The "Tex Avery meets Universal Monsters" art direction is just unparalleled, a stroke of genius. Good thing it's my favorite 2D fighter, too. So eccentric, dynamic, acrobatic, and yet insanely easy to get people into.

I once saw a streamer promote his playthrough of this game by promising viewers that he openly cries during it, which to me is a good summation of how the game approaches mental health.

A neat action-platformer that flirts with RPG elements. The obtainable auto-helper characters are a fun but kind of superfluous addition. The whole game is pretty visually repetitive, even with level skips.

Borderline psychedelic color palette, really nice to just look at. Kind of a walk-'n-gun with a neat, tactical pace. Some pseudo-3D sections that aren't so fun. Overall feels a little short and lacking a strong conclusion.

Jaleco's attempt at getting a piece of the Final Fight pie is predictably a disaster. Well not a disaster, just a total also-ran. The attempted noir setting is almost charming. Like, why is there a killer clown boss.

I like how it has a parry system (!?) and a non-fantastical medieval setting, but I just can't get into it. Parrying doesn't actually feel satisfying. The character level-up system is at least visually stimulating. Poor Percival!

The second Three Kingdoms-based beat-'em-up from Capcom. Combat and roster are pretty neat but the campaign is long and visually repetitive for no reason. At least the speed-eating mini-game is fun, I guess.

I have my usual "too long and bloated" complaints for its campaign, but I have to say it totally nailed the music and cozy small-town ambiance. I love how foggy the original is; that got removed in Golden for some reason.

It would be a neat little co-op experience were it not for all the insufferable "art-game" trappings. The art style is curiously very corporate for a game that's supposed to be so "out-there." Justly-forgotten slop.

These games had a ton of issues but I was touched by how they gave the player a sense of closure with the whole Mt. Silver climb. Pokémon never did that again because it's a self-consciously iterative series now.

The overhauled look and 150 new Pokémon were a nice fresh start after a multi-year hiatus, to say nothing of all the gameplay changes. It never recaptured the spark of the original Pokémon run, though.

Made a ton of long-overdue gameplay changes and handed out evolutions to those who needed it, felt like a very "corrective" generation. The campaign is just really tedious, way too many caves/mountains.

It's just way too long. Nobody has time for 90 hours of magical teenagers saving Japan (except for teenagers). The story's dumb, obviously. The musical cues and gameplay transitions and menus are very nice.

I like the sumptuous, rococo approach to character design here. The cheeky tone is all over the place, which I guess is the hallmark of a "cult" title. I vastly prefer this one to the sequels, even just in gameplay terms.

Cool-looking super-scaling combat racer that's fun to play for twenty minutes. At the end of each stage is a boss and the stage just loops over itself until you defeat them, which is kind of lame. Not a lot to it.