Just to get this out of the way, I didn't go for all the emeralds. I wasn't super enjoying my time with the game and didn't feel like going emerald hunting by hunting down the ring, playing a mini-game, then quitting the stage so I could redo it all again. I just wanted to finish the game.

As for my overall thoughts on it, it's an alright 2D platformer that I can understand would look amazing to people that grew up with this franchise, especially if you played the Genesis titles as children. Personally speaking I only kind of played them as a kid. Most of my experience back then was from the Sonic and Knuckles Collection on PC which I played a lot along with the Sonic Mega Collection when I eventually got that. I never finished any of the classic titles as I'd usually get stuck or just bored and move onto somehing else. When it comes to 2D Sonic (and I'm using this term in the way the general audience sees these games cause I know dedicated fans will endlessly argue on "Well technically some 3D Sonic games are actually 2D cause there's lots of 2D segments", but general audiences don't care) the only one I can say I've finished was the DS version of Sonic Colors. I remember enjoying that one a lot, but it has also been over a decade since I last played it I think. I was hoping this game, being as well received as it is, would capture some of what I loved about that game or the bits of older games and just give them some QoL improvements to make a game that feels fresh and modern. The answer I came to was....somewhere in the middle.

To kick things off with my biggest complaint and the one that gave me so much frustration that I ended up modding the game so I wouldn't have to deal with it, this game's lives system. Lives systems are never something I tend to enjoy in games. For the most part I can deal with it cause usually, in any game I play that still has them in the last decade or more, losing all your lives and getting a Game Over just meant you had to restart the stage from the beginning. That's only kind of the case here. If you get a Game Over in this game, you go back to the start of Act 1 of that Zone. This wouldn't bother me so much if each Act didn't feel the need to end with a boss fight. In theory ending each Act with a boss fight sounds fun, but when I'm fighting the same thing over and over just so I can get back to the part of Act 2 I struggled with (whether it's a platforming challenge or Act 2's boss), it gets super annoying. I got through most of the game mostly fine with this, but then I hit the final boss of the game if you don't have all the emeralds. The boss is a bit tricky for someone like me and to only have 2 or 3 chances to learn it before getting booted back to Act 1 sucks especially since I'd usually forget everything I learned by the time I got back. Now I've heard so many defenses for this. The classic one being that Sonic games are about learning the levels so you get through them faster, but as someone who rarely enjoys replaying even my favorite games, going through the same zones over and over just to figure out faster routes sounds awful. Another defense I've heard is that it's fine cause you can grind lives or that it's at least better than older games where you restart from the beginning of the game. That second part is just dumb cause anything is better than restarting the whole game. The first part I could understand if you were able to go back to easier stages to grind lives, but you can't do that till after you beat the game.

Now that I got my rant on the lives system out of the way and have pissed off like 99% of anyone reading this, the actual gameplay is pretty good. Sonic feels nice to control, even if I have no idea where I'm launching myself to most of the time. The level design is neat with the game constantly throwing new things at you, even in the throwback Zones. As almost everyone has expressed, I do wish there were more original Zones since they tended to be the best ones. The boss fights were creative and I even liked the bit where you play Puyo-Puyo against Eggman (thankfully you don't have to be good at Puyo-Puyo to win cause I suck at it and won on my first try). The only complaint I really have with the gameplay are the Blue Sphere stages, which aren't even required for anything other than getting medals for some extra goodies. My problem isn't even with the stages themselves, but more how the game handles progression with them. I don't think I ever finished a single Blue Sphere stage, which is fine cause again they're not required for anything. However I still enjoyed doing them early on....until I realized the game was just sending me to more difficult stages despite me not even being able to finish the easier ones. I don't really get why they set it up like this. It's not like the special stages for the emeralds continue in difficulty if you lose. Like I failed the second emerald challenge early on and when I got another chance at it MUCH later, it was the same stage with the same layout and difficulty. So why aren't the Blue Sphere stages like this?

Visually this game is just gorgeous. So much amazing pixel art is on full display and it was fun to see what new Zones would come next or even how they change between Acts. Again this is where the original Zones shine cause they are just breathtakingly beautiful.

So if I had so much good to say about the game, why am I giving it a lower score than it sounds like I should be? Well it does just come down to that lives system. It sucked so much enjoyment out of me when playing that, by the time I finished, I was more relieved at not having to play more than anything. I can't personally rate a game highly if I felt I needed to mod it and change how the devs wanted you to play it just to make it enjoyable for me. If the game had a built in option for infinite lives or creating save states or something, I'd have been more than willing to give this a higher score, but I couldn't just "get good" as people like to say.

Yes I have seen the video with the weird thumbnail.

Majora's Mask is a game that's haunted me for well over a decade. I picked up the original N64 copy by accident in the late 2000s (I think) thinking it was Ocarina of Time (I wanted the N64 Zelda game my cousin had, but didn't know there were 2 on the system). After getting over the disappointment of getting the wrong game, I played it for a while and didn't really know what to think of it at the time. The 3 day time limit, mask transformations, and just the overall world left various feelings for me. As time went on, I realized I just didn't like the game. It's not a bad game, but it's not for me. I decided, after watching that video several times, to finally put the game behind me using the 3DS remake since every time I tried the N64 version, I couldn't get past Great Bay Temple. Most of this review will be just my thoughts on Majora's Mask and only a bit will be about this specific remake.

I guess the best place to start is with the most divisive thing about the game, the three days mechanic. If you don't know, in Majora's Mask you're given 3 in game days to get as much as you can done cause time resets at the end of the third day. You can use the Song of Time to reset early, but there's no difference between letting the third day end and playing the song. The 3 day cycle ends after an hour outside of pauses for text boxes and menus. You can extend it to 3 hours by playing the Song of Time backwards and I believe this has been altered in the 3DS remake (although I can't find any definitive answers on that). The point is to create a sense of urgency in the player, to keep them constantly moving forward cause otherwise everyone will die. However, this isn't the case for everyone and I'm part of this camp. Personally speaking, I just found it annoying. While I never found myself running out of time, I just don't like forced time limits in games. It causes stress I'd rather not be feeling when trying to relax. I know I have tons of time to get things done, especially if you restart time after activating the owl statue (the fast travel spots) right outside the dungeon, but try telling my brain that. I also really didn't like everything in the world resetting cause it just lead to repetitive moments, especially towards endgame where I was running around grabbing all of the masks and heart pieces. Having to fight the bosses again (I can't tell you how many times I had to kill Goht) just to have the area in a state that I can use to do sidequests was annoying. Not to mention leaving me with the feeling of "What's the point?". I know this can also be argued away with "Well you can optimize your playthrough better by doing things after beating the boss the first time", but even then there's still times you're gonna have to refight the bosses. Not to mention I don't like factoring replays into my reviews since I tend to only play games once and move on.

As far as the actual core Zelda experience goes, it's fine here. Not really a fan of the dungeon items just being the elemental arrows since it feels like it limits some creativity you can have with having a variety of different dungeon items, but I guess this is sort of made up for with the 3 transformation masks. They're used well enough in the dungeons and surrounding area, although I will say it can feel that Deku Link drew the short straw cause after the forest he's barely used even for sidequests. The bosses are fine, but Twinmold can actually just die in a hole. This is easily the worst change the 3DS version made cause it's a fight that takes forever, doesn't telegraph what to do well, and feels random on when it'll let you know you're doing the right thing. Like this is a game with a time limit on everything you do, so why does this fight (and Gyorg although I didn't find him as bad especially after the second time fighting him) take so long to end? I'm also not a fan of how the game kind of forces you to go get the sword upgrade like immediately after the second dungeon. Enemies gain lots more health, especially everything in Ikana Canyon, Ikana Castle, and Stone Tower Temple, and it just feels so arbitrary.

As far as other things with the 3DS version are concerned, only other big change I cared about was the change to how Zora Link swims. I don't mind the slow swimming since it makes it easy to get around when near where you want to go, but draining magic when trying to do the faster swimming wasn't the right idea. If you don't do it reguarly, it'll be more annoying when going for the Beaver races or the Gyorg moon challenge (granted both are optional so technically the faster swimming is never required). Everything else honestly didn't bug me or I found better. Yes it's dumb that they added giant eyeballs to the 4 main bosses, but it never detracted from my experience. The addition of gyro aiming is an absolute godsend. The change in how saving works would honestly be something I never would have noticed had someone not told me. Basically in the original you had 2 ways of saving. You saved automatically when going back in time and you could also create temporary saves by using the owl statues. In this remake, they got rid of the travel back in time way to save and made the owl statues permanent along with adding a bunch of extra save statues that can't be used as fast travel locations. The reason I say I wouldn't have noticed this is cause even when I played the N64 version, I still always used the owl statues to save. It was my personal way of being 100% sure I did save after everything I did.

Majora's Mask will always be a divisive game. You'll have people that absolutely adore it and consider it one of, if not, THE best Zelda game ever made and possibly one of the best games in general ever made. You'll also have people like me who find Majora's Mask frustrating and hard to get into in comparison to the rest of the series. I can't help how I feel and I doubt I'll ever become a fan of it.

Whatever you do, DO NOT PLAY THE PS3 VERSION OF THIS GAME!!!! I got that one when it first released and holy crap is it a 0.5/5 experience. Runs at like 2 frames per second if there's anything more than 2 characters on screen and has massive input delay. Like it's actually unplayable. If you managed to finish the campaign on it, you are a true Super Saiyan God.

With that said, this is my second time (I think) playing through this game. I previously did so on PS4 and enjoyed it a lot, even if it had room for improvement. Then Xenoverse 2 released and kind of rendered this game pointless outside of playing it to get a decent partner for some story segments in Xenoverse 2 and being able to transfer more annoying skills over at the start of the game. I am reviewing it based on how it'd be to play today instead of when it first released, although I'll try to only bring up how Xenoverse 2 improved things if it's important.

The gameplay is your pretty standard anime arena fighter. You're given a small area to fight 1 or multiple opponents in and can use special skills that can range from fancy punches and kicks to colorful lasers and massive balls of destruction. The thing that sets this game apart is the amount of customization with your character. Dragon Ball games have had different forms of customization in the past. The Budokai series allowed you to create custom movesets based on what skills you wanted to use. The Tenkaichi games had some light RPG mechanics (along with games like the Legacy of Goku series). Ultimate Tenkaichi even let you create a custom character to go through the story. However, Xenoverse takes it to another level. The amount of customization when it comes to your moveset is kind of crazy. You can equip 4 special moves, 3 ultimate moves (which can also be a transformation since those take up the same slot), and a dodge move. There's also an insane amount of clothing options that all affect your stats in different ways and things called Z-Souls that give you special abilities when certain criteria are met like boosting a certain stat when a partner dies, powering up specific special and ultimate moves, reviving you on death, etc. The problem with this game, though, is keeping all of this balanced. This is more a problem with fighting the CPU than actual human players, but like once you unlock Super Saiyan and get Death Ball, the game is over. Super Saiyan makes it so your ki doesn't deplete when using skills, but the gauge is constantly draining. Just keep charging it when you start getting low and you're good. Death Ball does a pretty good job of tracking the target so just keep spamming it and not much will get you.

This does bring up another problem, though. Despite the game allowing you to play as one of 5 races that somewhat have different things they specialize in (although not enough to really be noticable), it HEAVILY favors Saiyans. Nearly all of the powerups can only be used by Saiyans and the others don't really get much to work with in comparison. This is a thing Xenoverse 2 addressed when it first released, but then just made the problem worse with later updates. I get it, Saiyans are the main race in the anime so of course they'd get the most tools, but it also makes it seem silly to play as anything else, at least on your first run through the game.

What did make me enjoy the game, though, was the story. Yes you're going through the anime's story for the 200th time, but this one tries to mix things up a bit. You're basically doing a bunch of "What if..." scenarios and they're kind of interesting to see play out. Although I will say by the time you get to Cell, the game kind of runs out of ideas and just starts rushing towards the end at a breakneck pace. There's definitely more that could be done with the concept and it does get expanded on in 2 a bit.

As for any final things I wanted to mention, mentors are really bad in this one. You can only learn skills from them as your friendship level increases which just goes up in the background as you keep them as your master. It goes up really slowly, like I had Pan as my master from near the start of the game and by the time I finished she still had 1 more skill I couldn't learn. The game also has just too much RNG when it comes to unlocking skills. Like take the mission that gives you Super Saiyan as an example. It's a mission where you help Frieza take out Goku and friends. In order to get Super Saiyan, you have to trigger Goku into transforming. To do that, you have to make sure you kill Krillen before going after Goku. This all sounds easy, and it is, but the problem is none of this is guaranteed to happen. You could do everything right, but because the RNG said no, Goku won't transform. Even if he does transform, the RNG can still say "No" and you won't get Super Saiyan. It took me around 10 or so attempts at this mission before I finally got it.

I think that's all I wanted to say. Dragon Ball Xenoverse was a fun game when it first released, but if you played 2 then it just feels like a massive downgrade. There's not enough different between the two to justify this one being worth going back to outside of transferring data to 2.

While I don't think this is one of the better Freddi Fish games, it's still a Humongous Entertainment game and fans of these games will love it. Being the first in the series, it obviously has some kinks to work out. Namely how padded it feels since, unlike later games, this one's just going back and forth between locations looking for bottles that weren't there last time you were there. Later games would fix this issue by just having you solve puzzles and the area only changing if something you did somewhere else affected this spot, like a character needing to go here for some reason. All of this is forgiven when the sharks are on screen though as I just love them. Sad they aren't used much in later games.

The game might have gotten more noticed for what it is if it didn't open with the classic DK arcade game (although I can't lie it is cool to see it have kind of a twist ending to that arcade game with DK getting back up).

So this is basically the precursor to the Mario vs Donkey Kong series. I've only played a bit of the first one before this, so I guess you can say this is the first one I've fully played. It's a fun little puzzle platformer with only a few hiccups along the way to the end.

The only big problems I had with the game were some mechanics I didn't fully agree with and tended to make some levels more frustrating than they'd otherwise be. The main thing is having to figure out how far Mario can fall. There's 4 different states he can be in when falling. He can just land on his feet, roll out, face plant and be stunned for a couple seconds, and die. Sometimes it's easy to tell if a jump is too high, but that roll was really annoying. So many of my deaths were caused by Mario rolling into spikes, lava, or bottomless pits. There's also an ice world which is easily the worst world in the game for me. Ice physics in platformers are rarely ever fun, especially ones like this that want you to do more precise jumps to solve puzzles. I eventually got the hang of it, but still not having complete control of your character's movement can be annoying. I guess the same could be said for the wind mechanic, but I rarely ever ran into issues with that. Not to mention in a few of the ice levels, the door is sometimes invisible so if you forget where the door is then you're just left to guess.

The levels themselves are pretty creative. There's 3 different types of levels. You have your puzzle levels where the goal is to get a key to a door. You have the levels similar to the Donkey Kong arcade game where the goal is to just get up to Pauline. Then you have the boss fights which tend to just be throw 3 barells (or twice it's walking enemies) at DK. The boss fights, outside of the final boss, are pretty boring if I'm being honest. The arena is pretty much always set up the same way, with platforms on the left and right side, and I never saw anything resembling a challenge during them. The puzzle levels, which make up a majority of the game, are really fun and creative. Some definitely had me thinking on how in the world I was supposed to solve them. My personal favorites were the few that basically had you make the level yourself.

The controls, outside of the roll, are really nice for a Game Boy game. While you have your basic run and jump that you expect, you also have backflips, handstands that can launch you into the air and those can be connected to 2 more high jumps for some really fun platforming. Once you get a feel for how Mario moves, it always feels satisfying to jump all over the levels to get the various keys and collectibles. Granted, you won't really need the collectibles unless you care about score. The only reward is more lives and this game just throws lives at you. I'd be shocked if anyone got a game over after finishing the first world.

That's Donkey Kong '94. It's a fun and charming little game that I can see why so many consider it a hidden gem. While I didn't love it like I've seen many others did, I did have a lot of fun and wouldn't mind continuing on to the Mario vs Donkey Kong series.