Link's Awakening without the "Nintendo polish" (with peace and love to you, Capcom). While all of the dungeons in this game were well designed and filled with puzzles that were challenging but satisfying to accomplish, traversing the Overworld always felt noticeably more of a grind and much less intuitive than it ever did in Link's Awakening's much more charming Koholint Island. That being said, the "changing seasons" mechanic is admittedly very neat and a really unique way to make the Overworld its own macro-dungeon. With all its drawbacks, it is still a very solid GBC and Zelda game, and worth playing, if nothing else, so you can experience the coolest item in all of Zelda, the Magnetic Gloves !

This game is really frustrating to rate but not nearly as frustrating as this game itself. On the one hand, this is a really creative way to revamp this arcade classic which sure enough successfully spawned like 10 other games (two of which I grew up with on the GameCube, Frogger Beyond and Ancient Shadow); on the other hand, this is a really flawed start.

First and foremost, the camera is way too zoomed in in this game, which makes everything feel claustrophobic and makes exploration feel very dangerous, especially with the narrow lives count and time limit that each level gives you. That, coupled with Frogger's limited movement options (compared to in later installments) means that Frogger is going to be dying A LOT, with most of the time not even being the player's fault.

Unless you are a masochist, the only way one should even attempt to 100% this game is utilizing the infinite lives "cheat" in the pause menu. I put "cheat" in scare quotes because infinite lives merely levels the playing field rather than give you an unfair advantage. Plus, you're still going to spend a lot of time getting through each level with it.

As for the levels themselves, to end on a more positive note, I have to admit that a lot of the different zones and mechanics within them are surprisingly well done for a first installment, the visuals and the soundtrack diverse to each zone is a welcome treat and playing through them makes a 100% run worth it. So long as you utilize the infinite lives "cheat" so you can actually spend some time on each level rather being thrown back into the main menu every two minutes.

Finally playing this game so many years after growing up fondly playing Pac-Man World 2 has really made me appreciate the monumental improvement of quality found in the sequel. While the sequel is superior in nearly every way, one point I have to give to PW1 would definitely be in the theming of their worlds, opting for more classic fantasy themes (Pirates, Space, Circus, etc.) over PW2 less inspired nature-themed worlds (Snow, Forest.... Deeper Forest?). The game still has its fair share of drawbacks however, more obviously some of the frustrating camera angles which are fixed and can lead to some awkward and frustrating jumps and more personally, the lack of any in-game tracker of all the collectibles in order to aid on a 100% completion quest. This game gets some extra meme points however, because the infamous Tommy Tallarico worked on the soundtrack.