TheMaxine
As a whole, Sam & Max is a complicated franchise to get into, as its fanbase is actually a whole bunch of split subsidiaries of fanbases. It's not too dissimilar from the Sonic fanbase, with the multiple directions and voice actors it took over the years, it's just a lot nicher. You've got the group of fans that love all forms of Sam & Max, but there's some that only read the comics, or only seen the sadly short-lived cartoon, or mainly grew up with the Telltale episodic series (I belong to that group!)... by far the most popular of those groups however, is the one that has only ever played Sam & Max Hit the Road, and nothing else.
Which, y'know, is totally fine, Hit the Road is a totally valid entry point, and I can respect if you think it's the peak of the series, as long as you're not one of those crazies that's still yelling about how they should bring back Bill Farmer and Nick Jameson 30 years after the fact. LucasArts has proven to make some pretty interesting point 'n clicks in the past, the lack of failure states makes them all the more accessible for it. But, despite me beating this game several times as a kid, and seemingly growing up with it, I rarely go back to it these days, while I'd still be happy to revisit the Telltale series any day.
Hit the Road shares many of the pros and cons of the prior LucasArts titles. Great writing, juxtposed against boring line delivery. A dry delivery makes perfect sense for a character like Sam, but Max is supposed to be kind of a psycho. He's wild, he'd beat you senseless, but he just sounds like some guy on the street with a New York accent. His voice is missing that thing that's supposed to offset him from Sam's calmer personality, so there's no balance, and the classic dynamic of the duo struggles to come through. Most of the other characters share a similar problem. No matter how wacky or weird they get, they all just sound so... disattached from the script. The country song was sick though, you gotta hand them that.
Likewise, there's a very creative setting and series of scenarios that occurs here, undermined by the possibility that you're never gonna figure them out without a guide. Honestly, the weird logic of this game might be LucasArts at their worst so far, you REALLY gotta think outside of the box to achieve any means of progress, and this raises the possibility of leaving a sour taste in your mouth, in regards to the time it wants you to waste on what should've been a 4 to 5 hour adventure, turned into above 8 or 10+ if played blind.
There is ultimately so much good packed in here, undermined by what I felt was a weak execution of voice acting, and a frustrating sense of difficulty that doesn't ask you to think smart, so much as it asks you to think stupidly and sometimes nonsensically. Maybe this is a skill issue? Maybe my brain just isn't engineered to deal with LucasArts logic, but there may be a trick to it. In any case, I ended up with a pretty average opinion of the game at the end. I don't hate it, I don't dislike it, I respect its originality and writing quite a bit. But I've found that the later games would go on to strike a much better balance of dry humor and energetic humor, and Hit the Road's approach of 100% dry humor and dry voice acting did not click.
My opinion aside, I would ultimately recommend any point 'n click fan to give it a shot and see if they like it. But if you don't, don't give up on the series yet. Try the comics, try the cartoon, I would especially recommend you to try the Telltale games. Each one of these was made years apart by a different set of creators, and has a distinct approach towards how to tackle the franchise, and one of them may have a probable chance of hitting you in the right way.
Which, y'know, is totally fine, Hit the Road is a totally valid entry point, and I can respect if you think it's the peak of the series, as long as you're not one of those crazies that's still yelling about how they should bring back Bill Farmer and Nick Jameson 30 years after the fact. LucasArts has proven to make some pretty interesting point 'n clicks in the past, the lack of failure states makes them all the more accessible for it. But, despite me beating this game several times as a kid, and seemingly growing up with it, I rarely go back to it these days, while I'd still be happy to revisit the Telltale series any day.
Hit the Road shares many of the pros and cons of the prior LucasArts titles. Great writing, juxtposed against boring line delivery. A dry delivery makes perfect sense for a character like Sam, but Max is supposed to be kind of a psycho. He's wild, he'd beat you senseless, but he just sounds like some guy on the street with a New York accent. His voice is missing that thing that's supposed to offset him from Sam's calmer personality, so there's no balance, and the classic dynamic of the duo struggles to come through. Most of the other characters share a similar problem. No matter how wacky or weird they get, they all just sound so... disattached from the script. The country song was sick though, you gotta hand them that.
Likewise, there's a very creative setting and series of scenarios that occurs here, undermined by the possibility that you're never gonna figure them out without a guide. Honestly, the weird logic of this game might be LucasArts at their worst so far, you REALLY gotta think outside of the box to achieve any means of progress, and this raises the possibility of leaving a sour taste in your mouth, in regards to the time it wants you to waste on what should've been a 4 to 5 hour adventure, turned into above 8 or 10+ if played blind.
There is ultimately so much good packed in here, undermined by what I felt was a weak execution of voice acting, and a frustrating sense of difficulty that doesn't ask you to think smart, so much as it asks you to think stupidly and sometimes nonsensically. Maybe this is a skill issue? Maybe my brain just isn't engineered to deal with LucasArts logic, but there may be a trick to it. In any case, I ended up with a pretty average opinion of the game at the end. I don't hate it, I don't dislike it, I respect its originality and writing quite a bit. But I've found that the later games would go on to strike a much better balance of dry humor and energetic humor, and Hit the Road's approach of 100% dry humor and dry voice acting did not click.
My opinion aside, I would ultimately recommend any point 'n click fan to give it a shot and see if they like it. But if you don't, don't give up on the series yet. Try the comics, try the cartoon, I would especially recommend you to try the Telltale games. Each one of these was made years apart by a different set of creators, and has a distinct approach towards how to tackle the franchise, and one of them may have a probable chance of hitting you in the right way.
All 5 of the Dragon Quests I've played so far have two major goals in mind with each entry. One is to expand the scope of the world, the other is to introduce further mechanical combat depth while still being firmly rooted in its cozy, simple to pick up gameplay. DQ5 succeeds in both, with a whopping runtime of 35-40 hours, the longest it's been yet. I knew not to expect huge changes, this isn't Final Fantasy. "Dragon Quest, but bigger" is up my alley as long as there's a good diversity of content, and this one makes good use of the SNES to bring a larger variety of places and events that should keep you engaged.
It's just a shame that the series is so heavily focused around scale and combat depth, but five entries in and it's still heavily neglecting quality of life improvements. Don't get me wrong, there are some fixes here! You can actually see the stat differences on armor/weapons while browsing shops, your party finally auto-targets enemies that are alive instead of trying to hit ones that are already dead, there's a dedicated button to talking to NPC's instead of having to use the command menu, medals don't take up inventory space, and the Tactics system is back as an option, instead of something that you're forced to use.
The problem is that Dragon Quest has been drip feeding its QoL from day one, and after playing 5 of these suckers, you really find yourself thinking they could've used that extra year of development time to address some of other bigger inconveniences that really should've been fixed by at least DQ4. The survival horror inventory, the encounter rates, the sluggish movement, inability to buy stuff in bulk, consumables not stacking, the repetitive town music, it's all still a problem here. The developers have used the SNES to deliver a greater sense of scale, but the overall systems and presentation still have the antiquation of an NES RPG.
Because of this, I've found myself getting more annoyed with this Dragon Quest than either DQ3 or DQ4. I'm by no means getting tired of the formula, which is as pleasant as ever. But I am getting weary of the lack of convenience that could elevate this formula even higher. It'd be nice to have less reasons to rely on the fast forward button, y'know? My time is limited too, and though I'm willing to give an RPG much more patience to prove itself than other genres, there are limits if my character's gonna spend these 40 hours walking at just above a snail's pace.
With that out of the way, it's not all doom and gloom with this game. The story is the strongest it's been yet. The generational structure, combined with the looming threat that approaches ever sooner, gives the game some very strong and impactful moments as time becomes out of your control. It also likes to play around with the conventions of RPG storytelling much like DQ4 did with the merchant chapter. Placing you in the shoes of someone else but the hero, and doing a couple fun things with it, almost bordering on meta.
My only gripe is that the main villain does not come anywhere close to the impact of those individual moments, and was so generically evil, that a week later and I don't remember who they were, what was their name, or what they looked like. Which ultimately, causes the finale of the game to fall flatter than the rest of it, like it's yet another Dragon Quest final boss, with yet another two phases, and one more "How can this be...!" speech on top of the pile.
The game also introduces a monster recruitment system, a prototype Pokemon of sorts. This is where the increase of combat depth comes from in this one, as certain important spells can only be obtained via these monsters, and there is no guarantee you'll get them. After all, recruiting monsters isn't something you can control, it's a random event that may happen at the end of every battle. What makes this more confounding is that only certain monsters can be recruited, and if you're not using an online guide, you won't be able to tell which. Let alone the fact that some of these monsters have a mere 1/4 chance to be caught, but some of them can be a 1/64, or even 1/256, necessitating the use of very heavy grinding if you really want them all. But I wouldn't recommend it. Something I've quickly learned about DQ5, is that it's a much better game if you just let luck take its course, and see what sort of recruits you accidentally stumble upon, instead of trying to gain the system to catch'em all. I'm sure the point was that on subsequent playthroughs, you could get some monsters that you didn't get before. Some of them, people have never seen in their life, but perhaps you might be the one who did... and that's the appeal.
Another reason to not grind for recruits, is because you eventually find out that certain 1/4 recruits are extremely competent at their jobs, more than enough to beat the game and its secret optional boss. The game is always balanced around giving you the right recruits for the right sequences, while the rarer stuff is just something for insane, or very lucky people to get. Unfortunately, while RPG's are generally about just choosing the one thing that works for you the most, I do wish I was incentivized to switch my monsters around more. Some of the recruits completely paled in comparison to the one that I warmed up to using for the rest of the journey, the Golem. An absolute beast of a tank, that had better stat growths, defense, and attack power than any other recruit I received, yet through its 1/4 chance of recruitment, was very easy to obtain.
And I mean, it's cool at first, but it makes you retrospectively look at the entire recruitment system and realize just how uneven so much of it is, with so many recruits that you're gonna try out for an hour and then switch back to the Golem every single time. There are many mediocre recruits. And there are only two or three really good ones. As for the rest, prepare to grind for hours if you ever wanna see them, but why do that if Golem exists? Personally, if there was a better system implemented that didn't require on just pure RNG chance, and allowed me to have better control over how I recruited monsters, DQ5 wouldn't have needed to run into the problem of having to compromise its own system by just giving you the best shit through the lowest possible amount of effort.
This review has been kinda all over the place, which is exactly how I view DQ5. A game that shot for some really big things, a game that I'm pretty sure I enjoyed throughout most of my runtime, but I kept asking "Man, wouldn't it better if they did it like this?" Outdated design just comes with the territory when you're playing an early SNES RPG, but when you make your world way more huge and sprawling, you can't just leave your NES jank as is, you gotta speed it up to accommodate this kind of scope. I don't think I'm gonna touch the original version of this game again, however, I get the strong feeling that all of my gripes will be addressed by the time I get to the DQ5 remakes. It is then that my praise for the story and the monster recruitment system is likely gonna outweigh my amount of complaints.
It's just a shame that the series is so heavily focused around scale and combat depth, but five entries in and it's still heavily neglecting quality of life improvements. Don't get me wrong, there are some fixes here! You can actually see the stat differences on armor/weapons while browsing shops, your party finally auto-targets enemies that are alive instead of trying to hit ones that are already dead, there's a dedicated button to talking to NPC's instead of having to use the command menu, medals don't take up inventory space, and the Tactics system is back as an option, instead of something that you're forced to use.
The problem is that Dragon Quest has been drip feeding its QoL from day one, and after playing 5 of these suckers, you really find yourself thinking they could've used that extra year of development time to address some of other bigger inconveniences that really should've been fixed by at least DQ4. The survival horror inventory, the encounter rates, the sluggish movement, inability to buy stuff in bulk, consumables not stacking, the repetitive town music, it's all still a problem here. The developers have used the SNES to deliver a greater sense of scale, but the overall systems and presentation still have the antiquation of an NES RPG.
Because of this, I've found myself getting more annoyed with this Dragon Quest than either DQ3 or DQ4. I'm by no means getting tired of the formula, which is as pleasant as ever. But I am getting weary of the lack of convenience that could elevate this formula even higher. It'd be nice to have less reasons to rely on the fast forward button, y'know? My time is limited too, and though I'm willing to give an RPG much more patience to prove itself than other genres, there are limits if my character's gonna spend these 40 hours walking at just above a snail's pace.
With that out of the way, it's not all doom and gloom with this game. The story is the strongest it's been yet. The generational structure, combined with the looming threat that approaches ever sooner, gives the game some very strong and impactful moments as time becomes out of your control. It also likes to play around with the conventions of RPG storytelling much like DQ4 did with the merchant chapter. Placing you in the shoes of someone else but the hero, and doing a couple fun things with it, almost bordering on meta.
My only gripe is that the main villain does not come anywhere close to the impact of those individual moments, and was so generically evil, that a week later and I don't remember who they were, what was their name, or what they looked like. Which ultimately, causes the finale of the game to fall flatter than the rest of it, like it's yet another Dragon Quest final boss, with yet another two phases, and one more "How can this be...!" speech on top of the pile.
The game also introduces a monster recruitment system, a prototype Pokemon of sorts. This is where the increase of combat depth comes from in this one, as certain important spells can only be obtained via these monsters, and there is no guarantee you'll get them. After all, recruiting monsters isn't something you can control, it's a random event that may happen at the end of every battle. What makes this more confounding is that only certain monsters can be recruited, and if you're not using an online guide, you won't be able to tell which. Let alone the fact that some of these monsters have a mere 1/4 chance to be caught, but some of them can be a 1/64, or even 1/256, necessitating the use of very heavy grinding if you really want them all. But I wouldn't recommend it. Something I've quickly learned about DQ5, is that it's a much better game if you just let luck take its course, and see what sort of recruits you accidentally stumble upon, instead of trying to gain the system to catch'em all. I'm sure the point was that on subsequent playthroughs, you could get some monsters that you didn't get before. Some of them, people have never seen in their life, but perhaps you might be the one who did... and that's the appeal.
Another reason to not grind for recruits, is because you eventually find out that certain 1/4 recruits are extremely competent at their jobs, more than enough to beat the game and its secret optional boss. The game is always balanced around giving you the right recruits for the right sequences, while the rarer stuff is just something for insane, or very lucky people to get. Unfortunately, while RPG's are generally about just choosing the one thing that works for you the most, I do wish I was incentivized to switch my monsters around more. Some of the recruits completely paled in comparison to the one that I warmed up to using for the rest of the journey, the Golem. An absolute beast of a tank, that had better stat growths, defense, and attack power than any other recruit I received, yet through its 1/4 chance of recruitment, was very easy to obtain.
And I mean, it's cool at first, but it makes you retrospectively look at the entire recruitment system and realize just how uneven so much of it is, with so many recruits that you're gonna try out for an hour and then switch back to the Golem every single time. There are many mediocre recruits. And there are only two or three really good ones. As for the rest, prepare to grind for hours if you ever wanna see them, but why do that if Golem exists? Personally, if there was a better system implemented that didn't require on just pure RNG chance, and allowed me to have better control over how I recruited monsters, DQ5 wouldn't have needed to run into the problem of having to compromise its own system by just giving you the best shit through the lowest possible amount of effort.
This review has been kinda all over the place, which is exactly how I view DQ5. A game that shot for some really big things, a game that I'm pretty sure I enjoyed throughout most of my runtime, but I kept asking "Man, wouldn't it better if they did it like this?" Outdated design just comes with the territory when you're playing an early SNES RPG, but when you make your world way more huge and sprawling, you can't just leave your NES jank as is, you gotta speed it up to accommodate this kind of scope. I don't think I'm gonna touch the original version of this game again, however, I get the strong feeling that all of my gripes will be addressed by the time I get to the DQ5 remakes. It is then that my praise for the story and the monster recruitment system is likely gonna outweigh my amount of complaints.
Yo, this one rules. Konami, what the hell was going on with you and the Genesis? Your development team was off their shits with these titles. And that includes Castlevania: Bloodlines, which takes advantage of every programming trick possible to create one of the most stunning games available on the system. Whether you're looking for crazy rotatey effects, bosses made up of like a dozen individual parts, or illusions that create the effect of climbing a wobbly tower, Bloodlines is determined to impress you, to look as top of the line as it could be back in 1994.
Bloodlines plays much like the previous Classicvania games, and that does unfortunately include the lack of Castlevania IV's mid-air control. But, somehow, the deliberately stiff controls here manage to feel a lot tighter than Rondo of Blood, alongside the overall pacing throwing tons of new shit at you for every new room you visit. Bloodlines manages to pull off a paradoxical feeling of strategic slow pacedness, combined with the frantic setpieces of Contra that make you forget about the game being slow at all. At which point, your time never feels wasted, and your engagement is at a consistent high.
Bloodlines also lets you select from two characters, one of which can use their spear to climb up high ledges. I assumed this would've led to alternate routes that only that character could take advantage of, but to my surprise, there weren't any. In fact, Bloodlines is by far the most linear title since Castlevania IV. There are no alternate stages, there's only one path, straight towards the setpieces. Which is completely fine by me, I always enjoy a straightforward experience. But, after playing Rondo & Castlevania 3, the selection of two playable characters might lead you into thinking there's more replayability here than there really is.
Speaking of, there is an instance of contrived replayability, and it is in the form of the true ending being only obtainable via Hard difficulty. Never was a fan of this design, and so I've never went for it. The extra lifes may also be argued as an artificial way to extend the length of the game, as with the case of many other games which employed the tactic back then. Using an infinite lifes cheat code may be preferable for the best experience, unless you're up to the challenge.
This is however, a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things. Bloodlines is still solid as hell. It is one of my favorite Classicvanias. Sometimes I feel it might be better than IV, even without IV's improved controls. A satisfying arcade experience, with some of the best presentation value you could ask for. Highly recommended.
Bloodlines plays much like the previous Classicvania games, and that does unfortunately include the lack of Castlevania IV's mid-air control. But, somehow, the deliberately stiff controls here manage to feel a lot tighter than Rondo of Blood, alongside the overall pacing throwing tons of new shit at you for every new room you visit. Bloodlines manages to pull off a paradoxical feeling of strategic slow pacedness, combined with the frantic setpieces of Contra that make you forget about the game being slow at all. At which point, your time never feels wasted, and your engagement is at a consistent high.
Bloodlines also lets you select from two characters, one of which can use their spear to climb up high ledges. I assumed this would've led to alternate routes that only that character could take advantage of, but to my surprise, there weren't any. In fact, Bloodlines is by far the most linear title since Castlevania IV. There are no alternate stages, there's only one path, straight towards the setpieces. Which is completely fine by me, I always enjoy a straightforward experience. But, after playing Rondo & Castlevania 3, the selection of two playable characters might lead you into thinking there's more replayability here than there really is.
Speaking of, there is an instance of contrived replayability, and it is in the form of the true ending being only obtainable via Hard difficulty. Never was a fan of this design, and so I've never went for it. The extra lifes may also be argued as an artificial way to extend the length of the game, as with the case of many other games which employed the tactic back then. Using an infinite lifes cheat code may be preferable for the best experience, unless you're up to the challenge.
This is however, a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things. Bloodlines is still solid as hell. It is one of my favorite Classicvanias. Sometimes I feel it might be better than IV, even without IV's improved controls. A satisfying arcade experience, with some of the best presentation value you could ask for. Highly recommended.
2024
I dunno man, the visuals are very pretty, but as far as sense of progression goes, Ultros is not hitting the kind of pacing I desire out of a Metroidvania. You're either unlocking way too many skills at once to process the worthwhile usage of each one, or you're finding seeds to plant, the advantages of which are not immediately apparent, and instead delayed until you hit the next bit of story progression. It's too much instant gratification, and not enough clarity messily colliding against each other, with mechanics rarely trickled out at a rate that allows you to slowly learn the advantages of each one, or what each type of seed actually does before you're given more of them.
I also take an issue with the game taking away your skills & abilities per every time loop. I don't understand the intent of this. The argument is that it's pretty easy to re-acquire those abilities on repeat runs, but that's still at least 15-20 minutes of backtracking and grinding up enemies in order to reunlock that stuff, plus another 15-20 minutes per every succeeding loop, and... the fact that it's easy only further begs the question, why did it have to be that way at all? Granted, you can find some items that let you lock some of your skills in place, but... at that point, you've already seen them all, and it doesn't feel that rewarding anymore. Meanwhile, there are some abilities that you are always forced to lose no matter what, requiring you to backtrack to a specific room to re-acquire them. It's incredibly unsatisfying. For every major ability I unlock, all I can think is that I'm about 5 minutes away from losing it.
Perhaps Ultros didn't want to be like every other metroidvania out there, but at the same time, what it tries to do different is unnecessarily gimmicky. A more standard progression system where each ability takes effort to get, but is yours to keep couldn't have hurt. None of what's currently here is necessarily stressful, nor is the game all that hard. I think it just overcomplicates itself in ways that seem pointless, abandoning the structure of a classic metroidvania in favor of one that really just doesn't feel as carefully balanced, or intrinsic to explore. Unless you love plant seeds and cryptic lore. Ho, baby.
I also take an issue with the game taking away your skills & abilities per every time loop. I don't understand the intent of this. The argument is that it's pretty easy to re-acquire those abilities on repeat runs, but that's still at least 15-20 minutes of backtracking and grinding up enemies in order to reunlock that stuff, plus another 15-20 minutes per every succeeding loop, and... the fact that it's easy only further begs the question, why did it have to be that way at all? Granted, you can find some items that let you lock some of your skills in place, but... at that point, you've already seen them all, and it doesn't feel that rewarding anymore. Meanwhile, there are some abilities that you are always forced to lose no matter what, requiring you to backtrack to a specific room to re-acquire them. It's incredibly unsatisfying. For every major ability I unlock, all I can think is that I'm about 5 minutes away from losing it.
Perhaps Ultros didn't want to be like every other metroidvania out there, but at the same time, what it tries to do different is unnecessarily gimmicky. A more standard progression system where each ability takes effort to get, but is yours to keep couldn't have hurt. None of what's currently here is necessarily stressful, nor is the game all that hard. I think it just overcomplicates itself in ways that seem pointless, abandoning the structure of a classic metroidvania in favor of one that really just doesn't feel as carefully balanced, or intrinsic to explore. Unless you love plant seeds and cryptic lore. Ho, baby.
1994
First things first, I'm gonna go on record and say that the japanese version of this game is the way to go. Not only did the western version double the difficulty of everything, it also... neglected to translate any of the dialogue and cutscenes from the japanese version, so it just chucks them out altogether. There's a fan translation of this version of the game, and I wholeheartedly recommend it over what the west half-heartedly gave us.
With that said, Dynamite Headdy is the type of game where even through several completed playthroughs, I'm still kinda struggling to wrap my thoughts around it. It's like a platformer, with the pacing of a run 'n gun. That is to say, it almost feels like I'm supposed to play more methodically, but the game is just blasting through its mechanics and setpieces at such a rapid-fire pace that I feel like I'm not being given time to digest any of it.
Despite this, I can't help but admire the creativity on display. Headdy leans headdily into its stage play aesthetic, far more than Mario 3 ever did. Every stage is an act of a play, filled with blatant props substituting the sky, spotlights, behind the scenes background elements, and - on a side note - the occasional ridiculously high-quality voice clip that made me double take my prior understanding of what the Genesis sound chip could handle.
This is a Treasure title, through and through. Their technical prowess, penchant for weirdness, and thrilling setpieces are all present here, and are all worth experiencing. It's just... it feels like there's a difference between me thinking "This game is really cool," versus "This game is fun to play," the latter of which I don't find myself thinking as much. It's not bad to play either, nor is it clunky. Maybe the problem is that whereas the aesthetic is very focused, the gameplay is not. There's tons of powerups, but few of them contribute towards a fun flow of movement that I normally expect out of platformers. Headdy carries no momentum, no running button, he isn't much more other than servicable to play as.
It's the kind of situation where the style of the game carries everything else. And man, if there's anything that'll win you over, it's the style. The amount of scenarios present here are all wild and crazy beyond all imagination. And yet, for all it does, there's just that one tiny thing missing that makes me wonder if the simplicity of the controls not matching up to the complexity of the level variety creates an awkward balance of design priority. In the sense that the gameplay and the variety should've been equally prioritized, but clearly, one thing took precedence, and thus Headdy winds up as "fun enough," but could it have been more fun?
Yeah, again, it's difficult for me to collect my thoughts on Headdy. I love what it's doing, I highly respect it just for being a game that the developers had complete freedom over. But it feels like it's doing too much within too little time, and I guess it makes it difficult to keep a lot of it in your memory once you're done. Perhaps that's not a bad thing, though. It just means that my next playthrough is going to still feel fresh.
With that said, Dynamite Headdy is the type of game where even through several completed playthroughs, I'm still kinda struggling to wrap my thoughts around it. It's like a platformer, with the pacing of a run 'n gun. That is to say, it almost feels like I'm supposed to play more methodically, but the game is just blasting through its mechanics and setpieces at such a rapid-fire pace that I feel like I'm not being given time to digest any of it.
Despite this, I can't help but admire the creativity on display. Headdy leans headdily into its stage play aesthetic, far more than Mario 3 ever did. Every stage is an act of a play, filled with blatant props substituting the sky, spotlights, behind the scenes background elements, and - on a side note - the occasional ridiculously high-quality voice clip that made me double take my prior understanding of what the Genesis sound chip could handle.
This is a Treasure title, through and through. Their technical prowess, penchant for weirdness, and thrilling setpieces are all present here, and are all worth experiencing. It's just... it feels like there's a difference between me thinking "This game is really cool," versus "This game is fun to play," the latter of which I don't find myself thinking as much. It's not bad to play either, nor is it clunky. Maybe the problem is that whereas the aesthetic is very focused, the gameplay is not. There's tons of powerups, but few of them contribute towards a fun flow of movement that I normally expect out of platformers. Headdy carries no momentum, no running button, he isn't much more other than servicable to play as.
It's the kind of situation where the style of the game carries everything else. And man, if there's anything that'll win you over, it's the style. The amount of scenarios present here are all wild and crazy beyond all imagination. And yet, for all it does, there's just that one tiny thing missing that makes me wonder if the simplicity of the controls not matching up to the complexity of the level variety creates an awkward balance of design priority. In the sense that the gameplay and the variety should've been equally prioritized, but clearly, one thing took precedence, and thus Headdy winds up as "fun enough," but could it have been more fun?
Yeah, again, it's difficult for me to collect my thoughts on Headdy. I love what it's doing, I highly respect it just for being a game that the developers had complete freedom over. But it feels like it's doing too much within too little time, and I guess it makes it difficult to keep a lot of it in your memory once you're done. Perhaps that's not a bad thing, though. It just means that my next playthrough is going to still feel fresh.
Princess Peach Showtime, a game where you press button A to jump, and button B to win.
Not for nothing, this is actually a well put together thing. It was just obviously designed with a 20-year younger audience than myself. Showtime isn't concerned with putting its playerbase in risky situations (unless you're going for those rehearse gold trophies, those ones actually gave me some shit), or getting them to think a puzzle over. It carefully crafts the illusion that it's doing both of these things through its theatrically elaborate spectacle, but that illusion only exists to fool a younger audience into thinking that all the flashy lights and big cutscene moments mean that they're really good at playing the game. Feel Good's goal is in their very company name: You're here to press that B button, and feel very good about yourself.
I can't say that this sort of design mantra makes for a very replayable experience. I'll give it credit and say that 8 hours of longevity is double the amount that I was honestly expecting, but throughout these 8 hours, you're basically getting shoved from one baby's first platforming challenge, to another. The speed at which it shoves you is breakneck enough that there's a very impressive amount of variety to be had here, and it's a major factor that kept me interested in reaching the credits.
But the ideas at hand are just never evolved enough to mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, not to mention their pace is constantly broken (not broken up, just broken) by unskippable cutscenes. This especially becomes an issue when the post-game introduces a new set of collectibles that basically asks you to re-run every single stage again. But with this amount of unskippable scenes, do you honestly expect me to bother? So because there's no satisfaction to be obtained from the mechanical side of things, your main source of satisfaction will come down to the visual aspect, so y'know, the spectacle. The biggest problem with this, is whereas gameplay depth makes your game more exciting on subsequent runs, visual depth will only carry the first go-around.
Keeping all this in mind, I've still had a very pleasant experience with Princess Peach Showtime. I just don't have any reason to play it ever again. That sucks. But, that's not gonna be a problem with kids. Take it from me, kids can play one game hundreds of times if it looks cool enough, and that's exactly what this game was built for. That mysterious ability to make endless fun out of one thing, that grown-ups like us lose over time.
I really like this new direction for Peach, on a side note. The voice direction stuck out to me especially, cutting away from the over-the-top high-pitched damsel voice in favor of just having her speak like a regular-ass person is a big plus in my book. Also, Dashing Thief Peach genuinely rules, did you even hear this song yet? Her segments were some of the coolest parts of the game, and it makes me kinda wish they made an entire game just around that concept. Kind of like a parallel to Barbie, what this game shows is that Peach can be more than just one person, one profession, one aspect of a personality. And if we can get more takes of that going forward - something with a little more meat on the bone if I'm being hopeful - then I'm all for it.
Not for nothing, this is actually a well put together thing. It was just obviously designed with a 20-year younger audience than myself. Showtime isn't concerned with putting its playerbase in risky situations (unless you're going for those rehearse gold trophies, those ones actually gave me some shit), or getting them to think a puzzle over. It carefully crafts the illusion that it's doing both of these things through its theatrically elaborate spectacle, but that illusion only exists to fool a younger audience into thinking that all the flashy lights and big cutscene moments mean that they're really good at playing the game. Feel Good's goal is in their very company name: You're here to press that B button, and feel very good about yourself.
I can't say that this sort of design mantra makes for a very replayable experience. I'll give it credit and say that 8 hours of longevity is double the amount that I was honestly expecting, but throughout these 8 hours, you're basically getting shoved from one baby's first platforming challenge, to another. The speed at which it shoves you is breakneck enough that there's a very impressive amount of variety to be had here, and it's a major factor that kept me interested in reaching the credits.
But the ideas at hand are just never evolved enough to mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, not to mention their pace is constantly broken (not broken up, just broken) by unskippable cutscenes. This especially becomes an issue when the post-game introduces a new set of collectibles that basically asks you to re-run every single stage again. But with this amount of unskippable scenes, do you honestly expect me to bother? So because there's no satisfaction to be obtained from the mechanical side of things, your main source of satisfaction will come down to the visual aspect, so y'know, the spectacle. The biggest problem with this, is whereas gameplay depth makes your game more exciting on subsequent runs, visual depth will only carry the first go-around.
Keeping all this in mind, I've still had a very pleasant experience with Princess Peach Showtime. I just don't have any reason to play it ever again. That sucks. But, that's not gonna be a problem with kids. Take it from me, kids can play one game hundreds of times if it looks cool enough, and that's exactly what this game was built for. That mysterious ability to make endless fun out of one thing, that grown-ups like us lose over time.
I really like this new direction for Peach, on a side note. The voice direction stuck out to me especially, cutting away from the over-the-top high-pitched damsel voice in favor of just having her speak like a regular-ass person is a big plus in my book. Also, Dashing Thief Peach genuinely rules, did you even hear this song yet? Her segments were some of the coolest parts of the game, and it makes me kinda wish they made an entire game just around that concept. Kind of like a parallel to Barbie, what this game shows is that Peach can be more than just one person, one profession, one aspect of a personality. And if we can get more takes of that going forward - something with a little more meat on the bone if I'm being hopeful - then I'm all for it.
Link's Awakening is an incredible game for Gameboy standards, and one of my favorite entries in the Zelda series. It does not escape every problem that comes with making a Zelda game for a system with two buttons, and a limited amount of storage space, but I'd say the design of the world heavily outweighs the issues and makes it a must-play if you're looking for some good dungeons to explore, and caves to spelunk.
Oh, right, we're talking about DX. Sometimes, you kinda forget that Link's Awakening was originally a 1993 black and white Gameboy title, as the addition of color in the DX version makes the original pretty obsolete. In addition to that, it contains a bonus dungeon with a very useful powerup, and an optional side quest, that albeit mechanically useless due to its dependence on the Gameboy Camera, still provides some cute art that makes it worth seeking out. In other words, make the DX version your priority, it keeps everything and adds more cool stuff on top.
Despite being an 8-bit title, I was impressed by the translation of Link to the Past QoL features onto it. Your sword still a satisfying sense of range, and with the press of one button, you have access to a full map of the overworld, although in this instance, it fills out as you go along. It'll still ensure that you'll never get lost, and really makes me wonder why Zelda 1 couldn't do this. Was the case that the Gameboy had more powerful specs that allowed for a full map compared to Zelda 1 on the NES? Or was Zelda 1's inclusion of a manual map a fully intentional choice rather than a technical one? Either way, the way Link's Awakening handled it is much more preferable.
The world has an immense amount of locale variety, and each dungeon will challenge you in new ways through each new item it introduces. It's crazy just how close to Link to the Past's quality this game is, if not, in my opinion, even better. It feels like there's less overall empty space in the overworld, in part due to game going back to a grid-based map with each room being a square long, which makes each room feel like it serves more purpose. Perfect for a handheld entry.
Something I find especially enticing about Link's Awakening is the tone of the story itself, which seperates the series from the generic fantasy roots, and strands you within the confines of a mysterious island directly inspired by Twin Peaks. It definitely shows, the NPC's aren't just stilted hint dispensers directly telling you what to do, they're much closer to people with their own lives, with hints disguised behind their troubles, or their curiosity over something they saw recently. But even sometimes, their dialogue isn't about giving you a hint at all, sometimes they're just minding their own business, or doing something weird or silly that doesn't help you at all. And while all of this sounds completely expected for a modern player, believe you me, if you were to play a couple RPG's that were released around this time, the way Link's Awakening handles NPC dialogue would be a refreshing breath of air.
All this makes the moral conundrum of the story that appears within the latter half all the more interesting, as Link's Awakening proceeds to raise an existential question within its latter half, challenging your preconception of what is right, what is wrong, and whether your quest is even worth it. I mean, we're not talking master-class writing here, but because of the strong sense of personality this game exudes, the things it wants to ask yourself hit pretty strong, and as it lets you contemplate this all the way to the final stretch of gameplay, it'll hit all the more strongly. It's a simple, yet powerful story about what are you willing to sacrifice to succeed in your goal, and even if it may make me look stupid, I always tear up a little for its message.
There's a lot of good, but there is a little bit of jank. Firstly, going back to the game having very few buttons to work with, the inventory system takes some getting used to. While Zelda 1 has one slot to equip an item in, Link's Awakening has two, and that includes the slot you equip your sword in. Where this screws up is the impractical implementation of certain equippable items that could've worked far better as context-sensitive-use items. Such as the shield. This did not need to be something you gotta equip for it to work, it could've worked like Zelda 1 where all you do is face towards a projectile to automatically use it.
Ditto for the power gauntlets that let you lift heavy objects, all you needed for that to work is have it activate based on proximity to the object, but instead you gotta equip it first.
Now, generally speaking, you can get away with just keeping your sword on the A button, and whatever current item you need on the B button, but that's still gonna be a whole lot of times where you'll be heading into the inventory to swip and swap and swoop and sweep your items around based on what you currently need, and it surely could've been a lot less with some simplifications of how items work.
Thankfully, the upside to this is that the inventory system is very quick to access, equip, and get out of. Once you get used to it, each inventory-equipping session should take a little less than 3 to 5 seconds.
The second bit of jank pertains to Awakening's random drop items. Occasionally you'll get your usual stuff, like health drops, rupees, and whatnot. But more than often, you might get powerups that double your defense or attack power. What's more, these powerups don't have a time limit on them, they last for as long as you avoid damage, so you could keep them for long amounts of time if you're good enough. Sounds good, right? Okay, now imagine the entire game's soundtrack is replaced by an 8-second jingle that plays on loop for as long as you keep this powerup.
The result is that you eventually start deliberately avoiding these powerups, and everytime you accidentally touch one, you go "fuck!" and proceed to start deliberately taking damage just so that maddening jingle can stop playing. It's like if you played Mario 1 with nothing but the Starman song on loop. This was a very poorly thought out design decision, and should've been represented through a visual change rather than an auditory one.
On the topic of sound, I would also say that the dungeon music doesn't exactly hold up in all the right places. Having a unique song for each dungeon was admirable, but the game being several kilobytes long means that these are all stupidly short loops, and some of them can get quite grating. I think I would've rather preferred this space to be dedicated to a 2-3 minute dungeon song with more variety, and have just that be used for all dungeons. I mean, one of the dungeons literally just has the cave music but sped up, come on guys.
The best way to play Link's Awakening may be subjective, but my recommendation would be this one. You should also consider getting the Redux romhack, which I think fixes the powerup music issue by disabling it, and introduces some other small QoL things. As for the Switch remake, that could probably be a good way as well, but I'm honestly not big on that version's 30FPS, and its excessive use of depth of field. The soundtrack is a lot nicer, though. All in all, I think the Gameboy Color and the Switch remake both have their pros and cons, and you may just wanna play both of them to experience the game from two wildly different perspectives.
The game itself is wonderful, even amid some of its smaller flaws, and some of the best top-down Zelda action you can get. It's smart, chock-full of content, charming to boot, and even a little sad at times. Next to Minish Cap, it's way up there on my top Zelda games.
Oh, right, we're talking about DX. Sometimes, you kinda forget that Link's Awakening was originally a 1993 black and white Gameboy title, as the addition of color in the DX version makes the original pretty obsolete. In addition to that, it contains a bonus dungeon with a very useful powerup, and an optional side quest, that albeit mechanically useless due to its dependence on the Gameboy Camera, still provides some cute art that makes it worth seeking out. In other words, make the DX version your priority, it keeps everything and adds more cool stuff on top.
Despite being an 8-bit title, I was impressed by the translation of Link to the Past QoL features onto it. Your sword still a satisfying sense of range, and with the press of one button, you have access to a full map of the overworld, although in this instance, it fills out as you go along. It'll still ensure that you'll never get lost, and really makes me wonder why Zelda 1 couldn't do this. Was the case that the Gameboy had more powerful specs that allowed for a full map compared to Zelda 1 on the NES? Or was Zelda 1's inclusion of a manual map a fully intentional choice rather than a technical one? Either way, the way Link's Awakening handled it is much more preferable.
The world has an immense amount of locale variety, and each dungeon will challenge you in new ways through each new item it introduces. It's crazy just how close to Link to the Past's quality this game is, if not, in my opinion, even better. It feels like there's less overall empty space in the overworld, in part due to game going back to a grid-based map with each room being a square long, which makes each room feel like it serves more purpose. Perfect for a handheld entry.
Something I find especially enticing about Link's Awakening is the tone of the story itself, which seperates the series from the generic fantasy roots, and strands you within the confines of a mysterious island directly inspired by Twin Peaks. It definitely shows, the NPC's aren't just stilted hint dispensers directly telling you what to do, they're much closer to people with their own lives, with hints disguised behind their troubles, or their curiosity over something they saw recently. But even sometimes, their dialogue isn't about giving you a hint at all, sometimes they're just minding their own business, or doing something weird or silly that doesn't help you at all. And while all of this sounds completely expected for a modern player, believe you me, if you were to play a couple RPG's that were released around this time, the way Link's Awakening handles NPC dialogue would be a refreshing breath of air.
All this makes the moral conundrum of the story that appears within the latter half all the more interesting, as Link's Awakening proceeds to raise an existential question within its latter half, challenging your preconception of what is right, what is wrong, and whether your quest is even worth it. I mean, we're not talking master-class writing here, but because of the strong sense of personality this game exudes, the things it wants to ask yourself hit pretty strong, and as it lets you contemplate this all the way to the final stretch of gameplay, it'll hit all the more strongly. It's a simple, yet powerful story about what are you willing to sacrifice to succeed in your goal, and even if it may make me look stupid, I always tear up a little for its message.
There's a lot of good, but there is a little bit of jank. Firstly, going back to the game having very few buttons to work with, the inventory system takes some getting used to. While Zelda 1 has one slot to equip an item in, Link's Awakening has two, and that includes the slot you equip your sword in. Where this screws up is the impractical implementation of certain equippable items that could've worked far better as context-sensitive-use items. Such as the shield. This did not need to be something you gotta equip for it to work, it could've worked like Zelda 1 where all you do is face towards a projectile to automatically use it.
Ditto for the power gauntlets that let you lift heavy objects, all you needed for that to work is have it activate based on proximity to the object, but instead you gotta equip it first.
Now, generally speaking, you can get away with just keeping your sword on the A button, and whatever current item you need on the B button, but that's still gonna be a whole lot of times where you'll be heading into the inventory to swip and swap and swoop and sweep your items around based on what you currently need, and it surely could've been a lot less with some simplifications of how items work.
Thankfully, the upside to this is that the inventory system is very quick to access, equip, and get out of. Once you get used to it, each inventory-equipping session should take a little less than 3 to 5 seconds.
The second bit of jank pertains to Awakening's random drop items. Occasionally you'll get your usual stuff, like health drops, rupees, and whatnot. But more than often, you might get powerups that double your defense or attack power. What's more, these powerups don't have a time limit on them, they last for as long as you avoid damage, so you could keep them for long amounts of time if you're good enough. Sounds good, right? Okay, now imagine the entire game's soundtrack is replaced by an 8-second jingle that plays on loop for as long as you keep this powerup.
The result is that you eventually start deliberately avoiding these powerups, and everytime you accidentally touch one, you go "fuck!" and proceed to start deliberately taking damage just so that maddening jingle can stop playing. It's like if you played Mario 1 with nothing but the Starman song on loop. This was a very poorly thought out design decision, and should've been represented through a visual change rather than an auditory one.
On the topic of sound, I would also say that the dungeon music doesn't exactly hold up in all the right places. Having a unique song for each dungeon was admirable, but the game being several kilobytes long means that these are all stupidly short loops, and some of them can get quite grating. I think I would've rather preferred this space to be dedicated to a 2-3 minute dungeon song with more variety, and have just that be used for all dungeons. I mean, one of the dungeons literally just has the cave music but sped up, come on guys.
The best way to play Link's Awakening may be subjective, but my recommendation would be this one. You should also consider getting the Redux romhack, which I think fixes the powerup music issue by disabling it, and introduces some other small QoL things. As for the Switch remake, that could probably be a good way as well, but I'm honestly not big on that version's 30FPS, and its excessive use of depth of field. The soundtrack is a lot nicer, though. All in all, I think the Gameboy Color and the Switch remake both have their pros and cons, and you may just wanna play both of them to experience the game from two wildly different perspectives.
The game itself is wonderful, even amid some of its smaller flaws, and some of the best top-down Zelda action you can get. It's smart, chock-full of content, charming to boot, and even a little sad at times. Next to Minish Cap, it's way up there on my top Zelda games.
If I'm ever looking for the type of game that's guaranteed to satisfy me on just about every aspect, I know I'm looking for a kind of platformer where every single level is at least 2 to 4 new mechanics relentlessly shoved down my throat, paired up with some of the most refined, godlike controls. Donkey Kong Country 2, Rayman Legends, maybe even the Spyro trilogy. All these, and Yoshi's Island too, fall under the same boat of games with such enormous confidence and passion put behind them, that I don't have to think twice about booting them up the moment I think about them.
On a side note, how many people actually call this game "Mario World 2?" Because I just use the "Yoshi's Island" subtitle to refer to it, and I do so because this thing is so far removed from the actual Mario World, that at times I don't really know whether it counts as a mainline Mario game, or a very elaborate spinoff of it, with the World moniker used to give it some marketing push. And I mean, starting from Yoshi's Story onward, all the way to the kinda middling Yoshi's Crafted World, it then really did become a spinoff franchise. Mario's just a guest character here, the run button is absent in favor of an automatic windup run, and stomping is a mere side ability in favor of the considerably more complex loop of creating egg ammunition out of enemies, aiming your shots, ricocheting them across walls, and skipping them across lakes of water.
With a little practice, it takes astoundingly quick to get used to these mechanics, not to mention how little of your time they actually waste. Being able to move around while aiming prevents the flow of gameplay from stopping, alongside the ability to instantly aim above you by holding up before readying the egg shot. The design rejects constraining its gameplay to a janky "stop 'n go" set of movements, and must've spent years being refined to ensure every action you perform can be done while on the move. Which is such a huge thing to appreciate, considering how most developers would've likely bungled this sort of thing on their first try, yet released it anyway. But Miyamoto's team had already perfected it here.
Aside from the variety of mechanics present at each stage, something else I adore is the huge amount of stages present in itself. While ultimately less than the 96 stages of the first Mario World, Yoshi's Island's 48 stages manage to still feel bigger by abandoning Mario World 1's more arcadey setup. Gone is the time limit, and gone is the conventional high score on the top left of the screen. Yoshi Island's HUD is by comparison a lot more minimalistic, and this was done to encourage playing levels thoroughly, not quickly.
Exploration is the main dish of the game, and by god there's so much shit to find. Secrets galore, things that are just there for fun and not to actually serve any purpose. There are entire mechanics locked away behind secret pathways which you'll otherwise never see if you're speedrunning the thing. Every 4 levels you run into a new boss, and it's not like the previous games where it's a bunch of the same boring Koopaling fights, no! Every boss is different, every boss is fought differently. You get swallowed by a giant frog, you fight a crow on the moon, you destroy platforms to send an invincible monster down a lava pit, and none of these are ever repeated. Which is more than what I can say for even something as creative as Mario Wonder - which is still a fantastic game, mind you - but nothing has yet to match the unbridled creativity of Yoshi's Island, a delicious pot of hundreds of ideas that has no end to it at all until the moment you see the credits.
So, I guess this is where I talk about my rating being a 4.5 instead of a 5/5, right? Well, believe it or not, the Baby Mario cry is not the reason. Actually, I've always been confused about that, is it really THAT bad to people? I mean, one thing for sure is that it fulfills its point. It serves to make you frantically scramble to get Baby Mario back as soon as you can, before that timer reaches 0. But, like, it being "annoying/ear grating" though? Eh, it's fine, really. Maybe I have a higher tolerance for this stuff or something.
The flaw of Yoshi's Island I really want to talk about is the difference between casual exploration, and obsessive completionism. So, just to catch up newcomers, every level can be 100%ed, right? There are three conditions for this. Collect all 20 Red Coins, all 5 Flowers, and reach the end goal with 30 Stars. First things first, part of what makes the Red Coins suck is that they're only just SLIGHTLY red, but otherwise, blend in with all the other yellow coins. I have partial color blindness, so being able to tell apart the color falls out of the question. While the solution to this would be "well, just grab all the coins then, they give you extra lifes anyway, it's a win-win" but sometimes, the game will put you into a situation where you only have one shot to grab the coins, whether it's when you're falling down, or moving across an autoscrolling sequence. I'm aware there's an item you can use that makes red coins much more obvious to see, but... that's assuming you're lucky to actually get it in one of the minigames, and why obtuse it like that anyway? What would've been the harm in making the red coins look more obvious by default?
The next problem are the "Stars" collectibles. Stars are your health, and you can cap'em out at 30. Of course, as you take damage, your Stars decrease. Now, the thing is, to 100% a level, the more sensible thing would be to punish you if, say, you took damage 3 times across the stage. Instead, what Yoshi's Island decides is that you can collect as many Stars as you want throughout the level, but if you so much as take one sliver of damage at the very tail end of it, then that's it for the 100% run, you're gonna have to do the stage all over again.
What makes this worse is that you can't 100% this stage by, for example, doing one run where you collect all the Red Coins and Flowers, then another run just to do the 30 Stars. You gotta do everything, all at once. Collect all the shit, find all the secrets, AND make it to the end of the level without taking damage, and only then will the game consider that level fully completed. To me, that's an insane set of conditions considering the larger scope of each stage, and ultimately, I've only ever done a 100% run once because of this. Which is enough for a lifetime.
"So, 100%ing sucks, why do it at all then?" Good question. The point of this entire tattletale is me saying it's not worth it. Instead, it's much better to play it as if you're attempting to 100% for the sake of discovering all the cool little secrets the game has to offer, BUT if you miss something, then you should just live with it, and move on. The only real big shame about this is that 100%ing unlocks an extra set of neat stages for you to play through, and I wish I could unlock these stages without it being this massive chore. As a whole, Yoshi's Island is some of the best platforming you'll ever get, contrasted against some of the most painful completionism that there is. Thus, play it casually for the best possible experience.
Oh yeah, I got a hot take too. The overworld theme is admittingly very memorable, but I'm really not a big fan of that harmonica. If we're talking "ear grating noises", then this is the closest thing I can point at, I just don't like it. In general, I feel like there's not enough music in this game to match the amount of varied content present in it, which in itself makes the overworld theme get worse over time. Anyway, it's not that big of a deal, I mean, the athletic theme is fantastic, and so is the castle theme, the boss theme, the final boss theme... there's still really good stuff in here, even if there's not much of it.
And that's that for my review! Good night.
On a side note, how many people actually call this game "Mario World 2?" Because I just use the "Yoshi's Island" subtitle to refer to it, and I do so because this thing is so far removed from the actual Mario World, that at times I don't really know whether it counts as a mainline Mario game, or a very elaborate spinoff of it, with the World moniker used to give it some marketing push. And I mean, starting from Yoshi's Story onward, all the way to the kinda middling Yoshi's Crafted World, it then really did become a spinoff franchise. Mario's just a guest character here, the run button is absent in favor of an automatic windup run, and stomping is a mere side ability in favor of the considerably more complex loop of creating egg ammunition out of enemies, aiming your shots, ricocheting them across walls, and skipping them across lakes of water.
With a little practice, it takes astoundingly quick to get used to these mechanics, not to mention how little of your time they actually waste. Being able to move around while aiming prevents the flow of gameplay from stopping, alongside the ability to instantly aim above you by holding up before readying the egg shot. The design rejects constraining its gameplay to a janky "stop 'n go" set of movements, and must've spent years being refined to ensure every action you perform can be done while on the move. Which is such a huge thing to appreciate, considering how most developers would've likely bungled this sort of thing on their first try, yet released it anyway. But Miyamoto's team had already perfected it here.
Aside from the variety of mechanics present at each stage, something else I adore is the huge amount of stages present in itself. While ultimately less than the 96 stages of the first Mario World, Yoshi's Island's 48 stages manage to still feel bigger by abandoning Mario World 1's more arcadey setup. Gone is the time limit, and gone is the conventional high score on the top left of the screen. Yoshi Island's HUD is by comparison a lot more minimalistic, and this was done to encourage playing levels thoroughly, not quickly.
Exploration is the main dish of the game, and by god there's so much shit to find. Secrets galore, things that are just there for fun and not to actually serve any purpose. There are entire mechanics locked away behind secret pathways which you'll otherwise never see if you're speedrunning the thing. Every 4 levels you run into a new boss, and it's not like the previous games where it's a bunch of the same boring Koopaling fights, no! Every boss is different, every boss is fought differently. You get swallowed by a giant frog, you fight a crow on the moon, you destroy platforms to send an invincible monster down a lava pit, and none of these are ever repeated. Which is more than what I can say for even something as creative as Mario Wonder - which is still a fantastic game, mind you - but nothing has yet to match the unbridled creativity of Yoshi's Island, a delicious pot of hundreds of ideas that has no end to it at all until the moment you see the credits.
So, I guess this is where I talk about my rating being a 4.5 instead of a 5/5, right? Well, believe it or not, the Baby Mario cry is not the reason. Actually, I've always been confused about that, is it really THAT bad to people? I mean, one thing for sure is that it fulfills its point. It serves to make you frantically scramble to get Baby Mario back as soon as you can, before that timer reaches 0. But, like, it being "annoying/ear grating" though? Eh, it's fine, really. Maybe I have a higher tolerance for this stuff or something.
The flaw of Yoshi's Island I really want to talk about is the difference between casual exploration, and obsessive completionism. So, just to catch up newcomers, every level can be 100%ed, right? There are three conditions for this. Collect all 20 Red Coins, all 5 Flowers, and reach the end goal with 30 Stars. First things first, part of what makes the Red Coins suck is that they're only just SLIGHTLY red, but otherwise, blend in with all the other yellow coins. I have partial color blindness, so being able to tell apart the color falls out of the question. While the solution to this would be "well, just grab all the coins then, they give you extra lifes anyway, it's a win-win" but sometimes, the game will put you into a situation where you only have one shot to grab the coins, whether it's when you're falling down, or moving across an autoscrolling sequence. I'm aware there's an item you can use that makes red coins much more obvious to see, but... that's assuming you're lucky to actually get it in one of the minigames, and why obtuse it like that anyway? What would've been the harm in making the red coins look more obvious by default?
The next problem are the "Stars" collectibles. Stars are your health, and you can cap'em out at 30. Of course, as you take damage, your Stars decrease. Now, the thing is, to 100% a level, the more sensible thing would be to punish you if, say, you took damage 3 times across the stage. Instead, what Yoshi's Island decides is that you can collect as many Stars as you want throughout the level, but if you so much as take one sliver of damage at the very tail end of it, then that's it for the 100% run, you're gonna have to do the stage all over again.
What makes this worse is that you can't 100% this stage by, for example, doing one run where you collect all the Red Coins and Flowers, then another run just to do the 30 Stars. You gotta do everything, all at once. Collect all the shit, find all the secrets, AND make it to the end of the level without taking damage, and only then will the game consider that level fully completed. To me, that's an insane set of conditions considering the larger scope of each stage, and ultimately, I've only ever done a 100% run once because of this. Which is enough for a lifetime.
"So, 100%ing sucks, why do it at all then?" Good question. The point of this entire tattletale is me saying it's not worth it. Instead, it's much better to play it as if you're attempting to 100% for the sake of discovering all the cool little secrets the game has to offer, BUT if you miss something, then you should just live with it, and move on. The only real big shame about this is that 100%ing unlocks an extra set of neat stages for you to play through, and I wish I could unlock these stages without it being this massive chore. As a whole, Yoshi's Island is some of the best platforming you'll ever get, contrasted against some of the most painful completionism that there is. Thus, play it casually for the best possible experience.
Oh yeah, I got a hot take too. The overworld theme is admittingly very memorable, but I'm really not a big fan of that harmonica. If we're talking "ear grating noises", then this is the closest thing I can point at, I just don't like it. In general, I feel like there's not enough music in this game to match the amount of varied content present in it, which in itself makes the overworld theme get worse over time. Anyway, it's not that big of a deal, I mean, the athletic theme is fantastic, and so is the castle theme, the boss theme, the final boss theme... there's still really good stuff in here, even if there's not much of it.
And that's that for my review! Good night.
1986
The first Zelda has some quite obtuse and weirdly-translated moments, but here's a tip: Pick up the manual. It's available online. The moment you do that, you realize the game was very much meant to be played with the manual in mind, providing much context, along with starting tips and hints to get you on the right path.
Other than that, it's quite good. You're not gonna get smooth movement on par with more recent Zelda games, but much like Castlevania, your limited controls are a deliberate way to make the combat more strategic. Dungeon-exploring is a good time, albeit the music can drive you nuts after a while. I put up a music playlist about halfway through the game to ease things up.
Overall, a respectable first entry to the series, as long as you don't mind its simplicity.
Other than that, it's quite good. You're not gonna get smooth movement on par with more recent Zelda games, but much like Castlevania, your limited controls are a deliberate way to make the combat more strategic. Dungeon-exploring is a good time, albeit the music can drive you nuts after a while. I put up a music playlist about halfway through the game to ease things up.
Overall, a respectable first entry to the series, as long as you don't mind its simplicity.
1995
I love Ristar. I don't think you could make Ristar again. Part of what makes this one special is that there's only one of it. (do we count the 8-bit version...?) Nowadays, you'd probably get some 2.5D reimagining that mostly just recycles a buncha stuff from the original and calls it a day. And it'd be servicable for one playthrough, but I wouldn't come back to it like I would come back to this one over and over again.
Ristar, for its short length, emanates a level of passion and variety akin to something like Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Fitting, as the Ristar team would go on to join Sonic Team after this game released (which is why there's a misconception that this was developed by sonic team). Every world's broken up into two platforming stages and a boss, each with a new mechanic, a new bop of a song, rarely overstaying its welcome and always a marvel of spritework to appreciate. Controls are simple, you move and you stretch your arms out for a variety of context-sensitive acrobatics, including using enemies as climbable platforms, flinging yourself off poles/handles, and climbing up walls as one of the more advanced techniques. If that one small part of your brain lights up everytime a game lets you swing across something to cross a gap, then I'm happy to report that with some practice on hand, Ristar is a Tarzan game in disguise. But even without taking full advantage of these abilities, the game has plenty of mini-bosses and hidden nooks and crannies that reward you with lifes, or even extra bonus stages that feature unique mini platforming challenges for you to overcome, and perhaps take advantage of to practice your moveset.
Game only gets half a star off for the 1st music world stage, which has something akin to an escort mission that I personally found it went a little against the rest of the game's flow. Everything else points to Ristar being a sort-of hidden gem amongst the Genesis library. Coming out at the tail end of its life cycle, this is one of the games that understood the Genesis best. And in a way, as the Saturn approached and overshadowed this game's release, this might very well have been the last glowing star in Sega's track record that burned out.
Ristar, for its short length, emanates a level of passion and variety akin to something like Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Fitting, as the Ristar team would go on to join Sonic Team after this game released (which is why there's a misconception that this was developed by sonic team). Every world's broken up into two platforming stages and a boss, each with a new mechanic, a new bop of a song, rarely overstaying its welcome and always a marvel of spritework to appreciate. Controls are simple, you move and you stretch your arms out for a variety of context-sensitive acrobatics, including using enemies as climbable platforms, flinging yourself off poles/handles, and climbing up walls as one of the more advanced techniques. If that one small part of your brain lights up everytime a game lets you swing across something to cross a gap, then I'm happy to report that with some practice on hand, Ristar is a Tarzan game in disguise. But even without taking full advantage of these abilities, the game has plenty of mini-bosses and hidden nooks and crannies that reward you with lifes, or even extra bonus stages that feature unique mini platforming challenges for you to overcome, and perhaps take advantage of to practice your moveset.
Game only gets half a star off for the 1st music world stage, which has something akin to an escort mission that I personally found it went a little against the rest of the game's flow. Everything else points to Ristar being a sort-of hidden gem amongst the Genesis library. Coming out at the tail end of its life cycle, this is one of the games that understood the Genesis best. And in a way, as the Saturn approached and overshadowed this game's release, this might very well have been the last glowing star in Sega's track record that burned out.
Mystic Quest isn't just plain boring. From a design viewpoint, it's downright amateurish. A game made for RPG beginners wasn't the problem in itself, I mean, Paper Mario pulled it off and I love those games. Where Mystic Quest really falters is the belief that gameplay depth was what made their mainline Final Fantasies unapproachable. I hold the more likely belief that the original FF1 came out as a bug-ridden, sluggish, unbalanced, grind-heavy mess with a severe lack of QoL, and that's what turned some people off from it. FF4 comes out and people like it, because in spite of that game streamlining many elements of the series and making things more linear for it, that kind of thing can only "get you" into a game. Whether it'll retain your attention for the rest of it is another matter, FF4 made up for that through its more involved storyline, and a combat system that remained complex and varied enough to encourage experimentation, and pressuring you to think on your feet.
In contrast, Mystic Quest's simplicity is capable of getting you into it, but that's it. As the dungeons start ramping up the amount of enemies, the game wears down your patience through the same repetitious button-mashing tactics against the exact same formation of enemies, tossed at you some 70-90 times. Most RPG's are like this to be fair, but if you like the genre, you don't have this visceral realization that the game is wasting your time with battles, the point for them is to be relaxing and always leading you towards a dropped item, or a new level up. But in Mystic Quest, the balance is all sorts of unsatisfying. Level ups take agonizingly long to obtain after a while, enemies don't drop shit, and even as you level up or obtain stronger armor and weapons, the difference is negligible in practice, with often a scant few points of additional damage to an enemy, but always, and I mean ALWAYS, the same amount of turns required to defeat them.
Your main character is always weak, your partner is always stronger. Your partner will always take everything down in one hit, you will always take them out in two. Even as you get the Excalibur, which is often the ultimate weapon in a Final Fantasy game, taking it out for a test reveals that it still takes the exact same amount of turns to defeat an enemy. Not even the Excalibur is capable of making a dent in this game's infuriatingly perfect balance, where you're only as powerful as the game wants you to be at that moment, and it always wants you to be at the exact amount of power that you've started the adventure on. In a way, everything is intended in most video games. But Mystic Quest does the poorest job at hiding it, making it clear to you that the fun of this game is dictated, and never in your control.
Considering that there are no random encounters, the game gives you a choice of which enemies you want to engage with. That's assuming they're not blocking your way, of course. But, since I fought every single one and thus fought way more enemies than I'd like to have, there was a question roaming through my mind. "Am I playing this wrong? Should I be trying to avoid as many enemies as I can?" I could never figure out the answer to these questions. You have more than enough resources to take all of them on without getting anywhere close to running dry, so the game wasn't incentivizing me to be careful with what I fight. On the other hand, even as I fought and amassed as much EXP as I could throughout the game, enemies and bosses are still capable of hitting you real hard. Which makes me wonder what it would be like if I did dodge a handful of level ups. How much harder would the game be then?
One way or the other, it has to be stressed that even at a high level, the difficulty of this game is some bullshit. Enemies just love to spam status effects, stuff like Stone, Paralysis, Sleep, Confusion... Combine the sheer frequency of these things with there only being two characters you can bring into battle, and enemies are extremely likely to instantly evaporate you. There are no buffs to protect yourself or anything, all it takes is one unlucky turn where at least two enemies choose to inflict a status effect on you, and you're done. And this will happen FAR more often than you'd think.
Dying's not such a big deal though, since the game allows you to restart from the last fight you died in without any hassle, plus, you can save anywhere, even in dungeons. That's nice, at least. But y'know, think about that for a sec. Think about how without these two features, the experience at hand would be very, very different. Imagine only being able to save in certain spots, and then you get 30 minutes into a dungeon and suddenly, an enemy inflicts Stone on you. You're dead, start over. This is the kind of balance we're talking about here. Built-in save states are the only thing that turn Mystic Quest from an unplayable garbage pile to a mindless bore with zero stakes. Strategy is irrelevant, your only option is to keep trying until you stop dying. Like a paradox, it is simultaneously way too easy, and yet one step away from being impossible.
Coming from the team that made Final Fantasy Legend III, while that game was far from a worthwhile playthrough, I'm stupified by this being what they followed things up with. No depth in the gameplay, no ambition in the story, a game whose entire purpose is to dumb itself down to an audience that wasn't going to play it. Truly, the more I think about the decisions made around this game, the worse it gets in my eyes. It does get at least one bonus star for the soundtrack, though, if there's anything you'll hear about this game, it's that. Take a listen to it. Enjoy it. Then move on to your next RPG.
In contrast, Mystic Quest's simplicity is capable of getting you into it, but that's it. As the dungeons start ramping up the amount of enemies, the game wears down your patience through the same repetitious button-mashing tactics against the exact same formation of enemies, tossed at you some 70-90 times. Most RPG's are like this to be fair, but if you like the genre, you don't have this visceral realization that the game is wasting your time with battles, the point for them is to be relaxing and always leading you towards a dropped item, or a new level up. But in Mystic Quest, the balance is all sorts of unsatisfying. Level ups take agonizingly long to obtain after a while, enemies don't drop shit, and even as you level up or obtain stronger armor and weapons, the difference is negligible in practice, with often a scant few points of additional damage to an enemy, but always, and I mean ALWAYS, the same amount of turns required to defeat them.
Your main character is always weak, your partner is always stronger. Your partner will always take everything down in one hit, you will always take them out in two. Even as you get the Excalibur, which is often the ultimate weapon in a Final Fantasy game, taking it out for a test reveals that it still takes the exact same amount of turns to defeat an enemy. Not even the Excalibur is capable of making a dent in this game's infuriatingly perfect balance, where you're only as powerful as the game wants you to be at that moment, and it always wants you to be at the exact amount of power that you've started the adventure on. In a way, everything is intended in most video games. But Mystic Quest does the poorest job at hiding it, making it clear to you that the fun of this game is dictated, and never in your control.
Considering that there are no random encounters, the game gives you a choice of which enemies you want to engage with. That's assuming they're not blocking your way, of course. But, since I fought every single one and thus fought way more enemies than I'd like to have, there was a question roaming through my mind. "Am I playing this wrong? Should I be trying to avoid as many enemies as I can?" I could never figure out the answer to these questions. You have more than enough resources to take all of them on without getting anywhere close to running dry, so the game wasn't incentivizing me to be careful with what I fight. On the other hand, even as I fought and amassed as much EXP as I could throughout the game, enemies and bosses are still capable of hitting you real hard. Which makes me wonder what it would be like if I did dodge a handful of level ups. How much harder would the game be then?
One way or the other, it has to be stressed that even at a high level, the difficulty of this game is some bullshit. Enemies just love to spam status effects, stuff like Stone, Paralysis, Sleep, Confusion... Combine the sheer frequency of these things with there only being two characters you can bring into battle, and enemies are extremely likely to instantly evaporate you. There are no buffs to protect yourself or anything, all it takes is one unlucky turn where at least two enemies choose to inflict a status effect on you, and you're done. And this will happen FAR more often than you'd think.
Dying's not such a big deal though, since the game allows you to restart from the last fight you died in without any hassle, plus, you can save anywhere, even in dungeons. That's nice, at least. But y'know, think about that for a sec. Think about how without these two features, the experience at hand would be very, very different. Imagine only being able to save in certain spots, and then you get 30 minutes into a dungeon and suddenly, an enemy inflicts Stone on you. You're dead, start over. This is the kind of balance we're talking about here. Built-in save states are the only thing that turn Mystic Quest from an unplayable garbage pile to a mindless bore with zero stakes. Strategy is irrelevant, your only option is to keep trying until you stop dying. Like a paradox, it is simultaneously way too easy, and yet one step away from being impossible.
Coming from the team that made Final Fantasy Legend III, while that game was far from a worthwhile playthrough, I'm stupified by this being what they followed things up with. No depth in the gameplay, no ambition in the story, a game whose entire purpose is to dumb itself down to an audience that wasn't going to play it. Truly, the more I think about the decisions made around this game, the worse it gets in my eyes. It does get at least one bonus star for the soundtrack, though, if there's anything you'll hear about this game, it's that. Take a listen to it. Enjoy it. Then move on to your next RPG.
1990
Mario World is mechanically sound, with the best controls of any Mario game so far. Everything about how the game feels is tight and responsive. The in-air mobility, the turning, the way you control your jump height, the build-up of your speed and how you maintain it as you sprint across the stage, the way you slide and duck under obstacles, or spin jump on enemies that previously couldn't be bounced on... it's all perfect.
The world map had some tradeoffs, such as a lack of the Mario 3 minigames and enemy encounters, but in its place came a more open-ended world design, where finding secret exits in stages can allow you to beat the game through different routes. I enjoyed the freedom this allowed, whether you wanna find the shortest or longest route to the end of the game, or just do a casual run by taking as few secret exits as possible.
It's a very well refined game, but sometimes, I feel like refinements is all it has. Comparably, I play Mario 3 more often than Mario World, and I think this is because Mario World feels like... "another one." Whereas Mario 3 had the neat little stage play theme and a ton of new ideas, Mario World feels more confused about what it's trying to do. It's supposed to be a dinosaur and food-themed setting, but I didn't get that vibe at all. The levels are named after food, but they don't look like they're made of food at all to me.
Meanwhile, the dinosaurs ARE there, they're your enemies, sometimes I have to remember Yoshi is a dinosaur too, but, I just can't help but feel like these elements should've been leaned into harder than they were.
Because right now, what this game feels like is a mild mix of those elements, with a greater focus on generic level themes that don't take advantage of them. I'll be honest with you, I don't know what you could do differently to make this game feel more unique than it already is, maybe more prehistoric settings? More blatant food-themed levels, the kind that look delicious when you step into them? I dunno, something about this game feels very withheld.
Keeping in mind that I still think this game is fun, here's another nitpick. This one is what I call the "Koji Kondo dilemma." Koji Kondo has made some of the greatest songs in video game history, and this game is no exception. These things are stuck in my head, and I will never get them out. The dilemma is this: Every song that Koji Kondo makes is good, but he does not make many of them. As a result, you wind up hearing the same 4 songs over and over throughout the 3-5 hours that this game will take you to 100%.
I think this amount of songs would've been acceptable back in the NES days due to size constraints, but with the introduction of a new fancy 16-bit console, I strongly believe that Koji should've composed a greater variety of songs to take advantage of it. On the other hand, it's possible that composing the already-existing songs was a difficult process, and I've heard the game had to be rushed anyway, so there wasn't much of a choice.
Thing is, the Koji Kondo dilemma would've persisted for several more games after this. Amazing songs, but not a whole lot of them. Initially, they're enough to carry the whole game, but let's say you've replayed it 10 or 20 times like I did, there comes a point where you realize the lacking music variety becomes tiring to hear, and that dilemma wouldn't have existed if each world had at least 1 or 2 unique tracks to call its own. Like I said, this is all a nitpick, but it is one I've been thinking about more and more lately.
My thoughts on Super Mario World come down to this. Fun to play, but not particularly impressive for an SNES launch title that should've been there to showcase the system's true capabilities. it feels safe. Very safe. Moreof a continuation of Mario 3, rather than the next big step in the Mario series. But if you just want a fun Mario game, who gives a shit? This one does its job as well as it can. But I can't help but feel that there's something missing here.
The world map had some tradeoffs, such as a lack of the Mario 3 minigames and enemy encounters, but in its place came a more open-ended world design, where finding secret exits in stages can allow you to beat the game through different routes. I enjoyed the freedom this allowed, whether you wanna find the shortest or longest route to the end of the game, or just do a casual run by taking as few secret exits as possible.
It's a very well refined game, but sometimes, I feel like refinements is all it has. Comparably, I play Mario 3 more often than Mario World, and I think this is because Mario World feels like... "another one." Whereas Mario 3 had the neat little stage play theme and a ton of new ideas, Mario World feels more confused about what it's trying to do. It's supposed to be a dinosaur and food-themed setting, but I didn't get that vibe at all. The levels are named after food, but they don't look like they're made of food at all to me.
Meanwhile, the dinosaurs ARE there, they're your enemies, sometimes I have to remember Yoshi is a dinosaur too, but, I just can't help but feel like these elements should've been leaned into harder than they were.
Because right now, what this game feels like is a mild mix of those elements, with a greater focus on generic level themes that don't take advantage of them. I'll be honest with you, I don't know what you could do differently to make this game feel more unique than it already is, maybe more prehistoric settings? More blatant food-themed levels, the kind that look delicious when you step into them? I dunno, something about this game feels very withheld.
Keeping in mind that I still think this game is fun, here's another nitpick. This one is what I call the "Koji Kondo dilemma." Koji Kondo has made some of the greatest songs in video game history, and this game is no exception. These things are stuck in my head, and I will never get them out. The dilemma is this: Every song that Koji Kondo makes is good, but he does not make many of them. As a result, you wind up hearing the same 4 songs over and over throughout the 3-5 hours that this game will take you to 100%.
I think this amount of songs would've been acceptable back in the NES days due to size constraints, but with the introduction of a new fancy 16-bit console, I strongly believe that Koji should've composed a greater variety of songs to take advantage of it. On the other hand, it's possible that composing the already-existing songs was a difficult process, and I've heard the game had to be rushed anyway, so there wasn't much of a choice.
Thing is, the Koji Kondo dilemma would've persisted for several more games after this. Amazing songs, but not a whole lot of them. Initially, they're enough to carry the whole game, but let's say you've replayed it 10 or 20 times like I did, there comes a point where you realize the lacking music variety becomes tiring to hear, and that dilemma wouldn't have existed if each world had at least 1 or 2 unique tracks to call its own. Like I said, this is all a nitpick, but it is one I've been thinking about more and more lately.
My thoughts on Super Mario World come down to this. Fun to play, but not particularly impressive for an SNES launch title that should've been there to showcase the system's true capabilities. it feels safe. Very safe. Moreof a continuation of Mario 3, rather than the next big step in the Mario series. But if you just want a fun Mario game, who gives a shit? This one does its job as well as it can. But I can't help but feel that there's something missing here.
If Sonic 2 wasn't already a big improvement on the Classic Sonic formula, Sonic 3 swoops in and takes the crown by a mile. A game so ambitious, so loaded with unique content, and so tightly polished despite of its scale, it may be as close to a perfect Sonic game as it gets, and most certainly the best platformer on the Genesis. Combined with the "& Knuckles" part, this is a lengthy and fulfilling package that can last you multiple playthroughs worth of discovering new routes and secrets, with tons of levels to do so.
In the first level alone, you go from a beach, to a jungle, to a burning jungle, into some lakes, followed by a chase sequence, culminating in a boss fight in a waterfall-laden area. Every act has its own song, its own mechanic, its own boss. The water level is actually FUN. And the soundtrack, man, the soundtrack. One funky hit after another. This is, and may always be the ultimate Classic Sonic game, the love poured into it was evident, as if Sonic Team wanted to make this their final one.
My only real gripes are centered around the optional content. Firstly, may be a controversial take, I'm not really a fan of the Blue Sphere special stages. They're better than Sonic 2's, but some of the later ones get pretty confusing to navigate. Secondly, unlocking Hyper Sonic requires sacrificing your ability to turn into Super Sonic in order to complete 7 additional special stages, adding up to 14 total. I consider this padding, and even then, I don't think it's worth the hassle, I'd rather just keep Super Sonic. Speaking of, there really should've been an option to turn the Super Sonic music off. This game has so many good-ass songs, that it's a shame that Super Sonic's 15-second loop pretty much overrides the entire soundtrack.
On another note, figuring out the absolute best version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles to play is its own challenge. It's certainly not the Origins version, I'll tell you that much. As you may know, Sonic 3 & Knuckles originally came out as two seperate games, "Sonic 3" and "Sonic & Knuckles", and this is the combined version of those games, intended to be the definitive experience. Problem is, it's missing a boss from the "Sonic 3" part of the game. For that reason, I actually consider playing "Sonic 3" and "Sonic & Knuckles" seperately as the more recommended option, but it does mean that you won't get to keep the emeralds you collected in Sonic 3 once you begin the other game.
I believe there's a romhack and a fanmade PC decompilation that may serve as the true definitive way to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles, although I haven't looked into them too much. But it may be worth doing so. Whichever way you go about it though, you're still in for a good time. Phenomenal fucking game.
In the first level alone, you go from a beach, to a jungle, to a burning jungle, into some lakes, followed by a chase sequence, culminating in a boss fight in a waterfall-laden area. Every act has its own song, its own mechanic, its own boss. The water level is actually FUN. And the soundtrack, man, the soundtrack. One funky hit after another. This is, and may always be the ultimate Classic Sonic game, the love poured into it was evident, as if Sonic Team wanted to make this their final one.
My only real gripes are centered around the optional content. Firstly, may be a controversial take, I'm not really a fan of the Blue Sphere special stages. They're better than Sonic 2's, but some of the later ones get pretty confusing to navigate. Secondly, unlocking Hyper Sonic requires sacrificing your ability to turn into Super Sonic in order to complete 7 additional special stages, adding up to 14 total. I consider this padding, and even then, I don't think it's worth the hassle, I'd rather just keep Super Sonic. Speaking of, there really should've been an option to turn the Super Sonic music off. This game has so many good-ass songs, that it's a shame that Super Sonic's 15-second loop pretty much overrides the entire soundtrack.
On another note, figuring out the absolute best version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles to play is its own challenge. It's certainly not the Origins version, I'll tell you that much. As you may know, Sonic 3 & Knuckles originally came out as two seperate games, "Sonic 3" and "Sonic & Knuckles", and this is the combined version of those games, intended to be the definitive experience. Problem is, it's missing a boss from the "Sonic 3" part of the game. For that reason, I actually consider playing "Sonic 3" and "Sonic & Knuckles" seperately as the more recommended option, but it does mean that you won't get to keep the emeralds you collected in Sonic 3 once you begin the other game.
I believe there's a romhack and a fanmade PC decompilation that may serve as the true definitive way to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles, although I haven't looked into them too much. But it may be worth doing so. Whichever way you go about it though, you're still in for a good time. Phenomenal fucking game.
2023
Sonic Superstars is like if Sonic 4 was given the polish and refinement it needed, but was just as creatively blank. Now, when you move and jump around, you can go to yourself "Oh yeah, this feels right." But once I got used to that, I was left with a perfectly servicable platformer that I don't think I'm going to remember a week from now.
it's weird, because when you compare the two, Sonic Mania has far worse problems with originality than Superstars does. At least Superstars's zones are all technically original, and the idea of tying a unique power to each emerald isn't a bad one either. But Mania's 4 original zones still somehow supercede everything that Superstars tries to do. I get the feeling I'm gonna need some time to think about this game, because right now, I'm not sure if I can place why have I felt absolutely no excitement playing it.
Perhaps the move away from fluid 2D spritework has miffed me. Perhaps when Sonic Team decided to abandon Mania's reliance on fan service, it turned out that it didn't have much else to offer besides chopped up fascimiles of the series's past levels, just rebranded with a new name. Perhaps it's the neat soundtrack getting consistently interrupted by Jun Senoue letting everybody know that after a whole decade, he still hasn't found more than one snare sample to use in his music.
I've no clue. Beyond some frustration with the game's later bosses, and the amount of waiting you have to do before you can attack them, I can't say I felt much playing it. I'm not even sure why I played it. I've been waiting years for Sonic to become this amazing franchise, to live up to the potential that I always hoped it would live up to, when all it seems to settle for these days is being "good enough." Where every title is deemed "a step in the right direction." But I don't want to be taking steps in the right direction anymore. I want to BE in the right direction. And I want to sit down, and remain there. Yet, I keep walking...
it's weird, because when you compare the two, Sonic Mania has far worse problems with originality than Superstars does. At least Superstars's zones are all technically original, and the idea of tying a unique power to each emerald isn't a bad one either. But Mania's 4 original zones still somehow supercede everything that Superstars tries to do. I get the feeling I'm gonna need some time to think about this game, because right now, I'm not sure if I can place why have I felt absolutely no excitement playing it.
Perhaps the move away from fluid 2D spritework has miffed me. Perhaps when Sonic Team decided to abandon Mania's reliance on fan service, it turned out that it didn't have much else to offer besides chopped up fascimiles of the series's past levels, just rebranded with a new name. Perhaps it's the neat soundtrack getting consistently interrupted by Jun Senoue letting everybody know that after a whole decade, he still hasn't found more than one snare sample to use in his music.
I've no clue. Beyond some frustration with the game's later bosses, and the amount of waiting you have to do before you can attack them, I can't say I felt much playing it. I'm not even sure why I played it. I've been waiting years for Sonic to become this amazing franchise, to live up to the potential that I always hoped it would live up to, when all it seems to settle for these days is being "good enough." Where every title is deemed "a step in the right direction." But I don't want to be taking steps in the right direction anymore. I want to BE in the right direction. And I want to sit down, and remain there. Yet, I keep walking...
I'm gonna provide one of the more positive takes on the game, and say it's actually not so bad. The translation of Mega Man's run 'n gun gameplay onto a smaller, more crunched screen didn't detract anything at all, surprisingly enough. It's NES Mega Man as you know it, just with smaller rooms that make the game a bit simpler and more fast-paced to play. It's a very faithful recreation.
Each stage is taken from Mega Man 1, which may present the question "is it worth playing this if I'm just basically playing the same stages on a handheld?" If you're not that into Mega Man, then probably not, but let's say you are, in which case these are not actually the same stages from the NES counterpart. Sure, they share the same music and theme, but the layouts are completely different, along with an occasional new enemy or level mechanic. If you're just looking for more Mega Man, you can't go wrong with this one.
That is, until you get to the final stage, anyway. You know how every Mega Man has a set of about 4 to 5 final stages? Some genius here decided that for their handheld on-the-go spinoff, they should actually just give you one single very long stage that's equal to about 4 stages of length. And while the rest of the game has been well balanced so far, this final stage is peppered with constant bottomless pits, and instant death spikes that you won't see coming until it's too late. It's pure trial 'n error, and it fucking blows.
My recommendation is to play the initial romp of stages as you normally would, then bring out the save states for the final stage. If you do that, Dr. Wily's Revenge is not a bad time for a Mega Man fan. But if you're not that familiar with the franchise, then you can safely skip this.
Each stage is taken from Mega Man 1, which may present the question "is it worth playing this if I'm just basically playing the same stages on a handheld?" If you're not that into Mega Man, then probably not, but let's say you are, in which case these are not actually the same stages from the NES counterpart. Sure, they share the same music and theme, but the layouts are completely different, along with an occasional new enemy or level mechanic. If you're just looking for more Mega Man, you can't go wrong with this one.
That is, until you get to the final stage, anyway. You know how every Mega Man has a set of about 4 to 5 final stages? Some genius here decided that for their handheld on-the-go spinoff, they should actually just give you one single very long stage that's equal to about 4 stages of length. And while the rest of the game has been well balanced so far, this final stage is peppered with constant bottomless pits, and instant death spikes that you won't see coming until it's too late. It's pure trial 'n error, and it fucking blows.
My recommendation is to play the initial romp of stages as you normally would, then bring out the save states for the final stage. If you do that, Dr. Wily's Revenge is not a bad time for a Mega Man fan. But if you're not that familiar with the franchise, then you can safely skip this.