda Freak like me that has to 100% every game, you can avoid salvaging over 50 times and just do it the mandatory 8 times, during the last stretch of the game. That last stretch is sadly, where my actual least favorite thing about the game rears it’s ugly and forlorn head: that it comes to an end too soon.

Wind Waker came out only three years after Majora’s Mask. That’s a big technological leap in such a small and stressful amount of time. And because of that, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that corners were cut. One of those corners was the number of dungeons, as alluded to in a 2013 IGN interview with Wind Waker’s director Eiji Aonuma where he states that two of its dungeons were repurposed for later Zelda games (my guess is most likely Twilight Princess).

It’s pretty nice to know that the dungeons weren’t lost to time, but I would have liked to live in a world where Wind Waker could afford to get the extra dev time to have those two dungeons.

So you beat the 5 dungeons and the quests and met everyone and done everything and maybe even taken a picture of everything to get figurines made of them. Time to go to the endgame and go through what is basically an elaborate boss rush before the final boss.

But when you get to that final boss, you’re given dialogue that makes this game’s Ganondorf the uncontested best Ganondorf in Zelda. The fight is nothing crazy, but the character, the pathos. We meet him multiple times throughout the game and each time we see a bit more of him. It establishes his villainy and then gives us his motives. It is a shame that we haven’t come close to this introspective iteration of the King of Evil since.

I have beaten The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker at least five times. I haven’t gotten every figurine yet, and I will eventually, but otherwise I’ve 100%ed everything else at least three times. I’ve also done a three heart run and it turned out to be a very disappointing time. There was no adventure!

Wind Waker is an excellent game that under-stays its welcome. It feels good in the hands, and there’s tons of toys to play with, the music is great, the sights are lovely. I recommend it to anyone who wants an adventure. You’ll no doubt end up like me and wanting more (that’s where the equally excellent fan-made randomizer comes in.)

The water temple is good, actually.

This is it. The high they’ll chase for decades to come. The Zelda Formula, perfected. The quintessential 3D Zelda, on the first try.

There was a time where I was of the opinion that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was just Okay. It was Fine. It was Overrated. Just A Link to the Past with 3D models. That was also a time in my life when I was a moron. Ocarina of Time deserves every bit of praise it ever has or ever will get.

My thoughts on Ocarina of Time was originally a novel’s worth of paragraphs. I went on about how hyrule field’s connectivity to its surrounding towns and locales with only a loading screen separating them pushed the sense of adventure. I rambled about the appealing and memorable characters that lived in those towns and locales. I talked about just how much of a home run Ganondorf’s first on-screen appearance was. I spoke on the coolness of Sheik, and just how much of a character princess Zelda became because of that. There’s so much to like about Ocarina of Time. Too much for a “””review””” like this.

I have played this game at least 10 times, and I've 100%ed it two or three of those times. Those Big Poes can be a real pain in the ass.

You don’t need me to tell you how good it is, it speaks for itself and its voice is loud and clear.

It's got the best Hyrule Field theme too. it brings a tear to my eye every time.

i've written a review of this game already and it was silly and hyperbolic but nonetheless, how i felt. i will delete that first one as i will go more in depth here in this second review.

This really is the perfect video game.

It’s astonishing how intense of an evolutionary step 1993’s Mega Man X is in the Mega Man series timeline. Just the ability to cycle through your special weapons with the shoulder buttons would have been enough to be a game changer, but then Mega Man X adds the ability to climb walls, to charge up those special weapons for a unique super attack, and above all else, to perform a momentum-carrying dash.

And that’s not even counting the brilliant level design, and how some of the stages are intertwined. The effects of this is limited to three stages, but beating one stage can alter another, allowing you to explore further and find more goodies. Aside from the immediate upgrade you might find, this connectivity between a fraction of the stages really adds to the sense of Place the game has. Throw in a world map on the stage select screen and you really are saving a capital W World.

In this world, every character design and silhouette is stellar and iconic. Zero and Vile and Storm Eagle and of course, X himself, are some of the coolest designs around. It is Classic Mega Man, but more "hard core", with just the right amount of excess. If anything, it separates the Mega Man style from Astro Boy just enough to have more of its own identity, and I'm thankful for that.

Beyond the visuals, every sound, every song, is a serenade for the ears. Once again, Storm Eagle takes a W for having such a good theme, but Boomer Kuwanger and Sigma 2 and the Cast Roll themes are all certified bangers. The sound of X charging his buster is one of my favorite sounds of all time. That violent harmonizing that hums before crescendo of a blast of energy has to sound pleasant if you’re going to be holding down the shoot button the whole time you’re going through a level.

They COOKED.

I have lost count of the number of times I've played and beaten Mega Man X. I've 100%ed it multiple times. I've done a humble speed run of it. I've done a Buster Only run. I've done a no-dash run. I've wrung every drop of novelty i could out of this game and yet it is still a fantastic time, every time. It feels good in the hands, it sounds good in the ears and it looks great in the eyes. Play this game. That's not a recommendation lmao it's a demand.

finally, media that explores what it's really like to be Italian.

Pizza Tower diagnoses you with anxiety, and then demands you weaponize it against what causes you stress.

getting a P rank on any level feels like doing a foot-long line of coke.

As a certified Gameboy Zelda Lover, I am biased, and the ability to transform into an Octorok deserves a perfect score.

On their own, the Oracle games are a pretty middling Zelda experience, with Ages not shining as brightly as Seasons. But together, through the programming magic of sharable passwords, they become a much more interesting and full experience. An experience that feels like the season finale of a Saturday morning action cartoon. This review, copied and pasted for each game, for better or worse, will be on that experience.

I should start by saying that when these games were first released, you had to buy each of them. For twice the price of a regular game you got the Oracle Twins’ full experience. Nowadays, one could easily play both of these games for as little as one savvy google search. Regardless, it’s worth criticizing nintendo for more or less selling you two weak games that make up a somewhat stronger, more interesting experience, rather than just making a great experience from the start for half the price. But what’s done is done, and I’ve said what I wanted to say on that.

The Oracle Twins are at their most fun and interesting when you have beaten at least one of them, but which one should you start with? Which Oracle game takes place first in the Zelda Timeline? Well, as far as the games themselves are concerned, each game has the potential to be the first or second in your playthrough. So start with whatever you want. Oracle of Seasons for the action? Or Oracle of Ages for the puzzles? Do you like blue haired ladies? Or redheads?

But why is it more fun to have already beaten one of them? Why not be fun from the start? Well, it is fun from the start. You’re playing a Zelda game, after all. But once you beat it, you’re given a special unique password that you can then use when you start the other game to turn it into a sequel of the one you started with. There are dialogue differences that slightly change the context of the games’ respective intros, your animal friend is carried over, and most importantly, your magic rings that you spent countless hours grinding for, which I will get into later, are also carried over. It makes the second playthrough a much more personal experience than just “the next game to play”. It’s a continuation of Your journey.

Since these games started off on a handheld console, they already had the benefit of being more personal than something that is played on a tv where anyone in the room can watch. Add to that the intimate nature of the Oracle’s Linked Game, and you have a nice quaint story all to yourself. Add to THAT the Linked Game Only side quests that require you to go BACK to the previous game and talk with old characters to fulfill those quests and bring the reward back again to the second game, and you have not just a story but an ongoing saga with living breathing worlds, all in your back pocket.

Now maybe you’re more of a Zelda Freak than I am. I only beat Ages and then a Linked Seasons, but if you want to get the full Oracles Experience and get all the little details: you beat each game, and then using the link codes, start a linked version of them, effectively starting both games again with slightly different contexts. That’s too much work for me, but here I am writing a review on it, so maybe I should have done it.

It’s kind of wild how much of a preamble this review has, considering the overall simplicity of the games themselves on their own. They’re your usual 2D Zelda affair, elaborating on 1993’s Link’s Awakening’s already abundantly charming graphics and fun controls. As someone who in turn abundantly loves Link’s Awakening, the Oracle Twins are a great time if only because I get to play as this Link some more. And then you tell me that there’s new goodies for this Link to play with? Like the Roc’s Cape that extends your jump into a glide? And the noisy but interesting Magnet Glove that opens up a host of interesting puzzles? I’m sold.

To add to the fun, there’s a horde of 64 magical rings to collect across both games. The usefulness of these rings range from simple baubles commemorating an achievement, to making enemies drop extra money when you defeat them, to tripling the damage you both deal and take. There’s also rings that transform Link into a green palette swap of some of the enemies in the games, like the shield swallowing Like-Likes or the perfect little Squit, the Octoroks. These rings are kind of just for show and don’t act as a disguise or anything, which is a shame, but they’re fun and I like having fun.

There is however, something shameful about the rings that I find indefensible, and it isn’t that you can only wear one ring at a time. It’s how you acquire these rings that I cannot defend. While some of them are scripted rewards, a great majority of the rings you collect will be through sheer chance. You might occasionally get a ring drop in the Maple the Witch minigame, which you have you grind for. You might also get a ring drop from a Gasha Nut, which randomly gives a tiered prize depending on how much you’ve grinded. So you could be like me and spend half an hour grinding away at killing enemies to spawn the Maple Minigame and then harvest a Gasha Nut only to get the same useless ring three times.

Because of this, I did not get every ring between the two games. I got every piece of heart between them, but I didn’t 100% them and I’m okay with that. There are other, better Zelda games to spend every waking moment with.

I’ve talked mostly about the mechanics of the games and not the story, because the mechanics are much more interesting to me. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue here though. Veran is a fun villain for Ages with a really strange design (I’m serious look up the promotional art for her and try to figure out how her hat looks, it’s infuriating), and Seasons is the only Zelda game where you can find the Jawa-like Subrosians. They’re very fun and silly but I think it’s the simplicity of their designs that held them back from being a recurring Zelda race. It’s a great design though. Everyone loves a little cloaked freak.

I think Subrosia alone is what makes Seasons the better of the two games. Being a pseudo-dark world with its own currency, it makes the world in this little game feel so much bigger, despite its relative simplicity.

There are sadly, other reasons why Seasons is the better of the Oracle Twins, and those reasons are things that are in Ages but are absent from Seasons. The most egregious being the Mermaid Tail. Ages gives you a swimming upgrade to make you move not only move faster in water, but also dive down into combat-capable underwater rooms. However, the Mermaid Tail requires you to frustratedly mash the directional buttons to move. You can't just hold the left button to move left. When switching back and forth between the linked games, the different swimming styles become dreadfully apparent, and playing Seasons just becomes less annoying.

Ages also has the Simon Says-like Goron Dancing minigame, which was a miserable time for me. And you can't hit me with that Skill Issue nonsense, i'm the Karaoke King in all the Yakuza games and i soloed the Orphan of Kos. It's not me.

Regardless, both games are a fine time. I have my problems with Ages but the good outweighs the bad. Despite the mermaid tail, I will probably play it again some day. Honestly, I dread running into the last few dungeons in each game than I do the mermaid tail. Those dungeons can get pretty tedious.

I have played each game twice, but only done a Linked Game once, where I got every piece of heart for each game.

I recommend the Oracle Twins Experience for anyone who enjoys Zelda but also anyone who likes the Game Boy. For some reason, the Game Boy has had a massive resurgence in the DIY/custom building scene, and the only reason i could see myself sinking the time and money into putting a backlight on a Game Boy Color would be to play the Oracle Twins again.

A safe return to form with a real off the wall gimmick.

After the frustrations of 2011’s Skyward Sword on the Wii, you could not hear a discussion on Zelda games without the words “linear” or “hand-holdy” popping up. It would seem that being unable to explore the world of a Zelda game at your own pace is something that can really hurt the experience. The children yearned for adventure.

So two years later, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds dropped and gave the children what they wanted. It also gave the geezers like me what they wanted too. Everyone was happy.

A sequel to 1991’s A Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds takes you back to the Hyrule of old with a few new changes. The music and visuals are fresh but don't stray too far from the source material. The soundtrack ironically is one of the more interesting choices, rather than using unique instrumentation, A Link Between Worlds feels more rustic European than anything that's come before. The flutes and strings in the minigame theme especially sound like something straight out of Bilbo Baggin's 111th birthday vibes. Link looks phenomenal in this game. His hair isn't pink though lmao, so as much as we can say it's a nostalgia driven game, they weren't brave enough to be that adherent to the past. But enough about the sights and sounds, let's get to the real meat of the game, what sets it apart from its peers.

A Link Between Worlds allows you to take on whichever dungeon you want, by making the items you usually get in those dungeons available from the start, but only through renting them. If you die, you lose it, and if you have enough money, you can permanently own it. The Item Rental System makes dangerous enemies more threatening and collecting rupees more important than ever. It’s pretty cool.

A flaw in the Item Rental System is the threat of dangerous enemies and the value of rupees disappears once you gather enough cash to permanently own the items. The game is quite generous with rupees and ways to get more rupees, so you’ll be owning those items a few hours in. A few more hours in you’ll have upgraded your items and cleared all the mini games so enemies will be a joke, and the rupees they drop won’t matter.

I’ll tell you something though, the enemies are pretty easy even without permanently owning the items. I recently did a Green Tunic Only, Rented Items Only playthrough and only died once the entire time in the late game challenge tower. The main game couldn’t touch me. But I guess that’s what hero mode is for.

Ah but the item rental isn’t the only gimmick in the game, is it? The Wall Merging mechanic is what was advertised the most before A Link Between Worlds was released. It’s a cute little thing that flattens you up against the wall, but what shouldn’t be ignored is how much it changes the way dungeons are approached from both the developer and player points of view. Instead of just being a string of rooms with puzzles, the very structure of the dungeon can be included with the puzzle. Structures you normally wouldn’t see the back side of can now hide secrets if you wall-crawl around them. You have to pay attention to every wall. I only wish they pushed this further, it’s a really neat gimmick.

The wall merging is also the means to go to the dark world, hilariously named Lorule. A Link Between Worlds treats Lorule less like a cursed evil world and more like a parallel Hyrule that fell on hard times. Instead of the unsettling creature-like npcs from A Link to the Past, Lorule’s inhabitants are (most of the time) color-swapped reflections of Hyrule’s npcs. These reflections can inform things about each other, and make both worlds feel a little richer. Yet another reason why the purple haired anti-Zelda, Princess Hilda, is one of my favorite Zelda characters ever.

I’ve beaten The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds three times and 100%-ed it two of those times. Each time was a blast and I’m probably going to play it many more times. It looks and sounds and plays great, it’s a treat all around. I love it. You should play it.

This has just what Mega Man 4 was missing: War Crimes.

Mega Man 5 also has a charge shot that looks great and melts through everything in the game.

Mega Man 5 ALSO has nothing but bangers in its soundtrack. I love every song in this game, especially the Proto Man stages. They were cookin here.

The Super Arrow is pretty redundant in this game though, considering Rush Jet is present, as well as an upgraded Rush Coil. It's pretty cool though!

There's not much else to be critical about here, the game is really solid all around. I love every bit of it. They added some extra frames of animation so that Mega Man can spin around. It's great! How could you be mad with that?

I've beaten Mega Man 5 four times and enjoyed it each time. I recommend it to anyone who likes video games. You don't even gotta study or play the previous games to enjoy it, just jump right in and have fun.

They put a jump button in this one and it's game-breakingly good.

If not my first video game ever, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is my first Zelda game. I vividly remember playing this game on my dad's big clunky Game Boy with my mom over my shoulder watching what i did and giving me suggestions of what to do. If this game was terrible, it would still hold a special place in my heart as the game my mother and i went on an adventure through.

But this game is particularly good, despite being on the Game Boy. I think that's something to temper your expectations with before going into it. It's a Game Boy game, and those always pale in comparison to their console counterparts. But Link's Awakening is one of the best Game Boy games ever. It's a simplified Zelda game, but it holds its own. If you need proof of this, it's been remade twice (once in color on the Game Boy Color, and then a full on 3D HD Remake on the Nintendo Switch).

There's a lot that makes this game so remake-able, and to that extent, enjoyable to play, and the most noteworthy is the intriguing story. But that story would be slightly less interesting if there wasn't a colorful (considering this review is on the black and white Game Boy version of the game, i'm using colorful with a bit of poetry here) cast of characters to interact with and adore. Marin in particular is a very lovable character, and she's lovable enough to play through the game without getting a single game over. Do it for her. She deserves it.

Link's Awakening falters for me in an interesting way, but I have to explain the good part about it first. It chooses to let you use the two face buttons on the Game Boy for any item however you want. For example, you can equip the sword to either the A or B button, or neither of them because you have the bow and shield out because you're low on hearts and don't want to get in close. This trait actually lets you use the first instance of Bomb Arrows in a Zelda game, beating Twilight Princess to it by over a decade. (Just press the bomb button slightly before the arrow button).

The way the game falters is that because it's on the Game Boy, and you only have two buttons to work with, you're constantly pressing the pause button and waiting a split second for it to show up so you can swap items and then wait another split second for it to go away so you can go back to the game. It's a little thing, but considering how many times i pause to swap the Roc's Feather out for something else and then pause again to swap back to the Roc's Feather adds up.

This brings us to the Roc's Feather. I like the Roc's Feather in the same way a crackhead likes Crack. The Roc's Feather lets Link jump, and jumping diagonally increases Link's speed. It feels incredible to play. But at the same time, playing without it for whatever reason makes the game feel less fun. It feels stiffer, it feels stunted. It shouldn't feel that way, it's a fine game on its own. But that feather changes everything. It's Crack. Thankfully, the 2019 Switch remake doubles the face buttons you can use and then adds a few more for good measure, so your Roc's Feather can always be on hand.

Despite this, the original is still worth playing. Any shortcomings you might find are balanced with cuteness and silly charm.

I have played this game so many times I know it by heart. I've played every version of it multiple times. I've glitched the DX version to do a full Damaged Sprite Tunic playthrough just because i liked how it looks. I adore the Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. My biggest gripe with it is that it's not long enough, i want more.

Classic Mega Man at its finest. It’s got that dog in it.

If Mega Man 2 improved on its predecessor by adding fun levels for the player to jump around in, Mega Man 3 improves on its predecessor by adding more things to do in new fun levels. The most noteworthy of these mechanical additions is Mega Man’s doggy friend Rush letting you jump and fly and occasionally swim. He’s a good boy.

That being said, I don’t want attention taken away from the slide, which I consider to be a huge step forward for Mega Man’s toolkit. Press down and jump and you briefly zip forward at half your height. It’s a little awkward to pull off but it’s satisfying and (with the right amount of skill) can be used for quick evasions and (with even more skill) extended jump distance.

The Robot Masters have fun designs, their stages have great music, you get to fight the bosses from MM2 again via the morbid Doc Robot (some kind of translation of its original name, Dokurobotto K-176), you get a ton of levels to play, Mega Man 3 has just about all you could ask of a Mega Man game. Except a charged shot, but I’m not docking points for that, they hadn’t thought of it yet at the time.

Mega Man 3 is on hardware that can struggle to allow for in-depth storytelling, and it was made in a time where the tricks to do that storytelling on that hardware hadn’t been discovered yet. As such, the Proto Man plotline, a fan favorite story beat, is left entirely to the ending, where the player is also left to infer a lot of the meat of this story. I’m a certified Mega Man Freak, so after hours of poring over manuals and comics, I can appreciate the story of Mega Man 3, but it would be nice to be able to just turn the game on and get the full experience. But that’s a discussion for old games as a whole, and not just Mega Man 3.

Something that bothers me is that the times that Proto Man is a mini boss, he is just regular ol Proto Man. But when we have our final showdown, he’s wearing his full mask with the Sniper Joe eye as Break Man. Those looks should have been switched around so that the player could assume they’ve been fighting an elite sniper joe. Then, we get the twist that he’s a guy like Mega Mn, and then at the end Dr. Light reveals he’s Mega Man’s long lost brother.

I’ve beaten Mega Man 3 about four or five times. It’s length and trickiness detract from its replayability, but I think it also adds to the substantialness of the experience. I recommend it to any video game enjoyer. It’s the best NES Mega Man game. No empty calories.

This is a pipe dream and a half but I fully welcome a Powered Up-style remake, just to get some cutscenes and dialogue to give us the angst and drama that this game deserves.