Rise & Shine is a game that was pretty to look at but clunky to play for me to the point where it did mostly hinder my enjoyment of it despite it's short length.

When its fun, its with the boss fights and puzzle solving. When it's not fun, its the enemy waves and moving around. The movement is really slow, clunky, which makes it unsatisfying to play. The story and writing didn't really stick with me either, mostly just skipped the dialogue. The referential videogame humor was neat, I guess.

I hate to sound this negative about this game especially since its being delisted soon (fuck you Warner Bros) but this is my honest opinion on what I've played and I wish I enjoyed this game more. It's not terrible, but I've played better games.

OlliOlli World is a freaking blast. It feels so damn satisfying to control and string a ton of skate combo chains together to net yourself a bigger score at the end of each level. It starts out easy but the levels get harder, and you're rewarded for your mastery of it's mechanics.

I was surprised at how much of a breeze the final level was for me too, I just got through it with relative ease all because I mastered it's controls. Just goes to show how important control, movement options, and feel is to making great platformer games.

Whip! Whip! is a really fun take on the arcade clear em up genre that Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros is apart of. The game looks cute, music is alright, story is silly and lighthearted, and the gameplay itself is really addicting. Chaining attacks together to maximize your score feels really good.

While I'm not too huge on the lack of continues, the game is pretty fast to get you back into it. There's 100 Levels and a post game challenge where you need to complete every level in one go.

If you're into games like Bubble Bobble, Snow Bros, and others like it I'd grab Whip! Whip! while you still can. Alpha Unit went defunct sometime ago and in lieu of that, the Switch version of the game was delisted. The game is somehow still up on Steam, so buy it while you're still able to.

We Love Katamari is an excellent followup and companion piece to Katamari Damacy. It's more Katmari as you've come to know and love, but it adds a lot more levels and tweaks to keep things fresh.

We Love Katamari digs into the addictive arcadey nature of old school Namco games in a satisfying way. You want to replay levels to make a bigger Katamari or make the Katamari faster than before-the addition of a retry button absolutely enhances this game's replay value, it was hard to put down.

The humor is zany and weird (much like Damacy) and I love how this game digs a bit into The King of All Cosmos's backstory and relationship with his father.

Overall a lovely game that I can come back to and replay often. Highly recommend this and Katamari Damacy if you're looking for something chill and funny.

Tl;dr Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is still one of my favorite Donkey Kong games of all time. I still hold it dearly to my heart and I'm really glad I was able to play it again properly with a pair of DK Bongos I bought again (which were the same ones I sold off to a local store ages ago). Only main critique I have of the game is the short length but that's really it.

Jungle Beat is one of those games my dad's side of the family owned when I was a kid and would play when I would go over to their house. When I was a kid I was completely out of the loop regarding the Rare buyout, I just saw this as another cool DK game, and it was definitely a pivotal game from my childhood that made me fall in love with Donkey Kong with DKC2 and DK64 being my main entry points.

And I'm very happy to say that Jungle Beat is still a really fucking fun ass game for me, probably even more fun for me now after mastering the DK Bongos as an adult. The game feels so satisfying to control, play, and my god its so rewarding to string long combos and finally land on the ground netting a ton of beats. DK's a mad powerhouse in this game and it really shows in the levels and boss fights too. Levels are so tightly designed around it's limitations that it feels exquisite to master movement and find the most optimal routes to keep your combo gauge going.

I love this game so much man; Jungle Beat, Jungle Climber, and Tropical Freeze are definitely my favorite 3 Post-Rare DK titles.

I highly recommend it to people especially since DK Bongos aren't in any demand right now, it's better time than now to get them before they fetch higher prices.

Cookie Cutter has such a strong artstyle, seeing it in action felt truly special. I also really like Cherry and her moveset from the get go being fighting game inspired. It felt really good to chain light attacks into specials. She has alot going on. Though unfortunately you hit that stride by the time the game is reaching it's end. It's shorter than I expected.

I didn't have much gripes outside of wishing Cherry had a faster movement option on land, walking to the fast travel spots was a bit tedious. The game's abundance of instadeath spikes towards the latter half was annoying too because there really isn't anything to use to avoid them more effectively (they were p annoying in Golden Tower too). Enemy variety isn't very vast, I did find it really cool they animated unique glory kills for enemies though, but I imagine most people wouldn't use em once you make Cherry a high power killing machine with upgrades.

The strange decision to have voice acting at the beginning and then cutting it for the rest of the game was...baffling. Which is a shame cause I really did enjoy the voicework of Cherry & Raz (I mean come on, Cherry has a design that tells you off the bat what she sounds like). I chalk it up to a budgetary thing clearly most of it went into the presentation which is no slouch.

The ending was also...very abrupt? I felt like this game could've done more to make Cherry regaining the memories of her past as a more gradual buildup rather than just being shoved in last minute after the climax. Granted, the story wasn't amazing/super duper engaging (not poorly written at all, it was just by the numbers for me) but I wish the importance was carried throughout gradually rather than at the start, kinda nothing inbetween with small buildup, then the giant drop at the end. The Infonet and Denzels stuff was neat though.

Overall though, Cookie Cutter is a solid ass game and it shows a ton of promise for this dev studio. They're constantly updating and tweaking it too which is really great to see. They really do care about this world they made and that's a great thing to behold.

(Played Wiredcrackpot's recently released retranslation patch for the Saturn original)

This was an amazing translation, I genuinely didn't think it'd ever happen, but I'm so glad it did. The story is still pretty nuts but it feels so good to actually experience the proper personalities of the characters and the comedic timing of jokes on-screen. I loved this game so much already, but this retranslation patch is most certainly the best way to play it now.

The patch's existence makes Working Designs' handling of the script all the more apparent. While I do appreciate them bringing the game to the West back then, they really messed with character personalities, adding forced jokes that were never there, and scrubbing of biblical allegories that the original script had.

If you're interested in checking Silhouette Mirage out, I implore you to played Wiredcrackpot's retranslation patch. The game takes a bit to learn but you will not regret it.

If I could give a game zero stars on this website this would be it. It's hard for me to say that Alex Kidd is "a product of it's time" when it dropped in the mid 80s and there was already more than plenty of decent stuff by then.

Levels are a disorganized mess, Alex controls like he's wearing butter shoes to the point where its actually really fucking hard to have any degree of precision with him, one hit kills with nothing at all to remedy it, ontop of RNG being in blocks and the Janken matches you're faced with throughout the game.

How this game was a success and spawned a franchise is beyond me. It definitely has it's place in SEGA's history but it's no shock to me as to why they dropped Alex after Sonic came into the picture.

Whenever I think of SEGA games, there's a bit of a loop to most of them that makes you want to replay it. Either just getting better for higher ranks, or having a ton of fun. Alex Kidd severely lacks that appeal for me alongside the issues it has as a game that has aged poorly.

Genuinely, not worth your time.

Penny's Big Breakaway is a grand ol' time. I really enjoyed how Penny controlled (there's definitely a learning curve to using her and Yo-Yo) and I love how well your speedy moveset weaves into the level design. Everything feels like a playground. The music and visuals are A1, I'd be preaching to choir telling people how good the game looks and sounds.

That said, there's two big things that knock this game down some pegs for me: the bosses and execution of the denizen dilemmas. The bosses aren't terrible, they're fine, but I wish they were more engaging to go up against, you blink and you're done with them.

The Denizen Dilemmas were either fun of frustrating. When they're fun, I feel like they're best executed in a way that naturally flows throughout the level; when they're not fun, I feel like they either skimp out on giving you enough time to complete something or they're so far out of your way that it halts your skilled & speedy platforming to a crawl. It breaks the pacing.

The game does lack polish and while the occasional out of bounds clip was funny as hell to experience and didn't necessarily bother me, I do think the game would've benefited from more polish and time in the oven. I really don't understand why it shadowdropped.

Overall, Penny's Big Breakaway is still a really fun, cute, and colorful game. I recommend it if you're a fan of platformers or games with satisfying controls to master.