It's a Breakout clone for the Game Boy. It's pretty no frills - just piloting a paddle, hitting a ball into some blocks, and racking up a high score. You have some speed control by holding A or B, but there are no power ups or other player mechanics. The variety instead comes from the 24 main stages and 8 bonus stages. Every group of three main stages shares a layout across three variants (standard, moving blocks, and slowly descending), mixing things up in an otherwise short game. It's not fully enough to not feel a bit repetitive, though, a feeling heightened by those moments of your ball not being able to hit that one last block! Worth a try if you happen to come across it, and I'm sure this is more impressive as a launch Game Boy title, but there are better versions of this concept out there nowadays.

Perhaps the most notable thing about this one is the fact that it's technically a Mario game! Mario pilots the paddle, one of the stages arranges the blocks in the shape of Mario's head, and all of the bonus stages are based on Super Mario Bros. characters. It's a neat addition to an otherwise simplistic title.

The first generation of Pokémon games are important titles, launching one of the biggest media franchises in the world. But the first go-around is definitely a bit janky and lacks more modern quality of life features. Game Freak themselves have remade these games twice for a reason! Fans have also taken it upon themselves to clean up these classics, though most of the biggest efforts focus on Red/Green/Blue. How about the version that stars the Pokémon mascot?

Enter Yellow Legacy, the latest in TheSmithPlays' series of hacks for classic Pokémon games. You got pretty standard quality of lfe improvements - all 151 Pokémon available, gender selection, running shoes, more inventory space, better access to rare items in end/postgame, that kinda thing. More significant are the efforts to rebalance the game. Certain Pokémon have received stat buffs (such as your Pikachu), moves have been tweaked to buff weaker types, Bug no longer beats Poison, Psychic is now weak to Ghost, learnsets have been updated across the board, and Pokémon availability is adjusted for more diverse team options at earlier points in the game. Battle mechanics are generally the same, in the effort to keep that Generation I feel, but the options made available to the player are improved. Trainers and especially boss fights have been updated to match this increased standard, with better movesets and tougher rosters, but this is not strictly a difficulty hack - just bringing things up to the options you also have at your disposal.

Pokémon Yellow offers a specific Kanto experience with its partner Pikachu mechanics and Pokémon anime inspirations. These aspects are retained in Yellow Legacy, and I think these are the reasons why (or why not) you should play this over other Generation I QoL hacks. While I usually will go for the more traditional Kanto experience, be that in Gen I or Gen III, this is now my preferred Pokémon Yellow experience.

This is the localized version of Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun. It is mechanically identical to the Japanese version (which is covered in my review of that game), but the original setting with high school delinquents (inspired by director and designer Yoshihisa Kishimoto's childhood of getting into fights) are replaced by an American setting with street gangs and mob bosses. The story, originally about saving a fellow student from a yakuza boss, has also been replaced with saving the lead's girlfriend, but while the Famicom game keeps the story in the game, the NES game lacks the intro and ending. This makes Renegade marginally worse than Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun in my eyes, but if you only have access to one of the two, this is a fine version to play.