What I Look For In a Life Partner: stereotypically Italian, makes pizza and knows how to perform a spinning piledriver.

You know what I'm tired of? Player characters who only do wimpy attacks like jumping on their enemies, or swiping with their dinky-ass little broadswords. What are ya gonna do with that buster sword? Tickle me to death? I'm here to grapple with every goddamn thing I see, and uppercut them through the ceiling straight into other enemies, initiating a combo and gaining points like an even more sadistic version of bowling. Like a demented pizza-making freight train I dash around colliding into everyone like an Ed Edd n' Eddy character straight outta Hell with nothing to lose. I do a sick body splash too. You see that stupid sunglasses-wearin' pineapple guy? I'm gonna beat the daylights outta him. I hate him! He ruins every pizza he touches! I'm gonna smash you into the ground Pineapple Man!!! BOOM! POW! SMACK!

BRUTALITY IS ME! I AM THE BRUTALIZER!

It kind of goes without saying what Pizza Tower is attempting to mimic. I mean, you know why I'm playing this, and I know why you're probably interested in it. Hell, it even has a golf stage perhaps as an allusion to the third game. Mario is jealous! He is so mad that Wario has better games than him! He can't take it anymore! He politicked to Nintendo and made Wario sit behind a desk to develop microgames for wee ant babies, while Mario continued to hog the spotlight! Denying us more pure Wario games with shoulder charging and butt smashing action! Say no more though, because a wacky Italian pizza chef straight out of some kind of What A Cartoon-ass 90s era CN show is here to deliver the good shit.

In the case of whether you're wondering if it pulls it off well, I personally think it passes with multiple flying colors of some sort. I would even go as far as to say it adds enough to become it's own identity regardless of it's painfully obvious inspiration. Peppino is a big-time brawler that I mesh with as well as tomato sauce and mozzarella, and just when you think the transformations are gonna start repeating they instead just keep cranking out more. Well, except near the end, they kinda go overboard on a certain one involving a semi-ranged weapon that people tend to hate in multiplayer. Still pastrami cool though, and it's gonna be really satisfying once you start making this game your main squeeze and master it to the nth degree.

THE CHECKLIST:
•Heavyweight character move-set with professional wrestling moves [X]
•Collecting shit, but not too much shit. [X]
•Blast Processing [X]
•Sick Boss Fights [X]
•Cartoon Aesthetic [X]

Yup, that's a bunch of boxes checked. Vee is in love maybe. Pizza Tower, I choo-choo-choose you to be my Valentine. Swoon

"It's good, for an NES game."

I see stuff like this a bunch, and to be honest it kinda sucks. I know as someone whose first system was the NES it may be hard to take my opinion seriously on such matters, as often this horrible thing called "nostalgia" clouds our vision of the true quality of games from our childhood. There's however a massive problem with this potential accusation towards me and Castlevania. I didn't grow up with it. My dad never owned it, and none of my friends had it for their consoles. Hell, I don't think I even knew what a "Castlevania" was until I read an issue of GamePRO with Castlevania 64 news in it.

There is no demented ghost voice or evil rabbit on my shoulder to go "oooOOOOOooo, tell them the game is good tho!" to everyone like with Crash Bandicoot 1 or something, even when they list valid and fair criticism as opposed to some hack using completely fake dribble like "Crash's cry of "WOAH" upon death disrupts my Netflix viewing experience" or some shit. That just simply doesn't exist for me here, because I didn't play this until I got emulation going on my PSP. As a matter of fact, may I perhaps offer a hot take? It's a take so hot that if you have central air in your home it'll probably kick on as soon you read it.

Belmont movement fucking rules.

Loose movement is neat, but the feel of me playing as someone who seems to be made of concrete and falls like they're under the effect of ten times normal Earth gravity does nothing but satisfy me as I land from a jump like a ton of bricks. Methodical platforming is my crack, to hell with that fast bullshit, I want to slowly strut my stuff and have to deal with the consequences of my actions if I don't think five seconds ahead.

From beginning to end, from Simon walking up to the front gates in that little intro cutscene and fighting the giant bat that reminds me of Golbat, to the very end when I send Dracula's head straight to Saturn and get rewarded with the shitpost credits brightening my day with "James Banana" and "Green Stranger" it never fails to entertain and I never tire of it. To say I could replay this X amount of times and never have second thoughts on doing so is as rare as the Jackalope for me, there are plenty of games in the same high end of my "enjoyment" spectrum that I can't say that about.

"Spyro on PS1? Sorry my friend, perhaps another time."
"Pokemon randomizer nuzlocke? Not feeling it."
"Shitty fighting games? Maybe next weekend."
"...Castlevania? Sure, I got thirty minutes to kill."

It's actually slightly difficult to resist the temptation of another playthrough upon viewing my list of completely-legal-and-dumped-myself NES games on my everdrive. Is a game that is infinitely replayable and only more enjoyable as you master it not the perfect game? Maybe if it came with cup holders and a winning lottery ticket it could be "perfect", but as it stands Castlevania to me gets as close as it gets. As some people say "good things come in small packages" or something, I guess they still say that.

Legendary.

Sorry for my random ramble, it was just something I was thinking on as I was replaying this for the 700th time as I was doing my laundry. NES games rule.

To quote another Capcom game, "a solid beginning may lead to a perfect ending". A solid beginning was something that Street Fighter V unfortunately didn't really have, and it pretty much haunted it for the rest of it's life, even if it deserved the contempt or not.

So what can Capcom do to deliver this solid beginning to 6? Well, how about a fun as shit mode where you make your own self-insert, and run around Metro City delivering shoryukens to the back of some old lady's head and initiate fights with everyone you see? A Yakuza-like perhaps, but for me it's Mortal Kombat Deception's Konquest Mode expanded and perfected. It turns out all you need to attract more casual fans is a cool single player mode that just so happens to have a neat fighting game attached to it. Vets like myself love it too, because the Capcom references and lore drops never stop falling on top of you, and the cellphone interactions with the fighters is so fucking adorable. God, it's probably the best mode I've ever played in a fighting game.

Capcom is always Capcom, they do silly things constantly, but here they've proved that they've learned from the last game. I haven't felt this good about a Street Fighter entry since Third Strike, and obviously it remains to be seen whether this can have that kind of longevity. Regardless, everyone I know who's playing is absolutely fuckin' happy, and you know what? I'm fuckin' happy. It feels so nice seeing the game launch this well after V's clumsy-ass stumble out of the starting gate. I do think there's a special kind of quality to having Street Fighter do good, and attract all this attention even from friends in my circles who don't normally play fighting games, perhaps more good things will come in the end....more fighting game friends.....yes....let's fuckin' go. Yes, I WANT YOU TO PLAY FUCKIN' FIGHTING GAMES!!

For now, I have high hopes.... perhaps a perfect beginning may lead to an even better ending. Rooting for ya champ.

Disappointment after disappointment, when will I ever grow up? Every damn game I am underwhelmed, yet I seem to never learn. I will never love an entry in this series again, the magic that I experienced from days long past will never be seen or heard from again. Forever I am chained to this merchandise-pushing bulldozer of a franchise. Why does my childhood keep pestering me? Is it a curse? Why do I bother? Just let it die already.

Being someone whose username looks like it's based on Pokemon and formerly having an Eevee PFP for quite a while on here, it would feel like my take on seemingly the most divisive entry in the series yet will come off as something easily discarded. An open world game that is apparently super buggy and super empty? No way I could love it. It's a despicable game that would probably steal my dog's lunch money if it got the opportunity. I can't believe they would release such a broken game in 2022, etc, etc, yadda yadda. Whatever, you heard it all already.

Lend me your ears though... I loved this game.

As I lie here on my bed and rest myself on my Slowpoke pillow, I think to myself "is this a dream?". Not since the early days of playing on my purple Game Boy Color with my copy of Blue version have I felt this same feeling of grand adventure. The ability to go wherever I please without a completely nothing rival constantly challenging me at every other route, or having someone stop me from going down a certain route because they dropped their contact lens. Even the overworld trainers have grown to finally get some manners, and allow me to walk around freely without being demanded to waste my time fighting their crappy low level Scatterbug that wouldn't even give me a single XP point. Finally, a game that eschews all of that so that I may feel free. Free to experience the world of which I seem to never grow out of.

This is MY adventure.

The best part? This game will only get better for me. I played Violet in pretty much the worst way possible, via portable mode on my Switch. I experienced the worst frame rate drops possible, I experienced the worst pop-in, and despite all the doomer talk on Twitter....I never once experienced a crash or even one of the funny glitches or bugs. (may have helped that I bought it digitally) It turns out you can't trust judging your incoming experience based on what you see on the internet, especially when everyone everywhere can easily record stuff that happens to them in what might be the new best-seller in the entire universe. Personally, that stuff actually endears me more to this game. There's a clip of a Jigglypuff that flew off into space out there somewhere that's actually perfectly in-character, and would've made me laugh my ass off if I had experienced it in my own game. To say that I can't wait to replay this later on either a patched version, on better switch hardware or emulator would be an understatement. I cannot imagine how much I would love this once I experience it at a consistent frame rate.

Despite the tacky school uniform you're saddled with at the beginning, I found the setting very charming. Clothing options suffer thanks to it, but these are probably my favorite set of characters since Black/White. Mela having to move her legs like a robot because of her ridiculous boots is more fun and entertaining than anything Leon and his merchandise-moving Charizard did in the last game, and Arven is someone who I want to fight for to the very end. Don't talk to me or my cybernetic lizard motorcycle son again. The last 5% of this game goes beyond words in how much of a step up it is from Sw/Sh's wet fart of a climax.

They say an image speaks louder than words, but here it is.

Call me a fanboy, call me chopped liver. You could even call me late for dinner, but...I enjoyed myself immensely...and that's all that matters in the end.

It's then that I ask myself again, "is this a dream?"

No, the sky has not fallen.....no cats and dogs are not currently living together.... Pokemon Scarvy is my game of the year. This is reality, and I still can't fucking believe it.

Ten.
Years.

Ten whole years since B/W, and they finally do it again... holy shit.

I refuse to grow up.

Normally if I enjoy a game I'd either try to have fun with my writing and do something corny like roleplaying as a character or go insanely heavy on the showmanship, but for the sake of this I'm actually going to be really vanilla and bore everyone to death.

Before I heel out, I'd like to let it be known that I was rooting for this game. When it was originally revealed in one of the Directs, I clapped, I hooted, and I hollered, for she deserves the universe and everything in it. She's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment. I heard it get compared to Wario World, which made me bounce off walls like Spring Wario from the classic Game Boy games. I could imagine it now, Peach womanhandling every bad guy in sight and going on an exciting journey through every genre of artistic theater known by Mushroomy Kingdom history. Unfortunately, comparing Good-Feel to even one of Treasure's lesser developments is essentially like putting silly putty next to an unpolished diamond.

"Engagement" and "difficulty" are two separate things, and it really needs to be stressed that the latter means little in the grand stage of what makes a game do what a game does, which is engage the player and take their mind off life, with the "fun yeah woo" energy replacing all their other thought processes. Spyro the Dragon and Ninja Gaiden are on opposite ends of the spectrum and still manage to be a few of my favorites to ever do it. Just a few days ago, I played Bugs Bunny Lost in Time on stream in a Discord call with one of my friends as she did some programming, and that is a game "made for children" with very little punishment dealt out for mistakes. For how jank and lower budget it was, it was fun with decent puzzles, cool ship combat, car chase segments, and even pretty good boss fights! It's something I enjoyed when I was eight, and still do now as an adult.

Peach Showtime for all of it's poor performing extravagance doesn't even use a lot of the joycon's controls, and many segments are very linear and on-rails with one of the Detective Peach puzzles quite literally having the solution put up on the wall for you. Using a simple control scheme is never a bad thing in itself, I enjoy an Atari game now and then, but the fine art of utilizing that simple control scheme demands creativity that extends beyond auto-scrolling sections that make 100%'ing the game annoying. It would also ask for enemies to master the very tricky art of "moving the fuck around a little" to justify having the world's most lenient parry window. It's frustrating, because for every half-decent powergaming moment that involves throwing hitboxes around enemies that are less threatening than beginner mode Musou soldiers it's spliced between very uninteresting unskippable dialogue, uneventful non-combat plays, auto-scrolling/auto-running sections, and "puzzle" segments that are more trivial than microwave cooking. It makes me drowsy! I've played stuff like Toy Story Activity Center off the Collection Chamber and Number Munchers last year, and that stuff was pretty fun despite the target audience! Hell, I still come back to Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio on Sega Genesis just to screw around with the music maker! It stimulates my imagination, unlike Peach Showtime!

Give kids some respect, or even better give Peach some respect. A little bit of both I feel would go a long way.

....Also, I know I'm preaching to the choir on this subject, but why does the game run so goddamn bad? The loading screen and results screen run worse than a bunch of Atari Jaguar games I've played, was it a bad style choice? It would check out I guess, I may as well be playing a movie game.

A dull direct-to-VHS Disney movie game.

There's a nebulous concept I've struggled to pinpoint about certain games that's completely intangible to the usual scale that's often used to weigh them of their quality. It's not really unique entirely to Yoshi's Story, but to me it's probably among the strongest in it's field. It's that magical ability to have your emotions be naturally struck and never fail to bring a smile across your face. I really don't want to just call it "nostalgia", because it implies that it's only associated with me in particular, and no one else can really experience that same sudden wave of warmness. As I slipped more into pessimistic adulthood though, I started doubting this magic really existing.

"It's just an easy platformer with some high score mechanics, nothing more, nothing less. It's nothing special."

Everyone was right, it really was just my nostalgia overtaking my childish feelings. I'm just overly emotional. Yoshi's Story isn't special. Despite this, throughout all the troubles...the frequent moves to different homes, the friends permanently borrowing games, the trips to GameStop to sacrifice others in hopes of getting something new outside of Christmas or my birthday.....even the near-complete extinction of my childhood N64 cartridges due to my own dwindling interest in the system.....you're still here. That's why I sit here on my notepad document struggling to write about you, and I ask myself that ever so important question:

"What makes you so special?"

It's all too much. My hope to secure my reasoning beyond my own overactive imagination continues to falter. It can't be just because of Shy Guy Limbo and singing Yoshis, there has to be something. I start to believe that the so-called magic that I conjured in my own head is just that, only in my head. Just close the damn document and get back to work on that concept art you're supposed to be doing for a friend. Stop wasting your time. It's hopeless.

but...

Once in a while, I feel that spark of hope once more, and my fire burns again. Those rare times I meet someone who utters "I loved that game", or even "yeah, that music cheers me up too". My childhood optimism returns, perhaps...it isn't just me. The magic does exist. That quality that transcends anything else, something so powerful that it negates any terrible feelings. To remind oneself of simple and innocent times, to give some much needed emotional relief in times of hardship. For me, that right there is the strongest quality any form of media could possibly have.

Thank you, Yoshi.

"Ecco, if we breathe air, why do we live beneath the waves?"

Before you read on, I'd like you to listen to the music I linked to in that quote. There's a chance it might not hook you, but that track in particular used to mesmerize me when I was little. It kind of perplexes me how beautiful it is, especially coming off something like the GEMS driver, which is often derided for sounding like well....flatulence. Nevertheless, to this day I still think it's one of nicest pieces of music I've heard out of the 16-bit generation. The entire opening sequence still captivates me, from watching Ecco and his pod swim through their home to the close up of Ecco himself at the title screen, it always entices me to watch the entire thing and stay there for a while before I begin the game proper.

Like many I too also enjoyed the start of the game where I just swam around with my pod and got to talk to my fellow dolphins. Not many people like the controls, but I think they're okay. Maybe I'm just in denial and have grown accustomed to them throughout the years, but Ecco's ability to torpedo through the water never ceases to put a smile on my face. It definitely kept me entertained as a kid for the longest time despite never actually progressing from that starting area for a while. I was just enjoying my time as a dolphin, doing tricks and chatting with my pod! Hanging out with my friend Ecco, what more could I ask for? Of course, at some point though...I jumped too high.

WHAM!!

The biggest jumpscare that absolutely shattered me when I was little. Make no mistake, that entire sequence shellshocked me for a very very long time. Not just the sudden disturbance and loud noises, but also the fact that I was now all alone in the unforgiving ocean. No friends here, not even the passerby fish for me to munch on. It was just me...alone...

What awaited me beyond these waters? Regardless, this is when I talk about something else that always astonished me about Ecco's game, which was...just how mean it was. As a young one, I stood absolutely no chance against this beast. Ecco's game...did not want me to beat it. The puzzle solutions made no sense, and checkpoints did not exist. Oh, you died? I guess that's too bad, you'll need to start the sequence over again. Super R-Type back on the SNES trained me on the ways of never messing up, but that game was a walk in the park compared to Ecco, it was straight-forward at the very least. By the way, do you by chance like auto-scrollers?

Welcome to the machine, welcome to hell. Stay a while, I hope you're comfortable...

Suffice to say, even as an adult Ecco's game is nothing but a stone wall of tedium and frustration. In a way it perfectly represents the ocean itself. It's beautiful in every way you can imagine, the ocean's serenity is captured perfectly and the screen even darkens as you descend lower to the depths of the bay, where it then displays the sheer terror and danger of the abyss itself with it's outrageous difficulty, of which I'm sure it would be just as hard to survive there as it is to survive in this game. I marvel at this game every single time I boot it up, as it is a true work of art, a hard to play work of art, but a work of art nonetheless.

Why do I bother playing this game then if it so terrible? To see my friend Ecco, that is why. I still enjoy spending time with him and his pod in the starting screen, jumping for joy in the bay until the game decides to jumpscare me and begin the adventure. An adventure of hardship and dread. Will I ever beat it legitimately? Who's to say? Maybe one day I'll finally get through it, but for now...

Goodbye Ecco, see you my friend....until next time......

What is the best game?

What could the best game even be? It's hard to think of, isn't it? Maybe you would want good mechanics? A gripping story with very well-written and likeable characters? Lush environments with an atmospheric soundtrack that drags you straight into it's universe? There's many more you could want that would be more tailored to your personal tastes, which at that point your best game becomes my mediocre game and vice-versa. Arguments and debate about influence are often used as sticks of measurement as to what the best game possibly is, but influence is something that can be lost in time like many other things in life. After all, nothing is truly original, and would it be fair to give an award to one who was simply....first? I'm not entirely sure on that myself.

Metroid on NES was different from the other games I had played on that system, where as I played other stuff like Super Mario Bros. or Duck Hunt for childish entertainment, I felt a much different array of emotions. I was scared, I was curious, I was confused, and I was intrigued. It was due to this, and my sudden discovery that I enjoyed music coming from a little electronic piece of equipment, that Metroid was something I couldn't really forget, nor would I not find it's ambition to be truly commendable for such an early title. I liked it, but it wasn't my favorite NES game. Samus would notably spend a long ways away from my personal gaming timeline, Metroid II just being that Super Game Boy box was again my only memory, and in Super Smash Bros on Nintendo 64 I would play as Samus wondering where she's been this whole time, being reminded of her existence as I played as her, because she just seemed cool. She was cool, but I noticed something when I would look at her character profile in there....

Super. Metroid.

What is that? In 2023 it might be a bit hard to believe, but back then I did not have internet, or even cable. The only games that were out on Super Nintendo to my knowledge were just whatever was at the local Hollywood Video and such. Maybe I saw Super Metroid at Toys r' Us and just never registered it? Who's to say? One thing is for sure though, at one point I started getting into gaming magazines, and my dad eventually had a cable package with G4 among it's listings. It was in places such as these where I would hear the combination of the words "Super" and "Metroid" a lot. I was already interested, but in these same pieces of media, many would cite Super Metroid as "one of the best games of all time" and other such words of grandeur. It knocked me off my feet to hear about it or even see footage of it, Samus was in...the best game? I... wasn't there for it.

For years, it would be a bit of a white whale of gaming for me, especially after having enjoyed games that renewed my interest in the meantime such as Zero Mission and the Prime games. I had played pretty much every major release that came about on the SNES too...

Super Mario World? Of course.
Donkey Kong Country? Was my jam.
Link to the Past? Yeah, I played it at a friend's house.
Super Metroid? Wha-what?

It wouldn't be until I started browsing GameFAQs where I would eventually learn of this thing called "emulators". What are those? One google search later, I would find it... a program that would help this penniless child play a game they had stuck in the back of their mind for what seemed like a decade. It was during a time where emulation was a bit dodgy, certain things would look off and sounds could come out pretty warbly. Back then though, we were just happy to have something work at full speed. I was thankful enough just to see that famous intro, albeit with German subtitles attached to it. I couldn't believe it, on my family's kitchen computer I was about to play it, the best game...

It seems our little friend from our adventure on SR388 has been kidnapped by familiar foes, those we hadn't seen since they were but adorable 8-bit caricatures. They have rebuilt their base, and have grown far more fearsome. It's time to visit Zebes again, our old stomping ground. We trek across familiar landscapes, recalling the memory of escaping during the countdown of the original destruction of Mother Brain and find our morph ball....right where it was last time. All too familiar, until we are spotted and suddenly we find Ridley's henchmen swarming the innards of Old Tourian. This Zebes is different, it's been expanded and they are much more prepared for us this time it seems, and Kraid has gotten.....larger.

....but we were ready, for we are SUPER Metroid!

I always thought it would be seen as odd to have nostalgia for an emulator. It's not a real system, it's a fake, a phony. A shoddy imitation of what was my little grey and purple friend I had next to my little cable-less hand-me-down TV in my bedroom. To top it all off, there is no reason to ever use it anymore, it is obsolete and has been for some time now. It's existence means nothing anymore, but it lent me a sudden helpful hand and let me experience games that I had missed out on...and allowed me to finally revisit old favorites during a time it felt impossible. Oh, Star Fox how I had missed you so. It's difficult to believe they were once so guarded from young online eyes, and now they are commonplace. It's hard for me to imagine a world without them...a world where those younger than me wouldn't be able to easily experience that of which I had grown up with.

Thank you for your time ZSNES my old chum...and thank you Nintendo for making this apparently behind my back, and thank you Zeric, maker of this map on GameFAQs.

That leads us back to the question I asked from the beginning, what is the best game? Is Super Metroid the best game? Well my friend, I've played many a "best game". Many have not survived my trials, whether it was due to factors like "I didn't care for the thing" or a simple "I just don't play well with RPGs I'm afraid", but... Super Metroid has legs. It's a horse in this race of highly-acclaimed classic titles that I would get behind. It walks that aisle, and styles and profiles. Upon finishing my return to this game that I played very much legally as a youngling, I found myself playing again right away, and my entertainment somehow doubled as I was utilizing wall jumps to find alternate quicker paths to upgrades and energy tanks. It's a rare breed of game that somehow gets better the more you play it, just like a true Metroid adventure. What was once a clunky feeling is now just second nature, no longer do I care about the controls or Samus' physics of actually feeling like a person in a space suit jumping around on an alien planet. It is all just second nature, and now I am Samus, and I fuckin' rule.

The high I get from seeing that small amount of inventory I start with getting larger, and eventually taking up all that space on the top of the screen? Unfathomable.

Imagine making something that was so good that developers didn't want to even follow up such a game. That begs the question, could you in fact make a better Metroid? What is the next step for the series then? If Sakamoto could not imagine a way to utilize the Nintendo 64's controller, then what hope is there for the Dolphin console? There is maybe one way...how about, now bear with me on this...two fantastic games, at the same time. Would that be sufficient? Hrmph, unlikely that such a thing would be done. Regardless, it seems we would need to wait a while to go on another adventure with our favorite bounty hunter. I suppose another round of matches with the boys would be okay in the meantime. Until next time Samus, take care.

See you next mission.

Save the animals.

hypothetical life partner walks into the room

"Vee, what are you doing?"

"Playing Balatro."

"It's 4 o'clock in the morning. Why on Earth are you playing Balatro?"

"Because I've lost control of my life."

This was super cute!

It's slightly embarrassing to admit, but I'm always interested in Sonic characters just being Sonic characters around each other and this was like a sniper aiming straight for my heart. I hate to beat on the drum that's already been beaten to death, but it says something when a game as simple as this accomplishes the role of a self-insert better than Forces. I don't need to save the world with Sonic, I just wanna hang out with them for a bit!

Any game that lets me compliment Knuckles on his hat is one worth enjoying, and yet again I'm reminded that Blaze is still my role model. God, she's so fucking cool!

Dreams... why do we have them? Where do they come from?

They're many things. They often inspire us to create, mold and manifest those same dreams into reality. They give us a vision of what is to possibly come, or perhaps to remind us of simpler times that made our little hearts grow. Above all else, they serve as our home away from home, to escape from the troubles we face in our lives as we sleep through the moon's company, or look towards the sky as we lay on that peaceful hill and put our head in the clouds with the sun. To relieve us from all that stress and bad energy, and bring back that positive outlook that is so important to us as we live on this plane of existence. In a way, it is the most significant element for all of us. Without the ability to dream, what would we do aside from just exist? Where else could we go to get away?

...at the very least, that's my interpretation of them.

No one knows how they work, and we probably never will figure them out or who is out there trying to motivate and cheer us up. Is it a mystical property our bodies have? Is someone above looking out for us? Are they just... as they are? For all we know, we could each have our own personal rogue nightmaren that looks over us and tries to keep those night terrors at bay, and allow us to remain hopeful and optimistic. When we pass, do we meet them? The concept of dreaming in itself is a dream as my imagination runs rampant like the sheep that I count within my mind. It's more intriguing as I ponder on it, because I always find myself diving into that same realm to find my vision on creative personal projects, or to bring me strength to work toward a brighter future for myself and those around me. What about you?

Dreams of finally meeting that special someone online who lives many miles away? Don't worry, you'll see each other soon. Dreaming of finally making your own game and putting it on Steam? You got this. A dream of becoming a YouTube content creator? You can do it.

We can.

That is what matters. I'll always believe in you. Never doubt yourself.

Why the sudden burst of helpful optimism? Well, that brings us to you NiGHTS, the instigator of my sunny disposition. You offer me this flight through your world of colors and frolicking moody nightopians that grow with age as I play your game, challenging me to climb ranks and smash Sonic's records. I continue to be amazed at your poise and grace with your cat-like gaze. You're but an arcade game at your core, and yet you touch my heart with your musical score and the neverending warmth of your silent tale. It feels as though I had my emotions bottled up to keep myself professional like an adult as I went on my adventure with you, and yet... I left the experience feeling like a kid again, singing your tune to bring myself joy. With you, I touched the stars and felt the wind beneath my newly discovered wings.

If I may ask you, the reader...

Is it strange to be this full of cheer with tears in my eyes?

It's insanely easy in today's context to write off vanilla Sonic 3 and to only play the lock-on version, but there's a very important thing you're missing out on, and that's getting to hear the mini-boss music that's exclusive to this version.

It's such a funny ass song to use as a boss fight theme especially in the context of a forest getting napalmed, it'd be like if you fought Maruyama/Trouble Bruin in Dynamite Headdy to his appearance theme instead. That second-and-a-half-long introduction that's essentially a baseball organ doing a board game jingle that leads straight into a bit crushed "C'MON" voice sample with tapdancing noises and a funk beat behind it is somehow simultaneously the funniest and hardest shit I ever heard in my life. The only way you could escalate this, would be if you had a dopey-ass three second long french horn that went straight into extreme sludge metal. If I had to use entrance music that wasn't Maruyama's theme it'd be this. This is like top three music to interrupt someone cutting a promo with. Imagine if people got to reel in terror at the sound of the goofy baseball organ during Smackdown as if The Undertaker's gong went off.

God, so fuckin' good. The comedian who designed Carnival Night Zone Act 2 will be hearing this music very soon, I assure you.

Sparkster is so cool! They tick so many random checkboxes for me!

[X] Anthro
[X] Cool Armor
[X] Jet Pack
[X] Goggles (Goggles are cool)
[X] Expert Mech Pilot

What endeared them so much to me too was actually their idle animation! They look so jovial, they're happpy to be the hero! Sparkster doesn't brood (Ignore the NA cover here), he's anxious to start the day and get to the rescue of their fair princess! He's a gallant jet-propelled knight who's a zoom zoomin' all around and beating up all the bad guys! Mr. Nutz, Punky Skunk and Zero The Kamikaze Squirrel are so angry that Sparkster is actually awesome! They are so mad! Sonic's got nothin' on Sparkster! Except merchandise apparently! What gives Konami? Where's my Sparkster nendoroid , Sparkster YGO cards, Sparkster party accessories, and Sparkster line of clothing?

Ah well, knowing my luck they'd use this look instead, and I'd be an absurdly sad rabbit. Fuck that guy, this is the boy you want.

This game rips, it's Saturday Morning Cartoon down to the empowering theme music that blares from the first stage and goes off after every victory. Sparkster's here to fuck shit up! Those damn pigs won't know what hit'em! You got that patented Konami difficulty, but thankfully they kept themselves in line and didn't Bayou Billy this one. As a matter of fact we actually got all the difficulties unlocked by default over here in NA! Thank the lord above that Konami wasn't dumb enough to make their mascot platformer harder than 90% of the Famicom library, although they were cheeky enough to call Japanese "Normal" the "Children" difficulty and cut you off from the final boss if you played on that. Couldn't help yourselves could you?

Konami: "Nope."

Easily one of the most memorable titles I ever played on the Genesis back then, you know it's memorable when I didn't even own this shit and only played on Sega Channel! I so wish I had owned it growing up though! I would've been a master at it and been Rocket Royalty of some sorts.

You're the coolest Sparkster! Look at him! AAAAA HE'S SO FUCKIN' COOL!!!

In an age before the internet became commonplace, I didn't have as much to entertain myself within the multiple childhood bedrooms I had. A small hand-me-down television of dubious quality eventually made it's way into my possession, albeit with no cable or antenna. Three things kept me company during those rainy lonesome weekends: toys, old video game consoles, and the trio of pencils, crayons, and discarded notebook paper.

I never liked having my room overtaken by the sound of silence, so I would often keep my fan on during even the cold winter nights. The constant noise of the fan wasn't really sufficient when I wasn't actively trying to sleep, so often I would rely on the only thing my television could produce besides static white noise, the music of my video games. This music was something that could either be easily conjured up by the sound test within the options menu, something that I could only hear in-gameplay, or if I'm lucky pausing wouldn't quiet the music. It's the reason a child would do such things like constantly replay a game to the point of being able to no-hit run it, play a racing game to drive on the same tracks over and over, or destroy countless soldiers on the battlefield for an entire evening. It was all due to the cool music.

Sonic 3 and all of it's versions didn't have a sound test, at least as far as I could see. It was quite a bother, because Sonic 2 had this. Why didn't 3 have it? I love the music so much. It wasn't until I came across the miracle of gaming magazines such as Tips and Tricks, Expert Gamer, and the like that suddenly my games would find a new lease on life, and Sonic 3 would perhaps get the most mileage out of it. Go to the vines in the first level, hit left x3, right x3, and up x3. Easy enough to remember. Sure, I get a stage select, but the sound test without any strings attached was what I truly wanted. I didn't need to constantly fight Mecha Sonic as Knuckles to hear the final boss music, even if I did find him super cool. I drew him so much...

Even when I eventually did get cable in my room, there were only like four channels I'd bother watching, and unfortunately I broke my sleep curfew a lot and stayed up like many a kid would, and advertisements would eventually start being shown instead of cartoons, pro wrestling, or stand up comedy. I'd spread my blanket across the floor of my room in front of my TV to either play something or just put music on from something I liked, then I'd draw, play my game boy, arrange my massive stash of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, etc. Was I a weird kid for sometimes enjoying the company of bleeps and bloops or some insane synth-rock music I heard in a fighting game about the anime I would catch after school every day? Maybe so, but music is music regardless of it's origin. For myself, that music represents memories of the journey I have taken through every console's library. Some are just more special than the rest...

I grow older, and I go through changes for better or worse. I live, I learn. Yet, here I am typing up this pointless nostalgia piece to the very music that inspired me to create decades prior, with the sound of the CRT speakers being replaced by some HyperX headphones, and my notebook paper replaced by a digital interface.

Some things never change.

It's a shame.

I probably spent about 20 years both ironically and unironically asking people in forums and discord chats about a new F-Zero finally getting made, basically to the point now where even I'm in on the joke that it's not happening, and I just keep repeating it for the sake of tradition every time a Direct is announced. At the very least I'll take F-Zero GX HD with online, that'd be sick I think.

Welp, here we are. It happened, I got my joke wish and I am so completely numb to it. A cheap asset flip game that will get delisted in a year after it does its rounds of entertaining streamers for a week.

I'm going back to bed for another 20 years.