Picross games and fakeout endings, name a more iconic duo

I don't get why this wasn't released! It's an accessible, friendly first Picross game which could have turned plenty of young Pokemaniacs into Picross addicts. The art is the clear highlight, with each image being quite lovely, especially for the hardware, and the Pokemon theming gives the game plenty of charm. There are 151 puzzles that you'll complete in the main game, one for each Pokémon (at the time). If you complete a puzzle, that Pokémon is added to your Pokédex, and the puzzle is marked with a Poké Ball. However, if you beat the puzzle under the target time, it's marked with a Great Ball instead. Is there any real reason to go for Great Balls on all of them? Not as far as I can tell! I came in under the target time on every single puzzle, and I'm unsure if anything in the game changed as a result. Probably not worth all the retries!

Throughout these 151 puzzles, I feel comfortable saying this is an entry-level Picross game. Nothing is too difficult, largely due to the small resolution of the Game Boy. This means that you won't encounter any puzzles larger than 15x15, though the game does fake its way to 20x20 and 30x30 pictures by splitting those images into 4 quadrants, essentially just being a group of 10x10 or 15x15 puzzles that must be completed in a row. It keeps things quite simple, but they definitely did the best they could with the hardware limitations. Though there is one adjustment made by the dev team that might be controversial; instead of actually drawing the pixels in the images, you're sort of highlighting over the lines in broad strokes, allowing for more detailed stills. You can see in this image how there are black lines underneath the dark blue filled squares. This does end up causing a LOT more completely filled-in rows than your average Picross game, but again, I think it works well as an introductory title.

However, after the game rolls credits, a new mode is unlocked. In the Safari Park, you'll be completing images of multiple Pokémon in a variety of settings. These puzzles skew towards the larger side, have stricter Great Ball times, and most crucially, multi-screen puzzles which are split into 4 quadrants no longer tell you if one quadrant has been successfully completed. You must verify for yourself that no required square has been left unfilled, which ultimately soured me on my experience quite a bit. When you're trying to make that Great Ball time, nothing is more frustrating than thinking you're done, only to have to go check your work across 4 different 15x15 puzzles, searching for the single pixel you missed. Later Picross games tend to change the color of the numbered prompts associated with a row or column once you have filled the proper number of squares, a QOL improvement which I desperately missed here. The game does allow you to mark the numbers yourself, but that takes enough time to do that I don't think I'd ever make a Great Ball time in the Safari Park while doing so.

In short, Pokémon Picross for the Game Boy is Baby's First Picross, until the Safari Park happens. I think it's a great introduction to this style of puzzle, and a much more worthwhile entry than other titles on the Game Boy. But there is a serious handbrake turn towards frustrating difficulty in the post-game, and I haven't even taken into account any time penalties for marking the wrong squares. As an unearthed relic that never saw a formal release, I think it's absolutely worth checking out, just don't expect anything groundbreaking.

The only thing you race against in Gotham City Racer is the clock. This Twisted Metal wannabe is comprised of a series of Batmobile missions, bookended by clips of the 90s animated series. The story presentation is done quite well, but that's just because the show that it's derived from is fantastic. What you're really playing here is the time spent traveling between scenes. Sometimes you're pursuing another car, shooting assorted Bat-projectiles to wear them down, but quite often your objective is just "QUICK GET TO THE LOCATION WHERE THE STORY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN BEFORE SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS".

I was going to jokingly say that this is a game where you watch the action and play the loading screens, but there are actual loading screens in the middle of most of the playable segments. See, Gotham is split into a few chunks, and most missions will take you to more than one of these partitions. Each time you enter a new area, you're struck by a 15-30 second loading screen in the middle of your "race". It really kills any hopes the game had of creating tension or excitement when you have to take a mandatory time-out during your high-stakes car chase.

But even if all of that was fine, the game fails for two more fundamental reasons: First, the controls are real real bad. And second, the map is practically worthless. When you're playing a destination-based stage, you've got an arrow over your head pointing in the general direction that you need to go, and you've got a minimap in the corner. But without the ability to zoom the map out, you'll quickly find yourself unable to proceed towards your target location due to fences or bodies of water. Unless you memorize all the maps AND the destinations using guides online, you essentially just have to make guesses and drive blindly, hoping you'll stumble across an area where you can reach the goal without Michael Scott GPS-ing the Batmobile into a lake.

Tired: Uncharted telling me I'm a bad person for shooting mercenaries

Wired: My own crippling guilt after picking someone's pocket and realizing they only had two dollars

This was fun! Getting to be a rainbow-colored little scamp on a road trip to fake Vegas, robbing literally everyone in sight along the way. The game doesn't overtly dive into the morality of your choices, and I think that's the right call. There's just enough conveyed by some of the people you rob that you can feel bad all by yourself without the player character telling you to. This is not a guilt trip game, this is an "Aren't you so sneaky and clever" game, in the most rapscallion way possible. Like, when you inspect items, you just kick 'em. Angst!

~ ~ The lightest implications of potential spoilers below, but I do not state anything that actually happens ~ ~

I've seen a couple of reviews that seemed very upset about the story shift late in the game, but like... come on. There was a point less than 30 minutes in where my wife and I both said at the same time "Oh, X is gonna happen". With all the 90s vibes from the game, I really shoulda said "jinx". Do kids still do that? Do Zoomers jinx each other? I have no idea. Anyhow, I don't think the "reveal" (if you can even call it that) could have been implied more clearly. It's the natural, if predictable, way for this story to play out. Thankfully, random NPCs and supporting characters make the tropes more fun in practice.

The animations and art style are delightful, characters are wacky, length was perfect, story was serviceable, and the dialogue got a handful of legitimate laughs out of us. If you've got Game Pass, I'd say it's very much worth trying!

Turns out, this is secretly a Downhill Jam prequel.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that THPS on Game Boy would be a completely different experience, but I was still taken aback at just how different it is. The core gameplay of completing objectives across sprawling maps is nowhere to be found; instead you've got a Half-Pipe mode and races. The controls are extremely limited, so don't expect to be pulling off massive combos here. In the races (playable as player vs. a single cpu or in "Tournament Mode"), you'll tap up on the D-Pad to accelerate, trying to reach the end first while collecting Skate points and Tapes for bonuses. If you do a trick after going off a ramp, there's no animation. Instead, the game pauses and cuts to a little splash image of the trick you performed.

Radical.

Half-Pipe Mode looks a little better in terms of animations, but it's still awfully basic. Going back and forth while limited to one trick per jump won't scratch the THPS itch for anyone. The game as a whole feels awfully light on content for a Tony Hawk title, but it honestly makes sense as a basic Game Boy skating game.

This is the quintessential 90s licensed game.

✅ Side-scrolling beat-em-up
✅ Minimal frames of character animation
✅ Overly simplistic controls, with fewer moves than buttons
✅ Very short length inflated by repetition
✅ Different enemies are often just palette swaps
❌ Fun

Please be advised, this is not a port of the Arcade title. These are drastically different games, I've submitted a revision on IGDB to get "Arcade" removed from this page as a platform because these have nothing to do with each other besides the IP.

EDIT: Revision approved!

Look, it's cute that this game lets you get a job as a Bard in a medieval-themed map, but it pretty much plays itself. Every challenge or action is just spinning the wheel for a number between 1 and 10. Dance off? Spin. Bowling competition? Spin. Costume contest? UHHHH YOU BETTER BELIEVE YOU'RE GONNA SPIN. The themed boards and music are quite charming, but most of the maps are paid DLC, with only three included in the already-overpriced base game. The 90s Game of Life for PC has ridiculous animations and cute minigames, it's way better than this snoozefest.

Also, how do you explain $100k for "takeout"?!?

The first Donkey Kong Country-like that I've ever played! The replication of DKC's aesthetic is beautifully done, but the David Wise-esque OST is the clear highlight. One track in particular sounds like it completes a trilogy with Stickerbush Symphony and Aquatic Ambience. I was shocked and impressed!

The gameplay is ultimately what comes last here, as the game can be finished in under 30 minutes without difficulty (which includes a preview of Super Kiwi 64 as an epilogue), and consists of levels that only go up. There was real potential for a great game here if Siactro had fully embraced the DKC format, but the vertical-only level format is ultimately a bit boring. Still, the game is only 99 cents, and absolutely worth checking out. If you find yourself wanting a little more, there are time trials for each level which are legitimately challenging. Make sure you play with the volume up nice and high!