I have a fondness for both hack and slash games and classic literature. It’s rare to get to combine them this way!

While the game may be on the short and easy side, it’s atmospheric and compelling just as a visual journey.

When I was a kid, holidays at my aunt and uncle’s house meant playing the old SNES in their game room. Donkey Kong Country was one of the inescapable games there, but I’m not just blinded by nostalgia: this game is nearly perfect. An absolutely ideal platformer with unbelievably vivid graphics and sound, it’s the nineties vaporwave Lisa Frank aesthetic come to life.

When people talk about old-school video games being difficult, this is one of them. Level one is "last level of Contra" hard, with an extremely punishing length and lack of powerups. But... my GOD the aesthetics are on point for that early nineties BTAS look. I truly felt like I was in the animated Gotham... getting killed.

So simple to pick up, so easy to understand, so hard to actually master. The aesthetic mix of cuteness and extreme difficulty (especially on a real handheld) makes the game pop: Hello Kitty goes to purgatory.

This is a game that requires a steady hand and extreme patience. I have neither.

It’s a quarter water with little finesse, cheap as hell and with arbitrary hit boxes… but that early Simpsons charm has no substitute. So much nostalgia for watching people play this in bowling alleys and roller rinks as a kid in the nineties. I’d forgive if anything.

I was a Genesis kid in the nineties. The games hold up like nobody's business.

The original run of Sonic games is an essential pillar of the platform genre. The Mega Collection Plus brings them all together with a few extra bells and whistles- what more is there to say?

Between first party and third party games, the Genesis had a shockingly solid line-up, meaning that classic collections like this are all killer, no filler.

A pivot point for the franchise; instead of going back to basics, they pivoted harder towards the narrative and GTA elements. It doesn't work completely, but it's not a failure either. But we're beyond the point of classics now.

The gameplay is starting to get a little stale; the exploration and RPG elements haven't gelled completely. But the soundtrack still slaps!

The formula is starting to get a little hairy here, with the skateboarding action game meets GTA fusion no longer as fresh as it once was. But it's still a Tony Hawk mainline game, which stands for something.

If not my favorite game ever, it's very near the top of the list. BioShock 1 may be old, and fairly short, but in terms of combining action and horror, shooter and RPG, narrative and just adrenaline, few games have matched it. This game is absolutely one of the top candidates for "games as literature."

I feel like an ass writing this review. Skyrim is a masterpiece, one of the greatest, most expansive and immersive games ever made. I just... don't like it much. It's not for me. The problem is on my end, not the game's end.

A masterpiece of the hack-n-slash genre, which holds up surprisingly well a few decades later.

This is the game Guitar Hero seemed to point to, that seems so obvious once it exists. The interface isn't entirely successful, because the guitar-to-MIDI translation isn't completely foolproof. Additionally, the homebrew and custom song creation scene online made the game nearly infinite in its possibilities. I didn't stick with it long, but I'm glad to know I always could in the future.