jtduckman
You know, I joke a lot to myself about the "guy that buys the yakuza games solely for the arcade games", but here I am, I am the guy now. And how could I not be? For the first time in the 25(!!!) years since this game first hit arcades, we finally have a playable version of this game on a home console, with no need for obtuse command-prompt emulator frontends getting in our way.
This game basically takes everything that the first Daytona did and continues to do it just as well. 3 courses to drive through with the first basically being a training stage for learning how to drift properly and the other 2 being more interesting race tracks. Drifting in this game is the same as the first; you can do so through either gear shifting or braking and regardless of which option there is quite a high skill ceiling. The visuals are incredible, really leaning into the theme-park attraction style vibes and thrills that come from these kinds of arcade racers, with setpieces that include cities, ice glaciers, haunted houses, canyons, an alien space ship, wide open fields, and a giant rocking pirate ship serving as eye candy to zoom through.
With attractive visuals to lure me in with the deep mechanics to keep me playing, this is yet another example of a banger arcade racing game. The version featured in the latest Yakuza game is a rebranded version of the "power edition" of this game, which adds some new content like a marathon endurance course combining all 3 tracks together and brings the original daytona car as an option. They also changed the beginner courses scenery from a lush biodome to a generic nascar track and scrubbed out the daytona branding due to licensing, which is lame but it is what it is. A hornet by any other name drives just as fast.
if sega adds scud race to a yakuza game i will personally fly to sega HQ and kiss the entire ryu ga gotuku studio staff
This game basically takes everything that the first Daytona did and continues to do it just as well. 3 courses to drive through with the first basically being a training stage for learning how to drift properly and the other 2 being more interesting race tracks. Drifting in this game is the same as the first; you can do so through either gear shifting or braking and regardless of which option there is quite a high skill ceiling. The visuals are incredible, really leaning into the theme-park attraction style vibes and thrills that come from these kinds of arcade racers, with setpieces that include cities, ice glaciers, haunted houses, canyons, an alien space ship, wide open fields, and a giant rocking pirate ship serving as eye candy to zoom through.
With attractive visuals to lure me in with the deep mechanics to keep me playing, this is yet another example of a banger arcade racing game. The version featured in the latest Yakuza game is a rebranded version of the "power edition" of this game, which adds some new content like a marathon endurance course combining all 3 tracks together and brings the original daytona car as an option. They also changed the beginner courses scenery from a lush biodome to a generic nascar track and scrubbed out the daytona branding due to licensing, which is lame but it is what it is. A hornet by any other name drives just as fast.
if sega adds scud race to a yakuza game i will personally fly to sega HQ and kiss the entire ryu ga gotuku studio staff
2004
Absolutely a game of all time. Weird hodgepodge of different ideas, with hub world city connecting all the levels that you can fly around in, combat that is incredibly stiff, sidequests that feel ripped straight out of the PSO DLC archives, and an overall pacing that ends before it can even really get going. It definitely felt a bit nothing-burger at times, especially with the last few levels that reuse the same corridors and enemy patterns so many times you'd think you were playing P.T.
That is to say though it's really not the worst thing I've ever played. I went in with really low expectations due to hearing how apparently horrendous it was going to be and it really was just your typical licensed anime-tie in video game made by Sonic Team's B-team (I looked up some of the credits on segaretro, the game was mostly made by people that worked on the space channel 5 games than any actual seasoned member of Sonic Team, though one game designer went on to design the levels for Shadow the Hedgehog and it really shows). If I was a kid playing this game I would have had a solid amount of fun just flying around and talking to people so it's got that going for it I guess.
That is to say though it's really not the worst thing I've ever played. I went in with really low expectations due to hearing how apparently horrendous it was going to be and it really was just your typical licensed anime-tie in video game made by Sonic Team's B-team (I looked up some of the credits on segaretro, the game was mostly made by people that worked on the space channel 5 games than any actual seasoned member of Sonic Team, though one game designer went on to design the levels for Shadow the Hedgehog and it really shows). If I was a kid playing this game I would have had a solid amount of fun just flying around and talking to people so it's got that going for it I guess.
(preface: I joined backloggd roughly like in march this year when the course drip feed was in the middle and because of that I thought it would be funny to review the waves individually since there were only like 2 or 3 by then and now there are 6 of those mfers clogging up my played and I don't want to delete them but also want to write about the pass as a whole without just copy pasting all 6 reviews into here so uhhhhh oops)
This was like the most whelming DLC I have ever played for a video game. Not overwhelming or underwhelming, just whelming. What I got was precisely what I expected when I first heard "Mario Kart DLC that doubles the course count for less than half the price of the game, released in waves". Yeah, the visuals took quite a hit in terms of aesthetic consistency, but that's kinda what I expected given the release-wave live-service type structure they decided to crank these courses out through. Doubling the course count definitely gives a fresh breath of air to Mario Kart 8, a game that had grown quite stale to me after the dozens of hours through the past 8-9 years playing on both Wii U and Switch, but something just kinda feels lost in the sauce with this expansion.
One of my favorite things about Mario Kart is the track design and selection, how each course feels less like a racing circuit and more like a theme park ride. Dozens of themed rollercoasters to ride through each with their own gimmicks and setpieces to race through (while obviously avoiding the nonsense that the other drivers throw at you). I feel like the courses in Mario Kart can really shine because of how much polish and effort goes into making each course have its own unique bespoke thrills, and it's the reason why courses from games decades old can still remain fresh in my memory. With this pass taking courses from previous games yet done so in a hasty manner so as not to overvalue the 25 dollar price point as well as to fit in the likely-incredibly-tight wave release deadline schedule meant corners had to be cut, and the polish had to be sanded.
A lot of courses lost most of their core identities from the little things in them that weren't recreated, whether due to janky reinterpretations of features in previous mario kart games that weren't necessarily in 8 like the half pipe boosters, or from conscious track design alterations that make certain courses lose a lot of their edge. You can't fall back down to the earlier part of the track in Choco Mountain. You can't do the cool-ass crevice skipping shortcut in DK mountain anymore. The bob-omb cars in Moonview Highway barely harm you more than an ordinary shell when hit. I think a lot of the changes usually come from courses that were converted multiple times from their original games to something like Mario Kart 7 and then from there to Tour and then from Tour to 8, and it just makes the vibes off just as much on a gameplay level as on an aesthetic level. Which really wouldn't be much of a problem if there weren't already the highly polished original versions of each track that exist as not only a comparison, but really a reference point as how the courses should be.
Luckily it's not all complete vibe-killers, as the blander courses manage to make it out mostly unscathed or even improved, as is the case with various GBA and SNES courses that made the jump. They even managed to shake up a few existing courses like Peach Gardens and Kalamari Desert by changing up the course as the laps go on, leading to a fresh take on familiar ground. Some Mario Kart courses are just impossible to mess up, yanno?
There are also plenty of city-themed courses from Mario Kart Tour that were included, and they were mostly quite uninteresting compared to the rest of the track repertoire. They felt more like courses from the Mario Kart Arcade GP series, where the courses are flat and devoid of many hazards, with setpieces mostly being static background imagery rather than dynamically integrated into the course like a lot of the best Mario Kart tracks. Like, how come we just drive under the Eiffel Tower in the Paris track instead of driving up it in zero-gravity and doing a backflip off the top or something? By making the courses just tour you through a cities landmarks instead of committing to a singular one and theming around it, it makes the city courses just feel like basic tourism propaganda from their respective cities, rather than creatively thought-out Mario Kart tracks.
Lastly they threw in some original courses, and while the highest highs in the entire 48 course lineup can be found here through Ninja Hideaway, Yoshi's Island, and Squeaky Clean Circuit bringing fresh course designs and gimmicks with considerable levels of polish (Yoshi's Island in particular being a fantastic tribute to its source game), there are also some absolute dingers thrown in there. Merry Mountain and Sky High Sundae were some of the most uninspired courses I have ever seen, being mostly static boring ovals with not much to really make them remarkable, and Piranha Plant Cove being kinda just meh all around.
As a whole, despite the fact that now the course count in Mario Kart 8 has doubled from 48 to an impressive 96 tracks to race on, it's reached the point of diminishing returns for me. I guess stale bread is still stale no matter how much sauce you may try to cover it in, especially if that sauce is stuff I had before in the past made by someone who had more time to perfect it. I was originally kinda upset that courses like Airship Fortress and Mushroom City didn't make the cut, but honestly maybe it's for the better they get to keep their swag.
At this point, I want Mario Kart 9 to have a course count closer to older titles. Give me only 16 courses in four cups, but make them the most exciting, creative, goddamn FUN 16 courses they could ever possibly conceive. Quantity can only win out against quality for so long.
This was like the most whelming DLC I have ever played for a video game. Not overwhelming or underwhelming, just whelming. What I got was precisely what I expected when I first heard "Mario Kart DLC that doubles the course count for less than half the price of the game, released in waves". Yeah, the visuals took quite a hit in terms of aesthetic consistency, but that's kinda what I expected given the release-wave live-service type structure they decided to crank these courses out through. Doubling the course count definitely gives a fresh breath of air to Mario Kart 8, a game that had grown quite stale to me after the dozens of hours through the past 8-9 years playing on both Wii U and Switch, but something just kinda feels lost in the sauce with this expansion.
One of my favorite things about Mario Kart is the track design and selection, how each course feels less like a racing circuit and more like a theme park ride. Dozens of themed rollercoasters to ride through each with their own gimmicks and setpieces to race through (while obviously avoiding the nonsense that the other drivers throw at you). I feel like the courses in Mario Kart can really shine because of how much polish and effort goes into making each course have its own unique bespoke thrills, and it's the reason why courses from games decades old can still remain fresh in my memory. With this pass taking courses from previous games yet done so in a hasty manner so as not to overvalue the 25 dollar price point as well as to fit in the likely-incredibly-tight wave release deadline schedule meant corners had to be cut, and the polish had to be sanded.
A lot of courses lost most of their core identities from the little things in them that weren't recreated, whether due to janky reinterpretations of features in previous mario kart games that weren't necessarily in 8 like the half pipe boosters, or from conscious track design alterations that make certain courses lose a lot of their edge. You can't fall back down to the earlier part of the track in Choco Mountain. You can't do the cool-ass crevice skipping shortcut in DK mountain anymore. The bob-omb cars in Moonview Highway barely harm you more than an ordinary shell when hit. I think a lot of the changes usually come from courses that were converted multiple times from their original games to something like Mario Kart 7 and then from there to Tour and then from Tour to 8, and it just makes the vibes off just as much on a gameplay level as on an aesthetic level. Which really wouldn't be much of a problem if there weren't already the highly polished original versions of each track that exist as not only a comparison, but really a reference point as how the courses should be.
Luckily it's not all complete vibe-killers, as the blander courses manage to make it out mostly unscathed or even improved, as is the case with various GBA and SNES courses that made the jump. They even managed to shake up a few existing courses like Peach Gardens and Kalamari Desert by changing up the course as the laps go on, leading to a fresh take on familiar ground. Some Mario Kart courses are just impossible to mess up, yanno?
There are also plenty of city-themed courses from Mario Kart Tour that were included, and they were mostly quite uninteresting compared to the rest of the track repertoire. They felt more like courses from the Mario Kart Arcade GP series, where the courses are flat and devoid of many hazards, with setpieces mostly being static background imagery rather than dynamically integrated into the course like a lot of the best Mario Kart tracks. Like, how come we just drive under the Eiffel Tower in the Paris track instead of driving up it in zero-gravity and doing a backflip off the top or something? By making the courses just tour you through a cities landmarks instead of committing to a singular one and theming around it, it makes the city courses just feel like basic tourism propaganda from their respective cities, rather than creatively thought-out Mario Kart tracks.
Lastly they threw in some original courses, and while the highest highs in the entire 48 course lineup can be found here through Ninja Hideaway, Yoshi's Island, and Squeaky Clean Circuit bringing fresh course designs and gimmicks with considerable levels of polish (Yoshi's Island in particular being a fantastic tribute to its source game), there are also some absolute dingers thrown in there. Merry Mountain and Sky High Sundae were some of the most uninspired courses I have ever seen, being mostly static boring ovals with not much to really make them remarkable, and Piranha Plant Cove being kinda just meh all around.
As a whole, despite the fact that now the course count in Mario Kart 8 has doubled from 48 to an impressive 96 tracks to race on, it's reached the point of diminishing returns for me. I guess stale bread is still stale no matter how much sauce you may try to cover it in, especially if that sauce is stuff I had before in the past made by someone who had more time to perfect it. I was originally kinda upset that courses like Airship Fortress and Mushroom City didn't make the cut, but honestly maybe it's for the better they get to keep their swag.
At this point, I want Mario Kart 9 to have a course count closer to older titles. Give me only 16 courses in four cups, but make them the most exciting, creative, goddamn FUN 16 courses they could ever possibly conceive. Quantity can only win out against quality for so long.
a rather mid end to a rather mid expansion. Pretty much has everything par for the course; bland city courses from tour, safe impossible-to-mess-up picks like daisy circuit and rainbow road wii, a ho-hum original track, and a good track done incredibly dirty (DK mountain did not deserve what it got). Surprisingly the most interesting course was the SNES bowser castle 3 remake, they added tons of neat little new things to make it a fun course to go through.
(why the hell did they skip GCN rainbow road that ones my favorite goddamnit)
(why the hell did they skip GCN rainbow road that ones my favorite goddamnit)
It was neat! Conceptually being a ghost and subtly manipulating the world around you is very cool, and the presentation of it all was really cool. Each level felt like a stage set, with props carefully placed in a way that works both aesthetically with the world as well as functionally as tools you can use to move around and do things. The use of basic 3D models from a distance makes the game look and move really damn good on the DS, though I bet the HD remaster scales everything up nicely too.
I do have a few personal qualms with the game tho. The story was okay, but didn't really grasp me all too much. I expected the game to be a lot more hands-off with its narrative structure, without much direct dialogue interaction with the other characters in the story (considering, yanno, ur a ghost), but eventually each of the characters gets the ability to talk directly with you and then it just kinda becomes more of a standard adventure game at that point? idk I might just be weird in expecting that kind of thing out of something like this, I thought it was going to be more of a passive narrative I guess. There were also a handful of twists that didn't hit me the way I assumed the writers were going for, with big reveals leaving me scratching my head going "huh." rather than the likely intended mind blown reaction.
The gameplay is much more focused about timing and space than your usual adventure game fare, which makes the game much more dynamic and puzzley. There are some solid a-ha moments that I had throughout, though unfortunately due to the timing-based nature of a lot of the puzzles, there were a lot of situations where my simple mistakes/curiosity screwed me over and I had to restart. The puzzles really aren't that long in the grand scheme of things but I did find the restarting kinda annoying over time.
The game is cool. It's got character, it's got style, it's unique, and I understand why it's such a cult classic with such high praise from fans (hell, look at the average user score here!). It just didn't click with me the same way in the grand scheme of things I guess. I'm not too big on adventure games in general, and I was also quite neutral on the Ace Attorney games, so maybe it's just me. Can't win em all, I guess.
Memry is peak character design, I love this chicken girl on skates and she needs her own game ASAP
I do have a few personal qualms with the game tho. The story was okay, but didn't really grasp me all too much. I expected the game to be a lot more hands-off with its narrative structure, without much direct dialogue interaction with the other characters in the story (considering, yanno, ur a ghost), but eventually each of the characters gets the ability to talk directly with you and then it just kinda becomes more of a standard adventure game at that point? idk I might just be weird in expecting that kind of thing out of something like this, I thought it was going to be more of a passive narrative I guess. There were also a handful of twists that didn't hit me the way I assumed the writers were going for, with big reveals leaving me scratching my head going "huh." rather than the likely intended mind blown reaction.
The gameplay is much more focused about timing and space than your usual adventure game fare, which makes the game much more dynamic and puzzley. There are some solid a-ha moments that I had throughout, though unfortunately due to the timing-based nature of a lot of the puzzles, there were a lot of situations where my simple mistakes/curiosity screwed me over and I had to restart. The puzzles really aren't that long in the grand scheme of things but I did find the restarting kinda annoying over time.
The game is cool. It's got character, it's got style, it's unique, and I understand why it's such a cult classic with such high praise from fans (hell, look at the average user score here!). It just didn't click with me the same way in the grand scheme of things I guess. I'm not too big on adventure games in general, and I was also quite neutral on the Ace Attorney games, so maybe it's just me. Can't win em all, I guess.
Memry is peak character design, I love this chicken girl on skates and she needs her own game ASAP
1989
its got all the foundations of a good compile shmup with high speed, hella weapons to mix and match with, and tons of stuff onscreen, but the overall balance is godawful. The upgraded powerups are so broken that levels 1-6 are practically braindead to go through even for someone who is ass at this games like me, with level 7 being a slight challenge, 8 actually being a really solidly fun challenge and 9 being an absolute rocket punch in the dick. I'm talking "lose all 20 lives you've been piling up from the easy-ass first two thirds of the game in minutes" levels of brutal at the end.
I feel like part of the appeal of shmups (and difficult retro games as a whole, really) is watching that slow skill progression through restarting the game at the end of every bad run, with game familiarity allowin ya to not only get to the part you last died at more quickly, but also usually with more lives/continues/just generally better odds at winning. This games pacing really doesn't allow me to experience something like that, as the piss easy nature of the first 2/3rds of the game makes it so that my punishment for getting pot shotted on level 9 and losing all my powerups is having to replay the stupid boring ass first 30-45 minutes that I already mastered on my first run all over again.
For a 1989 game it def is impressive on a technical and game feel level but I guess compile still hadn't gotten proper pacing down by this point. Honestly if they cut out the first 3 levels and put a few more powerups in level 9 to make death at least somewhat recoverable, this'd be a banger.
I feel like part of the appeal of shmups (and difficult retro games as a whole, really) is watching that slow skill progression through restarting the game at the end of every bad run, with game familiarity allowin ya to not only get to the part you last died at more quickly, but also usually with more lives/continues/just generally better odds at winning. This games pacing really doesn't allow me to experience something like that, as the piss easy nature of the first 2/3rds of the game makes it so that my punishment for getting pot shotted on level 9 and losing all my powerups is having to replay the stupid boring ass first 30-45 minutes that I already mastered on my first run all over again.
For a 1989 game it def is impressive on a technical and game feel level but I guess compile still hadn't gotten proper pacing down by this point. Honestly if they cut out the first 3 levels and put a few more powerups in level 9 to make death at least somewhat recoverable, this'd be a banger.
1988
It's arcade Tetris, but with Sega behind the wheel. Compared to other Tetris games of this vintage, it's honestly aged quite decently, mostly due to the lock delay making this game not have that "sticky" feeling that plague various old Tetris games. The pieces are still random, though one interesting thing about this particular version of Tetris is that the game uses the same predetermined RNG seed for blocks getting pulled, which means that the same order of blocks will show up every time the game is powered on for the first time. The game also has a very funky BGM track, crunchy 16-bit JPEG backgrounds for each level, and a game over monke, which makes it feel unique from the more blocky aesthetics of other Tetris games. Apparently the improved game control combined with the social aspect of figuring out the optimal way to play using the power-on pattern made this game quite popular in Japanese arcades. Since I wasn't a Japanese arcade-goer in the late 1980s I can't personally confirm whether that's really true, but given this games solid quality and the fact that its mfin Tetris, I'd believe it. Japanese-developed Tetris games usually used the mechanics from this game as a base, including the ever-popular TGM series, so if that doesn't prove this games solid quality, idk what could.
(also lol the screenshots for this on IGDB are for atari tetris, too bad im too lazy to change it)
(also lol the screenshots for this on IGDB are for atari tetris, too bad im too lazy to change it)
2020
Probably one of the most unnecessary sequels to ever exist. Puyo puyo tetris 1 had one goal in combining the gameplay of puyo puyo and tetris together and they pretty much executed it flawlessly on the first go. So this is pretty much just more of that. There are a handful of new game modes and all of them are very gimmicky and didn't interest me that much. The new story mode was inoffensive, though I think the localization focused a bit too much on making the dialog quirky and comedic which was eh. At least it has dual audio on all the versions instead of just PC, thank christ.
I feel like your enjoyment on this depends entirely on how much of the first game you have played. If you haven't played it, then this has more characters and game modes to make it worth going for. But really it's pretty much the exact same game as its predecessor all over again.
I feel like your enjoyment on this depends entirely on how much of the first game you have played. If you haven't played it, then this has more characters and game modes to make it worth going for. But really it's pretty much the exact same game as its predecessor all over again.
Aight, so this is definitely a horny game, and obviously your enjoyment is going to vary depending on how much you can enjoy that kind of thing. If you are the type of person that thinks this kinda thing is degenerate/objectifying then yea nothing this game does is gonna change that opinion. But like, idk man playing this 20 years after the fact it's kinda a vibe? hear me out
In todays day and age, I feel like a lot of horny shit has fallen to the blatant and trashy side of things. Should you feel so inclined, you could use the very web browser you are reading this review on right now to delve into all sorts of dubiously degenerate shit from probably millions of sources. Hell, even strictly staying to the console game sphere there's all sorts of "Sakura Succubus 4"s and "Hentai Girls 8"s clogging up digital storefronts on stuff like the switch and Playstation, degen shit is out there. There's also comparatively higher budget shit like the Senran Kagura and Hyperdimension Neptunia series that hit that degen sphere, hell even the later sequels to this game crank up the trash dial with all the different ports and versions of DOAX3 out there. And that's not even considering all the actual eroge/nukige that are on PC. What I mean to say by all of this is that compared to how things are now, DOAX1 is really honestly quite tame, to the point where I feel like I could hardly even call it a trashy guilty pleasure game anymore.
Maybe it's the games self-awareness and goofiness in its plot, as it's just Zack inviting all the DOA girls over to play volleyball on a vacation island he happened to winbefore it explodes into a million pieces at the end. Maybe it's the aesthetic design being solid, with clear, crisp sunny beaches with sparkling water and bright blue skies accompanied by the most 2000s ass ska/reggae summery music you ever could find. The areas have the same high attention to detail and level of polish that the stages in the main DOA games contain. There are a lot of moments where the game basically gives you a free-cam to zoom in and look at whatever is on the screen, and while it's definitely designed to peep on some polygonal xbox goochie, I honestly found myself using it to look at the environments more than the girls.
The actual gameplay is kinda eh though. Half the time you are playing volleyball with the girls, the other half you are blowing away your life savings at the casino. There's also this lite-social sim aspect to it in that you can talk to other characters and give them presents in order for them to play volleyball with you, but it's all quite shallow. The point of the game really isn't so much in the gameplay, so honestly its whatever.
So like yeah. It's horny, but not aggressively so. I'm honestly rather impressed. They cared equally as much towards making a game that captures a summer vacation vibe as they did towards making an early coomercore console game. It may still basically be softcore porn at the end of the day, but damn is it some vibin softcore porn. I earnestly can't hate it. Sasuga itagaki.
really this games opening says more about it than I ever could, so just watch that.
In todays day and age, I feel like a lot of horny shit has fallen to the blatant and trashy side of things. Should you feel so inclined, you could use the very web browser you are reading this review on right now to delve into all sorts of dubiously degenerate shit from probably millions of sources. Hell, even strictly staying to the console game sphere there's all sorts of "Sakura Succubus 4"s and "Hentai Girls 8"s clogging up digital storefronts on stuff like the switch and Playstation, degen shit is out there. There's also comparatively higher budget shit like the Senran Kagura and Hyperdimension Neptunia series that hit that degen sphere, hell even the later sequels to this game crank up the trash dial with all the different ports and versions of DOAX3 out there. And that's not even considering all the actual eroge/nukige that are on PC. What I mean to say by all of this is that compared to how things are now, DOAX1 is really honestly quite tame, to the point where I feel like I could hardly even call it a trashy guilty pleasure game anymore.
Maybe it's the games self-awareness and goofiness in its plot, as it's just Zack inviting all the DOA girls over to play volleyball on a vacation island he happened to win
The actual gameplay is kinda eh though. Half the time you are playing volleyball with the girls, the other half you are blowing away your life savings at the casino. There's also this lite-social sim aspect to it in that you can talk to other characters and give them presents in order for them to play volleyball with you, but it's all quite shallow. The point of the game really isn't so much in the gameplay, so honestly its whatever.
So like yeah. It's horny, but not aggressively so. I'm honestly rather impressed. They cared equally as much towards making a game that captures a summer vacation vibe as they did towards making an early coomercore console game. It may still basically be softcore porn at the end of the day, but damn is it some vibin softcore porn. I earnestly can't hate it. Sasuga itagaki.
really this games opening says more about it than I ever could, so just watch that.
WE ARE SO FUCKING BACK.
After YEARS OF SLUMBER (five months), the weather has cooled enough for me to continue where I left off in playing some good ol' DDR, and coincidentally I just recently finished the banger that is tokimeki memorial 2, so this game being both a DDR game and a tokimemo spinoff that stars miyuki, bro the stars have aligned for me to play this.
Being a spinoff game focusing on the very small 2-week period that is summer break, this game is more of a VN rather than your simulator-y stat-growth time-management beats that are in the main game. The main bulk of gameplay is done through dialogue choices and the occasional round of DDR. The plot basically consists of Miyuki wanting to play some DDR with you at the arcade, where by playing she accidentally manages to do an all-perfect FC and get scouted to a local DDR tournament. In reality, she sucks at DDR and it's up to YOU to not only train her to not entirely embarass herself at the tournament, but also convince either Yae or Miho to be her partner. Hilarity ensues. Considering the fact this game is a much more straight-laced VN, there's not much else I can say in the gameplay department.
My only minor complaints with the game are that in the entirety of the main scenario there's only one song that you play over and over and over again on the basic difficulty, with the final song being the same song on Another difficulty. I get drilling one song over and over again to get better at it is part of the DDR gitting gud experience that this game seeks to portray, AND the one song is sung by Donna Burke of Metal Gear fame, but the repetition gets a bit old and the sudden difficulty jump at the end def caught me off guard a little bit. I also wish there was a way to actually play DDR with the characters themselves as player 2, as you can watch them play or play yourself, but never really both. If I could play DDR with tokimemo characters, my life would have been complete right then and there, but alas, some things are not meant to be. It is certainly amusing to play through an entire VN with a DDR pad, ngl.
What else do I really need to say? Tokimemo 2 is based, DDR is based, combine the two and I'm a happy man. It def is weird hearing the characters mention DDR by name though. Like I get that its all konami so there's really no issue, but it's still strange. Completing a run unlocks the full DDR TokimekiMix game to be played, which has 6 bonus songs to play through from previous tokimemo games. It honestly is a good way to slowly get me back and acclimated to the ol' mat again.
i miss when konami was good
After YEARS OF SLUMBER (five months), the weather has cooled enough for me to continue where I left off in playing some good ol' DDR, and coincidentally I just recently finished the banger that is tokimeki memorial 2, so this game being both a DDR game and a tokimemo spinoff that stars miyuki, bro the stars have aligned for me to play this.
Being a spinoff game focusing on the very small 2-week period that is summer break, this game is more of a VN rather than your simulator-y stat-growth time-management beats that are in the main game. The main bulk of gameplay is done through dialogue choices and the occasional round of DDR. The plot basically consists of Miyuki wanting to play some DDR with you at the arcade, where by playing she accidentally manages to do an all-perfect FC and get scouted to a local DDR tournament. In reality, she sucks at DDR and it's up to YOU to not only train her to not entirely embarass herself at the tournament, but also convince either Yae or Miho to be her partner. Hilarity ensues. Considering the fact this game is a much more straight-laced VN, there's not much else I can say in the gameplay department.
My only minor complaints with the game are that in the entirety of the main scenario there's only one song that you play over and over and over again on the basic difficulty, with the final song being the same song on Another difficulty. I get drilling one song over and over again to get better at it is part of the DDR gitting gud experience that this game seeks to portray, AND the one song is sung by Donna Burke of Metal Gear fame, but the repetition gets a bit old and the sudden difficulty jump at the end def caught me off guard a little bit. I also wish there was a way to actually play DDR with the characters themselves as player 2, as you can watch them play or play yourself, but never really both. If I could play DDR with tokimemo characters, my life would have been complete right then and there, but alas, some things are not meant to be. It is certainly amusing to play through an entire VN with a DDR pad, ngl.
What else do I really need to say? Tokimemo 2 is based, DDR is based, combine the two and I'm a happy man. It def is weird hearing the characters mention DDR by name though. Like I get that its all konami so there's really no issue, but it's still strange. Completing a run unlocks the full DDR TokimekiMix game to be played, which has 6 bonus songs to play through from previous tokimemo games. It honestly is a good way to slowly get me back and acclimated to the ol' mat again.
i miss when konami was good
1994
ah. there's the bad. we don't go to tolemac.
After being actually thoroughly impressed by how not-actually-shit the animation magic zelda CD-i games were, I went into this one with meager standards. Not as many people talk about this game, which I presumably thought was just because it didn't have the funny uncanny animation that the animation magic games had. In actuality it might just be because not many people can actually stomach playing something like this.
Zelda 1 is the main source of inspo for this game, which is a much more logical game to source from than the castlevania/ghosts n goblins beats that the animation magic games were trying to go for. There's a big overworld with 7 dungeons scattered with various NPCs that say various clues/directions to where to go. Even things like the sound that plays when you die and the misspelled enemy names mirror zelda 1. I think you can do the dungeons in any order but the game is kind of structured in a particular way that emphasizes a specific order to go through things in, I didn't try to sequence break in my journey. The overworld in this game is significantly larger than zelda 1s, and is in a much more fragmented shape than the big block that was the zelda 1 map. There also aren't that many secrets locked to items like bombs or fire that zelda 1 had, most items in the overworld are just usually lying there or in a cave or smthn. Moving through the large overworld is incredibly slow, as it takes roughly 3-4 seconds for the CD-i to load the next map space. It makes getting anywhere a real patience tester and given how you spawn near the bottom left corner of the whole map, hopefully there isn't anything you need to do in the top right corner if you die. Hopefully it gets a PS5 port, it could really benefit from that SSD. I did discover that the compass items work as fast travel buttons WAY too late in the game, so don't be me and use that shit should you choose to play this.
The gameplay is also kinda wack. My biggest complaint with the game boy zelda games was the constant item swapping due to the system only having 4 usable buttons, and this game laughs in the game boys face and halves the amount of usable buttons. There's an item button and a menu button. If you want to do anything you need to load up the menu and switch to the appropriate item, which even includes equipping yourrupees rubies for the instances where you want to buy anything. Considering the fact this game has an assload of different items and WEAPONS to equip, the one button does get in the way quite frequently. There are also various enemies in the game that are only weak to one specific arbitrary weapon in the game that you may or may not even have at that point in time, so do yourself a favor and play with a guide to know who is weak to what instead of swapping around every weapon you have constantly to hopefully find out what actually does damage. Oh, and using weapons outside of your sword wand costs money so make sure to collect all those rubies!!!! Or don't anyways because the hitbox for the wand is broken and can hit things a mile away when positioned properly!!! The dungeons are also very strange. They start out very okay-ly with basic puzzles and confusing non-Euclidean design, but very very quickly just become linear hallways of fighting enemies. It's as if they wanted to make more interesting dungeon designs, but for some reason couldn't past the first like two.
But all that I've talked about above isn't the real interesting thing about this game. Aesthetically this shit is fucking strange, man. It goes for the pre-rendered-real-people approach that a solid amount of games of this vintage do (especially on CD systems), but just how uncanny it all looks for this game specifically is the real icing on the cake. There's pretty much no music in the game, with ambient noises and sound effects taking up most of the soundstage. Rather than communicating through text boxes, all the NPCs voice their dialog to you with writing and vocal performances that skirt the line between making the characters seem "real" and continuing to make them be video game NPCs, and the enemies make realistic snarls when around and unfittingly grunt when attacked. The worlds look less like real photos and more like an uncanny collage of real assets photoshopped together in a way that make the game look like those photorealistic minecraft texture packs, or like those bizarre spot what books I had as a kid. It reaches its absolute peak in uncanniness with the second dungeon taking place in this fucked up circus tent with all sorts of weird rooms that look like close-ups of a sand castle surrounded in cardboard, and seeing the Wallmasters as giant photorealistic severed green hands is horrifying. All of it just leads to make a game that feels incredibly unnerving to play, as you are isolated in this soundless, fucked up realm of "nature". I haven't played it, but I'd imagine virtual hydlide has a similar aesthetic feel. The visuals also cause a lot of directional problems, as it's not ever entirely clear what's in the foreground and what isn't, what terrains are traversable and what isn't, and what dark spots are just shadows rather than enterable caves. Despite the uncanniness and lack of visual clarity, it still is an aesthetic I quite enjoyed due to its bizarreness. Maybe I just have a thing for uncanny photoshop hodgepodges, who knows. It's certainly more unnerving than any goofy off-model cutscene the animation magic games had, that's for sure.
Anyways, yeah. A super bizarre experience through and through. I don't really regret having played it but definitely wouldn't recommend. My CD-i has a cooked save battery so I actually had to rush a bit through this, and even still had to leave it on overnight to play in two sessions without losing my progress. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more had I been able to save and take more of my own time, but thems the brakes sometimes when it comes to using 30+ year old hardware. The bizarre aesthetics and charitably-described-as-lukewarm gameplay and design definitely line up with the CD-i, alright. If a fucked up bizzaro zelda game sounds like something you'd enjoy, then go off, but otherwise you might want to just stick to the funny meme games if you want to play a CD-i zelda.
But hey! I finished all the CD-i zelda games!!! They were more interesting than bad!!! Do I at least get a T-shirt or something?
After being actually thoroughly impressed by how not-actually-shit the animation magic zelda CD-i games were, I went into this one with meager standards. Not as many people talk about this game, which I presumably thought was just because it didn't have the funny uncanny animation that the animation magic games had. In actuality it might just be because not many people can actually stomach playing something like this.
Zelda 1 is the main source of inspo for this game, which is a much more logical game to source from than the castlevania/ghosts n goblins beats that the animation magic games were trying to go for. There's a big overworld with 7 dungeons scattered with various NPCs that say various clues/directions to where to go. Even things like the sound that plays when you die and the misspelled enemy names mirror zelda 1. I think you can do the dungeons in any order but the game is kind of structured in a particular way that emphasizes a specific order to go through things in, I didn't try to sequence break in my journey. The overworld in this game is significantly larger than zelda 1s, and is in a much more fragmented shape than the big block that was the zelda 1 map. There also aren't that many secrets locked to items like bombs or fire that zelda 1 had, most items in the overworld are just usually lying there or in a cave or smthn. Moving through the large overworld is incredibly slow, as it takes roughly 3-4 seconds for the CD-i to load the next map space. It makes getting anywhere a real patience tester and given how you spawn near the bottom left corner of the whole map, hopefully there isn't anything you need to do in the top right corner if you die. Hopefully it gets a PS5 port, it could really benefit from that SSD. I did discover that the compass items work as fast travel buttons WAY too late in the game, so don't be me and use that shit should you choose to play this.
The gameplay is also kinda wack. My biggest complaint with the game boy zelda games was the constant item swapping due to the system only having 4 usable buttons, and this game laughs in the game boys face and halves the amount of usable buttons. There's an item button and a menu button. If you want to do anything you need to load up the menu and switch to the appropriate item, which even includes equipping your
But all that I've talked about above isn't the real interesting thing about this game. Aesthetically this shit is fucking strange, man. It goes for the pre-rendered-real-people approach that a solid amount of games of this vintage do (especially on CD systems), but just how uncanny it all looks for this game specifically is the real icing on the cake. There's pretty much no music in the game, with ambient noises and sound effects taking up most of the soundstage. Rather than communicating through text boxes, all the NPCs voice their dialog to you with writing and vocal performances that skirt the line between making the characters seem "real" and continuing to make them be video game NPCs, and the enemies make realistic snarls when around and unfittingly grunt when attacked. The worlds look less like real photos and more like an uncanny collage of real assets photoshopped together in a way that make the game look like those photorealistic minecraft texture packs, or like those bizarre spot what books I had as a kid. It reaches its absolute peak in uncanniness with the second dungeon taking place in this fucked up circus tent with all sorts of weird rooms that look like close-ups of a sand castle surrounded in cardboard, and seeing the Wallmasters as giant photorealistic severed green hands is horrifying. All of it just leads to make a game that feels incredibly unnerving to play, as you are isolated in this soundless, fucked up realm of "nature". I haven't played it, but I'd imagine virtual hydlide has a similar aesthetic feel. The visuals also cause a lot of directional problems, as it's not ever entirely clear what's in the foreground and what isn't, what terrains are traversable and what isn't, and what dark spots are just shadows rather than enterable caves. Despite the uncanniness and lack of visual clarity, it still is an aesthetic I quite enjoyed due to its bizarreness. Maybe I just have a thing for uncanny photoshop hodgepodges, who knows. It's certainly more unnerving than any goofy off-model cutscene the animation magic games had, that's for sure.
Anyways, yeah. A super bizarre experience through and through. I don't really regret having played it but definitely wouldn't recommend. My CD-i has a cooked save battery so I actually had to rush a bit through this, and even still had to leave it on overnight to play in two sessions without losing my progress. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more had I been able to save and take more of my own time, but thems the brakes sometimes when it comes to using 30+ year old hardware. The bizarre aesthetics and charitably-described-as-lukewarm gameplay and design definitely line up with the CD-i, alright. If a fucked up bizzaro zelda game sounds like something you'd enjoy, then go off, but otherwise you might want to just stick to the funny meme games if you want to play a CD-i zelda.
But hey! I finished all the CD-i zelda games!!! They were more interesting than bad!!! Do I at least get a T-shirt or something?
More like Kirby and the Stupid-Ass 12-year Wait. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. This shit is personal. Buckle up.
Going through the mainline kirby games this was the one title that always eluded me due to the fact I really started playing these games on the DS instead of the GBA and never could really find a copy back when I was a kid. I would only look at it through stuff like the kirby wiki, the museum and history book in kirby's dream collection, and various internet comments reminicing on how the GBA kirby games were the peak of the series in terms of game feel. When they announced it was going to be on the 3DS through the ambassador program, I was extremely excited to play the one mainline sidescrolling kirby game that I never had before at that point.
As I played for the first time those 10+ years ago, I was confused. Where were the levels? Why I am I going in circles? What's up with all these other kirbys that just bumble around? Where do I go? I think I accidentally skipped the intro cutscene when I first played because I felt like I was thrown in with NO idea what was going on. Unbeknownst to me, this game has levels structured in this large open world where you need to explore and find all the bosses to get all the mirror pieces. It's structured entirely differently from any other mainline kirby game, for better or for worse, and the in-game map isn't really the most obvious. Espically for 11-12 year old me. Combine that with the several unmarked one-way doors, and I was just kind of running around in circles on my first go, eventually dropping the game MAYBE halfway through, if that.
Fast forward a few years. In trying to get every US kirby game as a collector goal (in the times where collecting games definitely wasn't cheap, but was still in the realm of affordability to be a hobby, but that's a whole other rant for a whole other day), this game was the last game I needed to complete the set. The first copy of the game I got literally didn't work because it had what I assume to be black sticky tar on the inside back of the cartridge. Perhaps it was an omen that this game is just cursed, but I eventually got a second copy that actually worked on the actual GBA. I give it a play, knowing a bit more about what I was going to get myself into. In still getting as completely lost as before, I realized that the core problem must be the fact that the large open world is designed to be explored jointly with up to 3 friends, creating a much more social kirby experience as everyone explores a giant open world together, calling out what they find, and working to uncover all the level secrets. I knew that if I were to truly experience this game, I would need to get 3 friends.
So I bought a GBA link cable and asked around. By this point in time, it was the mid-late 2010s. Nobody had GBAs. Nobody had copies of this game. The period of time where you could concievably get a consistent group of people to play this had LONG since gone. Eventually, more time passed, I graduated from high school, my friends and I went our distant ways, and getting a group of people to play through this game went on to be a sort of bucket-list thing. I would find a way to play this in its entirety with 3 other people. If only someone made a GBA emulator that supported netplay...
And then it happened. When they announced that switch online was getting GBA support, This was the one title on my mind. When I saw it on that sizzle reel of upcoming supported games, that was my nintendo direct hype moment™. So I waited the extra few months or so for them to actually drip feed this game out, and when it finally arrived, I knew it was kirby time. Surely the various qualms I had with the game could be mitigated when divided up between 4 players, right?
WRONG!
(so firstly I have to get this out of the way because its not inherently the games fault. I was playing with one person on wifi with satellite internet and one person in Japan whereas the rest of us are in the US, so the connection was awful. Inputs pretty much took an entire ass second to register, but we soldiered on despite the many, many, MANY, problems that the poor netcode caused. The game also had a lot of periods where there would be a tangible amount of slowdown, and since the audio itself wasn't also slowing down I'm not sure if that's actually something that happens on the actual GBA hardware, but honestly for the benefit of the doubt I'm going to assume that was also a connection quality thing.) ANYWAYS
In a 4-person game, there are a few benefits and there are a few downsides. On the positive, the cell phone is actually a really cool feature. Provided you have enough battery, you can call your friends and teleport them exactly to where you are. It's helpful in situations where you need a specific ability, so you can have a friend get what you need and call them over to where you might be stuck, or if you need to solve a puzzle that requires multiple people. It also is handy if you need backup in a fight against a boss or mini-boss. The only problem about the cell phone is the fact that its super easy to teleport around between your friends doing stuff that it makes it even easier to lose track of where you are supposed to go. There were several times where I was doing something then got completely sidetracked by another player needing an ability I was close to, or help on a miniboss I had already fought. The game keeps track of which doors have been went through already between all players, and since everyone is bumblefucking around on their own, its easy to accidentally be wandering around in an area where someone else already wandered in The in-game map is still nowhere near as helpful as it needs to be for a game of this kind of calibre, though the confusing aspect of it was the least of our concerns. Oh my god, the map. Despite the fact that every player has their own bespoke screen with their own bespoke game boys doing their own bespoke thing, if ANYONE presses the map button, EVERYONE gets disrupted to see it. And even when it is showing for everyone, all players have to be looking at the same part of the map, theres no way for one player to look at one area while another person looks at another. It's like if you were in class and if one person has to take a piss everyone has to go get up and head out until they were done. Because of how disruptive it is for everyone to be checking the map so goddamn much, we'd all eventually just stop trying to use it as not to piss anyone else off, but then that just meant we were all wandering around aimlessly in circles again!!!!!!! The ability design doesn't work at all for this kind of game either!!! Losing your ability after getting hit makes sense in a linear style of game like kirby's adventure, but here where abilities have a more utilitary purpose, it gets incredibly annoying having to try and avoid touching a single obstacle just so you can keep the burning ability that can break iron blocks, or the hammer that can pound pikes. People like to describe this game as a "metroidvania" due to its non-linear structure, but then it'd be like playing metroid but every time you get hit you lose your upgrades and have to scramble around to get them back before they disappear. Don't even think about trying to get your ability back with friends dude, if everyone is getting hit everyones gonna be accidentally taking other players abilities and passing that shit around like its fucking chicken pox. Again, the phone can mitigate the ability problems (they are a lot worse in single player where you can't rely on other players), but the problems are still there. If they made it so that you could take 2 or 3 hits before dropping your ability, things would have been signifcantly better. Being careful not to get hit is also a lot harder when playing through molasses connections... The game also has all these dead-end "goal" areas scattered throughout the levels that do nothing besides net a couple of extra lives and send you all the way back to the starting area, which feels like its deliberately punishing the player for exploring because they weren't exploring in the right direction. The whole game just feels contradictory and not really well thought out. It wants you and your friends to explore a world but doesn't give the correct tools to do so, makes looking at resources for directions annoying, and punishes going the wrong way despite there not being any direction to begin with. Like they thought to make a multiplayer kirby game with a big explorable world then just kinda shrugged off the execution and instead just made a linear kirby game but with all the doors linked to one another in a confusing fashion. The level design genuinely feels like it takes cues from more obtuse non-euclidean experimental famicom and game boy games. This shit is the Atlantis no Nazo of the kirby series. (though definitely not as egregious.) Oh, and the final boss has 6 phases with only one player getting the easy-to-lose master ability to actually do any meaningful semblance of damage. Try doing that shit with a wifi warrior. If me and my pals didn't discover you could cheese life grinding by using the phone constantly at the goal areas, I think some of the players I got for the journey wouldn't have stuck around to see the ending.
Overall, yeah. Not very fun by yourself, not very much better with friends. One star is certainly harsh and the game has the amount of polish and misplaced ambition to it that I'd normally give something like this a two, but fuck man. I waited over a decade to play this, thinking it was going to be this really cool multiplayer experience lost to time finally come back. In order to have a smooth multiplayer experience, you either need friends that live close-by that still have GBAs and copies of the game around or friends with switches and actually good internet. Both of which are equally impossible for me unfortunately. I do think it also brings up the importance of having good netcode when it comes to things like this, as while it makes these old games all the more accessible for multiplayer, it can compromise the actual play experience and misrepresent how the multiplayer for these titles actually was meant to be played. If they waited a bit and made this for the DS, where it was a bit easier to get multiplayer game sessions going and they could have used the bottom screen to do an actually competent map, then they could have had something really cool. Flagship coulda made squeak squad for GBA and this for DS. They did it backwards, dammit. Not the worst game I've ever played but the actual game is bleh made all the much worse by my personal expectations and bad connection. At least it's off that bucket list...
Going through the mainline kirby games this was the one title that always eluded me due to the fact I really started playing these games on the DS instead of the GBA and never could really find a copy back when I was a kid. I would only look at it through stuff like the kirby wiki, the museum and history book in kirby's dream collection, and various internet comments reminicing on how the GBA kirby games were the peak of the series in terms of game feel. When they announced it was going to be on the 3DS through the ambassador program, I was extremely excited to play the one mainline sidescrolling kirby game that I never had before at that point.
As I played for the first time those 10+ years ago, I was confused. Where were the levels? Why I am I going in circles? What's up with all these other kirbys that just bumble around? Where do I go? I think I accidentally skipped the intro cutscene when I first played because I felt like I was thrown in with NO idea what was going on. Unbeknownst to me, this game has levels structured in this large open world where you need to explore and find all the bosses to get all the mirror pieces. It's structured entirely differently from any other mainline kirby game, for better or for worse, and the in-game map isn't really the most obvious. Espically for 11-12 year old me. Combine that with the several unmarked one-way doors, and I was just kind of running around in circles on my first go, eventually dropping the game MAYBE halfway through, if that.
Fast forward a few years. In trying to get every US kirby game as a collector goal (in the times where collecting games definitely wasn't cheap, but was still in the realm of affordability to be a hobby, but that's a whole other rant for a whole other day), this game was the last game I needed to complete the set. The first copy of the game I got literally didn't work because it had what I assume to be black sticky tar on the inside back of the cartridge. Perhaps it was an omen that this game is just cursed, but I eventually got a second copy that actually worked on the actual GBA. I give it a play, knowing a bit more about what I was going to get myself into. In still getting as completely lost as before, I realized that the core problem must be the fact that the large open world is designed to be explored jointly with up to 3 friends, creating a much more social kirby experience as everyone explores a giant open world together, calling out what they find, and working to uncover all the level secrets. I knew that if I were to truly experience this game, I would need to get 3 friends.
So I bought a GBA link cable and asked around. By this point in time, it was the mid-late 2010s. Nobody had GBAs. Nobody had copies of this game. The period of time where you could concievably get a consistent group of people to play this had LONG since gone. Eventually, more time passed, I graduated from high school, my friends and I went our distant ways, and getting a group of people to play through this game went on to be a sort of bucket-list thing. I would find a way to play this in its entirety with 3 other people. If only someone made a GBA emulator that supported netplay...
And then it happened. When they announced that switch online was getting GBA support, This was the one title on my mind. When I saw it on that sizzle reel of upcoming supported games, that was my nintendo direct hype moment™. So I waited the extra few months or so for them to actually drip feed this game out, and when it finally arrived, I knew it was kirby time. Surely the various qualms I had with the game could be mitigated when divided up between 4 players, right?
WRONG!
(so firstly I have to get this out of the way because its not inherently the games fault. I was playing with one person on wifi with satellite internet and one person in Japan whereas the rest of us are in the US, so the connection was awful. Inputs pretty much took an entire ass second to register, but we soldiered on despite the many, many, MANY, problems that the poor netcode caused. The game also had a lot of periods where there would be a tangible amount of slowdown, and since the audio itself wasn't also slowing down I'm not sure if that's actually something that happens on the actual GBA hardware, but honestly for the benefit of the doubt I'm going to assume that was also a connection quality thing.) ANYWAYS
In a 4-person game, there are a few benefits and there are a few downsides. On the positive, the cell phone is actually a really cool feature. Provided you have enough battery, you can call your friends and teleport them exactly to where you are. It's helpful in situations where you need a specific ability, so you can have a friend get what you need and call them over to where you might be stuck, or if you need to solve a puzzle that requires multiple people. It also is handy if you need backup in a fight against a boss or mini-boss. The only problem about the cell phone is the fact that its super easy to teleport around between your friends doing stuff that it makes it even easier to lose track of where you are supposed to go. There were several times where I was doing something then got completely sidetracked by another player needing an ability I was close to, or help on a miniboss I had already fought. The game keeps track of which doors have been went through already between all players, and since everyone is bumblefucking around on their own, its easy to accidentally be wandering around in an area where someone else already wandered in The in-game map is still nowhere near as helpful as it needs to be for a game of this kind of calibre, though the confusing aspect of it was the least of our concerns. Oh my god, the map. Despite the fact that every player has their own bespoke screen with their own bespoke game boys doing their own bespoke thing, if ANYONE presses the map button, EVERYONE gets disrupted to see it. And even when it is showing for everyone, all players have to be looking at the same part of the map, theres no way for one player to look at one area while another person looks at another. It's like if you were in class and if one person has to take a piss everyone has to go get up and head out until they were done. Because of how disruptive it is for everyone to be checking the map so goddamn much, we'd all eventually just stop trying to use it as not to piss anyone else off, but then that just meant we were all wandering around aimlessly in circles again!!!!!!! The ability design doesn't work at all for this kind of game either!!! Losing your ability after getting hit makes sense in a linear style of game like kirby's adventure, but here where abilities have a more utilitary purpose, it gets incredibly annoying having to try and avoid touching a single obstacle just so you can keep the burning ability that can break iron blocks, or the hammer that can pound pikes. People like to describe this game as a "metroidvania" due to its non-linear structure, but then it'd be like playing metroid but every time you get hit you lose your upgrades and have to scramble around to get them back before they disappear. Don't even think about trying to get your ability back with friends dude, if everyone is getting hit everyones gonna be accidentally taking other players abilities and passing that shit around like its fucking chicken pox. Again, the phone can mitigate the ability problems (they are a lot worse in single player where you can't rely on other players), but the problems are still there. If they made it so that you could take 2 or 3 hits before dropping your ability, things would have been signifcantly better. Being careful not to get hit is also a lot harder when playing through molasses connections... The game also has all these dead-end "goal" areas scattered throughout the levels that do nothing besides net a couple of extra lives and send you all the way back to the starting area, which feels like its deliberately punishing the player for exploring because they weren't exploring in the right direction. The whole game just feels contradictory and not really well thought out. It wants you and your friends to explore a world but doesn't give the correct tools to do so, makes looking at resources for directions annoying, and punishes going the wrong way despite there not being any direction to begin with. Like they thought to make a multiplayer kirby game with a big explorable world then just kinda shrugged off the execution and instead just made a linear kirby game but with all the doors linked to one another in a confusing fashion. The level design genuinely feels like it takes cues from more obtuse non-euclidean experimental famicom and game boy games. This shit is the Atlantis no Nazo of the kirby series. (though definitely not as egregious.) Oh, and the final boss has 6 phases with only one player getting the easy-to-lose master ability to actually do any meaningful semblance of damage. Try doing that shit with a wifi warrior. If me and my pals didn't discover you could cheese life grinding by using the phone constantly at the goal areas, I think some of the players I got for the journey wouldn't have stuck around to see the ending.
Overall, yeah. Not very fun by yourself, not very much better with friends. One star is certainly harsh and the game has the amount of polish and misplaced ambition to it that I'd normally give something like this a two, but fuck man. I waited over a decade to play this, thinking it was going to be this really cool multiplayer experience lost to time finally come back. In order to have a smooth multiplayer experience, you either need friends that live close-by that still have GBAs and copies of the game around or friends with switches and actually good internet. Both of which are equally impossible for me unfortunately. I do think it also brings up the importance of having good netcode when it comes to things like this, as while it makes these old games all the more accessible for multiplayer, it can compromise the actual play experience and misrepresent how the multiplayer for these titles actually was meant to be played. If they waited a bit and made this for the DS, where it was a bit easier to get multiplayer game sessions going and they could have used the bottom screen to do an actually competent map, then they could have had something really cool. Flagship coulda made squeak squad for GBA and this for DS. They did it backwards, dammit. Not the worst game I've ever played but the actual game is bleh made all the much worse by my personal expectations and bad connection. At least it's off that bucket list...
They made a full game out of the prototype that was the first motor toon grand prix! The tracks are more track-like (though I definitely miss the absolute insanity that was the first games track design), the controls are tighter, the physics are firmer, the visuals touched up. A marked improvement in almost every aspect. The items are also overhauled with there being a system where you can spend coins to get a random item at any point of the race, which can add a bit of strategy to the game. They also added new pre-rendered FMV cutscenes that have that rad yet also kinda uncanny vibe that's in mid-90's CG.
The game just has this playful vibe in it throughout. By winning the main grand prix mode on higher difficulties you can unlock various goodies that have their own bespoke menu. Not only are there your typical extra characters and tracks but there are these neat unrelated minigames that you can earn as well. The minigames also all run at 60 FPS with 3D graphics, which is quite the rarity on PS1. The minigames feel like little side projects the devs had that they decided to put in the game just for fun, and it keeps the whole rookie-dev-studio-experimenting-with-fancy-new-hardware vibe from the first game alive despite the main game being much more polished. There are even like 30 different menu background textures that you can choose from in the settings, I can tell that the devs were enthusiastic to use as much of the CD space they could, and I like that energy.
The gameplay is way more down-to-earth than most other arcade/kart racers of its time, and while the items certainly can help, the main key for victory is good driving technique. Knowing good braking and cornering points for the various courses are essential to winning, as the game doesn't have your mario kart/ridge racery drifting in it. Each vehicle also feels distinct from one another, and I found the most success with the unlockable train guy. The two highest difficulties surprisingly turn items off altogether, making it a true test of driving mastery. If you manage to clear the game on the hardest difficulty, the final unlockable minigame is Motor Toon Grand Prix R, which is a 60 FPS time trial on the first course of the game with a real F1 or stock car that controls much more realistically than the main game, which is really cool.
It's got that soul that a lot of Japan Studio-produced games contain. This Polys team sure has both a passion for cars and enthusiasm for the PS1s hardware. Sony should give these guys the budget to make a full-fledged racing simulator! I think they have it in them to make something truly special down the line.
The game just has this playful vibe in it throughout. By winning the main grand prix mode on higher difficulties you can unlock various goodies that have their own bespoke menu. Not only are there your typical extra characters and tracks but there are these neat unrelated minigames that you can earn as well. The minigames also all run at 60 FPS with 3D graphics, which is quite the rarity on PS1. The minigames feel like little side projects the devs had that they decided to put in the game just for fun, and it keeps the whole rookie-dev-studio-experimenting-with-fancy-new-hardware vibe from the first game alive despite the main game being much more polished. There are even like 30 different menu background textures that you can choose from in the settings, I can tell that the devs were enthusiastic to use as much of the CD space they could, and I like that energy.
The gameplay is way more down-to-earth than most other arcade/kart racers of its time, and while the items certainly can help, the main key for victory is good driving technique. Knowing good braking and cornering points for the various courses are essential to winning, as the game doesn't have your mario kart/ridge racery drifting in it. Each vehicle also feels distinct from one another, and I found the most success with the unlockable train guy. The two highest difficulties surprisingly turn items off altogether, making it a true test of driving mastery. If you manage to clear the game on the hardest difficulty, the final unlockable minigame is Motor Toon Grand Prix R, which is a 60 FPS time trial on the first course of the game with a real F1 or stock car that controls much more realistically than the main game, which is really cool.
It's got that soul that a lot of Japan Studio-produced games contain. This Polys team sure has both a passion for cars and enthusiasm for the PS1s hardware. Sony should give these guys the budget to make a full-fledged racing simulator! I think they have it in them to make something truly special down the line.
Once again, not nearly as bad as I feel people say it is. I already got the gist of things out of the way when I reviewed its sister game, so I'll spare repeating myself here too much.
The core gameplay and structure is predictably the same as Faces of Evil, with the same controls and mostly the same items, all the control quirks are still present, yadda yadda. This game is a bit more streamlined, as I was able to do most of what the game wanted me to do without needing to really consult a guide whereas with faces evil I was nose deep in that gamefaqs page. The levels themselves are also a bit less solid this time around, with a lot of spots where using a rope to progress is unavoidable. There's also a bit more money grinding in this game, as the levels are designed in a way that requires using ruby-consuming items a lot to make it through. There's no snowball/fireball shenanigans this time around though! Instead theres a flute and a loaf of bread that I never had to use once in my entire run, so that's something.
I think both this game and faces of evil have their share of upsides and downsides from one another to the point where I'd say they are about equal in quality. I'm not really sure why they felt the need to split the game into two sister releases, but they sure did. Maybe they were going to have some sort of cross-compatibility between the two or something during development, idk. Someone has probably done the research to find the answer to that question. Regardless, I didn't find either of these titles to be a really bad time. Definitely rough around some edges, sure, but nowhere near "worst games of all time" level. Not even "worst zelda games" to me either, I'd gladly play more of this over something like the oracle games or phantom hourglass any day. Maybe these "bad games" are pretty cool after all.
The core gameplay and structure is predictably the same as Faces of Evil, with the same controls and mostly the same items, all the control quirks are still present, yadda yadda. This game is a bit more streamlined, as I was able to do most of what the game wanted me to do without needing to really consult a guide whereas with faces evil I was nose deep in that gamefaqs page. The levels themselves are also a bit less solid this time around, with a lot of spots where using a rope to progress is unavoidable. There's also a bit more money grinding in this game, as the levels are designed in a way that requires using ruby-consuming items a lot to make it through. There's no snowball/fireball shenanigans this time around though! Instead theres a flute and a loaf of bread that I never had to use once in my entire run, so that's something.
I think both this game and faces of evil have their share of upsides and downsides from one another to the point where I'd say they are about equal in quality. I'm not really sure why they felt the need to split the game into two sister releases, but they sure did. Maybe they were going to have some sort of cross-compatibility between the two or something during development, idk. Someone has probably done the research to find the answer to that question. Regardless, I didn't find either of these titles to be a really bad time. Definitely rough around some edges, sure, but nowhere near "worst games of all time" level. Not even "worst zelda games" to me either, I'd gladly play more of this over something like the oracle games or phantom hourglass any day. Maybe these "bad games" are pretty cool after all.
2021
combining 2D physics with 2048 gameplay is quite a dangerously addicting formula indeed. It's certainly no surprise why this game has taken japan by storm so suddenly, it's perfect vtuber/streamer bait. It really has that mobile game time killer energy, for better or for worse. Like all fad games though I doubt this game has much staying power in the super long term. It's 200 yen, you might as well give it a go and contribute to this game staying on the top of the switch eshop charts in japan.