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.

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.

My expectations between the classic Mega Mans and the X series differ significantly. You could pump out 20 more classic-type games that all play exactly the same, and I'd eat them up like the tasty junk food that they are. X is not like that for me. There's a higher amount of complexity going on in X1, thanks to its introduction of optional upgrades, backtracking, and more durable bosses. These aren't the sort of games I can marathon one after another, as even playing just one is enough to call it a break from the franchise for at least a couple months.

So, when a sequel to X1 comes along, there's this sort of hope within you that seeing as they took the strides to raise the complexity of gameplay, the future of Mega Man looks to be one with more creative liberties attached to it. Alas. I'm already a Mega Man fan, and the folks at Capcom have like, 8 months to make a game, so I know where it's all going. X2 is... wait for it... more of X1!

And my god, is it all a blur. I could tell you what's going on in each of the 6 NES Mega Mans, but X2 (and X3, while we're at it) feel like a blip in the timeline, a dot in space, as if X4 was really supposed to be the 2nd game to come out, while these SNES sequels serve as the beach episodes that you're not even sure they exist. The freshness of the X series has been evaporated. Now, all you got is a Saturday morning cartoon, where every episode ends with X staring out at a sunset, pondering such deep questions as "why must Reploids fight", or "same question, but big emphasis on the WHY"

But even if we stripped away the part where anybody gives a shit about Mega Man being the same thing as ever, and we just enjoyed X2 because it does the good things that X1 does, I think that only applies to about 70% of X2, while the other 30% involves you having to contend with the game's final set of bosses. At least before that, the main 8 stages pull their weight, give you a good variety of things to see and do, and design-wise, they hold up. Nowadays, I'd honestly turn the game off after clearing those stages, as the finale that ensues goes into full tedium mode, with fights that go on for too long, and are packed with some pretty dreadful attack patterns. Maybe that's just me, but I don't remember my fingers hurting in X1 like they did here.

Then there's X2's main concept of collecting the parts of your robot friend in order to re-assemble him and obtain the good ending. The optional bosses that carry these parts are randomly chosen to appear in any of the 8 stages, and eventually, stop appearing. The idea is that you're pressured into going out of your usual boss order in order to pursue these parts, which WOULD be something interesting, if it weren't for the good ending somehow being worse than the bad one. For one, you miss out on an extra cool boss. For two, your friend gets re-assembled at the very end no matter what ending you get, so what was the point?

So that's X2's main thing just waved away, almost as if it wasn't completed on time. And the rest is... just an X game. For me, more complexity in a Mega Man game means a lesser desire to replay it. And with X2 being so similar to X1, I really feel like I'm just replaying X1 again. Doing all the same things that I enjoyed, but also some of the things I could've done away with, like backtracking and the larger enemy health bars. Overall, I'm feeling more iffy than jiffy about this one.

When I was around 9 years old, the website I played this on tried to desperately warn me by saying I needed "nerves of steel" for this game. I didn't know what those words meant. 2 minutes later, shit made me freeze up so bad that it felt like brain paralysis. The first episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People was downloading in the background. My family was in the other room, blissfully unaware of what I just stumbled into. And there I was, absolutely frozen in my chair. Presumably, taking a mental note that I should probably be more careful of the internet from there on out. I proceeded to do some research on screamers, memorized how a couple of them looked, and vowed to never be tricked into seeing them ever again.

A couple months later, my friend put headphones on me and started playing that car coffee commercial. I jumped out of the chair before the jumpscare even happened, knowing full well what this was. My research... paid off in the end.

I haven't just mastered you, you fucking piece of shit of a browser game. I've mastered how to dodge them all.

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.

I've played the Donkey Kong Country trilogy many, many times in my life, and there was always this subtle roughness to the first entry that I can't quite put my finger on. But once you touch DKC2, you'll probably pick up on what I mean. There's a feeling of Rare still working out the kinks of having to create a pre-rendered look that also plays on-par with something like Mario. It was far from an easy task, and their first attempt is a commendable effort, albeit one that I am only able to engage with on a casual level.

I only felt like 100%ing DKC1 once, so that includes finding all the secret rooms. Many of them are repeats of each other, and the rewards aren't super enticing. Those golden animal statues in particular are not even rewards so much as obstacles to me, as the way they work, they'll give you 3-4 extra lifes in exchange for potentially erasing the progress you had on your level. Not an amazing trade-off, given that DKC1 has lifes in many many other, more convenient places.

The game also firmly teaches you an important Donkey Kong lesson, which is to never trust Cranky Kong. He boasts about how he can beat the game under an hour and without dying, and you're free to take on that challenge, but his dialogue will not update to acknowledge your achievement. He also brags about finding everything in the game. Your reward for doing the same is a slightly different bit of dialog from him. Really, 100%ing the game in any capacity is just not worth it, because you'd only be doing it to get approval from some douchebag in a rocking chair. If he existed in real life, he'd likely hold some very questionable political opinions, and I would go on record to say that I wouldn't find all the bonus rooms for someone with questionable political opinions.

Speaking of challenges, one that I unintentionally do everytime I play this game is the "Diddy only" challenge. Because when you compare how Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong play, you subconsciously realize that there is almost never any reason to intentionally play as Donkey Kong, when Diddy is smaller, more agile, and just less awkward to use as a whole. Ironically, despite DK's name being in the title, it's somehow a more major punishment to lose Diddy and have to play as DK than it is to lose an extra life. I dunno how that works, man.

Okay, but I'm just getting the negatives out of the way upfront because I also think that this game IS fun enough, when you stop caring about completionism and just run like hell through it. Chances are, you won't even register that the secret rooms count as part of the 100% requirements, until you're staring at the credits and figuring out what'd you miss. You've probably been charging through the levels, having a good - if not slightly jank - time, and you've thought to yourself "man, this is flying by quick. am i rushing this?" And you shouldn't feel uneasy for doing so, because the secrets almost feel like they're dragging you down. Rushing DKC1 is just the most natural way to play it. It is the game's normal pace. The popcorn of the DKC trilogy.

At least the popcorn comes with a solid David Wise soundtrack. And hey, I still like the visuals! Naturally, they hold up a lot better on a blurry CRT monitor, where you can't make out every pixel that composes the graphics. Finding a good filter might be worth your time.

Playing DKC1 is worth your time too, but only with expectations dialed back. Rare is learning the ropes here. And much like the kongs who climb the ropes, Rare will do the same in the sequel.

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...

(Used a romhack to revert difficulty back to the japanese original)

Wicked Phenomenon is a sequel to the 1991 "Exile." And color me impressed, because they somehow managed to make it worse than the first game in nearly every way. It's even shorter (took me nearly 2 hours instead of the first game's 3), even more underdeveloped, more forgettable, and significantly more unpolished. I remember saying "That's it?" when the first game's credits rolled. With this one, I exclaimed the same question, but with much greater exasperation.

The main goal of Wicked Phenomenon is to make use of an opportunity it squandered before. If you've played the first Exile, you may recall that you get all these party members that aren't actually playable, or do a single useful thing in the story, which led me to believe that the game was rushed. Now, you're able to switch between four playable characters (and a 5th one after you make some progress), and each one has some degree of a unique attack move.

Your main character, Sadler, and the 5th playable character has a sword with decent reach. Rumi is a projectile-wielder with long range, Kindi has a short range fist attack that's slow but more powerful, and Fakhyle is a mage that throws slower homing projectiles. Rumi has her moments here and there, but Kindi and Fakhyle are still useless. Kindi's short range attacks are not a worthwhile tradeoff, and Fakhyle's homing projectiles have a mind of their own, rarely targeting that which I wanted and their slowness can cause battles to stall. There is nothing to incentivize you to switch between characters anyway, no moment where you think "Ah-ha, this character will be useful for this part!"

Either way, no amount of characters will save this gameplay, the combat for which I cannot describe in any better way than "It's fucking wretched." The first thing you'll notice is the camera only scrolling if you push against the edge of the screen, rather than keeping your character in the center at all times. This WILL lead to frequent cheap shots, enemies coming out of nowhere and projectiles that you cannot possibly react to, unless you like playing your games by slowly inching forward.

The second thing you'll notice is the questionable enemy hitboxes, with no consistency behind them. Some enemies will deal damage to you even if you're 100% sure that you're not touching them. There are projectiles that you're certain you could duck under, but they'll deal damage to you anyway even as they pass right above you. Special shoutouts to the fire-breathing dragon enemy, with a hitbox that seemingly switched on and off for no discernable reason, and couldn't even be avoided, so it was most often just free damage to myself.

Enemies are also likely to overwhelm you as early as the first or second stage, with erratic movements that require ridiculously fast reflexes. And bear in mind, I'm playing with the difficulty-decreasing romhack, right? And it still fucking sucks! I shudder to think how would this go if I stuck with the regular western version, as Wicked Phenomenon is also known as the game that Working Designs REALLY fucked up, with enemy stats cranked up so high that just about anything is liable to kill you in 3 hits or less. And then you take into account that the game itseIf is just plain broken at times, I can't imagine 90% of people being able to beat the US version, even if 90% people knew about its existence. Everything here feels bad.

I didn't even mention that talking to NPC's sometimes just glitches the fuck out of the game, causing the text box to break and display garbage data as you start pushing the NPC forward in eternity. The only reason this wasn't a major inconvenience is because I had the rewind button, but without it, all I would have to do is restart. It's difficult to say if this is a problem with the romhack or not though, so this point might be left up to subjectivity.

Those were just my gripes with the gameplay, but I'd also like to like to briefly touch on the story. The first Exile's story had promise. Despite being ultimately underdeveloped, the overall idea was that you're interfering in somebody else's war, aiding a mysterious man who you're not sure can be trusted. Will your efforts mean anything, or will they only fuel the flames of war even further? You're never sure if what you're doing is the right thing, and that gives the story enough complexity and thought that you could do something with that.

The sequel in comparison, has nothing even remotely as interesting. It is a black 'n white, stripped down version of what came before. As simple as "Use the power of friendship to stop the bad guy," down to the game itself using the "power of friendship" line word for word. When I was hoping that the sequel would expand on the lore of Exile, it merely made things more basic.

Sadler, the protagonist, is supposed to be an assassin. I have come to the realization that the game does not treat this like a profession. It is a title. A title for a hero. He does not assassinate humans for a price. He assassinates evil monsters from the goodwill of his heart. Perhaps this is all he ever was, and if that's really true, then perhaps I assumed too much when I thought Exile had promise. I was hoping for a world in which nothing is right or wrong, but Wicked Phenomenon chose the boring route in order to tell yet another story of a hero prevailing. It challenges nothing. It makes you think nothing. And then the franchise never got another entry after this one. What I described in the review, is the most likely reason why.

Ironically, the Working Designs cover art for this game may have been the most interesting part of it.

For what it's worth, it's not a bad remake of the first three Mega Man's. Slightly different in terms of feel, but accurate enough that I don't think you'll feel that something's off. Where I think Wily Wars falters is the necessity of its entire existence in today's age. Back in the 90's, if you didn't own an NES and wanted a way to play Mega Man on the Genesis? Sure, this'll more than fill that sweet spot.

But let's say it's 2023, and you now have access to the NES, Genesis, and all the other classic consoles at the same time. Is... Wily Wars worth playing at that point? And I personally don't think that it is, other than once for the sake of a fan's curiosity. Sure, Mega Man 1's difficulty has been slightly adjusted to be more fair, and there's a new campaign you can play, but none of this is enough to stop me from thinking that Wily Wars could've been a lot better than it turned out to be.

I mean, it's a generational leap. We've gone from 8-bit to 16-bit, and we are now more than 4 years into that period as of 1994. Yet, the remakes of Mega Man 1-3 feel like a 1990 launch title, seemingly content with doing the bare minimum of work to touch up the game. Mega Man himself looks good, but the environments still feel like something out of an NES title. Color choices feel washed out. None of this harms the game too hard admittingly, but then there's the converted music, which took the biggest hit of them all. I dunno how you feel about Genesis twang, but there's something about it here that lessens the energy of the music, losing what I thought made the 8-bit chiptunes special.

I get the feeling that the development team had only a year - maybe a few months less - to make this entire compilation. And that lack of time (and perhaps even experience with the system, seeing as they've been making Gameboy titles up until now) results in a remake that I can't help but feel could've been a lot more ambitious in order to show how far we've come since the older days.

As for the new unlockable campaign, it's... also just okay. I commend it for its unique idea of giving you every weapon from Mega Man 1-3, and letting you select your personal favorites for the stages you complete. This is a concept that needs to come back on a much larger scale. But, for now, it rests only within Wily Wars, a campaign with 3 levels and a Wily Fortress which I do not remember a single thing about, other than the fact it reuses assets and enemies from the remakes, alongside a strange and unfitting soundtrack that's too on the cheery side for what I'm used to with this series.

I come out of Wily Wars a plain person. With little of an impression to go on, only an imagination remains of what could've they done to make this remake better. It's not even about making it the "definitive version," because what's on offer plays just fine. It's about making it the unique one. Something that stands on its own ground. Right now, Wily Wars merely exists, neither better nor worse. The NES titles exist too. And those came first, which means that they get my dibs on what I'd rather play.

EarthBound may be the winner of the "best game with the worst first impression" award. Getting into this one took at least 4 separate attempts for me. The first 3-4 hours of the game involve you traveling as Ness, all by yourself, with no party members. And I'll be frank, the game was simply not designed for this. Enemies have just as much of a chance to crit shot you as you do them, along with dealing devastating status effects which you have no defense against other than your luck and your ability to trek back to the nearest hospital. You are likely to die, and it is likely to be completely out of your control, even with prep.

Adding to that, you also have to deal with a pitifully low amount of inventory space at first, further compounded by necessary quest items that don't feel like they should be taking up an inventory slot at all. Why does the map have to take one? Along with your ATM Card, and the Sound Stone? That's three inventory slots (maybe two, if you can live without the map) right there that are already hogged for the rest of the game by these things. Is the bike supposed to be a joke item, or an inconsidered waste of space and time? There's a lot going against EarthBound at first... I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to drop it.

Okay, but here's the thing. Push through. Genuinely, sincerely push through if you enjoy classic RPG experiences. Because as soon as you get your second party member and level them up a bit, the meta changes. Now, you've got a mage on your team, an additional set of inventory slots, and a bit more defense and protection against incoming threats. And suddenly, the game actually becomes managable and fun. Well, in bursts.

EarthBound is all over the place like that, like an uneven stock market graph with a line swaying up and down, where you're likely to see the calm after the ensuing difficulty storm. You will have just as many moments where you're in total control of the game, as much as the game will have its moments with you, bringing you down to earth level with bosses that will kick your ass. Although it gets easier over time, there's always that element of a dice roll, where sometimes, you'll just want to depend on those critical hits doing the job for you, but things might not turn out the way you want them to. And if that's not your cup of tea, that's understandable. But I think of it this way. Even if I may not win this time, the luck element does mean that I'm much more likely to win it the next. In contrast to the initial few hours, the rest of the game is about not giving up.

And the theme of "not giving up" is not only examplified through its design mentality, but through its simple and pure story. You are a courageous ragtag team of kids, off on an adventure to save the world. Do not expect the plot to get any more complex than that. What really matters is the usage of RPG gameplay elements and interweaving them into the story of the game, all to tell you just two things: You're getting ever stronger, and ever further away from home.

You'll find yourself counting each landmark you discover, each city or village you stumble into, until the time comes when the game will directly ask you to look back on everything that's gotten you this far. A trip down reminiscing lane. And that's when it'll hit you that this is a story of determination, perseverance. The power of courage, and friendship, and all that shit. Which would normally be a cause to roll my eyes, but EarthBound never uses this as a way to dramatize things and make the story bigger than what it seems. It's almost like a charming children's book, where rather than going on big anime monologues about your friends being your power, it just simply asks you, the player, personally, to never give up. And by leaving it at that, there's something incredibly earnest and sincere about it.

Still, if that's really all that there is to the story, then where is the draw to push through 20 hours of that? The writing is the answer. It's already been said many times that EarthBound had a really damn solid localization for its time, and it holds up just as well today. The NPC's are fuckin' weird in this one, and you'll want to find yourself talking to every single one of them not just for the sake of hints, but just to... take in their oddities and quirks. Take a shot everytime one of them says "Oops!"

EarthBound's writing makes a whole lot of something out of practically nothing by prioritizing surrealism and personality on all counts. Normally, a writer's job would be to make himself sound like multiple differing characters, but in the case of this, every character sounds like one writer. One writer's rambling thoughts, thrown into hundreds of text boxes with reckless abandon, like I'm peering into his very mind. As a result, nothing here feels "real." This is not someone's world made reality, it is a look inside the machinations of Mr. Itoi. And that's what truly makes the game special, once you make sure to roll with that.

Also, a brief shoutout to the final boss, which for its time, was an unbelievable thing to put into your SNES game for kids to play, let alone to see that localized overseas. Sometimes, I see EarthBound as one giant buildup to that single moment. And in a way, I think it further cements its total sincerity of the game's theming. Even though the whole point is to cheer you on and show you the good side of life, it doesn't ignore the fact that there are terrifying things out there.

Summing it up: EarthBound is a simple RPG, coupled with a simple story. Never does that simplicity equal mindlessness. It is a charmingly written game where progression and evolution of your strength and experiences means everything. If you love your numbers going up, and as long as you don't set your expectations to "One of the greatest RPG's ever made", I think you'll warm up to what it's doing and appreciate how straightforward it wants to be. As mentioned, the first couple hours will be rough. Everything else beyond that, will be a pleasant treat, and an adventure to remember.

There comes a point where in your goal to push a franchise's spectacle as far as possible, you'll eventually hit an absolute limit on what you can do. Hard Corps is that limit. No other Contra game after this one managed to reach this level of insanity and creativity. They might still be fun, but they will all be aping what Hard Corps and Contra 3 already did, and did so perfectly. But, probably the most insane thing about it is that not many people talk about Hard Corps, even though this may very well be the best Contra game out there, more than the NES one, more than Contra 3.

I feel like I'm a broken machine everytime I talk about the impressiveness of a 90's Konami game made for the Genesis, but come on, you've played one or two of them, you know that you're in for some good shit with the next one. So, perhaps I could instead talk about Hard Corps introducing the choice of four playable characters, each with their own unique arsenal of weaponry? (although i'll obviously still use the guy with the spread shot, i mean, come on)

Or, how about the fact that there are now multiple routes, that lead to multiple different stages, that lead to multiple different endings? In Hard Corps, the replayability no longer just stems from practicing and mastering the same set of 6 stages. Now, there's choice, and that choice impacts the events that play out, and the obstacles you'll face. Perhaps you'll have a preferred route, or perhaps you'll want to master each individual one. The game leaves that up to you.

Still, it is Contra, and if you were ever looking for a point where Contra becomes more accessible, this ain't it. Everything's still a motherfucker to overcome, alongside your limited lifes and weakness to toe-stubs. Interestingly, I've learned that this is another one of those examples where the game was made harder over in the west. You've got three hits that you can take in the Japanese version, but you've only got one everywhere else, the classic Contra standard. Depending on what kind of player are you, seeking out a romhack that incorporates the 3-hit system may be recommended. Alternatively, a cheat code for more lifes.

And if you can't beat the game the way the western version intends, then trust me, you really do want to go out of your way to set up some cheats for yourself. Because whether you're good at Hard Corps or not, it's worth playing just so you can go "oh wow" or "oh shit!" every 10 seconds. Contra Hard Corps goes hard on every aspect. The soundtrack, the feel of the weapons, the graphics, the visual effects, the replayability... it's just so damn good that it's worth seeing no matter your skill ceiling. This, right here, is where Contra peaked, and more people need to be aware of that.

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.

(Used romhack to revert difficulty to the Japanese original)

Coming into Lunar, I was filled with a sense of dread. The last game I played that was published by Working Designs was Cosmic Fantasy 2, and my review on that one is far from polite. Reading up some of the reviews on Lunar, I started to worry that this was gonna turn out pretty much like that game. Monotonous combat, a wasted storyline, and me walking out of it thanking Althena that it's finally over.

To my surprise, Lunar actually turned out to be... a little better than I expected, and felt like a palette cleanser after some of the more recent RPG's I had to put up with, Romancing SaGa haunting my dreams day and night withstanding. Is its combat complex? Oh, god no, there is an auto-battle command, and you can spam that shit to kingdom come from beginning to the very end, it is as basic as it gets. However, encounter rates are forgiving. Grinding is minimal, I only did it twice across my 20-hour run, and I'm not sure if I even needed to. The music is varied, and pleasant on the ears. The magic can be actually useful at times, whoa, now there's an incredible thing. You spend plenty of time exploring towns and getting new bits of story, and I overall think it's enough to prevent you from getting bored.

Of course, you'll need to bring your appreciation for 90's anime aesthetics with you for the "not bored" claim to really hold up, because if you aren't fond of that, then I'm afraid there's not much else left for you. Back in 1992, CD Audio is still a fancy new toy for developers to play around with, and Lunar places all its bets on making that the main charm of the game. Something I've found especially charming are the character intros. Everytime you run into an important character, a heroic jingle plays and they get some unique introductory art to go along with it. If Lunar was actually a popular game instead of a cult classic, these intros feel like something you could meme to hell and back. Put Jerma in one of these, except he gets the evil character intro theme.

The battle system uses a slight variation of the formation mechanic, in which the further a character is placed in the back row, the more turns they need to walk up to the enemy and hit them. In other words, it's not like most RPG's where the characters are swinging swords at each other from 20 feet away. It's slightly more real-time than that, where the character needs to physically walk up to the enemy and close the distance before being able to land a hit. Same goes for enemies landing physical damage on you. If a character's too far away, they'll move a little closer, but not close enough to land a hit. This was kinda interesting at first, but as usual, it is remedied by equipping back-row characters with long range weaponry and making use of magic spells. Once you figure that out, it's no different from any other RPG system.

Probably the biggest annoyance with the gameplay is the lack of creative dungeon design. Oops! All Mazes! Never was a fan of this sort of design, especially for RPG's where it becomes all the more clear that they are there just to waste your time. Throw in some break rooms, maybe some puzzle rooms where there are no battle encounters, a minigame, something that doesn't make it the one thousandth cave I've traveled through.

Lunar may also be likely to draw you in based on its writing alone. It's weird, wacky, tends to break the fourth wall... It's kinda mean-spirited at times. That's Working Designs showing their stuff right there, baby. Exile & Cosmic Fantasy had slivers of this, but it seems like Lunar was the game where they truly just up and went "fuck it, we're publishing this, it's our game now." There are pros to this... there are also problems with it that ring a little bit of ego.

Bear in mind, I'm not that much of a purist, it's fine for a localization to not be 1:1 with the original, and sometimes there are creative liberties taken that make the localization better than the original. However, it is both funny and partially infuriating to see this game's manual talking about the importance of staying faithful to the source material, before one sentence later talking about how they rewrote the opening theme song's lyrics to be less "lovey-dovey" and more "urgent", and claiming it's a change for the better. Seeing the localizer just outright contradict themselves like this, not to mention outright admitting their version is an improvement feels like it's lacking in the humble department.

Similarly, I take some concern with Working Design's claim that they had to replace various jokes to be more understandable for American audiences. And that's fine to do. I get it, some Japanese humor is too reliant on wordplays, puns, and the country's culture to be translatable. But, what's your excuse if you're inserting pop culture references into scenes that didn't have any? Legends of Localization did a short little article about one instance of the game doing this, and it's unfortunate they never did a more thorough look at one of these games, as immediately my curiosity wants to know how many more instances of this are there.

To be a localizer, you need to have the skill of a writer. A straight translation of a foreign language is unlikely to sound natural, so it's up to you to decide how to reshuffle everything and take advantage of your language's unique vocabulary in order for the script to flow naturally, while still preserving the overall intent of the original. In that sense, a localization always has some degree of opinion to it. However, taking a fantasy setting like this and essentially turning it into a parody of itself feels like steering the ship wheel a bit too far in the wrong direction. Rather than enhancing what's already there, you changed it completely and made it yours. That's where the problem arises for me.

Yes, your localization was amusing. Kinda dumb, but it did make for a more entertaining game at the end of the day, and it's possible I might've found Lunar kinda boring if it was more accurate. But I feel dirty admitting that. Because for all the genuine care and love that you poured into these publishing efforts, it's baffling that the one thing you didn't pay heed to is consistent faithfulness to the tone. The game's climatic moment, and what I've personally found to be the most memorable one, is undercut by a fourth wall break followed by a comment about spanking the villain. It's hard to say whether this was part of the original script or not, I don't speak the language so I'm not qualified to fully explore this. However, either the case is that the original script kinda ruined the mood of this scene, or the localizers did. Either way the jokes could've worked if they fit naturally, but instead they consist of dated references, and scat humor that make it blatantly clear they don't belong.

Anyway, that's probably gonna be the last time I rant about my localization woes, otherwise it's gonna get tiring. Is Lustar: The Silver Nar worth your time? Ehhh, maybe. For me, Lunar came at just the right time after a series of painfully slow and difficult RPG's. Lunar is not slow, it's not difficult, and it has some charm to it, some of it for the better and some of it not. If you ran out of popular RPG's to play and are hunting for some more obscure ones, I don't think you can go wrong with this one. Good enough for what it does, but the lack of complexity ultimately takes away any potential replayability. I'm interested in seeing how the later Lunar games hold up, including their remakes.

Policenauts is a truly fascinating disaster of mixed messaging. On one hand, it asks and answers some interesting questions. What would society be like if we perfected space travel? If we made other planets inhabitable? What if after a 25-year coma, you've found yourself in such a world when it seemed like none of that was possible just yesterday? What of your friends? Your old colleagues? Your wife? You were gone for so long, so where are these people now? Is it worth chasing the past, especially if you may not end up getting the answers you like? If the people that you respected back then, are no longer who they used to be...?

But of all these questions, the one that it desperately wants to ask you the most is "How much creepy misogynistic bullshit can you stomach in order to experience any of these themes?" Because, fucking whoof. I thought Snatcher was bad with this stuff, but in contrast, that's nothing. Policenauts is a fantastic story, buried miles below a stream of constant intrusive interruptions of Kojima's unrestrained and creative freedom, otherwisely known as his libido.

Let's just get the good out of the way, shall we? Yes, there is a genuinely solid story here. When Jonathan (the main character) and your cop buddy Ed are going around solving the mystery of an illegal trafficking ring, looking into things that you shouldn't have and accusing high-ranking rich scumbags that could have you be disappeared within a day, Policenauts is a thrilling and dangerous ride, yet filled with many slow-paced instances of retrospection on the differences between this world, and the one Jonathan grew up with.

The story revels in its worldbuilding, its heavy usage of medicinal and biological terms that I barely grasp, and it is equally as intriguing as it is difficult to follow at times. Whether that's because things get too complicated for me, or because the pacing takes a bit of a nosedive and I start paying less attention. My deficit attention span aside, I find it well put together, with a viscerally satisfying ending that tops it off and wraps things up with a neat ribbon.

The visuals of the PS1 version, while not very stylistic when it comes to the backgrounds depicted (a downgrade from Snatcher's 16-bit nightly city landscapes, which were a lot cooler), are quite detailed and tend to match the standards of the anime produced of that time, alongside the couple FMV's that were produced for this port. An effort is made to deliver a cinematic quality that I think does a well enough job to enhance the setting, and storytelling of the game.

If Policenauts was just this, it'd be sitting at 4 stars right now. Maybe even 4.5, because damn, it really does have its special moments, and a couple pretty likable characters, Ed just being such a pitiable down-on-his-luck guy that you wanna root for. Regrettably, I'm now gonna have to come back to my initial point. Ed is likable, Jonathan... far from it.

As I stated in my Snatcher review, writing your main character to be horny isn't an automatic reason to make a rant like I'm about to. While I would more often leave it than take it, there's a decent way to do something like this. Policenauts oversteps its boundaries, and the boundaries of every single girl you will meet across your investigation. These are just working people. One's a flight attendant, the other's working behind an info desk... Most of them scantily-dressed, revealing some bit of sideboob or as much as leg as possible. And maybe I'd just be overthinking it, if it weren't for the game immediately enforcing these clothing choices by giving me free reign to flirt with them, comment on their face, their hips, their legs, and... a whole new feature exclusive to this game, the Molest button! Go right ahead, just grope their boobs and face absolutely no ramifications or consequences for it, beyond a meek scolding from your cop buddy, and an "Ahn~ Stop it~" from the girl. Truly, an experience made for the gamer.

Policenauts likes to utilize porn game logic for its moments of levity. Just like in a porn game, you're not really meant to think about the way you conduct yourself in front of a girl. Let your wild animal instincts kick in, and enjoy yourself, that's what I presume Kojima figured. The biggest problem with this sort of mindset is that you chose to insert mindless porn game logic into a story that actually requires you to think quite heavily. You can't turn your brain off in a game like this, you wouldn't be able to follow the plot, you wouldn't consider the theming, you wouldn't theorize about the truth of the mystery. You are required to do all of those things to get the most out of Policenauts, and just when you really start to immerse yourself into it- Hot dog, is that an attractive woman?! Cue up the Attractive Woman Theme Song, Jonathan's about to make some wacky unwanted advances!

You see? Policenauts wants to treat itself as a grounded and realistic story. But it also wants it both ways through dedicating half of its cast to a guy's fantasy, and an uncomfortably frequent chunk of its humor to attempts at sexual assault. And when you're in the middle of analyzing everything else, it's not gonna be hard to analyze this for what it is, which is an insanely one-sided depiction of women that takes away and distracts from an objective understanding of how the world really works, just to titillate the player a bit. One tone is contradicting the other, neither work well in tandem with each other, and it ends up ruining my ability to take any of the story seriously.

It's not a sin to appreciate the good aspects of Policenauts. But it would be ignorant to say what's problematic about it isn't a problem at all. If you were crafting a story as extensively detailed as this one, you'd think you would want to spread its message to a larger demographic than horny dudes. As it stands, how can I recommend this game to my friends? "There's a really cool story here, if you ignore all of the objectification?" I'm fucked. Policenauts fucked itself. And did it honestly need to be that way?

After over four Gameboy games that spent their time regurtitating level themes from the NES Mega Mans, the final fifth Gameboy game throws in a surprise: it's a fully original title! Hey, whoever gave up on the Gameboy games after two or three of them, did you hear me?! THIS ONE'S ORIGINAL! COME BACK!

They had the opportunity to throw in some levels from Mega Man 5 & 6, and call it a day. Instead, Mega Man V chose to create its own robot masters and its own set of stages, centered around cosmic planetary themes. One boss is called Venus, the other is Jupiter, and so on, and so forth. Levels are imbued with newly-created mechanics to spice things up here and there, and I've found the arsenal of weapons to be more interesting this time around, such as a weapon that saps enemy health and gives it to you.

The game feels like it's trying to do some creative things from a team that wanted to push the boundaries of what was expected from them, to create a Mega Man title that they could call their own. There's a sincerity to it, a much greater sincerity than some of the more recent Mega Man games that seem to exist just for the sake of sucking out all the honey from the formula. Of course, the gameplay here isn't anything new, it's still Mega Man, you still platform and shoot things to death... it's the aesthetic that shines brighter, it's the music that hits harder (I love the Venus theme, it feels so unconventional for a Mega Man title but it gets stuck in your head so easily), it's the level design that's more enjoyable. It's the same, yet it feels so much fresher in all the subtle ways.

Overall, an underrated title. It only took them 5 tries, but Capcom finally landed on a Gameboy Mega Man that's memorable, and would be likely to make you come back for more, especially as a Mega Man fan. Highly recommended.