Yet another stop on my never-ending journey to complete every animal themed platformer in existence.

Ardy Lightfoot is perhaps even less remembered than Bubsy or Aero the Acrobat, and I'm sure that "Titus" logo had something to do with it. Even before they dumped Super Man 64 on us, they weren't exactly running toe to toe with third party publishers like Capcom nor Konami. It stars what I'm assuming be some sort of cat or fox accompanied by Pepe-At-Home (seriously...I bet these guys were fans of Monster World IV) in a quest to retreive the seven Chaos Emeralds-At-Home.

One thing Ardy does exceptionally well compared to other B-tier mascot games is (surprisingly) storytelling. Everything is told through pantomime cutscenes like Sonic 3 and Knuckles, granted these are a bit more extensive. To cap it all off, there's a beautiful (non-interactive) world map showing the characters' progression. The in-game art is also pretty solid, although not mindblowing for 1994.

Unfortunately, the game stumbles where it matters most- gameplay. It does, however, start out strong. You'll be using Ardy's signature tail bounce move to scale vertical sections and tossing your buddy (who also serves as a hit point similar to those weird fuzzy things in Psycho Fox) about to solve puzzles and kill enemies. By the time you reach the pyramid scene, however, the game starts introducing massive difficulty spikes and doesn't organically explain certain mechanics.

One such stage is Beecroft's Stronghold, which introduces security cameras that deploy traps if Ardy is caught. At first, I thought this was a stealth section and that said traps/cameras could be avoided by hiding underneath certain platforms until the camera faces away. Nope- you basically have to run for it every time as the traps will always spring up. There's another section like this in Ancient Pyramid, where you would think there's a way to avoid a beam of light that triggers an avalanche of randomly generated spikes. Nope- you just have to deal with it and hope you don't take a hit.

Underground Passage redeems things a bit and sees you powering-up your buddy so that he can chomp through otherwise indestructible blocks. You'll also be looking for switches to pull in order raise the water level and make your way out of the scene. It made me wonder why more levels couldn't have this sort of pacing and sense of exploration, honestly.

The last few stages focus on scaling a tower and are ungodly annoying due to the iffy collision detection. Using a bunch of spears to make your way up would've been an alright idea if Ardy's lust for clipping through them wasn't so high.

Then there's a long autoscroller where you're assaulted by a bunch of electric spears. While you could try to memorize where they come from and what you need to jump, duck or tail-bounce over...there's one thing I haven't mentioned yet. By holding up, Ardy can pull out a mirror which (for whatever reason) shields him from attacks for a decent period of time. The catch is that it's stationary, has a brief window before it triggers and he'll eventually put it away regardless of if you let go of up or not. Considering this section is long as hell, you only get one hitpoint via Pec (the aforementioned buddy) and no checkpoints here- I opted to cheese it by timing my mirror shields properly.

While the game is tough (bordering on unforgiving in the late game), it does have enough concessions. You have unlimited continues, many of the scenes are fairly short, and there's often a ton of stars (this game's coins) or a 1-up around the difficult sections. In addition, if you lose Pec, it's often not long before you find him waiting in a chest nearby. It doesn't fix that some levels are simply miserable to get through, but at least you'll never lose much progress at any point.

Overall, Ardy is worth a once-over if you're willing to adjust to its crap factor and have already played the better platformers on the SNES. Slightly better than Bubsy, but a far cry from the likes of Sparkster.

A very run-of-the-mill western developed platformer- slightly below average but has its charm.

Chuck Rock's main gimmick is, as you might expect, throwing around stones. To be fair, the game does have some decent concepts centered around this. You can actually use rocks to block incoming attacks from above (especially useful in the second world) and will also need to stack them in order to reach otherwise inaccessible areas.

Unfortunately, Chuck Rock drops the ball in almost every other department. Chuck himself is a rather ugly sprite to look at. I get it, he's a neanderthal, but he could've at least been a bit more stylized like Bonk or Joe and Mac. Fortunately, the enemies and backgrounds fare a bit better but are still not impressive by any stretch.

Then there's the "combat". Although running around and jumping is totally fine, the two attacks you can pull off are incredibly short ranged and don't have the best hit detection. There's this weird belly thrust thing that works about half the time, and then there's a jump kick which is somewhat more reliable but will require you to jump around like an idiot at times. This game really would have benefited from some sort of projectile weapon (even with limited ammo) or power-ups.

Bosses? What bosses? Only two of them require any sort of strategy at all and the rest can be downed by spamming attack no problem.

Level design is about as bare bones as it gets, but I will give the Sega Genesis version credit over the SNES version for actually rewarding exploration. There's plenty of random items and junk food to pick up along the way, with larger (and often out of the way) collectibles netting far more points. After every 100,000 pts you'll gain a 1-up, which doesn't happen on the SNES.

Sadly, though, even the way the levels are built can sometimes be problematic. I encountered two situations in which I got soft locked due to throwing a rock where I shouldn't have. In the first instance, it was fine as I could simply wait for an enemy to drop down and kill me. The second, however, required a console reset.

As poor as this game is, I can't bring myself to hate it due to adoring the whole 90's prehistoric trope. The first few stages were somewhat enjoyable, the cavern music is actually a serious bop and the whole game is mercifully short (30-40 minutes). Do yourself a favor, though, and just play any of the Joe and Mac games or Congo's Caper if you need your fix of stone age sidescrolling.

Not as good as Operation C, but still an impressive port. A lot of bosses had to be cut as well as the bike stage (which I'm actually okay with- there was just way too much RNG involved on anything past normal), leaving us with just five total stages this time. The awkward overhead stages are also back, but they're not nearly as awkward this time around since there's no scaling nor rotation since the gameboy lacked shoulder buttons.

It's also worth noting that, at least in my playthrough on normal, fire seems to be the go-to weapon here when it comes to DPS. Pretty interesting considering the best weapon in the SNES game was hot-swapping between two crushers.

This version does do one thing better than Contra 3 on the SNES in my opinion- it gives you an actual ending for playing on normal. One of my biggest gripes with the SNES version is that it forces you to play on hard in order to get anything other than a wall of text. I always thought this was incredibly stupid and pretentious (and I await your hate replies with open arms for saying it, lol).

Obnoxious price aside, I found myself enjoying this a lot more than Wayforward's other Contra game (Contra 4). The biggest additions to the formula here are a perk system and the ability to "overcharge" your weapons. Basically, you can sacrifice them for a host of unique temporary power-ups such as slowing down time (laser) or sending a heap of bullets bouncing across the screen (spread). In addition to this, you can actually upgrade said weapons by picking up two of the same without getting hit. I had a lot of fun messing around with these mechanics in the handful of arcade mode runs I've done so far.

Overall I'd say this would be a great starting point for newbies thanks to how flexible it is in terms of difficulty, and not a bad entry for hardcore players since you can make the game as hard as you'd like (one-hit kill mode, no perks). As it stands, though, forty is probably going to be too much for most people and I get it. If it weren't for the fact that there aren't too many new games coming out that I want, I probably wouldn't have snatched this up day one.

This game refers to 1ups as "free dudes" in the demo that plays if you leave it hanging for a while. That's about the most 90's thing I've ever seen.

In all seriousness, this is a pretty decent platformer considering it's western made (something I've noticed a lot of people in these circles tend to loathe when it comes to older games for some reason). You're a scientist who has found himself shrunk down due to a freak lab accident and now has to retrieve machine parts stolen by mutated bugs.

Levels are mostly linear until the end and take you anywhere from a kitchen to the backyard. You'll find yourself picking up everyday items such as paperclips and thumb tacks to take out enemies, collect bolts (aka coins) and even jetfuel so that you can fly around on a gnarly jetpack.

Control wise, the game handles fine enough considering that it's shooting for that pre-rendered/claymation look that became popular in the mid 90's. I didn't care for the fact that the jump height can't be varied- if you ever played Kid Niki on the NES it's basically the same kind of jump. You'll get used to it after a stage or two, but it is annoying.

Although the level design itself is nothing special, there are a handful of interesting ideas here and there that make the game just worth that single playthrough. One stage, for instance, has you knocking a sponge into the sink so that you can run across it to generate bubbles. Then, you'll float to the top of the stage where the part is hidden. You're even able to explore the sink's pipelines for extra goodies, but it's risky due to the amount of traps and limited air supply.

This is a short game and a relatively easy playthrough outside of the backyard and lab stages (which are perhaps a bit too mazey for their own good). If you're not vehemently against euro-style games and are in the mood for something that screams "1993", you could definitely do far worse.

I'm one of those people who really likes Sonic 1 8-bit, so this was a treat even if I'm not a big fan of the Commodore 64 outside of Giana Sisters. This manages to not only be an impressive port, but in some ways, it is even better than its source material.

>In Jungle Zone Act 2, dropping down will no longer kill you
>There is basically no slowdown in Labyrinth Zone, which is a big deal as it caused copious amounts of slow down in both the Master System and Game Gear version.

The only problem for some such as myself would be getting the thing to run. I did not have a C64 growing up so figuring out the emulator was a bit of a PITA, but it was well worth it!

I think calling this "the worst kind of rom hack" is a bit of exaggeration. Scorched Quest has some nice ideas that go beyond "oh shit all these classic zones are on fire now". I found the supersized badnik bosses to be cute even if they do suffer from Superstars syndrome (too many hits+too much waiting around) and I liked that the special stages expanded upon the formula from Sonic 1 8-Bit.

I think the biggest problem with this hack other than the crappy music at times (especially Super Sonic's theme...blegh) is that the level design isn't all that interesting compared to the best Sonic hacks or fangames such as Sonic Time Twisted. Although you can beat the game with all of the emeralds, it's unfinished and it really shows in some spots.

All in all not a bad playthrough and its design never reaches the lows of something like Sonic Megamix, but not one I can see myself coming back to anytime soon.

(At the time of writing this, I beat the main game and am combing through for collectibles)

While it has a lot of neat ideas and an amazing OST from Tee Lopes, the core gameplay itself is brought down by bland and predictable level design. Your character ends up acquiring a bunch of different suits with unique abilities (such as zipping around in a flash of lightning or literally becoming the drill wisp from Sonic Colors), but you'll often find yourself doing the same kinds of platforming challenges over and over. I can't tell you how many times I bounced off of enemies over spikes or used the drill while running away from spiked walls over the course of the 15 main missions.

One other thing worth mentioning is that the second-to-last upgrade you get, which is a suit that enables flight, kind of breaks the game at certain points. There are a decent number of sections following this upgrade where you're intended to use the Ice Kunai (basically a ninja) to climb across these narrow ledges while avoiding obstacles, but you can just as easily swap to the flight suit and trivialize the whole thing.

There is also a ranking system per stage, but it seems to be similar to that of Sonic Generations' ranking system. (Basically you're good to go as long as you are somewhat thorough and do not die)

Overall this is not a bad game by any means, but I do think reviewers are hyping it up a little bit too much. It's a great "wait for a sale" kind of game (or, alternatively, something to get if you had an abundance of gold coins on switch and can knock the price down that way) but not necessarily a must-play at $20.

An adorable mini-Metroidvania starring some kind of wizard/witch girl as she goes through six fairly large stages. The character is a blast to control for the most part (the grappling hook felt really finnicky at times) and even if the levels are large and open-ended, I never really got lost or annoyed in the same way I have in other backtracking-heavy platformers. As with most games of this type, combat is very simple and while the bosses may be larger than life...they don't put up much of a fight.

I do think the level design drops off a bit in the last stage especially, hence why I didn't give this four or more stars. It relies just a bit too much on the whole "press this switch and rush back to the other end of the room before the door shuts" gimmick for my taste. I also found one point where I intentionally had to die because I did not have enough magic stars (the game's equivalent of magic points that allow you to use the abilities you find scattered throughout the stages) to get up to a ledge.

Still, if you can forgive that (and a few annoying sound effects), you're in for a good time that feels surprisingly modern.

Yes, it's a lot slower paced than Sonic, but it was never meant to be a high-speed platformer. This is much more of an exploration based game, and to this day, it amazes me just how much Sega was able to get out of the simple mechanic of grabbing. You'll be launching yourself off star poles, swinging around to climb and reach greater heights and head-butting the fuck out of anything that stands in your way.

I do think that the treasure-collecting side of the game could've been done better though. Each regular stage has a hidden star pole to find that will launch you into a special stage. Here, you'll be asked to reach the end of the area and pick up a bonus treasure within a set amount of time. Taking damage won't hurt you, but it will decrease the timer. Getting all of the treasures will reward you with special passwords at the end of the game that trigger anything from a sound test to a boss rush. For its time, this was a brilliant idea since the internet wasn't super relevant but has (of course) kind of lost its luster in a contemporary world. I can't fault the game for this, but what does bother me is that you only get one shot to do these per playthrough. Fail once and that's it- you need to start the whole game over to have another shot. Hopefully a remake will let you spend a life to retry (kind of like how Sonic Triple Trouble 16 bit did for that respective title).

Still, that's a very small issue when the rest of the game is brilliantly paced and accounts for the character's primary ability the way it does. Dare I say it's still the best thing Sonic Team came up with after Sonic 3 and Knuckles. It's just really damning that the game had to come out as the Genesis was on its way out.

Another weird ass game I played a lot in high school that doesn't have a review...I'll bite seeing as I replayed it in the past year.

Super Widget is based off a show I've only seen snippets of. The jist of it (and the game itself) is that you're an alien that finds himself crash landing on Earth and subsequently assigned to help clean it up. Because, you know, protecting the environment was a big deal in the 90's.

Widget's primary gimmick is that he's able to shape-shift into various creatures, which works well enough in the context of a basic A to B sidescroller. The power-up system is lifted straight out of a Mario game, with the various forms you take providing you an extra hit point before reverting back to plain ol' Widget and (of course) dying if you take a hit in that form. You'll be able to turn into a sumo wrestler, an insect, a hermit crab and eventually a whole ass saucer as the game progresses. Again, I'm not too familiar with the show, but it was a lot of fun seeing what the hero would turn into next as I'd honestly forgotten about most of the game in the past decade.

As this was a game meant for kids (and one of those rare instances where the devs actually understood that they were making a game for kids), it's not a very difficult game to get through for the most part. It's a tad bit longer than I would've liked and some bosses can be extremely difficult if you're stuck as regular Widget, but it also feeds you lives and I don't recall ever running out of continues.

Although the level design was nothing spectacular, the game did at least try to innovate in some ways. There's a ranking system tailored to speed and combat, but unfortunately, going for high ranks in the stages didn't seem to amount to much. As far as I know, you don't get a better ending or any changed dialogue for improving your times or score.

I'd say Super Widget is worth playing through in 2024, but only if you've already exhausted the rest of the platforming library on SNES since there are so many great must-plays in this department.

I admittedly have a soft spot for this game as I played it a lot on one of the PS2 Sega Genesis collections as a child. I still enjoy popping it in and seeing it to completion in about an hour or so every so often, but I'm willing to admit its flaws are hard to ignore. Alex is so slippery compared to how he handles in Miracle and Shinobi World, and it will throw you off no matter what. I also wish there would've been more proper bosses this time instead of rock-paper-scissors.

That being said, Enchanted Castle did try and up the ante a bit. For one thing, you're now able to stockpile items as well as equip/unequip them from the pause menu. It sucked to be stuck with just your bare fists after losing the bracelet in miracle world, especially if you were new to the game, but that's not as much of a problem here. There are also more secrets to find, and fortunately none of them are mandatory for progression this time (like the scroll in miracle world). It's just a shame the physics somehow got worse.

This is a fairly good conversion of the Amiga game with a fantastic OST and a few added quirks. You're now able to do short hops off ladders, and the ladders themselves are even able to collect flowers for you if they make contact. There's also the option to have an actual jump, but it's not really needed in my opinion. There's also a few additional levels that attempt to turn the game into a more traditional 2D platformer for their duration, but to be honest, they were the weakest part of the experience and (again) not really necessary. You also get the option to continue this time, and you're going to need it as the bee enemies are twice as fast and now shoot a barrage of missiles from their stingers. The last proper stage is pretty much a middle finger to the player as there are around eight of the bastards that proceeded to consume all the lives I'd been stockpiling like tic tacs. Still, had a great time although Amiga is still the way to go for this game to me.