the writing is so crusty it loops back to being enjoyable. almost a parody of anime tropes, to the extent that i'm not entirely sure this isn't satirical. the childhood friend girl-next-door love interest, the comic relief loser sidekick, the cute animal mascot, the stoic boy who's actually a super important special powers boy who got evil science done to him, and Toki. TOKI. she's the WORST, she's like how nerds remember the most marketable 'waifu' traits of Asuka and Rei Evangelion combined into a younger, edgier looking fanservice machine. the gameplay is probably the best mainline SMT has ever had up to this point, its atmosphere and art direction is nowhere near Nocturne's (tho what is) but this franchise's character writing hasn't ever been that strong. if you can have a good time with some anime babes saying shit like "homeslice went bananacakes" and dumbass edgelord demons telling you to unleash your joker's trick, then it's worth playing. if you can't handle that, you're a coward anyways.

Hi-Fi Rush is one of the most exciting releases from a major studio in the last decade, not because of it being shadow-dropped on its reveal, but because it's so FUN. people say being "like a PS2 game" as an insult but this game's got the identity, creativity, and style of the best of that era with modern polish and some of the most gorgeously animated visuals in any video game. it's refreshing, it's the kind of game that you don't really see outside of the indie space anymore - something bold, confident, and unique. it doesn't feel like it was made to be consumed, it feels like it was made to be played and loved. Hi-Fi Rush radiates joy and it makes me do the same. very few video games go this hard, more should.

this was the sickest shit i had ever seen on an ipod in 2010. shame that you can't play these anymore.

mobile games are a joke now. they're made for the sole purpose of harvesting as much cash as possible - whether that be from casual audiences, kids, or the 'people' who play gacha games and let themselves become more beast than man. but for a brief time, mobile gaming had promise. quick, cute, arcade-styled games ruled the market and weren't squarely focused on scamming you, but there wasn't really a substantive, impressive title for mobile. until THIS came out. this shit was nuts, at the time. it had atmosphere, actual gameplay, cool visuals - at the time i thought this was the future of mobile games. this was a bright, shining testament to the ingenuity possible in the mobile games market. now, it isn't even playable any more. lost to time in a sea of fuckin kim kardashian wait 14 hours to build a store games, banished into nothingness while anime girls get slightly naked if you pay several hundred dollars. shame, really.

i will do untold amounts of crime to get this game a translation patch, it looks SO GROSS and CREEPY i want to love it so bad

Update: SOON... shoutouts to Cargodin and EsperKnight for making me not have to learn japanese

Update: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6451/ gooped off my gourd with happiness. it real :)

one of my favourite aspects of the N64/PS1 era was just how hangout-able so many of its platformers were. i just want to inhabit a world like Peach's castle, the hubs of Spyro 2, and most of Banjo-Kazooie. that shit all had such delicious atmosphere, music, neat lil secrets, and great movesets to explore with. Cavern of Dreams fully embodies all of those great elements of its forefathers but fully cranks up the mysterious, slightly-spooky feelings playing games could give off up late at night on a CRT.

Cavern of Dream's tone and visuals are simply too good, its colour palette makes me want to cry. it's pulling from lots of N64-era games (particularly Rare's) but its main inspiration seems to be "the astral observatory in Majora's Mask", which might just be the single most beautiful location ever put in any game so i heavily fuck with the dev's vision. nearly every new location made me go "woah!!! pretty!!!" out-loud and take a couple screenshots. that made me like the game by default, but i was overjoyed to find out just how smooth of an experience 100%'ing Cavern of Dreams was. its areas are really compact, full of sharply-designed puzzles and challenges that never go too far in frustrating the player or boring them.

Cavern of Dreams isn't very long, getting 100% took me around 6 hours and very little of that time was spent aimless or upset. aside from maybe two stand-out sections that annoyed me (the final boss, the whirlpools in an end section that send you back a minute of walking) and a few qualms with the player's movement (it's really easy to bounce off a wall when trying to ground-pound) this was an absolute joy. i want to put this game in my mouth.

in grade ten we had a PE teacher who would usually just give up and say "fuck it, go do whatever activities you want here with your friends." i didn't have any friends so i just kinda sat there and he was like, "why the fuck are you just sitting there" and i was like, "fuck you man i dunno what to do." this game is very neat but it feels exactly like that to me. it's only fun with friends and even then, never a game i really choose to play. or want to play. you gotta put in so much time to make anything neat and, if you haven't already played this before, playing it with people who have just pisses them off when you don't know how to smelt shit. maybe i could spend fifty hours gathering materials and learning how to use redstone to build a little lever or something or i could just have sex with my wife.

this isn't super playable in its current state but it being playable in a state at all makes me very happy. Dinosaur Planet was always a really interesting thing, ambitious cancelled games are just inherently compelling but this one was particularly cool. Rareware at their peak doing shit on the N64 that still looks impressive before the scope of their project veered towards a worse direction. it's easy to wonder what could've been, but having all of this confirms it was better off this way, but only in theory. playing through this yourself requires a lot of trial and error, it's definitely not finished. really love this game's Krystal, wish she was more of a character in the final game. also wish they didn't ditch the adorable designs here to try and make her sexy for some reason. Miyamoto will never be forgiven for his crimes.

Grasshopper and Suda's trademark creative personality unleashed on a scale not seen since the original. not as quiet and contemplative as Travis Strikes Again, 3 returns to the bold bullshit of the first without any of the overexerting quirk of the games that followed it. a return to form and, finally, the first No More Heroes game with combat that feels good and fun. honestly my biggest complaint is that i just wanted more - more weapons, more dialogue, more story (was pulling for another Killer7 appearance) and maybe a bit more variety. you can definitely tell this was a victim of both covid and a low budget, but it does the most it can. it had me grinning at the edge of my seat like very few games ever can. this is more of a 3 1/2 but it gets 5 stars for the Travis rap bit.

"This is the character that is going to do it for Saturn!”
- Steven Spielberg

this quote is the most famous thing about Bug! because it is very, very funny. no one really cares about Bug!, not even enough to check if this quote was real - it's not. that is how little the world cares for Bug! and i say that as someone who fully completed Bug!. Bug! just isn't very fun, regardless of how many exclamation points are in its title. its cramped camera, tedious and labyrinthian level design, crushing difficulty, lack of continues, insufferably slow pace, and abundance of bugs really bugged me. Bug! is an interesting landmark in the history of 3D game development, its quality is the result of an insane development timeline at a point in game history where the 3D platformer didn't really exist. it's an incredibly impressive and unique experiment. the prerendered graphics are really fantastic, the concept and design for Bug! as a character aren't that bad - but the game doesn't take advantage of the character or theme. he's supposed to be a movie-star on a filmset but every level is just a generic game level, it's a huge missed opportunity for charm and flavour. a green little quippy film guy was neat conceptually, but would be done better later with Gex's 3D games. but Bug! has more exclamation points than Gex did, so maybe not.