"We know that millions of people all over the world just love the PAC-MAN arcade game. PAC-MAN has won the hearts of men, women and children everywhere. We also know that PAC-MAN has traditionally been an arcade game. Well, we at ATARI know all about arcade games. After all, we make some of the greatest arcade games In the world, and we know now to bring the same dynamite game play into your home. Our PAC-MAN has all of the excitement and challenge of the standard arcade game, and you get to play in the comfort and convenience of your own home. This is especially advantageous if you still plan to make an occasional appearance at the arcade to show off your great playing skills. (Little do they know that you've been practicing at home all along.)"
-Page 1 of the Pac-Man Atari Manual

at that point in 1982, you could probably argue that those words in the manual were the biggest lie ever told in gaming. When it comes to converting arcade games to the ol' 2600, obvious compromises need to be made in order to crunch out that game essence. Some games, like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender, Berzerk, etc, make the conversion relatively unscathed. But sometimes you just get some absolute nonsense like Pac-Man. While this game is in literally no means an accurate conversion of the arcade classic, it does show some interesting insight into Atari history both in a cultural and gamedev sense.

So like, the game pretty much shares gameplay similarities with the arcade version and that's kind of it. You eat dots and avoid ghosts that chase you, but compared to the arcade the ghost AI is different, scoring is different, the hitboxes are different, the maze is different, you get the idea. The maze isn't even like a bastardized facsimile of the original, it's just a bunch of circles in a grid. The hitboxes for actually eating the pellets video wafers seem to be a lot smaller and more precise than the hitbox for touching ghosts which makes things feel kind of inconsistent since you gotta be further forward towards pellets video wafers in order for them to actually count as eaten whereas the ghosts touch any pixel of you and pac man dies right then and there. At least on the control front things still feel responsive and snappy. There are only 8 different game variations here, and they just change how fast Pac-Man and the Ghosts can move to somewhat alter difficulty. I found that Game 6 is the fastest for both and even then it's still not that fast, so that's my rec if you want the most engaging Pac-Man gameplay. The slowest ghost speed is designed for younger children apparently, and at that speed the only way the ghosts will ever get you is if you actively try and get yourself killed which is awesome. Also this is probably just a me thing but using the stiff Atari joystick to try and quickly maneuver Pac-Man definitely hurts my hands after a little while. If there are any boomers on this site reading this please let me know of any proper Atari controller holding tech because I still haven't figured out how to use it in both a comfortable and consistently functioning way just yet.

If you look at this game solely through the lens of how accurate of a conversion this is, it's pretty dire. But ngl this game is pretty cool to look at retrospectively. Atari crunched the fuck out of one guy in 6 months to make something they KNEW would sell millions on brand alone (and sell it did, this is the best-selling game on the system), and so within those constraints the guy likely chose to go for preserving what he believed to be the essence of Pac-Man, rather than trying to make a straight conversion with no proper time or resources. Honestly, the essence still comes through pretty well even in this conversion, and there are probably a solid amount of the 8 million copies sold were probably satisfied casual customers just trying to get their fill of eating dots and chasing ghosts without much care towards the details. It's also just that by 1982 the Atari 2600 was already roughly 5 years old, and Pac-Man was already 2, and many other people had understood standards of what they should be expecting from a first-party conversion of an immensely popular arcade title, and this definitely wasn't up to those expectations. Gaming wasn't a fad anymore, the market of core gamermen had bloomed by this point, and if there's anything we know about those guys it's that they have quite high standards for their gamin. As a result, this game (and it's partner in crime that would release at the end of the year, E.T.) could be described as one of the first games known to the general public as a "bad game", and are frequently cited by historians and fans alike as a major cause of the great American video game crash of '83 as well as being touted as some of the worst games ever made in the later internet sphere of things.

Do I think this game really deserves that kind of reputation though? I mean, kind of? It's not nearly as ambitious as something like E.T. and is a pretty blatant result of Atari cutting corners to get as much easy profit on their grubby hands at the cost of making a quality product for their consumers, so it's not exactly like this game is great or misunderstood or anything imo. The Atari could absolutely have done a more direct conversion of Pac-Man, as both the Ms. Pac man port and plenty of 2600 homebrew can prove, so it's not like it was entirely the hardware at fault either. I just think that the end product is such a fascinating result of so many factors that it's hard not to be curious about it. It will obviously never happen, but I do wish Namco would reference this bizarro version of Pac-Man or include it in compilations as a historical curio or something. If they had a 2600 pac-man skin in a championship edition game or something I would absolutely pop the fuck off ngl. I definitely still wouldn't really recommend it to anyone outside of the curious gaming historians out there in this day and age, but an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel irredeemable worst-game-ever-made this game is certainly not.

hataraku ufoooo~~~

its a chill fun time bein a lil scrimblo ufo guy stacking things for people. It's short and sweet, doesn't overstay its welcome, has those feel-good comfy vibes that HAL Labs know how to do so well, and there are enough optional challenges to keep invested players busy and encourage learning how to get good at stacking shit. The multiplayer seems like it would be a lot of fun, especially if you are in an environment where you have frequent downtime with the homies, but I am but a lone samurai so I couldn't try the multiplayer for myself. It's only like 9 bucks, it's absolutely worth a play if you got some switch funds lying around.

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.

Usually when it comes to Atari 2600 ports from the arcade there's usually a lot of compromises that have to be made in order for the game to even be mfin legible, let alone carry the same game feel. Luckily for Atari, Space Invaders is a game so popular and simple that it can make the jump with primarily frivolous changes.

The core gameplay here is the same space invading as it always has been. Only one shot from your guy can appear on-screen, waves of invaders coming down that increase in speed as their numbers fall, blocks to hide behind, if they reach the bottom it's game over, a bonus ship comes by periodically for extra points, yadda yadda. Some primary changes from the arcade include the fact that the ship can't move entirely across the screen on both sides which makes prioritizing the right side way more important than the left, the number of invaders per level has been cut from 5 rows of 11 invaders to 6 rows of 5 invaders, and the scoring is different between the two. The secret of hitting the bonus ship on the 23rd shot to get extra points is also entirely absent from this conversion, so score junkie shot-counters won't get much practice from playing this. They did add some interesting new game modes to shake things up though, such as the ability to make the game have any combination of moving shields, zigzagging enemy bullets, super speed enemy bullets (but no extra speed on yours because fuck you i guess), and invisible invaders. The moving shields and zigzagging bullets honestly give the game a bit of extra freshness, but the other two modes just feel too unfair against the player for me to have any sort of fun with em. There are also a ton of two player modes that are good fun with a friend. Each combination of modes is represented as its own distinct game number so there's 110 different game types you gotta flip through. Make sure to keep that manual handy to know which one is which!

While it definitely seems like the nuances between this game and the arcade version would make it pretty crummy for actual score practice at home, I don't really think that many people buying this in its time really cared about that kind of thing. The core game feel is close enough to the arcade that I'd say it's a good port. Hell, I bet most people didn't even notice there were differences and were just happy to play some space invaders without throwing endless quarters in a machine. It's no wonder this game wound up being the second best selling game on the system.

I am a massive sucker for those colorful 1999/2000 Y2K aesthetics and by god does this game deliver that in spades. Stylistically this game is awesome, with some insanely cool cool character designs done by Ippei Gyoubu, an artist that does hella rad work. The visuals are that perfect level of dreamcast low-poly chonkiness mixed with an assortment of pop colors all over the place. Aesthetically and stylistically, this game owns.

While there is a plot involving two random kids getting yote into their TV into coolcooltoonland where everything must be settled by shmooving danceoffs, the plot really isn't the most coherent and seems like it serves as more a means to an end, that end being to show off the aforementioned rad ass character designs and world. Plot points and new characters get thrown around left and right, and the main point isn't to think about it and just enjoy the colorful craziness that each chapter offers.

That all being said the actual rhythm gameplay is pretty ho-hum. There's a big circle with various button inputs that you gotta move the cursor with the stick and press the button to make the input happen. My only gripes with it are really the fact that I can't do the edge-of-the-circle slide moves to save my life which ruins all my combos and sometimes when things get busy it's really hard to sight-read what the hell the game wants you to do even if the pattern and rhythm is quite simple. The game is hella forgiving though both with timing windows and how close your cursor actually needs to be to make a hit count so it's not all too bad. This game even supports the samba de amigo maracas officially! (though it's quite tiring to play that way and the game actually does have to handicap its own gameplay to make it work, but hey!) The setlist is also quite existent, nothing super offensive to listen to but also nothing that I would ever go looking up the OST for.

It's def style-over-substance at the end of the day but yanno that doesn't stop it from being cool cool. Honestly if the soundtrack was as cracked as the visual design this would have been an easy 4 for sure. It's crazy to me that this game was made by SNK of all people because this looks and plays so unlike ANYTHING else they have made before that it's shocking to see their logo on here. Considering this was made like the exact same year SNK imploded in on themselves I wonder if this was some effort to diversify their game lineup outside of the Neo Geo that was just done too late or something. There's surprisingly not a mobygames page for this that I can quickly scan the credits of, but I wonder if this was made by a veteran team or a team made out of new talent... Apparently there was going to be an english localization of this at its time, but the aforementioned SNK implosion kind of put a stop to that. There's a fan translation of decent quality out there by now, so if you have the means to play this, I would def suggest giving it a shot if not just to admire the visuals.


put a team of mfers from this game in the next KOF, cowards

lmfao i didn't even realize this shit had a backloggd page, ive played this ages ago lets go

it's a tech demo sent to devs to showcase what the gamecube can do. There are 7 different rooms that each focus on a specific technical feature that the Gamecube can easily do whereas previous hardware would have struggled, all themed around one big nintendo-y princess peachy castle.

There are showcases for high-resolution textures, bump-mapping, anti-aliasing, local light sources, texture projection, environment mapping, and large amounts of on-screen objects. Rather than having each demonstration be its own bland tech demo interface, they are integrated dynamically within each room of the castle. What better way to demonstrate large textures like a large mural covering the walls and ceiling? How else could you emphasize environmental mapping than using a giant reflective metal mario statue, or showing local lighting in a lowly-lit cave with swaying overhead lamps? Even in making something not to be seen by the general public, there's still the usual amounts of polish and charm that Nintendo has in their full-fledged titles.

Shoutouts to whoever dumped this guy for anyone with emulators/modded systems to explore, because I def have a soft spot for tech demos like this. While it's certainly not a game in any sense as there's no objective or goal, just tech demos, I think if this was put in a pack-in demo disc with like a few other game demos and videos at launch people would fondly remember this little showcase. They absolutely could have done that too, given the fact that gamecube discs couldn't have been that expensive to make and it didn't have a pack-in game traditionally. Maybe in another timeline we would all be asking for the red arrow to be in smash bros...

Interesting game, but not really my personal jam for 2D platformin. Whereas Wario Land 1 was more of a straightforward level based platformer akin to the Mario Land games that it piggybacked on, with the extra gimmick of being graded based off of how many coins you were able to collect, this game abstracts itself even further from its parent(?) series.

Most notably is that in this game Wario must have eaten some crazy kind of garlic or something because he is invincible now. There aren't any bottomless pits, and no matter how many times Wario gets smacked, slapped, roasted, frozen, squashed, or stretched, he cannot die. While there are certainly benefits to immortality, Wario Land 2 taught me that such a blessing can really be a curse. The level and game design has been fundamentally changed as a result, and now things are much more slow and explorative. Finding secrets is the real aim of the game here, as trying to straight-shot through the levels will only let you access 25 out of the whopping 51 levels that this game contains. As there's no threat of failure or death, the game really wants you to take your time combing the levels to find secret treasures and exits by leaving no door unvisited, no coin ungrabbed, and no wall/floor tile unchecked.

That isn't to say that there's zero punishment or challenge in this game, as while getting hit won't diminish any of Wario's health or make him any less capable than he normally is, it will put him in a cardiac arrest state for a few seconds while launching him with knockback force that makes the Belmont clan look like they have iron boots. Some enemies will instead change Wario's state like flame guys that will turn him into a fireball that can break blocks, hammer guys that will smash him into a bouncy spring form which can jump higher, hydraulic presses that flatten the lad into a pancake that can flutter, penguin lookin mfers that can make Wario drunk, and so on and so forth. You really don't know which enemies will knock you on your ass and which ones are actually powerups until you get hit.

All of this comes together to just kinda make a game that felt really annoying to play tbh. Since there's no mechanical punishment for getting hit the game usually punishes mishaps by resetting your progress whether that be by putting Wario in a state where you'd have to go back and revert or just by knocking you back down to the ground where you gotta get back to where you were before. Obviously, even in platformers with health systems mistakes commonly get punished by resetting progress by way of like checkpoints if you die or whatnot, but that's usually an automated process whereas here in Wario Land there are points where if you fuck up, you gotta drag your ass back to the starting line before you can try again. This is most egregious in the bosses, as there are a lot of bosses that punish any hit by forcing you out of the boss chamber, resetting the fight from square one no matter how far you initially got. For a game with an invincible protagonist, there's a surprisingly low margin for error in some of these levels. It makes an already slowly designed game feel even more sluggish, and my goopy gamer brain already isn't the biggest fan of slower, more explorative 2D platformers.

It still has that goofy wario charm that's all in good fun, and Captain Syrup is a fun antagonist. Instead of your typical victory animation or whatever, Wario just front-faces to look directly at you upon clearing any level to let you know what you've done. While I did get most of the endings on this playthrough, if I had this as a kid I guarantee you I would only have seen the default 25-level ending and nothing else. Definitely not my favorite game out there, but I still respect its experimentation with the platformer genre and its quirky charm.

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.

okay actually what the fuck? what the dog doin

This games fuckin weird bro. Pretty much every individual part of this game goes for a completely different tone, and it all comes together as the gaming equivalent of eating paste made out of bananas, peas, and sardines. The visuals are made up of reasonably solid looking (albiet framerate-chugging) levels populated by uncanny-looking people. The writing is immensely crass and immature, with a wise-cracking snarky dog interacting with a myriad of cheesy stereotypes with enough poop/fart/sex jokes added in to make any middling dreamworks movie blush. The soundtrack ranges from bumping techno jingles to ambient music that straight up astral projects me to another plane of existence. Our doggy protagonist moves and animates with a shockingly realistic attention to detail compared to other cartoony platformers. It really does feel like the games director, writers, animators, composers, and designers all misunderstood the assignment in their own unique way, making the game an absolute tonal rollercoaster. And that's not even considering the unfittingly eerie and morbid ending.

The thing is though, the actual core game is a pretty solid collectathon, and the more I played it and got used to the serial-killer vibes the game has, the more I honestly enjoyed it. It really did feel like there was a lot of genuine thought in analyzing what dogs do and how to convert them into palpable game mechanics. Like dogs usually just beg, retrieve stuff for people, piss and shit everywhere, dig around in the mud, bark at things, sniff around random places, and eat potentially questionable food from god knows where. All of those aspects of being a dog and more are covered in this game, and the main gameplay of doing dog things to accomplish tasks to earn bones to progress is just as fun as collecting progress mcguffins in any other collectathon.

The game is weird, but it's not half-assed shovelware. If anything, the bizarre vibes make this game certainly hard to ever forget, and I could definitely see this game leaving an impact on me in many different ways if I had played it growing up. It definitely has a cult following, and I can honestly see why. Give it a shot if you enjoy some absolute strange fuckshit. Sasuga europe

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

The developers of the Doko Demo Issho series finally realized what the world needed: Suika Game in 3D. And unlike a lot of other game series, the jump to 3D is extremely smooth here, as all the same core mechanics are the same. The original Suika Game was a fun addictive time waster, but add the existence of an entire third dimension and it becomes crack cocaine, with every "one more try" sinking me deeper into the depths of my fruity prison. Instead of the bucket-like play field of Suika Game, Fruit Mountain has you rotating around and aiming fruit onto a platter to join them together. It allows for some really cool setups to get fruit to combo into one another as well as the potential for sweet trickshots to get fruit right in that nook where you need them. There's also a combo system for linking fruits together in succession, so even score seeking players will find more depth here than in regular Suika Game. Theres also a cute anime girl painting in the background the entire time, a feature that should be in every video game and I want to know her name. I'm not an artist though, but i do wonder what she's actually painting since her subject is a constantly-transforming pile of fruit that keeps getting added onto. Not very still of a "still life", imo.

It's suika game but better and in 3D and there's a cute girl. I think the suika fad has already mostly died out, so I don't know if this'll make the same waves again, but if I need to kill hours with fruit, this is the absolute go-to.

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.

NES sequels are always hella interesting because you really never know what you are gonna get. Sometimes ya get a mario 2, sometimes ya get a zelda 2, sometimes ya get a mega man 2-6. The first Wai Wai world game was a fun adventurey romp gathering playable friends to explore levels and solve puzzles and whatnot, and this game throws pretty much all of that away to just be focused on linear action. You play as some robot named Rickle or something and rather than being able to switch between different konami characters, the characters work as limited power-ups where you transform into them for a brief period of time, with their health working as a timer. It's neat, but it loses the whole ragtag "getting the gang together" vibes that the first game had, and even then the roster here is nowhere near as insane as the first game. The levels are still fun homages to Konamis output at that time, with goemon, bio miracle bokutte upa, castlevania, contra, twinbee, getsu fuuma den, frogger, gradius, and more all getting some time in the spotlight. My only gripe is that there are a lot of mandatory auto-scrolling levels that just go way too slowly to be interesting, and it makes me not want to replay the game to try the other level paths or character selections, and the game for the most part is quite easy with the exception of the shmup sections which are your typical bouts of gradius-isms. Overall it's pretty bland but still a good time especially if you are a konami fan. The whole game is also playable in co-op, too!

I wish konami would make a waiwai world 3 with all their modern IP but that would require them to actually have to do something. Where's my fan-made doujin Wai Wai world game where all the konami characters have to break into the konami HQ and defeat the people preventing them from getting new games? ill direct it lemme at em

eh. Interesting concept with a scrolling multidirectional shooter, but as a consequence of being able to shoot in any direction it basically means ya get floded with enemies and projectiles from every which direction, and that can be really overwhelming. You do have a satellite that you can lock by shooting and it does function like a shield which can help in some situations, but I feel like the games pace is way faster than the positioning speed of the satellite so I couldn't really use it to the best effect. There's also a money system for upgrades too! It's very mechanically dense, but idk I couldn't really get into it ngl. The game has a strange "kill the gods" theme to it and the visuals can get quite grotesque at points which ain't really my thing. It's a game!