jesus christ activision sure knows how to make tense games for the 2600. On average, this game is like 6-7 seconds long, which sounds pathetic on paper but dear lord getting that time down is an absolute struggle.

So here's why this game is kinda nuts: there's a tachometer at the bottom of your screen. If it goes past 3/4ths of your screen at any time, you blow up and die instantaneously. Pushing the button on the controller is your gas and your gas moves the meter up. Pushing down the left direction on the joystick puts you in a clutch state where the tachometer is so sensitive to gas that pretty much holding both the button and left at the same time at any point is a death sentence. Releasing left after pressing it down brings you up a gear, where you go faster with a slower tachometer. Basically you need to do as close to frame-perfect button presses and joystick inputs/releases as you feasibly can, and if you do it right, you get a good time, and if you do it even slightly wrong you either die in a horrific car explosion or get a shit time that brings great dishonor to your drag racing career. The manual's challenge of getting under 6 seconds to join the World Class Dragster Club is no simple task either. Considering the frame-perfect theoretical perfect time is 5.57, there's a shockingly small margin of error to join that prestigious, 40-years-defunct club (and if you say you've gotten a 5.51 before, you are a liar!). It took me dozens upon dozens of attempts to be able to just barely squeeze out a 5.94 that I swear to god felt like luck as I did the same thing I usually did for a good run, I just must have happened to have pressed the buttons at a more optimal time. Though I guess since the game is only 6 seconds long on a good run those dozens of attempts was still only like 20-30 minutes of grind. I felt like I spent more time waiting for the starting countdown to finish (or prematurely exploding by failing to properly feather the gas during the countdown as a way to get a good start) than actually racing, which is kinda eh but it is what it is.

It's certainly a deep and thought-out game that has a high skill ceiling to work up towards for sure. With how much frame-perfection is emphasized here, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a game to sew the seeds of speedrunning or just general high-level gamer tech to the still-blossoming Atari gamer crowd. But it does mean that this game is definitely geared towards that certain type of player, so if you aren't into personal time attack grinds there's pretty much less game time for you in this game than the time it took you to read this whole ramble in the first place. Fascinating!

Sasuga Arzest. I definitely have to admit, this game reminded me a lot of their previous works, notably Balan Wonderworld and the Blinx series in just how stupefyingly confusing they are in design. Not due to the game having any obtuse mechanics or anything, but instead just from having design choices that leave me scratching my head wondering why the hell certain things even led up to how they are in the final game.

It really all just boils down to the level design, the pacing, and the boss fights. The levels have like 3 flavors; some feel like dimps-style 2D sonic levels with mostly an emphasis on pushing you forward through as many speed setpieces as possible, some feel like they are regular classic sonic levels yet designed with Sonic CD assets that are more served for exploration and backtracking (which this game doesn't particularly encourage, nor do they do it in a particularly smooth way like how Mania's CD levels handle things), and there are some levels where it genuinely felt like they had nothing so they just kinda whipped some stuff up and called it a day, truly nothingcore. I definitely felt like I was going through the motions playing through the levels, as they really just didn't feel like they had anything particularly distinct going on in them most of the time either in a level design or spectacle sense to make anything stand out. The levels lasting in the 8-10 minute range certainly doesn't help things either lmao.

The pacing is all sorts of messed up. Typically in 2D sonic games theres a nice rhythm to how acts work; there's usually like the first act to establish the level theme and any specific gimmicks, and then a second act that expands upon said theme and gimmicks. Throw in a boss at the end, and badda bing badda boom. In Superstars there's no set standard to ANYTHING. Some levels might be two acts of mostly the same thing, some levels have bonus optional acts that are character specific, and some levels just have one big act with a boss at the end, which just really feels underwhelming to go through. Why in the hell is there no consistency?? It makes the entire game just feel cobbled together, like they only had so much time to make so many levels so some zones just had to get their second acts cut. It just doesn't flow very well.

Lastly, the bosses. Definitely this games most controversial aspect, the bosses in this game are horrendously designed. Most of them have a very stop-and-go style of design to them where they are only vulnerable for one very specific window of their cycle, essentially having you wait through their whole attack patterns over and over again, dragging shit out to a ludicrous degree. Add the fact that some bosses are more than happy to use instant kill attacks like crushing attacks or bottomless pits, in which getting hit makes you have to do the whole contrived boss fight all over again from the very beginning. The Death Egg Robot was particularly egregious, that shit took me over an hour of attempts to beat just because that mfer won't die and getting back to the stupid platform-breaking death pit takes way longer than my patience can handle. Did I also mention that boss fight is also tied to a timer determined by how quickly you finished the death egg level, essentially making a last sonic level where going fast actively punishes you in the long run. In their infinite wisdom, Arzest decided to rectify this problem by just making the timer for the boss fight do nothing when it reaches zero, instead of, oh I don't fucking know, maybe LOWERING THE BOSS HEALTH TO MAKE THEIR ARBITRARILY LONG FIGHT A LITTLE LESS ARBITRARILY LONG???

I just don't get it man. I would love to go out to lunch with an Arzest designer because this company just continues to baffle me with how their games are made, and I'd love to talk with the people behind the scenes to try and understand at least somewhat where they are coming from. Their games always have decent artistic merit and are usually quite solidly coded and bug-free, just the actual games always manage to feel like complete nothingburgers to actually play, like they aren't designed by actual humans. Maybe their office is just full of alien creatures on a different wavelength, maybe they don't have proper ventilation, or maybe they are just a well meaning group of devs that have to work behind the scenes on whatever shoestring budget their publisher/rights holder chooses and never get to develop their ideas to a solid enough level. At least they get credited unlike shadow devs like Tose, for what it's worth. If anything, playing this has made me want to play more Arzest titles in the future, to see if maybe one day I can see through the mid and understand their sensibilities. Can't say I can particularly recommend you join me in that journey.

(I didn't even mention this games inconsistent OST, the fact that the xbox port in particular has a noticeable amount of input lag on it compared to the other versions, and the fact that the emerald powers were certainly cool in concept but were something I completely forgot to use entirely.)

I don't remember which state of play this game was first announced in, but I definitely remember seeing this game getting unveiled and being curiously interested for both good and bad reasons. On one hand, I thought that color-based territory and movement mechanics were too cool of a concept to be only used by one particular game series, and I was intrigued to see how this game plays and potentially evolves from other titles of its ilk, especially given how this game has Square Enix backing it up. On the other hand, the CGI announce trailer and character designs definitely gave me very "overwatch SFM" vibes. The art direction and derivative game concept definitely made it incredibly easy to make low-blow jokes online over, that's for certain. And as everyone online continued to make jokes (myself honestly included at that point), this game still remained in the back of my mind until then. That's certainly not a quality most games announced at a State of Play possess.

Some months later, and another State of Play happens announcing an open beta network test to try the game out early, so naturally I had to give it a try and see what the fuck they were actually cooking, and I actually quite enjoyed it! Eventually they announced the full games release date and the game remains mostly untouched from the beta with the exception of a few new game modes being introduced (and season pass microtransactions being shoehorned into the game, gee thanks). They even made it free on PS plus this month, so I could just drop right back into the action when the game launched!

The game itself is actually surprisingly not as derivative as I thought it was going to be. Yes, you shoot blobs of color that cover the arenas and can use them for movement purposes, but there's no gamemodes where it's a contest on who can cover the most ground in their color. Rather, the main gamemode is more like the Light Vs. Dark mode in Kid Icarus Uprising, where each team has a life pool that, once depleted, turns a team member into a powered up "star" player, where defeating the opponents star player wins the game. There is also a 2v2-style game mode as well as a payload pushing tower defending mode to add some variety. It makes for a much more aggro-oriented game experience, especially considering the fact that in order to chill (not kill, DO NOT CONFUSE THE TWO) someone, not only do you need to blast them until their health runs out, but also run into their foam-balled up downed form with your surfboard. Running into downed teammates with your surfboard resurrects them from their soapy demise, so the game emphasizes huddling together and cooperating to succeed. The foam can't be used to cover walls and climb them, but rather it clumps up which can be used in various ways like making a wall, building a high ground, ensuring a spot doesn't get covered by the enemy as easily, etc. It's certainly unique. That being said, the bullets being slow bubbles definitely gives the guns less impact and the clumpy nature of the foam can kinda turn the large choke points in the maps into big uneven bumpy wastelands that can be hard to parse, so it's not like it's a flawless gameplay experience. There is a single player mode but its really more just like tutorial stuff so like PS plus is basically required to have any semblance of content out of this game, it sure as hell aint worth 30 bucks for some offline tutorials.

The biggest impression this game left on me though was its environmental design and general aesthetic. The dark blacks and blues of the night sky being contrasted with the glimmering golds of the city and bright pastel neon colors of the foam just gives the game this luxuriant appearance. Some real sophistifuture shit, where the hubworld is a high-rise penthouse, the giant neon LCD billboards play stylish ads for fictional brands, the menus are overseen by a mascot rave DJ, and EVERYTHING is a party of the most expensive caliber. The vibe is certainly strong, and Bath Vegas is certainly a video game place I would want to live in IRL. The game world feels like it is made out of money in such a pompously luxuriant fashion, and the modern game PS5-ass graphical rendering makes every golden handrail and illuminated bubble glow all the brighter. The character designs grew on me and I find their personalities endearing, the 2D CGI art from the story missions have a lot of personality in them. I even like the weird goofy mocapped animations that everyone has in the lobbies, every time I can get a full team of randos to do the doofiest synchronized dances always fills me with raw energy. There was certainly a huge amount of genuine care that went into the creation of this world and its inhabitants, and I appreciate it a lot. Did I also mention that this games OST absolutely slams way harder than it ever had the right to? Like holy shit man I am WAITING for this shit to get an OST release, like seriously dude this shit BUMPS.

Let's not beat around the bush anymore though, nobody else really cares about all of that. Despite the beta being loudly announced in a large playstation announcement video I had a hard time finding ANYONE else who even knew about its existence, yet alone was actually PLAYING it. Whenever I would bring it up in various servers I was in, I would mostly get ridiculed for wanting to play "the shitty splatoon for straight people", and to "just play actual splatoon instead", dismissing me the same way they dismissed the game. It reminded me of trying to talk about Yo-Kai Watch back in the day with friends of mine only into Pokemon, they just don't care and only made the same low-effort jokes about something I genuinely liked just because it was similar in the most surface-level aspects. I did manage to convince some of my friends to give it a shot during the beta, and the gameplay left them unimpressed. They likely won't ever play the full game. While the game being free on PS plus certainly gives it solid publicity and a decent starting playerbase, I can't help but feel like a lot of the players trying the game out are going to bounce off of it after only a few hours of playing. In fact, I already have seen plenty of reviews here that are from people that have done exactly that. At least they gave it a try instead of just outright making fun of it without even playing it, i guess... Normally I don't really take very much into account what a games general reputation is, but in something that's trying to be a more multiplayer focused live-service type beat, having the game be such a huge punching bag is a huge problem that's entirely outside the developers control. I've seen more people online compare this game to fucking Morbius than actually talk about the game itself. Searching the game up on youtube brings more videos with shocked clickbait thumbnails titled "will it die?" or "is it ACTUALLY good?" than not. Mainstream gamers don't know the game even exists, and it's a laughingstock to the more core gaming crowd. I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist; I can't see this game gaining a large enough playerbase to last more than a year because of its reputation.

And that really sucks!!! Because this game is actually really cool and it feels like a lot of work and passion went into this game! It really reminds me of stuff like Survival Quiz City, where much like how for that game the small team of Gyaar studio was able to make it under the funding and publishing of Bandai Namco, ToyLogic was able to make this game with the backing of Square Enix. It has that solid AA feeling that a lot of modern games these days don't have, ironically something clamored by most of the same core gaming audience that dismisses this game in the first place aaaaAAAAA!!! I've been having a lot of fun with it though, and will continue to do so. I put like 5-6 hours into the beta, and have pretty much spent all of my fleeting free time just playing the full game constantly since it dropped, which is saying something, considering the fact one of my favorite games of all time got remade quite recently and yet I play this instead. If you have PS plus to be able to play online, I highly recommend giving this game an earnest shot. It's certainly not perfect, but the game is fun! The vibes are cool! What use would a giant golden festive city be if nobody wants to party in it?

(this is a long personal one, borderline life-storycore. sorry for those that dislike walls of text but sonic 06 does this to people. Sonic the hedgehog 2006? more like sonic the hedgehog 2006 word review)

I feel like if you are on the gaming pulse enough to be looking at a website like this, you likely already have at least HEARD of Sonic 06. Pretty much everything that could be said about this game on the internet already has been, it's really quite the overused topic both in the spheres of the sonic fandom and the sphere of bad game critics. Just in the sphere of youtube alone I've seen showcases of the many, MANY bugs and glitches the game contains, reviews of the game that dwell on it for uncharacteristically large amounts of time, personal retrospectives from fans recalling the impact the game has had on the brand as a whole, posthumous optimistic looks at the game dissecting vibes the game manages to retain in spite of its rushed nature, and the more recent phenomena, endearingly nostalgic takes towards the game from those that played it in their formative years. You could say that this game has had just as much of an impact on Sonic's brand as the previous game titled "Sonic The Hedgehog" (of which it has been a longer time between the present day and this games launch than the time between the two "Sonic the Hedgehog" games). It's certainly hard to say anything, let alone anything NOTEWORTHY about this game when everyone already knows what it is and why it is. All I can really contribute to the decades-rotten dead horse conversation is my own personal experiences with the game.

I'm a life-long sonic fan and despite being the correct age to have done so, I didn't grow up with this game. I definitely remember the launch hype cycle for this game, 6-year-old me frequenting the old Sonic Central website and looking at the promotional material for the game. I remember thinking that with the realistic environments and people that the sonic brand must have been taking a more adult turn after Shadow the Hedgehog, and since my family was still rocking the Gamecube as the sole household console, I was fine with sticking to the recently-released (yet equally mature in an incomprehensible sense) Sonic Riders and worrying about the fancy new Sonic game later when I was older. Given that I went on to own a Wii instead of any HD systems and wasn't a part of the greater internet at the time (as I should have been for that age), the release and subsequent car crash that was this games reception entirely eluded me. It wasn't until like, idk 2008/9ish? when I mentioned to a cousin that not much on the PS3 interested me besides "this game called sonic the hedgehog but not like the original one", and got laughed at for it that I realized that there might have been something up with this game, but I never thought much of it. I did always have a fascination with it in a curious way though, and whenever Silver was playable in any spinoff on the Wii, I always only played as him back then because he's from that mysterious sonic game I couldn't play! Imagine a Sonic Adventure 3 where you could play as him and all the other cool sonic characters...

Eventually I would get old enough to be given free roam on the internet and through that I would learn to discover this game and its actual reputation through youtube videos much like the ones I referred to earlier. Watching the game crumble under its own weight and seeing EVERYONE just absolutely tear it to pieces gave me a sense of relief that by owning a Wii I unintentionally dodged the bullet that was this game. (though instead I did have to suffer through Secret Rings, so who really won in the end?) I recall a family friend bought an Xbox 360 alongside this game and in the many times trying it at their house yeah it was just as janky and bad as the internet said it was. We would get stuck in that awesome beginners trap of getting owned by the mach speed section in Wave Ocean from hitting the scripted loop-de-loops at a bad angle and getting launched off of them to a game over, then having to restart from the absolute opening of the game. I saw firsthand that wow, this is certainly an unpolished, buggy, unfinished work that should be ridiculed. I couldn't believe this was essentially Sonic Adventure 3...

Eventually I got a PS3, and even more eventually I ended up buying a copy knowing full well what it was, and then I played it up to finishing Sonic and Silvers chapters before tapping out with Shadow. I felt like I had seen enough by that point, and outside of bringing it out for some ironic laughs in multiplayer with friends or playing it at my dentists office while high as fuck getting cavities filled in (don't ask, but yeah), this game remained on my shelf, uncompleted, for the better part of like a decade. The game sucked, after all. Seeing stuff like Project P-06 try and "fix" the game garnered no interest from me. Why would I want to even play a "fixed" version of this? My relationship with this game remained solely in the ironic "this is the bad sonic game haha" mindset and I couldn't believe that there were people that actually thought the game was good. They had to have just been gaslighted by nostalgia, right?

It was only a few weeks ago where the great almighty wheel of games decided it was time for me to stream a playthrough of this online. I figured that being a sonic fan that completing a playthrough of this was inevitable and that at least if I streamed it, it would be entertaining. Despite already owning the game on PS3 I instead bought the (bizarrely relisted for only 5 dollars) xbox 360 version as not only did it serve the ironic bit of buying Sonic 06 digitally in the modern day but also it gave me a clean save and was the most stable version of the game (as little as that actually means anything). As I played through the game, something very peculiar happened. Something that hadn't happened in all the years I've spent all this time rambling about.

I was actually having a lot of fun. And we aren't talking laugh-at-it isn't-this-game-so-bad-amirite-guys fun. Genuine, unadulterated, serious fun.

Maybe my tastes have changed a lot in all this time, maybe I'm going insane, but there was just this earnest sincerity that I felt when playing through this game, that emblematic sincerity that Sonic games have where they sometimes do some really REALLY absurd shit yet play it off with the straight confidence that I can't help but enjoy. Seeing all the sonic characters have their semi-winded anime-ass first-translation-draft dialogues with one another and how they handled this heavy-handed plot riddled with time travel and eldritch-horror summoning was the coolest thing ever. The game may be fucking, but I could still feel the games intent through it all. The game isn't even that fucking, honestly. Most glitches that I had heard the game get lambasted for online were things that I usually had to go out of my way to look for and execute, or things that I likely wouldn't have tried to do otherwise had I not already had the pretense knowledge of "check this out, I'm gonna kick in place on top of this box and you're gonna see some serious shit". The game is certainly unpolished and rushed, but if anything it's actually an absolute miracle that the game is as functional as it is to begin with! There's also tons of different characters to play as, which after having like 15 years of main series 3D games that only have you play as sonic and sometimes a variation of sonic, felt like an absolute breath of fresh air to control characters like Silver, Blaze, Omega, and Rouge again. I couldn't believe that this was essentially Sonic Adventure 3!

As I was enjoying my time with Sonic 06, it really had me thinking about it all. Was this game really as infamously horrendous as everyone has been saying, or had it perhaps been a victim of changing times? It was the first Sonic game designed for HD hardware, so maybe they thought it was a good idea to split the main team in half for Secret Rings as they assumed HD 7th gen gaming would only need as much dev resources as the last generation did, and gravely miscalculated how much more is needed from the jump to HD. 2006 was still the first year of these HD consoles, and a lot of the early titles for 360 and PS3 were also coming to grasps with those same problems regarding either total content or overall polish. Hell, that isn't even a generationally exclusive problem, look at how many games today launch in equal or even worse states as this one. Add that half-bakedness to both the facts that the mid 2000s was peak edgy gamer years culturally as gamers demanded the most photorealistic polished experiences out of their fancy new flat-screen displays, developer work be damned, AND that the modern social-media internet seeds had already been planting and sprouting giving viral videos much more weight, and maybe this game really actually was given a bad hand. There have certainly been a lot of people that wanted to see the Sonic brand crash and burn since its inception, and this game releasing in the state it did at the time it did gave those people the exact ammunition and platform they needed to do exactly that. Maybe the younger players that sing praises of this game aren't gaslit by their own nostalgia, but rather people like me have been gaslit by the myriads of negativity that has been surrounding this game since its inception, then only playing the game afterwards to affirm that already-implanted opinion. I honestly don't know, it's never usually as simple as that and it could go either way. It certainly did do a lot of damage, as after the negativity from this games release bled into other titles released in the same time frame, the brand took a more staunchly conservative approach by delisting "bad" games and scrubbing out any remnants of the 2000s era games from more contemporary works as they focused on more lighthearted and 90's oriented vibes before going full ironic meme mode in the mid 2010s, likely still due to the negativity towards the brand that remained from this game. (luckily that doesn't seem to be as much of the case anymore as both the sonic brand and community have been going back to the core of sincerity and have accepted themselves for what they are as a whole.)

I normally rate things off of some mixture of general recommendability as well as my own personal enjoyment, and while those two attributes usually go hand-in-hand, with this game they are at odds. While I may be crazy enough to have gotten a lot of enjoyment from playing this, I'm not crazy enough to recommend it over most other sonic games and you probably should be aware of what you are getting yourself into should you choose to play it on your own. I really have no idea how to end something like this tbh but I feel like I've said all that I can. There are probably many similar Sonic 06 takes and opinions in the vast endless sea of the internet, but this one is mine. There really is something about this game that makes people write a whole ass manifesto. Can't think of many other games that have that same effect, for better or for worse.

Highkey a banger video game. It's basically a game where you run around these circuit-like levels leaving behind dominoes to make them fall on specific designated trigger points, and when all the points have been activated, the levels are over. Linger in a level for too long, and Mr. Domino perishes. Each trigger spot has a designated space that knocks over any dominos that happen to be on it, so the sauce in the game comes from trying to manage the perfect run of setting everything up perfectly on one lap and watching the fireworks unfold on the second. There are also spaces on the levels that do things like change Mr. Domino's speed, replenishes some time, or hard resets the entire level. My only major gripe comes with how Mr. Domino controls; the levels are laid out on a grid and theres a sluggish heft in how he shifts between lanes and lays down dominoes, and if you don't grasp both the learning curve of how the game works and how to actually handle Mr. Domino, the game can certainly be frustrating. Once it all clicks though, this game rules and is incredibly satisfying to learn the levels and play through. I'd normally be upset about how this game has a limited continue feature, but since the game is for the most part entirely about memorizing the level layouts and there are only 6 levels it's not hard to get back to a previously game-overed level. If played well this game only takes like 30 minutes to clear.

Some might wager that this game has a misleading title, as in playing this you will find that through the myriad of obstacles that can and likely will slip you up, Mr. Domino is in fact actually one of the most stoppable characters in video game history. I wager that the title isn't necessarily a statement but rather an end goal; by learning and getting good at the game, with your efforts nobody will ever be able to stop Mr. Domino. If the ending is anything to go by, the only one that can truly stop Mr. Domino is himself. May he live on in our hearts forever as a true pioneer of dominokind. dominento mori

between this and the crew, this really is the year of playing midass games under the motivation of "ah fuck, guess i gotta finish this before i can't anymore". at least me and the homies were able to finish a playthrough of this with roughly 72 hours left on the clock baby

the game itself is okay, pretty unremarkable tbh. The game uses small levels instead of large dungeons to not only make things quick and snappy for portable play with friends/randos but also to add some weird element of grindiness to it. The big gimmick of this game are the various different costumes that you and your companions can wear to get various perks, which on one hand, yeah it certainly makes it a bit more personalized, but on the other you need to make the costumes with materials and you only get ONE mfin material per level at random which means time to hit that grindhouse if you want that tingle outfit, pig. I can't imagine how mind-numbing it would be to 100% this, doing the same dungeon levels over and over with randos of varying levels of cooperation just to try and get that 1/3 rare item. blegh

the real memorable moments really aren't from the game itself, but just from fucking about with the boys ngl. you'd think that 3 minds working to finish a zelda dungeon would mean we'd be 3 times as smart, but it really ended up being 3 links each taking one third of the singular collective braincell as we all bumbledumped our way through the levels. Shenanigans can and will ensue, as it's really easy to just be a little shit in this game. Picking up other players without their consent, trying to nab or use items in dubiously humorous ways, wearing some dumbass outfit that can actively hinder progress (shoutouts to the bomb suit baby), theres just a lot of ways to make this game either really funny or hair-rippingly irritating depending on your groups sense of humor. I can't really imagine it would be that fun if you tried to play this alone or with randos online, your friends definitely make or break the experience for sure.

It's not like this game is going anywhere when the servers get shut down, as there's still local play that's an option (you even get exclusive friendship token items when you play locally vs online), but unless you are in the particularly lucky situation where you live around or with people that still use a member of the Nintendo 3DS Family of Systems™ you are going to be shit out of luck playing this on stock hardware. Luckily, I believe the priitendo fan servers already have this games online functioning so hacked 3DS havers won't need to worry much in the future. I think you can also play this online through emulation, but me and my gang have still never been able to figure out citra netplay tbh. I def want to try out the four swords games for more multiplayer zelda shenanigans (those games have a whole extra link to share the same braincell with!), but alas it was already a herculean effort for me and the gang to schedule our busy adult lives effectively enough to play this and that was just with three people...

rest in pepperoni 3DS and wii U online servers, the nintendo netcode honestly wasn't that great and it died before 360 xbox live or PS3 PSN did despite releasing 5-6 years later, but it brought a lot of smiles and good memories regardless. From the premier titles like smash 4, mario kart 7/8, and splatoon to dumpy spinoffs like this game, its shutdown will make it a great deal harder to thoroughly experience this period of Nintendo's history.

wao, this is certainly a video game. The girls on the cover definitely jebaited my curiosity only to blindside me with a very ho-hum puzzle game with varying degrees of jankiness.

The game is basically like a weird mixture of pipe dreams and tetris where you stack together these fleshy intestinal tubes and making a completely enclosed section causes it to disappear. There's also occasionally times where a fairy will come down and destroy the bottommost layer of the board, which can honestly hurt things just as much as it helps. I will admit there is SOME layer of sauce that can be found, as i was able to do a few decent combo chains by smartly arranging blocks, but it's all too RNG dependant on block drops to feel all too skill based. It's also the first virtual boy game to actually hurt my eyes after playing for a while, as the entire playfield likes to suddenly pulsate outwards at points for no reason, and that quick having to readjust my focus forward then immediately back to normal is just unnecessary eyestrain. The game has a GIANT message in both english and japanese telling you to take a break and rest your eyes after every two levels and when the game is paused, and I think I understand why they did that. At least they have a girl on the right side of the screen at all times, complete with 3D "jiggle physics" (i am putting that in air quotes because i feel like the occasional one-pixel movement of the girls chest barely qualifies) so I guess that counts for something?

It's just a bizarre release for sure. Apparently it's one of the last VB games to come out and as such is one of the rarest, reaching absurd prices in the secondhand market. I shouldn't have to tell you that shit aint worth it lmao. If I do have to give this game credit, it's that the development history for this game is certainly interesting!

Really, the bad game hall of fame has a better and more detailed writeup about this game and the circumstances that created it than anything I could ever write so give it a read! They even managed to interview the sole developer!

I genuinely can't think of many other game series that have it as good as the Wonder Boy/Monster World lineage of games. From having every game of the original series be a well-revered classic among those that have played them, their lineage being preserved by M2 in the wonderful Sega Ages 2500 collection, and the Dotemu remaster of Dragons Trap that was made with more love for the source material and attention to detail towards it than most AAA remakes these days, Wonder Boy fans have been and continue to be eating fucking phenomenally. Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is absolutely no different, being a fantastic tribute to a series that's already so respected and beloved among the retro gamermen.

This game continues to evolve the style of open-ended yet still focused and linear design of Dragon's Trap and Monster World. It definitely leans towards the whole "metroidvania"-y style of genre moreso here than in those other games, but it still doesn't really fall in the design conventions of that genre all too well. The animal transformations return from Dragon's Trap (you can now play as the pig!), and unlike that game where most of the transformations were relegated to their own sections of the game, here you can switch between any of the 6 different forms you can earn on the fly whenever you want. There's the Pig that can sniff for secrets and use magic, the Snake that can go in tight passages and climb grass walls, the Frog that can use its tongue as a grappling hook, the Lion which can dash through blocks, the Dragon that can fly and breathe fire, and the Boy that can use a series of air-dashes. Each form has their own time to shine in the various levels, as the level layouts make the most out of each ability that you can use, with plenty of secrets throughout. If anything I do wish that there was more taken from Monster World 4, as I felt like having a changable Pepelogoo companion that could interact with each form in a unique way would have been cool. Designwise, it just feels like the culmination of what would happen if Dragon's Trap and Monster World were freed of their technical limitations, yet still designed in a very old-school traditional way.

The Monster World games are also known for their tight cohesion and continuity with one another, and despite not explicitly carrying the Wonder Boy name in its title, this game continues to have all the callbacks to previous titles as you would expect. The final dungeon from Monster Land is still here, each of the main sacred relics are artifacts from previous games, hell the in-game sanctuary is even adorned with stain-glass windows depicting all the previous heroes from games gone by. It's not so in-your-face that playing the previous games is required reading, but I would say that series familiarity will make this game hit like 10x harder than it would be if you went in blind.

And the music, oh my GOD the music dude. From the goddamn TITLE SCREEN I knew I was in for a fucking good OST. They literally got the whole ass avengers of game composers to make new tunes and arrange existing Wonder Boy tracks. They got Keiki Kobayashi, Yuzo Koshiro, Motoi Sakuraba, Michiru Yamane, and Takeshi Yanagawa in the kitchen to make some absolute bangers for this game alongside the studios in-house composer, Cédric Joder assisting with arrangements. Everyone on the sound team is firing on all cylinders, giving this game one of the best god damn game soundtracks I have ever listened to.

The game is just a banger, through and through. My only real gripes can be with the games length being a bit longer than my personal preferences for a Monster World game, mostly due to some sections having a few more mandatory subsections than was really necessary imo. The haunted house section was also a bit of a low point but that could have just been me being stupid and taking way too long to figure out the puzzles. If you are a fan of the Monster World series, this is such a no-brainer must-play that you've probably already went through this by now lmfao. If you enjoy classic open-ended sidescrollers, the whole Monster World series is seriously worth your time. Most fans of other game series would kill to be able to eat even half as good as Monster World fans do.

Interesting game. NGL I've always been interested in this game solely on just how nice the box art looked and had no idea what the actual game was about or how it played, so I'm happy to actually have seen what's behind that beautiful cover.

It's an FPS type thing where you use the wii pointer to aim and blast these little sprite-y dudes called elebits in order to capture em. Levels are set on a timer where there's a point quota that ya gotta meet and different elebits are worth different amounts of points. The main gimmick though, is that the elebits are hiding in various places and your gun happens to double as a phys/gravity gun that can freely lift and move all sorts of things. There are also specific elebits that level up your gun and allow you to manipulate heavier and heavier things, and every level pretty much ends up looking like a tornado went through it. There's a very visceral energy to playing this, just saying "fuck this tree" or whatever as you launch it into the stratosphere, or just ripping drawers out of desks and smashing through full closets looking for more mfers to blast. That being said though, this is a launch-window wii game that tries to deal with hundreds of dynamic physics items onscreen at once, and that much processing brings the wii down to its kniis as it struggles to keep any semblance of a smooth framerate going. The chunky FPS plus the fact that the sensitive pointer controls move the camera all around from all the shooting makes the game certainly a bit dizzying to play in long bursts. The later half of playing levels can also be a bit difficult to move around in thanks to all the shit that's thrown on the floor and the levels where you have to worry about not making noise/breaking certain things certainly add variety but feel antithetical to the games primal "fuck everything in this room up" vibe that the gameplay goes for. If anything, I wish this concept would be done again on modern hardware, especially in VR, as doofy make-a-mess-with-physics games are always popular there and the hardware can actually power it this time. Too bad konami isn't interested in doing anything cool anymore...

It's just some dumb mindless fun. If I had this game back in the day as a kid I probably would have enjoyed just throwing everything around, framerate be damned. Certainly worth a play, though you'd probably get a better experience playing this on an emulator or something where the game would run smoother and have widescreen. The OST is done by konami's A-team, with Bemani and Castlevania people working on it and it owns. There are even plenty of fun konami references strewn about, like how the arcades have real modeled bemani arcade machines (but no DDR cabs :C) and the creepy bunny thing from silent hill as the mascot of the amusement park levels (which I haven't played any silent hill games, but isn't that like not a good character to be a kids mascot?). The in-game visuals are pretty just existent for a wii game, but the key art and cutscene art is absolutely wonderfully drawn with an excellent dream-like use of color and lighting, like I said before the artwork was literally what drew me to the game in the first place. With how wholesome and pleasant that artwork looks, I sure bet the main artist went on to become famous for other absolutely pleasant and wholesome things!

...really?

This is supposed to be the "worst" zelda game? The game so infamously awful that it spawned the reactionary absurdist art for that is the YTP??? The game so irredeemably terrible that Nintendo themselves would rather bleach it entirely out of the canon, out of the official release timeline, and out of the public conciousness??? Perhaps I have high kusoge pain tolerance, but I actually found this game quite impressive.

The game is entirely side-scrolling, with areas segmented into these little 2-4 screen mini levels that usually have an item or a boss fight at the end. The game uses scanned images of hand-drawn pictures to form the level backgrounds, and it works surprisingly well. The collision detection functions rather solidly. The controls take a little bit of time to get used to, as theres the typical zelda item-based gameplay at play when the CD-i controller only has 2 functional buttons, so the pause/inventory screen is done by pushing the item button while crouching. It does mean you unfortunately can't pause the game or switch/use items in front of any door, as the second button becomes a context-sensitive door use button. Juggling between the lamp and other items to keep dark rooms visible is also a bit of a pain. Outside of that, the control feels rather solid. While I initially thought it would play more like zelda 2 given the side-scrolling perspective, this game actually feels like a bit of a mix between castlevania and ghosts n goblins. It has the slow, methodical pace and movement as castlevania yet the more lateral level design and "throw shit at the wall" enemy placement that loves to be just too high or too low to hit def reminded me of ghosts n goblins. The only part in the game that's actual horseshit is the final level, ganon's lair. There are too many got damn snakes that do too much got damn damage and sometimes the high enemy count lags the CD-i to a crawl.

The game def has some design problems but its nowhere near as absolutely garbage as I was led to believe all this time on the internet. If anything, the fact that they made a game like this work so decently on what is essentially a beefed-up photo CD player is really lowkey impressive. The OST also bumps way harder than it has any right to, even with tracks that dynamically change depending on whether you are indoors or outdoors. I honestly had more fun playing this than I did with some actual Nintendo-ass zelda games. Would definitely suggest giving the game an earnest play-through instead of just brushing it off as "the funny bad meme zelda game". You might be surprised.

Definitely a personal favorite of mine out of Midways 80s arcade lineup. The game is just so goddamn hectic with having to juggle counting shots to send the right number of beers and catching empty glasses while scanning the screen to course out the next plan of attack, it hits that ADHD multitasking brain real good. It definitely seems like there's an amount of luck to the game, as it seems like its entirely RNG how far a customer slides back and how quickly they finish their drinks, and that can just sometimes put you in a bad state where there's just too much going on to feasibly handle. But hey! It certainly gets me wanting to keep trying again and again to see what happens every run. If this is what actual bartending is like though imma start praying for every barkeep on earth out there. And also the ones in space too, apparently, as this game proves that even aliens need their fill of Bud.

If I ever see this at an arcade you know that's an on-sight play. I think there used to be an arcade around me that had this game, but they died a few years back...

Bro i do NOT remember this shit coming out the same year as the first game, i thought it was like at least the next year god DAMN.

Like the name implies, Wii We ski and snowboard is really more of an expansion of the first game instead of a true sequel. Not only is there the titular snowboarding that is included alongside the preexisting skiing, but the character creator has a bit more sauce to it, and they expanded the game to have TWO maps instead of the singular resort in We ski. There's both a brand new ski resort seperate from the first games resort, as well as a harsh mountain in the wilderness, untouched by the domestication of being ski-resortified. The new mountain map really felt like they took the bonus secret run from the first game and made a whole map out of it, which is hella cool. Since skiing both on real mountains and virtually was quite a family pasttime as a kid, this game and its predecessor def share a very "oh fuck yeah" place in my heart.

The ski resort map still plays namco game music through the in-game loudspeakers, they've made peak once again

I remember seeing this game way back in middle/early high school in all those sites and youtube videos showing "japans SECRET hidden gems that english speakers are TOO LAME to ever experience", and this game was one of the poster-games that kickstarted me actually getting off my ass to hit the books and learn Japanese. The game does have a fan translation, and ironically, that's actually what I ended up playing so the people watching me play could follow along in english.

Firstly, that fan translation. The website says that it's "95% complete" but imma be real with yall and say it's a good thing I actually knew how to read Japanese for when it shows up, because it really felt 75% complete at best. There were all too many times where the english text just gave up and just went back to JPN characters, and while I feel like enough is translated for someone with no japanese understanding whatsoever to fumble through the rough bits, it's certainly not ideal. The translation itself is also quite rough, there's a fair amount of typos and formatting errors. I can't really fault the game for these things, nor can I really dismiss the large amount of work that goes into fan translating a game in the first place, but it is worth pointing out for those that want to try this game out for themselves.

The premise of the game is absolutely me-bait. A game made by the chibi-robo developers that takes place on an island of misfit nintendo characters and you need to help them solve their problems and make their dreams come true as the titular captain rainbow.

The gameplay is quite unique, typical of skip games. There's like two gameplay modes; one where the game is a typical adventure game where you use your items and abilities to interact with and help the islanders with their various troubles. Eventually, once a problem is solved with an islander, a strong bond will be formed with them and they will give you these star collectables, which can also be found throughout the map. Collecting 20 stars will activate a starfall night, where a large star lands somewhere randomly on the island, and if you can find it, bring it to an islander that you have a strong bond with, and take them up to the heavenly star altar, you can ascend them to the stars, where whatever wish they have will come true. While ascending a character does remove them from the game permanently, the game is structured in a way where it both won't ever run out of collectable stars to activate the starfall nights with, nor will ascending a particular character get you stuck in a dead game. Ascend every character, and you get the good ending! Ironically outside of using the occasional ability and his quicker movement speed, there's not actually much use in playing as captain rainbow instead of his alter-ego, Nick, and the Rainbow transformation is on a timer that kills you if it runs out so I really spent most of the time in Captain Rainbow not actually being Captain Rainbow.

And as for the characters themselves, what a lively roster! There's Hikari from Shin Onigashima, Mappo from Giftpia, the soldiers from Famicom Wars, Takamaru from Nazo no Murasamejo, among other weirdoes and wackjobs from Nintendo's back catalogue. They all aren't the deepest of deep cuts, Birdo is a pretty popular Mario character and Little Mac has found new employment in Smash Bros, but most of the pulls are certifiably B-list. Despite the fact that every character has their own legacy's worth of history and background to pull from, surprisingly enough none of it really matters. You could pretty much replace the entire roster of wackjobs with generic equivalents and literally nothing would change whatsoever. You don't have to have played Golf on NES to know the old golfer mans unhygienic lifestyle, or read up on hours of Link's Awakening lore to understand what Crazy Tracy's deal is. It's incredibly beginner friendly for any newcomer to get into without needing to do piles of old Nintendo research, as the links between the characters and their mother IP is, quite literally, trivial. Did you know that Lip, the genki allergy-ridden magical girl in this game, is from Panel de Pon, the Japanese version of Tetris Attack? You don't need to. It doesn't matter.

Love-de-lic derivative games like this usually have some kind of greater message and theme in them, and I'm not entirely sure what this ones message is. The game is mostly about vibing on the island with a bunch of fellow misfits, all with unfulfilled dreams in their hearts and a whole lot of time on their hands. As the game goes on and more and more characters get ascended, things start getting really empty and lonely as there's just nobody around to give the island its energy. But the islanders have goals they want to accomplish, and while it's nice to appreciate the vibes of just being in that stagnant in-between part of life, by the end of the day it's better for everyone to go and make their dreams come true. And if you send someone out to make their dreams come true, they will inevitably come back. I think that's the kind of message the game is trying to convey.

The game certainly has a few qualms (why the hell is that stupid 50 hidden mimin easter egg hunt mandatory), but I did have quite a fun time playing through this game. It has that style of charm that skip/love-de-lic titles usually have, but without very many of the love-de-licisms that drive me crazy. It's just a very comfortable game to just be scooting around helpin people out on mimin island, and I'd definitely recommend giving it a try, jank enough as the English translation may be.