Yeah, World Tour is kinda mid, but you can also hit cops in the spine with a spinning bird kick. What am I gonna do, give this a three? C'mon.

I am so exceptionally unskilled at fighting games that I've never in my life been able to clear a single CPU match in Street Fighter 2 on normal difficulty. I am not made for these kinds of games, but much like shoot-em-ups, I keep trying. I don't talk to very many people and, though I'd like to, I play games with fewer still. The extremely small group I've discussed playing Street Fighter 6 with have all said similar things about their own skill level, but thanks to "modern controls," we all have a Street Fighter we can finally enjoy. Not that a simplified control scheme has benefitted me so tremendously that I don't start hyperventilating whenever I see someone play as Zangief (people saying he needs to be buffed scare me because they understand this game in ways I never can), but it is nice to have a Street Fighter I can comfortably play with others at my own skill level and feel somewhat competent about it. And hey, actually being able to finish literally anyone's story mode is invaluable to me.

I still hesitate to call this "the best one" since a lot of 3's feel and aesthetics nudge it out for me, even if I am categorically worse at that game. A lot of the music is kinda flat for me, and I'm not really digging the character creator, at least not as a tool for making convincing human beings. If you desire a fighter that resembles a podracer pilot then hell yeah, you've never been more equipped to see through your sick fantasies and I am genuinely happy for you. I want to play as a cute kickboxing girl who wears cute clothes, and it took me three hours before I found a good looking top and I had to travel to freaking Mexico and get beat up by a literal child to get it. Outfits also fit horribly on everyone. Everything is too baggy, and I'm sure it's to account for the uh, wide variety of body shapes people will be rolling with. Necessary compromises, but I can't help but feel like some of the custom character features are a bit lacking.

None of this is enough to totally pull me out of World Tour, of course. Interacting with the Street Fighters™ is a lot of fun, and no doubt you've already seen dozens of silly text message exchanges floating around out there already, assuming you aren't already teaching Ryu how to use a phone or striking out with Juri at this very moment. The matchmaking lobby - which also uses your custom character - has some real PlayStation Home vibes and I'm way into that, too. Remember to greet your friends with a tomahawk buster directly to their face, as is customary in Metro City.

Speaking of, I appreciate how significant Metro City and Final Fight's lore is to the story. You can also play Final Fight in the game, but why the hell would I do that? Final Fight sucks! I like everything that's in Final Fight, but I hate playing it, so hey, I'm getting the exact amount of Final Fight that I want in my diet. Mike Haggar is rich in protein.

God, why did I write that. Take that out. Remove it from the review.

I don't have any complex thoughts on arcade mode, in the usual sense of me finding it very difficult to articulate my opinions on what does and doesn't work about fighting games. There's no shortage of writers on this site who have both the eloquence and knowledge to run circles around anything I could possibly type up here, but suffice it to say I find it very good and I've had a blast testing out each character and seeing who gels with me. I was adamantly in the anti-Juri camp for years. Hated her design, I think feet are disgusting. Put some shoes on that Juri. But playing as her in arcade mode and a few online matches and being called a dumb bitch loser by her in World Tour has turned me around. I am now pro-Juri and I pray I do not regret this change of position. Cammy is my favorite character series-wide and I've found her to be just as enjoyable to play as she always has been, and Kimberly has been a lot of fun too.

I still don't think I've narrowed down my "main" just yet, and even though I feel confident in my opinion of Street Fighter 6 at this point in time, I'm going to be playing a lot more of it. One of those rare games where I can see myself coming back to it throughout the year and for which there won't be a true end point, so much as I eventually taper off and find that I'm not picking it up anymore. Nevertheless, leaving a review now as I have put a significant amount of time into this and feel unwavering in my assessment that they made a damn good Street Fighter.

A good, charming little JRPG starring some weird little fella named Mario. I think it's good, but I also don't share nearly the same reverence for it as others do, mostly because the novelty of a Mario JRPG had largely worn off by the time I was even aware of it. Somehow I didn't even know about this game until a (now ex) girlfriend told me about playing it when she was a kid, and we were dating in our early 20s. A decade-and-a-half gap between release and me forming some sort of awareness of it is almost as crazy as buying her a copy for eight dollars for her birthday. A loose cart is worth nearly ten times as much now.

I think this game will always be the one I think of when I contemplate how awful the used game market is. Pretty much that and me trading in Super Mario Sunshine for like, a dollar.

I think by now this game is so extremely well known that I don't need to walk anyone through how it operates mechanically. My main point of reference for other Mario RPGs is Paper Mario, which I think is quite good, and there's enough in common with button timing in battles and the overall sense of humor that I slipped right in with this one. Comfortable territory for sure. However, a lack of any childhood nostalgia and a reverence for a game that does more with Mario RPGs concepts means this game didn't quite land for me the way I'm sure it did for others.

Geno is cool, though. They should put him into some sort of fighting game. Geno fans need to eat.

There are 904 reviews on this site for Super Mario World, with countless more video essays and articles and retrospectives gunking up the net. Everyone has played it, everyone has an opinion on it, nobody has anything new to say about it. I don't have a friend group large enough to pretend like anyone is going to feign interest in my white bread opinion, but since I committed myself to writing something about every game on my bucket list:

Super Mario World stands side-by-side with Sonic 3 & Knuckles as being the platformers of the 16-bit era. It is timeless, nearly flawless, and one of the easiest games to pick up and play. It pretty much set the standard for 2D platformers and its impact is every bit as present and powerful today as it was in the 1990s.

There is no greater joy than jumping off a yoshi halfway over a pit of lava