El Viento is a game that had always seemed kinda interesting to me, but heard mixed impressions of overall, which scared me off from trying it for the longest time. Recently, I decided I should at last give it a shot, just to see for myself how it is... and wow, I really adore this game.

A lot of Wolf Team's games are kinda rough in terms of game design, but I genuinely think El Viento rules. It's legit a great action-platformer, that I had a ton of fun with. Over-the-top action, nice balance between a regular ranged attack and an auto-recharging magic spell attack (which lets you select different spells, depending on how long you charge the button for), sometimes quite quirky level/enemy designs, an excellent soundtrack, and a really neat protagonist in Annet, make for a solid action-platformer. Easily one of my favorite Genesis games yet.

My second experience with this Annet + Earnest trilogy.

I love El Viento, because I think it's genuinely an amazing, wonderful action-platformer that is a ton of fun. I love Earnest Evans, because it's hilarious and weird and awkward and clunky at every step of the way. The ragdoll sprites, the "QWOP before QWOP" vibe, and the way the silly gameplay contrasts with the badass music and tone, really makes for an amusingly surreal experience. I would not seriously recommend that anyone try to play through this... but at the very least, it's fun to mess around with. (and also doable to beat if you know what you're doing)

Hopefully someday an English patch can be released for this.

(edit - did a 1CC on 2023-08-24)

(beat main game on August 5th; finish post-game/100% achievements on August 20th)

I'm really satisfied with Trails into Reverie! I was feeling kind of ambivalent about the Trails series after Cold Steel III and IV had bummed me out, but Trails into Reverie helped address some issues I'd been having with the series as of late, and I came away from it looking forward to what the future of the series holds once more.

At this point, I'm thinking Reverie is pretty high up there, as far as my favorite Trails games go. Currently deliberating on whether it would enter my top 3 or not - it has steep competition, but nonetheless, I really like this game! It's quite good. (also it was my first time beating a Trails game on Nightmare, so that was neat)

Really disappointing conclusion to the El Viento trilogy in a lot of ways. I do find the story interesting, and getting some kind of closure in that regard is nice - plus the soundtrack is pretty neat. The actual game itself clearly is a bad experience though. It straight-up feels like an unfinished beta that was rushed to market due to lack of time or budget. Combat is tedious and unexciting, and it astounds me how bad enemies are at walking back onscreen if they've been knocked offscreen. I sometimes would wait for literally multiple minutes at a time before an enemy finally found its way back onscreen to keep fighting me, lol. Definitely the worst beat-em-up I've played thus far.

Interesting interpretation of the arcade original – it follows a flip-screen structure, which was likely chosen due to scrolling being somewhat difficult to implement well on the hardware. Contra as a flip-screen game, makes for... a rather tedious experience, I would say? You generally need to take your time on each screen in order to wipe out every enemy turret, so that you can clear a safe path through. This is encouraged, due to how turrets and other enemies' fire tracks your movement in a particularly aggressive way.

Along with this approach to level & enemy design, Contra for the MSX2 has a greatly expanded scope over the original, featuring new stages, and more of them. The stage count is somewhat inflated, as some boss encounters are considered a separate “stage” here, but counting them all up, you have a total of 19 stages here. The quality dips a bit, particularly in the second half, which is unfortunate. The increased length of the game also risks wearing on the player overtime – the NES game is great at around 20 minutes or so, but the MSX2 game can take roughly 40 minutes to beat – about twice the time. So, that makes it a bit less enticing to pick up and play.

Overall, it's not bad. Not great. It has some interesting ideas (such as the “rear gun”, which fires both forward and backward, in any direction you're aiming in – that's something the series would never revisit. Spread gun doesn't actually seem to exist here... so the best gun by far is the machine gun), but this game makes for a somewhat middling experience. It's whatever.

After several attempts to play through Quake over the years - each of which were abandoned at some point during the first two episodes... I've finally finished Quake, for the first time.

All in all - it's cool. I don't like it nearly as much as Doom, but then again, not much can really compare to Doom as far as FPSes go. Part of it is just due to personal preference (I prefer the more cheesy metal vibe of Doom over the gritty industrial vibe of Quake), but I also happen to find certain Quake enemies (the Shamblers, most notoriously) kind of annoying to fight, in a way that isn't very fun to deal with. It makes some encounters feel less enjoyable than they could have been. But overall, it's not a bad game at all. I'm glad I was able to finish it at long last.

Played in co-op on original hardware. Being the first Luigi's Mansion game I actually beat, it was an interesting experience. As far as rail shooters go, it's pretty neat. The vacuum controller in terms of shape (plus the way the controller shakes as you vacuum in coins or whatnot) helped bring about a sense of physical immersion - though the controller also felt a bit small, like it was intended for a kid to hold. The way you alternate between using the light and sucking enemies into your vacuum was pretty neat, and I liked being able to vacuum the environment for coins in between enemy encounters.

All in all - not a revolutionary experience by any means, but I'm not necessarily looking for one, either. It's a fun, solid 3-level game to play around with at the arcade.

did a 1CC clear after first beating the game.

Lester the Unlikely is a very peculiar game. It feels kinda like a midway point between cinematic platformers like Another World, and more traditional platformers... at times kinda feeling like the worst of both worlds, lol. The story is nothing special, it has some questionable narrative/presentation choices, and the gameplay is incredibly trial-and-error focused (it took me 11 Game Overs before I finally beat the game. No save states here). But, all things considered, it's not thaaaaaat bad a game. I was able to get some degree of enjoyment out of it.

The best thing I can say about Lester the Unlikely, is that it is a remarkable example of featuring a protagonist, who grows and develops as a character, over the course of the game. I don't just mean in terms of narrative, but even as far as gameplay is concerned, Lester changes as a character. He starts the game off being afraid of everything, but gradually becomes more confident, and that shows through in both the story, and the game design. Even his sprite changes, reflecting his better posture in the late-game. This is something that many games of today don't even do, let alone games from 1994.

To be clear, Lester the Unlikely is not a great, or even good game, by any means. But it's an interesting curiosity, and I do think it has something going for it. If you wanna check it out - go ahead, lol.

It's a pretty decent game. Overall I do think No One Lives Forever 2 is a better experience than the first - I appreciate the ability to upgrade your skills over the course of the game, and it rewards you for taking the time to explore environments to find notes and files and side-objectives to complete, so it's a pretty solid gameplay loop in that regard. Also, being able to lean is an incredibly welcome addition - not sure why leaning wasn't a thing in the first game.

That said, this game still has some rough spots - the Ohio and India stages in particular are really a pain to deal with, and kinda lower this game in my eyes. If you can get past those parts however, then there is fun to be had, here. The last few stages in particular I think are strong, and the game finishes out in a good way. I'm glad I finally got to knock this game off of my "to-do" list, after years of it sitting there unplayed.

Oh yeah - be warned that this game kinda behaves in weird ways on modern computers. One particular chase sequence in India, would break for me, unless I did the unusual workaround of recording my gameplay via OBS as I played. lol

It's a pretty neat take on third-person arcade-inspired shooting, that utilizes the 3DS hardware well. I did play this with my New 3DS XL mounted on a repurposed Nintendo Switch stand, which I think helped me handle the game's controls. You move with the analog slider, and hold the left shoulder button to strafe, while everything else is handled with the touch screen. Definitely a curious take on shooter controls, but I dig it.

It's a very short game, but also incredibly hectic. The length and pacing is maybe a bit weird - on one hand it's short as far as story-focused experiences go (and there is a lot of dialogue here), but at the same time, as far as arcade-esque games go, this is kind of on the longer side, as it took me about an hour and a half to beat.

Unfortunately this ultimately amounts to a prologue to a visual novel sequel, which as of this writing is only available in Japanese. Maybe someday I'll get to see this story to its conclusion. Either way, this is worth a go.