After the commercial flop that was Paper Jam, where does AlphaDream go from here? Well why not remake a game that isn't playable on the 3DS? Thus, we have Superstar Saga DX. It's called this in Japan and its a better name than "+ Bowsers Minions" cause lets be real it rolls off the tongue easier. Plus the new Bowsers Minions just sucks, it's too slow and uninteresting to be its own mode. I think its cool that we get some context for what was happening behind the scenes of the main plot but the mode feels tacked on and not really worth going through. Nah what were here for is the base game being remade in the modern engine, and boy is this game beautiful. I still have a bias towards the sprite based worlds the GBA/DS had but this game keeps the 2.5D map traversal but enhances it with superb lighting that makes each area feel distinct. There were some major and minor tweaks made to the combat but it still roughly plays like a Mario and Luigi game, this time more closely resembling Inside Story which is not bad. It still keeps the things that makes Superstar Saga have its own identity so that's most important. It's a pretty faithful remake and if you somehow missed out on the original Superstar Saga then this is a great alternative. It just goes a little lower because of the Bowsers Minions mode.

I'm gonna go against the general opinion here and say that this is a great first title in a new series. I think everything it does perfectly cements what the series will become in the future and lays out the foundation for future games to improve upon and refine later. Superstar Saga is a charming RPG with an interesting world and very great characterizations of our two bros, never before have we seen Luigi be this different and expressive from his older brother. You gotta remember when this game came out the only other game starring Luigi was Luigi's Mansion, every other game before that he was just Player 2. In this game there's more emphasis on the brothers relationship and how both work best with each other but are more than capable of handling things on their own. With everything this game got right, especially the combat, its kind of crazy how well crafted this game was in its length and overall feel. If you're looking for a short but solid RPG that involves reaction based combat and great observation of enemy patterns, this is the game for you. For it being on the GBA and being THIS good, is wild.

This started as a fun little blast to the past but the difficulty spike when you get to around world 4 and world 8 are insane. It's something to where the game becomes more annoying to play because their idea of level design is throwing like 500 of those annoying enemies, something akin to bad Mario Maker levels. It was a nice romp until I got to the final boss which soured my entire mood, while he wasn't hard i'm pretty sure it's a universal bug where the boss would disappear from the stage and then never return, this happened to me about 5 times before I finally beat it, but the damage was done. For a cute little 2000's 2D platformer, it's fine, but nothing worth checking out other than nostalgia.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this is a sin against humanity, I HATED this game and how much it consistently wasted my time. With the constant story beats that kept dragging on and on, fighting the same fights over and over again, padding for the sake of padding. This game had it all. For any aspiring game designers out there I point you towards this game, a complete example of what NOT to do when creating a fun game. There is virtually nothing fun about this game and anything this game has done the previous entries have done better. This is a soulless complete heap of garbage that I've ever played and I will NEVER return to. Game deserves all the hate it gets, it really is that bad, there was no saving grace here, nothing in this game was memorable and nothing stood out.
You order food at a restaurant and this is the kind of the stuff they dig out from the back of the trash can and serve to you on your plate. The combat was frustrating, the exploration was uninteresting, the music is forgettable, EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME WAS HORRIBLE.
The Paper Toad Missions make me want to pull every single last strand of hair out, these stupid paper morons and their horrible one liners, I hated them with a burning passion.
The Countless amounts of gimmick and minigames this game throws at you is so exhausting, the previous M&L games had minigames yes but this game throws it in all the damn time, you're always doing SOMETHING whether its a poorly designed stealth mission, a find the item mission, a chase the guy mission, a mission where you just play HIDE AND SEEK???
WHAT DEMOGRAPHIC WAS THIS MADE FOR? IT CAN'T BE FANS OF MARIO AND LUIGI, BECAUSE THEY WOULDN'T PLAY THIS, AND IT CAN'T BE NEW FANS BECAUSE OF HOW DIFFICULT THIS GAME GETS LATER ON.

Yes, I think this is without a doubt the hardest Mario and Luigi game in the series, which isn't saying much cause these games aren't even hard but this one just... oh my god. This one just was a pain in the ass. The devs try to remedy this games poor enemy pattern design by making boo cookies stupidly cheap and their sole purpose is so you can practice the bs enemy patterns but you know what my counter argument is to this? The whole fun of a M&L game is learning the patterns and picking up those yourself, yes its trial and error but the enemies always, ALWAYS, gave an indication of who they'll be attacking. In this game because there's 3 people to worry about it makes dodging so uncomfortable and when the game requires you to press all 3 buttons at once I despise it. NOBODY can tell me this was a fun control scheme, say what you want about Partners in Time, but you were still controlling 2 bros at the end of the day, the babies were just piggyback riding off of them. In this game you gotta manage 3 at one time and it's not fun, it's so frustrating because if one falls the other 2 will and then it becomes a domino effect. I really want to know what was inside the devs head when making this cause this wasn't fun at all to play. The Bros attacks in this game are also so forgettable and lame and nothing fun like in BIS or hell, even Dream Team. The Big Paper Craft battles were so boring and such a tacked on gimmick, you could remove these from the game and NOTHING would change. They're so insignificant to the entire game that playing them made me wish I wasn't.

But yeah, those are my thoughts on Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam. A complete waste of your time that no one should ever subject themself to. This is a one and done, forever.

A solid metriodvania with a lot style and love put into its central mexican culture theme. As a Mexican myself I was very happy with a lot of the games artstyle and the overall life it gave to its environments. On top of all that it was a fun beat-em up style metriodvania with an interesting world to explore. The story was pretty basic but with these types of games its not really the story you play it for, they're heavily gameplay focused and its something Guacamelee does well. If you're looking for a short but fun time to get into, you can't go wrong with this game. I picked it up on a sale and I was very satisfied with the game.

This is the downfall of the Mario and Luigi series, an absolutely pointless game with a ton of wasted potential, less replayability, and overall the reason to NOT get a 3DS at the time. I have to ask, why this game? Why remake this game? Why not the one you guys skipped before it? Partners in Time is such a mixed bag in a lot of areas that you could have easily made more enjoyable if AlphaDream chose to focus their time on that one. But here we are. This game on its own is fundamentally the same game as the original with a bit of changes here in there, the changes range from astronomically huge to they changed the creative toad designs into the stale bread generic toad design. Visually I think this game really is beautiful, but with great visuals come cheap performance, this game runs at a solid 30fps, while the original ran at a clean 60fps. If you think that's not a huge difference then maybe you should play both back to back like I did and realize that this remake is not consistent in its timing windows. A lot of the game is just slower and more drawn out than the original with battles taking longer only because the slow battle transition animation has to play every time. If you think the original was easy you have not played the remake, they somehow made it more easy to play with damage values being reduced and you earning more and more from battles than you would have playing the original.
It's just... disappointing, that this was the game that made an entire gaming corporation go bankrupt, and it killed off this series entirely. If you haven't played Bowsers Inside Story and you have a 3DS, just find the DS one, ignore this, it serves no purpose in the market.

This is the peak of the Mario and Luigi series, an absolutely phenomenal game with a ton of creative ideas, tons of replayabilty, and overall was THE main reason to get a Nintendo DS at the time. It took what the previous titles in this series have done, and refined it to its core. While i'm still a fan of the bros attacks from Superstar Saga I still think there's fun to be had with the bros attacks with this game being more of a minigame instead. Bowser is without a doubt the best character in this entire game, it's HIS story after all and my god do they do so much with it. We get so many great character moments with the guy and if you come out of this game not thinking he's one of the coolest video game characters ever, then we probably didn't play the same game.
A must play, for sure.

Yeah this was a short but fun experience, I think it fails as a Metroidvania, like very badly. If it weren't for the fun movement this would be a chore to go through because the areas you visit sort of blend in with each other. And having no map really just elevates it. That being said though, this is a very pleasant movement based platformer that I imagine would be fun to speedrun through. A lot of its ideas are there and they're great, but they're not as fleshed out or refined as they should be I feel. But for a $5 game you can't go wrong with that.

After all the updates, and the hype surrounding this game, all the press footage, leaks, trailers, music, everything. Sonic Frontiers is a complete game now, and it's good, damn good. Easily in my top 5, this game just feels like a revival for the series, everything that we wanted in this ip is here. Sonic has never controlled this better and the fact the game gives you the option to customize the way you want him to be is icing on this delicious cake. Yes, it definitely isn't perfect, the budget shows, but it really feels like the team making this had passion for the thing they created and really took the time to course correct Sonic as a character. This is the shift we needed after years of mediocrity and self deprivation. This team feels confident now, Sonic as a series a brand even, feels more confident. This was the game that did so much for the series and I can never forget that. It also helps the game itself is fun as hell! I still listen to the ost of this game to this day, it really got robbed from the game awards.
Regardless, this is a truly outstanding game, even with all its flaws I think the highs outweigh the lows by a large margin, to think that kids are gonna grow up with this game kind of puts a tear in my eye. Phenomenal in every way.

This game is actually a lot of fun, once you get past how bs it is to actually complete it. If you're like me (deranged) and like to play through every Yoshi game trying to get 100%, you will drive yourself mad with how annoying this game can be do it. But, there is one option you can do, a new feature in this rerelease known as "Mellow Mode" basically what happens is you have infinite flight and infinite eggs, you still take hits though so it's not entirely braindead. If you're planning on getting 100% which i'll say right now, it's not worth it, use mellow mode, it'll make your life easier.
With that out of the way, i'll just say that this game is very creative and the music is amazing, this is a solid 3DS port of a Wii U game, and I think its my preferred way to play. Sure the visuals aren't as strong as Wii U but this game still has the charm you'd expect from a Yoshi game. Right up there with the og Yoshis Island but that's going to be hard to top.

Fun fact, I never beat this one as a kid because when I would always play it I would be so relaxed and soothed by the music i'd always fall asleep. After actually going through the whole thing and seeing what I was missing out on all these years, yeah, it's pretty good! It's a very chill and easy 2D platformer that I think anyone of any skill level will be able to jump in and have a good time. Honestly for what this game was trying to accomplish it does it well, and the ideas presented here are really well done and fun to play with. One of the better yarn related games out there.

Only completed the Mizuki route technically but I'm gonna give my thoughts on the game now because once you see like the first hour of it you already know how the rest of the game will be. Just want to say that this game is really interesting at the start and the mystery is definitely there, it also likes to show a bit of its cringe anime humor and most of the time it is actually funny. The game knows its cringe and it usually makes fun of itself for it, but you can tell that the voice actors and everyone else is having a blast reading their lines. This game balances the silly funny moments with the dark and more serious moments so that's something i'll legit give it praise for. However this is where i'm just kind of thrown off, this game is a visual novel, but there will be moments sprinkled in between where you have to do quick time events and they're usually ok.
This is definitely not something you play for the gameplay, you play it for the mystery, the characters, and the world. If I were to give out a flaw I wish this game had a sort of trigger warning in-game, there are many mature things discussed here and it can scare anyone who's new and wants to get into the series. It's rated M but you wouldn't know there's blood and many eye centered gore from reading the box arts rating. This one can get pretty heavy at times so approach with caution if you have certain triggers like that. Stay safe!

You know what, I don't care, this game is perfect. This is quite easily, hands down, one of my new favorite Wii games of all time. Everything from like the charm, the personality, the characters, the fights, the music, it's all there. The ending left a lot to be desired and if leads room for a sequel which i'm hoping we get cause this series just needs to come back. I loved every second of this game, and even when I occasionally ran into the one or two roadblock boss, beating them just made it feel all the more satisfying to overcome. Yeah so if you haven't played this game idk what you're waiting for because it's truly one of those games that needs to be talked about more. Punch Out as a series is something that is so fascinating, there's only like 4 games but they're all quality in some way.
Definitely stands up there as one of the greats in Nintendo's lineup.