jtduckman
1985
Honestly for a title released in early 1985 pre-mario it's pretty darn solid. It essentially is Nintendo/Iwata's take on Joust, instead using more cartoony and readable characters. While I certainly like Joust, I def remember being a bit confused when first playing it mostly due to how the hitboxes were handled by a tiny sword on your bird guy. With this game, the core gameplay of manipulating momentum by air flapping remains the same, with the giant balloons on both your character and the enemies serving as a large understandable target to aim for/defend. Add the fact that this game being a console game rather than an arcade game means it can be a bit more forgiving with a 2 balloon health bar and an overall less inherently oppressive atmosphere and slower pace than Jousts swarms of death, and you have something that's still pretty comfy and timeless to play even today (something that a lot of other early famicom/NES black box titles can miss the mark on). Oh, it's also one of the few early famicom games with simultaneous 2-player gameplay which keeps it fresh, and the balloon trip mode is arguably more memorable than the proper main game with its tricky obstacle courses and catchy tunes.
I honestly have played this on-and-off for the better part of like at least 15 years by now ever since I first played this by unlocking it in animal crossing. I never knew there were only 12 levels in this version before it just loops so I finally got around to playing through all 12. This game certainly is in the upper echelon of early famicom releases, probably up there with lode runner and xevious as the best bang for your buck in the pre-mario days. It's no wonder why Nintendo got Iwata to work with them for other titles like pinball, golf, and F-1 race, starting a relationship that would kickstart his legendary career.
I honestly have played this on-and-off for the better part of like at least 15 years by now ever since I first played this by unlocking it in animal crossing. I never knew there were only 12 levels in this version before it just loops so I finally got around to playing through all 12. This game certainly is in the upper echelon of early famicom releases, probably up there with lode runner and xevious as the best bang for your buck in the pre-mario days. It's no wonder why Nintendo got Iwata to work with them for other titles like pinball, golf, and F-1 race, starting a relationship that would kickstart his legendary career.
Definitely an improvement from the first game in everything except for the fact that this game do be too got damn long for its own good. The main new addition to this is the free roaming map that ya drive around in to get to the various events scattered within, both visible on a big in-game map as well as secret stuff that can only be found through exploration. While it def makes everything slower than just pushing a button on a menu to get to the races, I actually did find the free-roaming quite fun as not only is the city reasonably sized and vibin' with its neon-coated glowing buildings and setpieces, but also it functions as a decent way to practice driving in a safe environment without having to constantly redo races n such. Considering the fact that a lot of the races take place in the giant city, having the familiarity of both the controls and the map through the free roaming do make it so that it's easier for me to get in the flow of things.
The game just kinda drags on a bit too much imo, has that same problem that a handful of racers I've played have where the mid-game is a bit more stagnant and difficult than the rest due to not having a properly upgraded/maintained car that the game might be expecting me to have. I feel like if they reduced the games length to like 2/3rds of its total runtime that this would be a lot more digestible. The open world explorable city already gives the game plenty of reason to go back to it and keep playing, they didn't need to have such high event complete quotas n whatnot. That being said though, it's really not like there's any gripping narrative going on here, it's just car gangs doing car gang things with very sparse cutscenes (that feel way lower budget than the CGI cutscenes the first game had but whatever). If I had this game back in the day I prob wouldn't have even cared about the story progression and just spent all my time just driving around the city taking in the wonderful 2000s ass visual and audio aesthetics that this game is rich with. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people that bought this game played it exactly that way.
(if i have to do ONE MORE drag race event i will go insane and drive into the highway, those events are ASS and I hope this is the last game in the series that they are featured in)
The game just kinda drags on a bit too much imo, has that same problem that a handful of racers I've played have where the mid-game is a bit more stagnant and difficult than the rest due to not having a properly upgraded/maintained car that the game might be expecting me to have. I feel like if they reduced the games length to like 2/3rds of its total runtime that this would be a lot more digestible. The open world explorable city already gives the game plenty of reason to go back to it and keep playing, they didn't need to have such high event complete quotas n whatnot. That being said though, it's really not like there's any gripping narrative going on here, it's just car gangs doing car gang things with very sparse cutscenes (that feel way lower budget than the CGI cutscenes the first game had but whatever). If I had this game back in the day I prob wouldn't have even cared about the story progression and just spent all my time just driving around the city taking in the wonderful 2000s ass visual and audio aesthetics that this game is rich with. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people that bought this game played it exactly that way.
(if i have to do ONE MORE drag race event i will go insane and drive into the highway, those events are ASS and I hope this is the last game in the series that they are featured in)
Kind of bizarre for a taiko game, especially since it felt like it was kind of shadow dropped out of the blue.
Unlike every other taiko game, this uses a vertical aspect ratio instead of a horizontal one. I definitely thought at first that it would limit visibility but the note charts are still quite readable. The UI and overall game aesthetic is very tiktokcore, with the extra vertical space being used to play videos and whatnot, which is eh. They gave every song in the game a bespoke album cover which has never been done before in taiko and the art for the covers is super cool, i honestly hope that they get implemented in the arcade and console taikos from here on out.
As for the gameplay, holding a phone vertically and using two thumbs as drumsticks works quite well, though this certainly feels like it was designed to not be taken so seriously. Not only is muzu the default difficulty with oni being locked behind a muzu clear, but also scoring in general is very P2W locked behind season passes and cosmetic unlocks and what have you. So while its definitely not comfortable to do really intense songs, I don't think thats the intention here.
Being an F2P mobile game, there are the caviats of there being ads that inconsistently bombard you with crap that you'd have to buy the season pass to remove. I thought that it'd be really bad and limit your every move, but honestly the game is incredibly generous with plays, as in my time playing so far I have never run out of limited play tickets and theres a rotating free song list that always has something interesting in it.
Honestly it's an upper-echelon home taiko game, as surprising as it is to say. It pretty much offers the entire breadth of content contained in the premium taiko pass on console for free, provided you dont mind watching a handful of cringe mobile ads from time to time. Considering the fact this has 800+ songs, a solid control scheme, and even mfin english support in the settings, there's probably not a better taiko game for newcomers. If this game came out when I was first getting into taiko, it'd have been all that I would have needed. Definitely keepin this on my phone to get a taiko fix whenever i want.
Unlike every other taiko game, this uses a vertical aspect ratio instead of a horizontal one. I definitely thought at first that it would limit visibility but the note charts are still quite readable. The UI and overall game aesthetic is very tiktokcore, with the extra vertical space being used to play videos and whatnot, which is eh. They gave every song in the game a bespoke album cover which has never been done before in taiko and the art for the covers is super cool, i honestly hope that they get implemented in the arcade and console taikos from here on out.
As for the gameplay, holding a phone vertically and using two thumbs as drumsticks works quite well, though this certainly feels like it was designed to not be taken so seriously. Not only is muzu the default difficulty with oni being locked behind a muzu clear, but also scoring in general is very P2W locked behind season passes and cosmetic unlocks and what have you. So while its definitely not comfortable to do really intense songs, I don't think thats the intention here.
Being an F2P mobile game, there are the caviats of there being ads that inconsistently bombard you with crap that you'd have to buy the season pass to remove. I thought that it'd be really bad and limit your every move, but honestly the game is incredibly generous with plays, as in my time playing so far I have never run out of limited play tickets and theres a rotating free song list that always has something interesting in it.
Honestly it's an upper-echelon home taiko game, as surprising as it is to say. It pretty much offers the entire breadth of content contained in the premium taiko pass on console for free, provided you dont mind watching a handful of cringe mobile ads from time to time. Considering the fact this has 800+ songs, a solid control scheme, and even mfin english support in the settings, there's probably not a better taiko game for newcomers. If this game came out when I was first getting into taiko, it'd have been all that I would have needed. Definitely keepin this on my phone to get a taiko fix whenever i want.
2014
It was fine. Ngl doing a more open take on the kuru kuru kururin gameplay formula is pretty ingenious, but once they added a jump button that allows you to just not engage with the spinning mechanics plus the less-than-stellar hit detection means I felt kinda disengaged playing it compared to actual kururin. The characters and goofy FMV have their own kind of humor that either will or won't click. The writing didn't super click with me and the low budgety FMV nature felt less like a B-movie and more like some high school media project or limited run E3 showcase, idk the whole zero-budget style trope has kinda lost its luster to me. Beth hard carries the entire narrative, it's not even funny. That all being said, it did seem like the developers had a lot of fun making the game and I can't really hate it so yeah. It exists!
(oh and if you are so inclined to want the platinum trophy for this game, I hope you like desert bus)
(oh and if you are so inclined to want the platinum trophy for this game, I hope you like desert bus)
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?