"Bro this game is so outdated!!! Just play Zero Mission instead and skip this!!!!!!!!!!"

why don't I skip over your bad takes how about that

shoutout to HPRshredder and his guide for getting me interested in playing Metroid 1 again as well as The Geek Critique for revisiting the game and shedding a more positive light to it. I haven't seen U Can Beat Video Games's video yet but his Castlevania II and Dragon Warrior ones were really great so this one's probably worth checking too, okay I'll actually talk about the game now

there's something about the original Metroid that has this cool...."uniqueness"? yeah I'm not sure what's the right word for it, but there's a unique feeling about this one that none of the later games quite have. now I agree that every other Metroid game I played is better than this one (every 2D one besides Metroid II GB, a decent portion of Prime 1), but I'd say that this is comparing a collection of gold trophies to a singular dusty gold trophy that could use a quick feather duster to shine again. what I'm saying is that this game's good

what's cool about the original Metroid's story is that there's nothing to precede it. none of the familiar lore of the later games is here so what we're given is in this one (which isn't much) (that's cool though) is all we really get. basically a powerful species known as "Metroids" has been captured by the Space Pirates, they're like criminals but in the space alien variety. The Federation Police sends out some bounty hunters to Planet Zebes, which is the Space Pirates hideout, to stop them from using the Metroids as a dangerous weapon however none of them were able to succeed. as a last resort they send Samus Aran, a cool cyborg dude (please don't get on my case I'll bring it up later) who gained a famous reputation for completely bounties most others thought would be impossible. naturally it would make sense for them to send the best of the best, so now Samus Aran must now traverse through Planet Zebes, explore and find the items and abilities left by it's previous civilization, defeat the two leaders of the Pirates (Ridley and Kraid), and eradicate the Metroids before they destroy the galaxy! for the first game, there's still a pretty decent amount of backstory and is still much more than a majority of games that came before it, so it's cool that there's a reason why you're there as well as an actual world you're in that isn't just a bunch of nameless disconnected levels, that's pretty nice for a game made in 1986.

Metroid is an exploration game, everyone probably knows it. what everyone always knows as well is that you're aren't just going right the entire game (cue a lengthy explanation on how a first-time player goes right until a dead end, only to go all the way back to the left and find the Morph Ball so they can go through the tiny corridor they couldn't before). your ultimate goal of the game is to defeat both Ridley and Kraid so you can access the final part of the game you encounter the Metroids as well as the final boss, however the way you go about doing so is all up to you, to the point where you can choose whether to face Ridley first or Kraid first. now you could immediately head straight for their hideouts and take them out as soon as possible, but an inexperienced player will no doubt get their ass handed to them, which makes sense since Zebes is a pretty hostile planet, so they'll probably want to stay around in Brinstar (the beginning section of Zebes) for a while and gather items to power up and prepare them for the tougher parts of the game. some of the items you can get are Missiles, which not only are a powerful offense, but can also help you open the Ketchup and Mustard Doors that can't be opened by regular shots. Energy Tanks not only increase your health by 100 but it also fully restores your health too, there's 8 of them in the game but Samus's health is maxed out after 6 of them, so it'd be a good idea to save the remaining 2 for when you need to regain some health quickly. now for actual upgrades, the Morph Ball (or Maru Mari as the cool people call it) lets Samus morph into a tiny ball to get through small passages, and the Bomb allows Samus to make bombs in this form to help defeat small enemies and get through blocks that otherwise can't be destroyed. the Long Beam makes Samus's shots long ranged which can be good for dealing enemies from far away, but it's not too important of an upgrade so you can to skip it if you want. the Ice Beam lets you freeze almost all the enemies in the game which also can turn them into temporary platforms before they thaw out which can helpful if you don't want to deal with them or if you want to do a few helpful skips, it can still be used as a regular weapon. the Wave Beam is a beam that pierces through everything and is decently powerful, however it overrides the Ice Beam which is needed if you want to defeat or get away from the Metroids in the final area so it's actually even more skippable than the Long Beam, if you plan to use this then make sure you pick up the Ice Beam again before you head to the final area. the High Jump Boots let Samus just higher, not much to say other then it helps Samus obtain the Varia Suit easier. the Varia Suit not only changes Samus's armor to a bright pink as a symbol of power, but it also halves all damage taken, making it very useful when it comes to traversing beyond Brinstar. lastly the Screw Attack, probably the best upgrade here, lets you perform a powerful shock whenever you diagonally jump, which instantly kills most regular enemies in the game, not only that but it's possible to get the item before you even face Ridley or Kraid, I cannot justify its power with what I'm saying here so you really need to get it yourself so you can understand what I mean.

once you're powered up and have defeated the two Space Pirate leaders, you can head to the upper left corner of Brinstar and gain access to the final area, Tourian, where the Metroids and final obstacle of the game is awaiting you, "Mother Brain". you better conserve your missiles for the end, and I don't mean just for Mother Brain, but to even get to her you'll have to destroy regenerating barriers that can only be damaged by barriers, they don't regenerate if you can manage to destroy them thankfully. the Mother Brain fight is weird, she doesn't attack you at all but the Rinkas (floating projectives that aim for you) and the cannons in the battlefield are very plentiful, so you'll be spending your time getting hit by those a lot thanks to your big hitbox, and whatever you do, DON'T fall in the lava in front of Metroid Brain, try to keep your distance by being on the right edge of the final pillar so you don't fall in the lava and instead land on the safe platform to the right of the pillar. after defeating Mother Brain you've now completed the ga-- SIKES YOU HAVE TO DO A SURPRISE ESCAPE SEQUENCE but it's kinda easy outside of the platforms being a bit small, the layout is also repeated a lot so it really shouldn't be a big deal once you memorized it. when you do that only then do you get the ending and here's when the fun part comes in. depending on how fast you beat the game, you might be able to discover Samus's true identity! if you manage to finish the game under five hours, Samus takes off the helmet to reveal....HE WAS A SHE THE WHOLE TIME?!?!?!?!?! yeah everyone and their mother knows Samus is a female nowadays (unless you don't so if this is how you find out then I'm terribly sorry), Nintendo themselves only kept it a secret for this game in particular, but for 1986 this was a pretty cool hidden twist, especially considering that Samus is one of the first female protagonists. yeah Ms. Pac-Man predates her by about four years, sorry Samus! if you finish the game in under three hours Samus goes down to a leotard which also lets you play as in that form after the credits (or by a password if you don't want to do all that), and under a hour has her go into a bikini. she must be the most cocky and confident bounty hunter ever if she's taking down an entire planet wearing nothing but that under her suit. if you didn't beat the game under five hours, you can always try again and see how faster you can become with more experience and knowledge of Planet Zebes. it's a pretty short game so that along with the incentive of getting to see Samus in a 8-bit bikini makes the replayability of the original Metroid pretty high.

Metroid's graphics are very simplistic, but I think this actually benefits toward the game's favor. normally having a black background for the entire game would be kinda lame, but for here it works. you're venturing inside a dark and hostile planet, if the background was blue or something then the entire atmosphere would be thrown out of the window. speaking of atmosphere, I think this is the first game in my opinion to successfully pull off a tense one. the realistic looking enemies compared to other games at the time having stuff like Goombas or Moblins makes you feel like your dealing with a much more genuine threat, though a lot of them are actually easy to face against especially once you have enough upgrades. all the dark scenery likes the faces you see next to the elevator that takes you to Ridley as well as the iconic face in the corridor just before Kraid's room makes you feel like you really don't belong here, thankfully you're playing as Samus though and no one is more capable for this job than her.

if you need something to boost the atmosphere, then the soundtrack's got you covered. the Title Theme starts off simplistic and foreboding but if you stick around long enough then it transforms to a much more hopeful melody but looping back to the menacing drones again. the Start Jingle and Brinstar continue this optimism with an upbeat and heroic tune before you end up wandering into a Secret Area that brings back the droning from the beginning of the title screen but with a more neutral and mysterious tone this time. if you're lucky and happen to come across the statues that grant you upgrades you get this Item Jingle to signal that not only did you gain a new ability but that you're on the right path to victory. though if you hear this near an elevator and choose to go down, you'll instead hear this foreboding tune of Norfair which while also signifies you're on the right part (to Ridley in particular), it also means the game's no longer messing around and you face a huge threat of getting killed if you haven't prepped up enough before. go down even further to Ridley's Hideout and get to even to hear this game's "you will die" theme. if you choose to go to Kraid's Hideout, you instead get this really rad and groovy ass theme that I can't believe was composed back in 1986. it's insane how bopping Kraid's theme is, it almost feels out of place in a way but I'm not complaining, this is the best track in the game and I will not be argued otherwise. once you face Ridley and Kraid or just venture into Tourian, you get this pretty threatening theme once you ignore the goofy bubble sounds that play during the whole thing. by the time you get to Mother Brain there are no more melodies, there are only deranged 8-bit noises to describe the terror that is Mother Brain, and by Mother Brain, I mean everything else that's inside her room. the Escape Theme starts off with a "you need to get out" vibe but after the first 30 or so seconds it insteads transforms into a "you saved the galaxy, just one more push!" vibe. then there's the Ending Theme which is a full on melody that goes from menacing to triumphant then just starts going all out after that first minute, okay this might rival Kraid's theme for the best track in the game.

so yeah Metroid NES is epic especially for its time and I feel the smaller majority that still thinks this game holds up, though it is rough in a couple of places I'll admit. lack of a map, similar looking rooms, enemies being able to hit you while you're going through doors, starting with 30 energy after a game over, the entirety of Mother Brain's room, it's a little rough to get into, especially on your first or second playthrough when you have no idea what to do. if you have the courage to come back to this game though and learn everything about it, it becomes much more enjoyable and dare I say....fun. even with Zero Mission being arguably a better Metroid 1 experience, I still can't bring myself to say this game can be easily skipped. Zero Mission may take place in Zebes, but otherwise it's a full-on remake with completely different room layouts as well as reworked bosses and gameplay elements, a very great remake I have to add, but I do have the courage to tell you that you will indeed be missing out if you don't give the original a deserved shot. despite all my praises, this is somehow still the weakest Metroid I've played but a 7/10 being the weakest goes to show the exceptional quality of the Metroid franchise, heck I might change my score to a 8/10 later down the line because that's how neat I think Metroid is.

so yeah that's it, play the game, git gud or something do people still use that phrase

this is the Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne of Pokémon

(Version played: 4.0 update, Hardcore Mode)

I'm not sure why I went back to this game since I was very mixed about it on my 3.0 playthrough, but I don't know I guess I really wanted to give the game another shot with a different perspective, that and hearing people seethe online about it, actually yeah those two reasons are why I went back to it. so yeah, I started the game, decided to go through Hardcore Mode this time, and made it all the way to the Indigo League. my thoughts?

it's PEEAAAAAK

okay maybe it's not peak but it's still really good

to be fair I did enter some in-game cheats at the beginning of the game that I couldn't have done Hardcore Mode without, and before you go "uhhhhh CHEATER you did not beat the game" first off yes I did not beat the game why do you think this review says "Shelved", second off the game doesn't penalize you at all for using the in-game cheats so as far as I'm concerned they're encouraged if you really want to go through that route, and lastly the two main cheats I used (free Rare Candies at Viridian, 100% successful catch rate on any Poké Ball) are more or less ways to make things more convenient for me so I can go "oh I don't have to spend time grinding anymore!" and "oh I can get my Pokémon right away now!", they're really huge time savers.

as for the actual game, this hack is a team builder's dream since every Pokémon to my knowledge has been spread out to the entirety of Kanto (that's pretty amazing shoutouts to the devs for pulling that off). by the time you get to Brock you'll already have a great variety of Pokémon to choose from and it'll only grow larger the further you go. add that along with the DexNav feature that lets you immediately find the Pokémon you want as well as the catch rate cheat I mentioned in parenthesis earlier and you should have no problem with finding and building your teams. certain items as well as moves and Abilities are taken from you in Hardcore Mode but the Nature changer in the Pokémon Centers are free in this mode so I'd say that's a worthy trade-off (you also get ways to change your Abilities later on thought I should mention). during the entire game you'll have Level Caps that prevent you from over leveling at a certain point (no easy Lv. 100 for you) and the Level Cap increases a bit after certain boss battles, and I'll say that even if you reach the end of the current Level Cap, the game will still be challenging.

now for that difficulty, this is very much a competitive oriented Pokémon hack. you won't see Brock using a Geodude that faints after one Water Gun, instead Brock is going to bust out a permanent Sandstorm with a full team of six, featuring a Sand Rush Cacnea with an Eviolite, a Lunatone with Ancient Power and Psybeam, and a Varoom with an Air Balloon to prevent you from exploiting it's 4x Ground weakness immediately, first Gym btw. now you may be thinking that this is ridiculous, but believe or not there's ways to go around it. remember you have a ton of Pokémon to choose from, so you can map things out like "oh this Pokémon took down two team members, I'll keep this one around" or "this one isn't able to do anything useful, I should swap it out for another Pokémon" and "this one's good but it's not doing as much as I'd like, maybe I should change up its moveset". for the most part I went into Gym Battles and others of the like by going with the team I was currently using for the first attempt, and then slowly I'd swap them out one-by-one until I found the (near) perfect combination of Pokémon that could reliably counter the team I'm facing as if I was putting together a puzzle. really Radical Red is a puzzle game: it looks overwhelming at first (and probably still will be after a while), but with enough time and patience you can start to figure it out and put everything together. I will say that though that at a certain point of the game I was able to gather a couple of really good Pokémon that could fit in most of the difficult battles afterwards so I wasn't swapping out my teams as much as I was before.

now is the difficulty "unfair"? no it's not, but I'll admit it does get a bit BS at times. of course, your opponents are going to have more options before you do; when you get to Lt. Surge bosses will start pulling out Mega Evolutions (something you won't be able to do until after Silph Co.), then when you get to Erika Ultra Beasts are brought into the picture, then when you face Sabrina (who is the 5th Gym Leader here) Legendaries and Mythicals are now on the table and they won't be dying down anytime soon. however I will once again mention that it is possible to overcome these crazy teams with enough time and patience, though that's not to say that I myself got into a "what do I even do here" moment a few times during the late game. the most well known example I think of is that at one point you're forced to go through two boss fights in a row, without healing. now granted it isn't two full six teams rather a five member team then a four member team right after, but this is Radical Red we're talking about here so they're still going to find a way to make it as difficult as possible. I could just manage to survive the first battle but then the second one immediately drops a Wailord with a Water Type equivalent of Oblivion Wing in Bouncy Bubble that I could not get pass against. this was one of the two times I conceded defeat and instead looked up another guy's team online to see what Pokémon they used for the battle and just copy what they did, hey at least you get some useful items after that.

now I'll give you three pieces of advice if you want your Radical Red experience to be more manageable. 1: get the Poké Vial. you'll have to do a puzzle battle at Viridian City to get it but once you figure that out you get an item that give you six free PokéCenter heals in the overworld and it refills whenever you heal up at a PokéCenter, you never need to purchase healing items ever. 2: get the Inf. Repel. I'm pretty sure this is an unskippable item in Viridian Forest, anyway when you obtain and enable it, random wild encounters are gone for as long as you have it on so you can just focus on venturing through the world without Wild Pokémon bogging you, another great time saver. 3: save and heal often. Gym Leaders aren't the only bosses here, certain NPCs that look like regular trainers will actually be boss battles (at least in Hardcore mode) with more dangerous teams than regular trainers, and you can be sure they become more common later down the line so make sure you prepared whenever that happens, also there are a few moments where you about to enter a new area only for someone to pop out and go "Hey, (player character) it's me, (important NPC)! Time for your 4 P.M. surprise boss fight, no you can't refuse!" so yeah have fun

alright you made it the end of my review and that's epic so your reward for reading all of this is me providing you the cheat codes I entered in the game console in Pallet Town down in the comments so you can have an easier time with Radical Red, that or you skipped all the way to the end which if you did, shame on you but I'll still provide the codes anyway. so yes Radical Red is GOOD maybe even GREAT and I feel like some people are just way too harsh on it. just be patient, collect a ton of Pokémon, and figure out which ones work for which situations. "OOOOH BUT THE DIFFICULTY OHH I CAN'T STAND THE DIFFICULTY" ok then bro why don't you go back to vanilla FireRed and find yourself a Kadabra to Calm Mind and Psychic through the entire game you big baby

there's a boss fight near the end that clowns on people that self-insert themselves into Pokémon hacks that was so based

the first game I'm reviewing as Shelved because the final area that gives you the third ending is slop (I got filtered)
(UPDATE 11/28/2023: nvm I did that shi the day immediately after, can confirm Last Cave is actually worse lol)

I finally got this game out of my backlog after so long and yeah, the game's great. now this game is flawed, very flawed at that (fetch quests slowing the pace early in, the third ending requirements, Last Cave, etc.), but personally I think the positives outweigh the negatives and I have to say that I don't regret trying it out. if you haven't already played Cave Story then you should try it at least once the game's free you don't have much of an excuse lol.

I don't want to spoil the story much because there's some cool and important moments sprinked throughout, so as a summary, you're basically some robot dude who finds himself wandering into a village full of Mimigas, some rabbit creatures who are being pursued by this dude named The Doctor who along with his minions, Misery and Balrog, are planning to kidnap and use for his nefarious deeds, so it's up to you to put a stop to his plans as well as unravel the mysteries of the island you're on. a thing I appreciate about the game is that while there's some dark stuff that happens throughout, it's not really in your face about it like a lot of other modern games I've seen in recent years. for example, there's a point where two somewhat major characters are killed off (not spoiling who) however the game doesn't drag this moment on or make a huge deal about it, it just happens and it's up to you to decide how to feel about it rather than the game forcing you to feel how they want you to. basically what I'm saying is that Cave Story does not insist upon itself.

Cave Story's kinda like Mega Man where you play as a robot that goes around shooting enemies while obtaining different kinds of weapons to use, but at the same time it feels like its own thing with a few of its hub areas as well as a good amount of NPCs sprinkled throughout the levels to talk to. for some reason a lot of people consider Cave Story a Metroidvania, and after playing it myself I just can't agree. usually in Metroidvanias you gain new abilities that incentivize to revisit previous areas to reach sections you couldn't before, and while you do revisit an area or two, the areas here are more or less self contained and straightforward, and while you do get two major new abilities (or rather items that let you perform them), most of the collectibles are either health upgrades or key items with some new weapons every once in a while. for me Cave Story is more of a traditional platform shooter, which becomes much more evident when you see the level layout of the later areas (spikes anyone)?

Cave Story's graphics are really neat and pleasant looking, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe this is the first indie game to go for a pixel art style (oh hey even the dev calls himself Pixel). though unlike a lot of later indie games that go for a nostalgic feeling or something else of the sort with its pixel art, Cave Story looks like this because that's just how it wants to look. now if we're talking about the music, well it's really good. I'm not sure if I can post some highlights since every track in this game is a highlight in some way, so instead how about I post a playlist of this game's OST instead? go listen to it and decide on your own favorites.

I don't really know how else I can give this game justice that a bunch of people online haven't already discussed about before me, so I'll instead have this next section be about specific things that I enjoyed throughout my time playing Cave Story, minor spoilers ahead if you haven't yet played this game

- you get your first weapon by stealing it from a sleeping dude, and near the end of the game you can choose to go back and be confronted by the guy
- there's a Mimiga named Kanpachi who spends his time fishing oblivious to everything around him, and by the time you meet up with him again near the end where the stakes have grown significantly, he's still only concerned about fishing
- anything about Balrog, dude is peak character design and you can even skip his first boss battle if you choose to say no to him, very epic
- there's a graveyard early on where you visit and read a tombstone to get a key and that reminded me of Dragon Quest where the first dungeon you go to has the grave of Erdrick at the end of it, I'm not sure if this was a shoutout or not but if it was then that's epic
- you can go in a house with a Mimiga inside and even sleep in their bed, once you wake up you get lipstick in your inventory, no further explanation is given
- there's a quest you can do where you help a character retrieve their lost puppies, how sweet I hope those puppies go on to have a wonderful life :^))))))
- Curly Brace who spends a majority of her screen time jobbing in some kind of capacity, though she does get some moments to shine that helps balance it out
- the Blade, yeah that's it just the Blade
- "OH THAT'S THE AREA IN THE TITLE SCREEN"
- "OH THAT'S THE MUSIC FROM THE TITLE SCREEN"
and last but not least
- realizing how overpowered missiles are to the point that they shred some bosses in a matter of seconds

so yeah that's it. apologies if this review is a little messier than usual, I just got done a five hour session of the final final area of the game before writing this and I'm understandably upset my gamer skills weren't able to get me through to the very end, but hey at least the area's optional. anyway, go check Cave Story, I already said that earlier but now I'm doing it again because this game is neat and you should check it out. if you already have, well idk do it again it's Cave Story man

Curly Jobber

how do I make a detailed review about Donkey Kong?

I guess I can start off with the fact that I do have nostalgia for this game as with a lot of other people since a pizza place I used to go to back in the day had an arcade cabinet featuring the game, unfortunately I don't think they have it anymore. I was pretty terrible at this game, I could never get past 25m so my only exposure to the later m's were the Game Boy retelling, the Masterpieces section in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and of course that one annoying ass Spirit battle in World of Light that takes place in the 75m stage (you know the one). years later I'm able to finally play this game on my Switch through Arcade Archives and was able to finish all the m's and finally reach the ending, it would have been cooler if it was on an actual cabinet, but I'll take it. so what do I think about it? idk it's ok

I'm pretty sure this is the first traditional platformer where you have the ability to jump, hence the main character being called Mario Jumpman. so this "Jumpman", why does he jump? well his pet gorilla (don't ask me why he has a pet gorilla) "Donkey Kong" decided to rebel against him and kidnapped his girlfriend "Lady", taking her up to a construction site that Jumpman likely contributed to building since he's a carpenter. now you may be thinking "wow, what a stubborn ape!" but if I told you that there's a potential prequel game named "Donkey Kong Circus" where Donkey Kong is forced to perform circus acts by Jumpman, who laughs at him everytime he screws up, so maybe Donkey Kong is in the right to rebel against this creepy pale dude in red and blue, ignore the face that the game I mentioned didn't even exist yet in 1981. whether or not who you're rooting for, you have to help Jumpman retrieve his girlfriend who has no involvement in this personal debacle. at the end of each m, the two have a brief reunion before Donkey Kong commits a "no u" and takes her higher up in the construction site. once you complete 100m and take off all the girders, Donkey Kong falls down to the ground headfirst as Jumpman and Lady finally get to be together again (the relationship won't last), but don't worry, Donkey Kong will get his revenge in Donkey Kong Jr. with his son coming to his rescue. I think this is the first game to have a story with a proper beginning and end so you have to give some props to that. as for the actual gameplay....I don't have much to say.

he jump over the barrels, he jump over the pies, he don't jump over the springs because they're annoying to deal with but he do jump over the girders. for real though, there's four screens Jumpman must go through to save his girlfriend: 25m where Donkey Kong repeatedly throws barrels down while Jumpman has to avoid them while also climbing ladders, 50m also known as the "Pie Factory", where Jumpman moves through conveyor belts switching between left and right while pies are being loaded onto them, 75m where jacks/springs are constantly bouncing near Donkey Kong that can knock out Jumpman idk who's throwing them probably Donkey Kong Jr., and lastly 100m where Jumpman has to take off the girders to finally defeat Donkey Kong. that's the Japanese order however. when they released the game in America, for some reason they changed the screen order from

25m --> 50m --> 75m --> 100m --> (next Level) rinse and repeat

into
25m --> 100m --> (next level) 25m --> 75m --> 100m --> (next Level) 25m --> 50m --> 75m --> 100m --> (next Level) rinse and repeat

I'm not sure why they made this change, I guess it means overseas people can see the ending faster but now Mario suddenly goes from the bottom screen to the top screen which is a little weird in my opinion. this also means that you can't play the easier variants of 50m and 75m in the overseas version since each Level increases the difficulty in some way such as increasing the spawn rate of Fireballs in 50m or speeding up the elevators in 75m. unless you prefer having a shuffled order for the first two Levels, I'd recommend playing the Japanese version since not only do you get the intended screen order right away, but there's also a trick in 25m where if you're right at the top of a ladder while a barrel rolls nearby, the barrel will never go down the ladder you're on which can make 25m a lot more manageable.

oh yeah each screen has hostile and mobile Fireballs to avoid, though 100m has more dangerous Fires that are harder to jump over, so besides jumping what's the most reliable way to deal with them? Hammers! with the exception of 75m, each screen has two Hammers that you can grab that you can use to smash the Fire/balls as well as the barrels and pies. it does has some big downsides, notably you can't jump while using it and then the hitbox constantly switches from above you to in front of you, which could end up biting you in the back if you're not careful, also from my experience moving with the Hammer seems to shrink the hitbox which makes you more likely to get hit.

now if you've come here expecting some cool tips from me, I'm afraid to say you're talking to the wrong guy, I still suck at this game. I can clear the first Level constantly, but by the time I get to Level 2 75m with the fast elevators and springs, the run falls apart. back when the Arcade Archives version first released back in 2018, I somehow managed to build up a High Score of 057800, while I could only get about up to half with my current attempts, to be fair I was studying a bunch of High Score runs on YouTube during that time so I guess it's expected for me to be rusty. anyway this game's three stars.

the funny thing about Donkey Kong is I find the many outside aspects about it more interesting than the actual game, like how this was originally supposed to be a Popeye game, or how it had a legal case regarding the similar name with King Kong, or how the Atari 2600 version's SFX are always used in television shows whenever a video game is shown, or even how there's a official bootleg Nintendo gave the OK to, only to end with the president of the bootleg's company to get arrested, need I mention Billy Mitchell's entire (sad) existence? despite that I still think the original Donkey Kong's a fine game, even if I like Mario Bros. more as well as a few earlier arcade games like Pac-Man. of course I have to absolutely recommend the arcade version, the NES version gets rid of the Pie Factory and other ports even get rid of 75m as well. although the walking SFX sounds a bit off in the Arcade Archives version, if you can't get an actual cabinet then that's the version to go for. btw if you're a huge fan of OG Donkey Kong, you should check out the Game Boy version that basically turns into its own game, it'd probably be added to Nintendo Switch Online in a couple of months from now. so yeah, not bad.

donkey kong

ZEROOOOOO

Zero is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, and at one point he was the favorite, not only that but I always wanted to play as him in X1, however the previous hacks that attempted to do this couldn't always get everything right, one not being able to implement Zero's hair and another using his X3 design even though Zero's not supposed to look like that yet, just a few examples so I'm happy to say that this hack finally perfects the Zero in X1 formula!

not only does Zero have his hair but his sprites actually match his X1 design (LET'S GOOOOO) and on top of that his Lv. 2 Z-Buster color is blue just like the one he shoots at Vile, while having a nice switcheroo with a green Lv. 3 Charge Shot. all the instances of X's UI have been properly replaced too: a Z on the health bar, Zero appearing in the opening and stage clear, the 1UP heads that look like Zero, also the silhouette during the ending cutscene is a nice touch, makes me wish the actual game did that. not only does all his sprites look natural, but so is all the new dialogue for this hack. not only is X still X but I appreciate that the Dr. Wily hologram doesn't go "haha I'm....LE EVIL!!!!" but instead is portrayed as a mysterious ally that might have more importance then you think. the new post-credits dialogue is also nice and might I say a better sequel hook than what the actual X1 does. gameplay wise Zero shoots a little higher and he can also jump higher, as well as deal more damage compared to X. Zero does use up more weapon ammo then X does but the Special Weapons in X1 are so good that it shouldn't matter too much. some of the bosses were also changed up a bit, for example Flame Mammoth's attacks have less breathing room, Armored Armadillo's rolling is much faster, and Chill Penguin's slide....slides more, props to making Chill Penguin more challenging.

unfortunately there's something about the hack I'm really mixed on, and that's the dopplegangers some Mavericks have during the Sigma Fortress stages. you see I'm a weird guy, I'm the type of person that plays X1 by collecting all the Armor Parts but skipping the other collectibles, as well as restricting myself to the Buster during the boss battles. the Storm Eagle doppleganger fight was surprisingly fun with the Buster, unfortunately I can't say the same about the other ones, especially Sting Chameleon that one was a bit of a pain especially with his invisibility mechanic affecting both of them at the same time. I was also surprised that Velguarder has one as well, isn't he supposed to be the warm-up before Sigma? I appreciate the Lv. 4 Charge Shot doing more than one damage to Wolf Sigma to compensate but now it deals too much damage to the point where it can kill him in just three shots, making the double doggys more difficult to deal with then the actual final boss. I'm kinda mixed on this mechanic in general like what is this, X Challenge? forgive me if this came across as rude, I just feel the dopplegangers a little unnecessary. outside of that the only other negatives are just personal nitpicks of mine (why is there a random Hoganmer at the beginning of the intro stage, why isn't X's theme Central Highway so the song doesn't go unused, why won't Zero be my friend), but I'm nowhere near a programmer so I understand that a hack like this requires a ton of work and time, I respect the craft.

for me I'd rate this hack four stars, but I don't want to ruin the 5.0 Avg. Rating it currently has so I'll just leave my rating blank. if you're itching to properly play as Zero in Mega Man X1, this hack is a must. shoutouts to CF for making this as well as Falchion22 and Programmer Peru for laying the groundwork. it'd be cool to see a future update but if we don't then it's all cool, would highly recommend playing

childhood is saying that Mario Bros. sucks, adulthood is realizing Mario Bros. is actually great and we mostly hate it because of the inferior NES version being shoved down our throats

huge shoutouts to the Lonely Goomba for being a big contribution into me trying out the Arcade version. as well as introducing me to the existence of the Classic Series NES port of this game, go check out his video on Mario Bros. when you're done reading this review. besides that, I had originally planned to go through almost every 2D Mario in order in preparation for Wonder, starting with this game, however I backed out of it since I didn't want to risk going through Mario Burnout, but hey at least I got to try this one out.

it's a shame this is considered a black sheep of Mario since a lot of staples originated here like the coins, the pipes, the POW Block, Luigi, New York, how can you imagine Mario without those? the goal here is instead of jumping on enemies like in later games, you instead have to jump under the platform they're on and kick them into the water while they're stunned. they ease you pretty easy at first by having only Shellcreepers to deal with, but as the levels, or Phases as the game calls it goes on, they'll start adding Sidesteppers that take two hits to stun, the first making them faster, then they give you the Fighter Flies that start off real slow and can only be hit when they land on the ground, then they give out the Slipice (known as Freezie in later games) that can freeze the middle and bottom platforms if they stand on the middle of it, then they add Icicles which slowly form at the bottom of the top platforms and can defeat you if you either touch them or have them land on you, and during all that there's red and green fireballs that begin to show up more often the further you get, the red ones slowly moving diagonally through the whole area while the greens quickly zip through one of the three floors. you're probably thinking that's way too chaotic, and it is, and that's what makes it fun (and frustrating). don't worry, there's bonus games at Phase 4, 9, and every seventh one after to help you earn bonus points for lives, as well as helping to calm your nerves, but not for long. the goal there is to collect all the Coins before time runs out, and you're given 20 seconds to collect them all, enough time to easily do so once you're used to the controls, but then in the next one, all the floor is slippery and you're given 15 seconds from now on, then after that, the slippery floor turns invisible after a few seconds then it's not relaxing at all, welcome to Mario Bros. Arcade.

throughout my five or so hours put into this version, I developed some tips to make things easier such as standing on top of the POW Block during Phases that start with Sidesteppers to try and stun them when they're on the middle platform, staying on the top sometimes to not only lure the green fireballs there and safety drop down but also to make Slipices and Icicles easier to deal with, as well as stalling the first three Phases out to try and get early bonus points by defeating the red fireballs as well as chaining up Shellcreepers, ensuring I get an extra life during the third Phase. despite all my efforts, at my best I could only make my way to Phase 20 with a High Score of 166350, before I reluctantly conceded defeat and almost considered dropping the rating to 6/10. there are 23 Phases in the game before it starts looping and not being able to complete that 23rd Phase will keep me up for the rest of the life, but I was able to complete a few Phases with the Icicles so I'll happily count that as my completion for the game.

now if you want to try and have as much fun as I did, get the Arcade version. there's an Arcade Archives version of this on the Switch and it doesn't cost that much money. don't play the NES version, though considering how many times Nintendo have released that version you've probably already have, so stop playing the NES version. the sprites don't look as good, the Icicles are missing, and the difficulty has been turned down so much to the point that the game becomes boring. "But Mario's outfit in that version matches how he's normally dressed!!!" don't go using that excuse on me this was a point of history when Mario used to wear a blue cap things were different back then

this is Mario Bros. at its purest form, however if you're somehow still getting filtered despite my words of encouragement, there's an exclusive European version of the NES port that not only fixes all the sprites and bumps up the difficulty to be closer to the Arcade version, but it also adds free air movement so you're not committed to the jump, potentially reducing some stupid deaths. of course there's also the GBA remake in all the Mario Advance and Superstar Saga carts that can be considered a much better game, but I'm here to sell you on the Arcade version so at least give this one a shot first and see how far you can get.

I think I like this more than Super Mario Bros., no you are not changing my mind

I was able to get this with just 20 bucks so why not

I like Pac-Man, his games are neat, and this is a nice collection. 14 games in one cartridge is a great deal even if some are better than others, and the arcade room hub is very fitting for Pac-Man and I like that they let you customize it with different wallpapers and decorations and even letting you change the floor color (wow!), though personally I wasn't too incentivized to mess with it too much IMO, I mostly came for the games. besides just playing through them, there's also little achievements you can do in them (clear 10 rounds in 1 game, earn a score of 10,000, eat X amount of Ghosts) that'll net you some in-game items for your arcade. some games have to be unlocked, though it's really easy to unlock them since the requirements are "play other Pac-Man game two times", so you're likely to get them all unlocked very quickly. now unfortunately I don't have the time to give each game (or even this game) in the collection a proper detailed review due to how little time I spent playing each one so the next section down here is more-or-less just my first impressions of each games (except for the ones I've played before) so you don't have to take them too seriously.

Pac-Man: 6/10
it's the original you have to pay your respects, of course I much prefer playing Ms. Pac-Man and even Pac-Man Plus when it comes to the original Pac format, but it's still solid even if it can get a bit repetitive over time

Super Pac-Man: 7/10
I've always overlooked this game since the arcade cabinets and plug and plays I used in the past always had Ms. Pac-Man so why would I play this when I have that? now that Ms. Pac-Man is in copyright limbo I'm forced to acknowledge this as the true Pac-Man sequel, and yeah it's actually great. the Ghosts decided to be smart and lock the food inside doors, however they aren't smart enough since they left the keys lying around in the maze for Pac to find and open them, on top of them there's Super Pellets that transforms him into Super Pac-Man and that makes him immune to Ghosts and be able to crash into the doors without a key, easily what this makes from alright to fun. oh yeah bonus stages are in the game and Pac's Super during them, cool game would recommend.

Pac & Pal: 4/10
damn what happened? Super Pac-Man was pretty cool but this just feels like an inferior version. the doors are still here but instead of the keys you have to flip over cards in the maze that open the doors but unlike the keys which open a nearby door, the cards open whatever door they want to so there's a bit of more randomness going on. instead of Super Pellets, Pac can find bonus items in some of the doors that turn him into Galaga-Man (there's no name for the power-up but they should have definitely called it that) that has him shoot beams at the Ghost to temporary stun them, not as cool or powerful as Super Pac-Man but it's still alright. there's also some random bootleg Lolo/Lala wandering around that helps retrieve items for Pac who goes by Miru or Mil, going through her is safe since she's a friendly ghost, she is the Pal. there's good ideas here but for me it just didn't click, maybe if I spent more time with it I'd like it more but I can't say I'm too interested. also there's goofy ass music playing through the entire levels.

Pac-Land: 6/10
MS Paint Pac is cool. this one is more of a side scrolling game where Pac-Man assists a lost fairy to help return her to her land, and along the way the Ghosts are there to try and mess with Pac-Man. Pac-Man doesn't care this time around he just tries to walk around them he has a job to do, though the Power Pellets finally make a return so he can eat them up again if it ever shows up. unfortunately I couldn't finish the third level since I kept messing up the jump over the lake and fell into the water every time so I didn't complete the fourth level where Pac returns back home to Not Ms. Pac-Man, sad

Pac-Mania: 6/10
damn this game looks great for 1987. it's back to the original Pac format but now the mazes are in 2.5D and Pac-Man is able to jump over the Ghosts! though I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I didn't get far in this one so I didn't get to see the other two mazes, new Ghosts, or the different colored Power Pellets. this is another case of if I played it longer I'd rate it higher, but this was a greater first impression than say, Pac & Pal, I wish the gameplay was a bit faster though.

Pac-Attack: 3/10
puzzle game competition is tough when it comes to me. if you're not Tetris, Puyo Puyo, or Dr. Mario then I don't caaare. I'll give it this I like the neat implementation of Pac eating Ghosts in a puzzle format, but I couldn't really figure out how to get into it and I don't have the interest to.

Pac-In-Time: 2/10
the best part of this game is the absurdity of the plot. Pac-Man is just enjoying the time with his family when all of a sudden his arch-nemesis, the Ghost Witch, the one who's been there since the beginning and is the one responsible for sending all those Ghosts against Pac in the mazes (source: trust me bro) decides to take things into her own hands and zaps Pac-Man to the year 1975 which also turns him into a young boy (I'm not sure how that'll benefit her but okay) so now he has to traverse through some random worlds while collecting Pellets to finish the levels and eventually face off the Ghost Witch at the end to get back home to the present. this game is off and it's not just me since not only was it not developed by Namco (only published by them) but it's also a rebranded version of Fury of the Furries so in all but branding this is not a Pac-Man game. anyway I couldn't get past the first level because I didn't have enough Pellets and couldn't figure out how to get back up, peak media

Pac-Man Arrangement (Arcade): 9/10
KINOOOOO! I used to have an old GBA cart with Pac-Man games and out of all of them this is the one that I enjoyed the most, now here I am playing the original arcade without the screen scrolling. this feels like the natural progression from Ms. Pac-Man with not only the different mazes (one of which being the original maze in appearance and layout), but there's boosters that let Pac zoom fast to stun the Ghosts, warp panels that send him to a different section of the maze, varied power-ups that give Pac a ghost clone, temporary trap the Ghosts in a urn, and even turn the Ghosts into presents (not sure what that one does but it's funny). there's also an introduction of a glasses Ghost (apparently his name is Kinky lol) where if he makes contact with another Ghost, he powers them up for the rest of the level (Blinky becomes a bull ghost that charges at Pac when he's in his sight, Pinky becomes a bunny ghost that tries to hop in Pac's direction, Inky becomes a "coooool" ghost that can create a parallel clone of himself, Clyde becomes fat and spits out extra pellets in the maze). the later levels have more Kinkies wandering about so near the end there's a possibility all of them will be powered-up and that is some fun chaos. there's also a boss fight with the Ghosts at the end so yeah there's an actual ending to this game that's cool. this is the only one I finished to the end as not only does continuing send you right back from where you are, but the game's just a bunch of fun. if you like Pac-Man but somehow never played this one, do it you are missing out.

Pac-Man Arrangement (Console): 4/10
"How dare you stand where he stood." ~ idk I think Luke Skywalker said that
how do you release a cool looking game like Pac-Mania in 1987 and then have this almost twenty years later? visually this looks like mobile slop, which is funny since there is a mobile game in this collection and it looks a lot better than this, gameplay wise it's not a good first impression. quickly skimming through the game online it seems the levels do get pretty interesting later on, but the first few levels I played were not anything special and I'm not sure if I really want to continue when I already have the superior Arrangement in the same collection. idk maybe I'm missing out but oh well.

Pac-Man Championship Edition: 8/10
Pac-Man but for a modern audience, it's very solid. more fast-paced, the mazes change layouts, there's an awesome neon look to everything, I'm sure most people on this page know what Championship Pac-Man so I won't go into any more detail. you're probably better off with DX or Championship Edition 2 since those ones improve the formula more, heck there's even a NES fan creation of this game that I'd say has even more style, but this is still really great on its own.

Pac-Motos: 5/10
I don't know what a Motos is, but I'll just say that I don't have much of an opinion on this one other than I got huge Checkerboard Chase vibes from this one. basically Pac-Man has to bump into his enemies like the Ys guy and knock them off the stage. there's some power-ups you can collect in the levels which you can save for later in a inventory of some sort and that's a neat way for Pac-Man to use his power-ups. idk what else to say, it's good I guess

Pac 'n Roll Remix: 7/10
Pac-Man forme de Marble Madness. I can see myself playing this through to the very end if I had the time to do so, it seems like a much better version of Pac-In-Time where instead of collecting Pellets through lame platforming, you collect them by rolling around in this fun little golf courses. don't have much else to say here other than....awesome.

Pac-Man Battle Royale: 3/10
what no Battle Pass? Pac-Man Battle Royale is really a game that gets all its magic from being at the arcade. in the arcade, it's at least a wonderful 7/10, but when you're just sitting there in a dark room alone battling against a Pac CPU inside a very small maze, all the magic is missing. why would I play this when every other game in this collection gives me a more unique experience? I guess if you had some friends with you in the house it'd be better but I really think the best way to play this is out in the arcade.

Pac-Man 256: 5/10
it's fine

the total of 75/140 bring the overall score to something like 5/10....I don't know that seems a bit harsh I'll bring it up to a 6/10. for the cheap piece I'd say it's well worth it, especially with the big hitters like Arrangement Arcade and Championship Edition. I feel it this collection could have been improved upon but this is a well-done effort and if you need an easy way to play a bunch of Pac-Man games, give this collection a go.

MS. PAC-MAN IS STILL IN THE CREDITS OF ARRANGEMENT CONSOLE YOU CAN'T CHANGE HISTORY FOREVER REVISIONISTS

okay….hear me out

yeah three stars, what a surprise. well there’s higher ratings for it on this website, but you are looking at what game this is. if you’re not familiar with it though, which I’m assuming a lot of you aren’t since this isn’t as well known as something like Sonic 06 or Balan Wonderworld, basically Castlevania Judgment has a rather infamous reputation in the Castlevania fandom for….multiple reasons. back in the olden days whenever this game was brought up, people have always described it with very hateful content, saying how this is the worst Castlevania game to ever exist, with some declaring it to be so even nowadays. being a Castlevania fan myself and having spent almost 20 hours into this game (at least according to the in-game play time), all I have to say in response is:

you’re all overreacting lol

man I finished Castlevania: The Adventure and that’s at least 10 times worse than this, maybe even more. Castlevania Legends is so boring that I’d have more fun lying in bed and thinking about better uses to spend my time. hell, I played Haunted Castle of all things, have you played Haunted Castle? I sure hope you didn’t. I don’t know much about the Lords of Shadow Castlevanias outside of the 3DS one running at 10 FPS, but didn’t they reboot the entire timeline and try to be a knock-off God of War? the point I’m making here is you can do a lot worse than Castlevania Judgment, believe me. so yeah what the hell, the Internet lied to me?!?!?!?!?! here I was, planning to write a review, tearing this game apart one-by-one by dissecting and describing every reason why it sucks, but I’m instead writing a review about why this game isn’t the worst thing to ever come out of Castlevania, while also still giving some actual criticisms and how it could have been improved, funny how life goes sometimes. to those of you who are still reading all this, go grab a beverage and some snacks, this is going to be a “MUCHO TEXTO” review.

this game has a Story Mode, and this is where most of this game's dialogue comes from so this will be a long one. so there's this Aeon guy, not much is known about the guy other that he governs over time, but he discovers that Galamoth, the well-known antagonist of the hit game "Kid Dracula", is sending his minion, the "Time Reaper" back into the past to destroy Count Dracula himself. this is obviously a bad idea since no more Dracula means the entirety of history gets written, assuming the Time Reaper destroys Dracula when he first came into fruition, so in retaliation, Aeon sends thirteen characters from different points of history into a time rift and has them all battle it out to give the winner "what they desire" as well as deciding who will be the one that's capable of defeating the Time Reaper. yes, Aeon is somehow able to mess with time and bring anyone that he wants into a time rift, even Dracula and Death are able to be yanked out of their timeline. imagine being the Castlevania equivalent of Satan only to be summoned against your will by Male Bayonetta, I suppose time manipulation is no joke.

well Aeon’s bringing along a bunch of powerful Castlevania characters to take care of the problem that’s good, but there’s a couple of holes in his plan. like I’ve said earlier, Aeon brings in characters from whatever point of history he felt like taking them from, but isn’t exactly the smartest idea. the Sypha in the rift is from a time before she met Trevor and the others, Shanoa and Carnell are also brought in before or right when their adventures are supposed to start, and Eric is brought in while he’s still a bratty child. wouldn’t it make more sense to grab all the Castlevania characters when they’re in their prime instead of when some of them are assholes that are still figuring things out? I guess you could say they were brought in early to learn a lesson and have the whole experience turn into the people they would become, but I’ll tell you right here a lot of these guys don’t learn a damn thing after all this, trust me I’ve seen all the endings. hell, a few of them become more egotistical when the journey ends, so on those rare occasions this did more harm than good. what baffles me probably more are the people he chose to bring into the time rift. some like Simon, Trevor, Alucard make sense. I mean they did defeat Dracula, Simon in particular defeating him twice by himself, but then he brings in child Eric, Carmilla, a generic golem? Carmilla’s a pure villain, I mean Death and Dracula are too but at least they have the power to take on the Time Reaper, in what timeline can G Cup Carmilla be considered a “Chosen One”? And “Golem”? why does a random golem hold a higher priority than someone like Julius Belmont who permanently killed Dracula or even Soma Cruz who’s Dracula’s reincarnation? what was bro’s plan here??? there’s no way this was unintentional since Aeon seems pretty confident from the whole thing judging from the cutscenes, so what was preventing him from going all out? Aeon my man, I don’t hate you, you’re neat actually, but your plan definitely could have used some time in the oven.

now that was just the plot summary, each playable character has their own route to go through, with a text introduction at the beginning, a cutscene with Aeon, then another cutscene every three Stages until Stage 10 is completed. I’ll quickly summarize what the stories are like in order of who I went with. hoo boy, these stories are something let me tell you. Alucard’s is nothing too special for the most part, he just goes around defeating Dracula’s two servants, Carmilla and Death. he has another good old conversation with Death over how he’s not rejoining their side with a bit of daddy issues in between until he faces against his dad himself. interestingly enough, he’s the only one that faces Dracula at all during the story, so I’m guessing Alucard knocked his dad out of commission for most of it.

Maria’s is definitely the most controversial, as everyone always points out how Maria spends her time obsessing over how the other female character’s breasts are bigger than hers, well she does do that….twice. wow you all really exaggerated Maria’s storyline I thought she’d be doing it every three minutes or something but it’s only twice. even then I find the whole thing more amusing than cringeworthy due to just how unexpected it is considering the character and franchise this is coming from (“THOSE ARE A SACRED GIFT”), but yeah that’s all she really does so lol.

Simon’s quest has him facing off against the three legendary warriors who have defeated Dracula before him, Sypha, Grant, and Trevor, the latter being his own ancestor. out of all the characters, I’m assuming Simon’s is the canonical one as his and Aeon’s dialogue sounds the most natural out of all the stories, being on the box art probably hints to that too. Simon’s pretty chill, I’m glad to see the game give his character respect despite the strange redesign he got. now let’s move on to a character that wasn’t given respect, Sypha!

wow, Sypha has no chill in this game. she antagonizes Cornell for being a creature of the night even though he clearly states he’s on her side, as well as accusing Shanoa of being a vampire, making herself no better than the people who’ve accused her kind. I don’t normally say this, but man what a hypocritical b||eeswax.|| she doesn’t learn anything from this btw.

Grant is living the life, he helped play a part in defeating Dracula and is now a respected hero who’s rebuilding Wallachia, but it just isn’t enough for him. “Man, I should have tapped that ass.”, Grant thinks to himself as he chooses not to go to Sypha and Trevor’s wedding. thankfully after a battle with Trevor, he is able to come to a conclusion and learns the true moral of the story: “bros before hoes”.

Golem, I like you, you’re a very charming guy, but man is your story pointless. Golem gains a soul as he’s sent in the time rift and tries to search for a way to become human. he meets Carmilla and starts calling her “Mama” and goes into a schizo babble about how she said he can become human, this is the only time this game’s story made me genuinely cringe believe it or not. Eventually he decides to give up his humanity, and upon being sent back he is destroyed by an unknown hunter. what a waste of time, I sure hope you didn’t choose to beat the final boss with this guy because wow. Golem was definitely put in just to have a heavyweight fighter in the game.

Maria’s story is always the one that gets criticized, but I don’t know, I think Eric is the true disaster of this game. His desire is to prove that the Alucard Spear can be just as useful as the Vampire Killer, that’s a fine goal and all, but god damn does he go about it in such a dickish way. “I don’t care if you created this spear, I’ll beat your ass for underestimating your creation!” “Ermm, your whip is actually trash! My spear’s way better!” “You’re more powerful than a Belmont? Too bad this spear’s more powerful!” Eric learns nothing from this, in fact he only becomes even more cocky after the whole thing, this is supposed to be one of the good guys?

why is Carmilla here, what was Aeon thinking? well obviously the game needs its fanservice character but I could at least use an in-game explanation. Carmilla only exists in this story to be a b||eeswax||, that’s it, I don’t know what you were expecting.

Cornell on the other hand is pretty cool, even if I haven’t got to his game yet. the time rift has trapped him in his werewolf form so he has to find a way out and maybe attempt to find a way to remove his curse. he finds Sypha and Carmilla along the way and deservingly beats the crap out of them. Death informs him that there’s a way to fix his curse and while Cornell believes him, he tells Death he will find the cure on his own terms, then he beats up Death. nothing of note really happens here, but it’s a neat first impression of Cornell’s character.

speaking of nothing of note, Trevor’s about the same. he faces Simon, meets up with an old friend, and beats up someone that doesn’t know him yet (it’s Sypha). Shanoa’s still cool as always but she doesn’t do much either, she goes off to face a few people that previously took down Dracula and that’s about it. wow, the second half of these stories are pretty filler.

Death’s isn’t much to write home about either but I do like the idea of Death being the one to face the Time Reaper as the Time Reaper is basically Galamoth’s Death so having the two big bad’s most respected servants duke it out is pretty awesome.

Dracula is just pissed throughout his entire story. after being sent to the time rift, he spends his time getting revenge on people like Maria and the Belmonts who’ve defeated him before in the past. of course after that he also has to deal with the being that’s trying to destroy him in the first place, and he succeeds in doing so if he’s the one you’re playing us, honestly good for him. imagine the complete embarrassment Galamoth has knowing the being he sent to erase Dracula from history was destroyed by Dracula himself.

lastly, Aeon gets his own tale to end things off. Aeon is the only guy to face off against every character in his storyline, which makes sense since he’s trying to determine who is the one capable of taking on the Time Reaper. but since you’re playing as Aeon, after you defeat everyone Aeon expresses disappointment and goes “wow this was a waste of time you all suck I’m going to deal with the Time Reaper myself” and does just that, well he doesn’t say those exact words but you get what I mean.

so that’s what Castlevania Judgment’s storyline is like, would you believe me if, despite all that, I still find this game’s story entertaining? yeah it’s a trainwreck, but a glorious trainwreck, one that I can’t bring myself to look away from. it is amazing just how wrong it gets some of the characters, to the point where it transcends from being cringeworthy and instead borders on hilarity. even with the flanderization of some characters, the rest seem pretty faithful to how I expect them to be. the plot, while probably just an excuse to get people excited over a motion-controlled fighting game on the Wii, isn’t too bad either. the idea of summoning a bunch of Castlevania characters into a singular point in time and having them face off against a common foe is very cool. Konami probably thought so too since they brought back that idea in Harmony of Despair and Grimoire of Souls from my knowledge. the concept is great, but the execution clearly could have used some work judging from everything I’ve described before. did you know that even though Galamoth is the one responsible for the events of Judgment, he’s not mentioned by name or even shown once during the entire game? why not? it seems like such a huge missed opportunity. maybe have a boss fight with him right after the Time Reaper, though the Time Reaper is pretty annoying to fight so they’d definitely have to nerf him so you don’t have two ridiculous battles in a row. I’m guessing the possibly strict budget prevented him from even appearing, rather unfortunate. a less arcade-like story route could have benefited the game too, for better or for worse. the cutscenes only occur during the beginning of a Stage, and even then only a few of them are unique since the less important battles reuse the Versus Mode banter. wouldn’t it be great to see more than two characters interact at the same time? I for one would love to see the wonderful mess of all the Judgment interpretations being in a single room together. maybe the voice acting would have cost too much if everyone spoke more than three lines per cutscene so that might be why we didn’t get something like that. I also appreciate that it doesn’t take itself completely seriously besides the whole “all powerful being wants to destroy the timeline” plot, where else are you going to find a game about a mummy-looking dude moping about his best friend marrying a hot woman?

if there’s something that I genuinely don’t like here is if you want access to the final boss, you need to complete everyone’s Story Mode to unlock the True Story Mode. granted each Story playthrough is only about 20 minutes long so realistically it’ll only take you 4 hours to get there, but the thing with True Story Mode is it’s pretty much identical to the regular Story Mode, all the same battles and cutscenes and all except you fight Aeon a second time, face the Time Reaper, then get 30 seconds of ending text for your character. first off, don’t do this with every character, just bring your favorite character to face the Time Reaper and consider the mode completed. second off, why even have the regular one to begin with if True Story Mode is the exact same but with two added fights? the only reason I can think of is to artificially pad out the game length, which is probably the likely answer. speaking of game length, I guess I should finally move on to how Judgment actually plays.

GAMEPLAY. THIS IS THE GAMEPLAY SECTION for the people that didn’t want to read those paragraphs of me describing the game’s story here you go. let me get an important detail out of the way: please don’t play with the Wiimote and Nunchuck. I don’t know if you heard or anything, but you don’t need to use the Wiimote to play through this game. Judgment supports the Classic and GameCube controller just fine so yes, even though the game was based on the idea of swinging the Wiimote like a whip, that is not the only way to play, so you can try to treat this like a traditional 3D fighting game. I don't know what it’s like to play this with motion controls but it’s probably pretty terrible so I guess only do so if your curiosity’s gotten the best of you. you start off the game with 10 of the 14 playable characters. Shanoa, Dracula, Death, and Aeon have to be unlocked by completing their True Story Mode campaign so if you don’t want to go through all of that, whoops. there’s actually another way you can unlock Shanoa and Aeon, and that’s by connecting your Wii to your DS with a Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia cartridge inside it. I bet all you Pokémon Battle Revolution owners forgot the Wii could do that. each character has a neutral combo where you just press the attack button repeatedly, a directional combo that involves using the left stick then attacking, a jump combo where you press the jump button then attack, Finisher/Special Attacks that involve both the A and B buttons, a charge attack that has you hold the A button and attack with B, and a guard breaker by using the Left Trigger and the B button. like traditional Castlevania, you can also collect Hearts in the stages to power up your Sub-weapons which depend on what character you’re playing as (Simon can use the Cross and Holy Water, Maria gets Gale Force and Bat Swarms, Shanoa has Jagged Earth and Gravity Circle, etc.). they’re not too powerful on their own so most of the time you’ll want to use them to keep combos going, although there’s a chance you can find the Double/Triple Shot items by breaking objects in the stage which will let your Sub-weapons twice/thrice respectively, from my experience if you manage to get the Triple Shot Cross, you’ll have an easy time zoning out your opponent as long as you have the Hearts available, just remember that the Double and Triple Shot won’t stick around when the next Stage starts.

of course you can’t have a modern fighting game without some cool super moves and this game has plenty. the Wiki cites them as “Super Finishers”, though some YouTube videos seem to call them “Hyper Attacks”, I don’t have a clue which term is correct so I’ll refer to them as “Supers” from this point forward. during a match you have this Skill Gauge or Hyper Gauge (they really couldn’t decide on a single term for these) that fills up whenever you or your opponent take damage. you can use it to perform some unique techniques like Cornell’s Rage Mode or Golem’s pretty good roll but if you can get it to full (which is really easy to do it’ll happen at least once a match), you can perform a powerful Super by pressing the X button. every character has their own unique Super move and animation, almost all of them take around 15-20 seconds to finish so they can be a bit of a pace-breaker, especially if they’re successfully landed all the time. this is when you realize Trevor is the most based character since his Super only takes 9 seconds. Trevor knows that your time is precious so he makes his finishing move quick and painless. if you not playing as Trevor though, you might as well bite the bullet and make sure you have a beverage or snack to consume while you wait for the animation to play out, unless you’re playing someone like Golem or Aeon whose Super takes too long to pull off, at that point you’re probably better off not using it.

okay now all good fighting games have to have some extra modes to keep you occupied, well this one’s got you covered. there’s the Story Modes I’ve already mentioned, but there’s also Arcade Mode which is a more traditional version of Story Mode where it’s all fight, no talk. there’s also eight stages instead of ten, no monsters to fight at Stage 6, no Time Reaper at the end, and it keeps track of your time during the whole thing. at the end you get to register a name and your time in an in-game leaderboard that you can show off to your friends or the internet, but odds are there’s not really interest in getting any quick times online, the last submission was sent over a year ago trust me I checked. a Survival Mode is also here where you’ll fight against an endless amount of characters until you eventually lose. this one has even less demand as there’s no category for it at all on the speedrun website, on top of that the only footage I could find for it on YouTube is some sort of mod where the player character is the Time Reaper. I’m not kidding. besides that there’s the traditional Versus Mode which is what you’ll probably be playing if you somehow manage to find a friend who willingly wants to play this game with you. just remember that Shanoa, Aeon, and the Castlevania duo aren’t there from the get-go, make sure you unlock them beforehand so Shanoa bro won’t back out on you. and of course you can’t have Castlevania Judgment without the amazing and spectacular Viewing Mode, where you can listen to unlockable music and sound effects, as well as JPGs of the characters’ artwork that you can easily find nowadays with a quick internet search, in higher quality!

the main mode that I want to go into detail about however is Castle Mode. you know how most Castlevania games are about venturing into Dracula’s Castle until you meet and battle him at the very top? well this is kinda like that. in Castle Mode, your goal is to traverse through 30 different rooms, the last one being where Dracula resides. there’s no 3D hub for you to move your character around, it’s more similar to something like Super Mario Bros 3.’s overworld where you go over to level-to-level with some divergent paths to take. now don’t go thinking the different pathways are optional rooms, you need to do all of them. even if you reach Dracula’s room, it will be sealed off until every other room has been completed, no skips. what helps bring some variety in these rooms is that you’re not always going to simply defeat your opponent to complete it, there’s an array of different objectives that you’ll have to do in order to progress through this mode. sometimes you’ll have to collect a set amount of items from crates or candles, sometimes you’ll just need to collect Hearts instead. other times you’ll have to string up a long enough combo against your opponent, or maybe you’ll need to land the finishing blow with a Sub-weapon, or even a Super. on some occasions you’ll even need to activate a stage hazard to move in, and by a stage hazard I mean only just the one from the Clock Tower stage. on the topic of Clock Tower, you’ll probably also have to ring out your opponent either there or another stage by knocking them into a pit (yeah you can do that in this game I couldn’t find a good opportunity to bring it up). to put it simply, there’s a few other things besides winning a match that you’ll have to do in order to move on, some easier than others. getting the Clock Tower hazard room is basically a freebie, unless you’re playing as Dracula who has terrible mobility you should have almost zero problem completing that one. the Sub-weapon/Super objective isn’t too difficult either since your opponent will always stay alive even at 0% health until you finish them off with how the game tells you to, the Super variation is a bit more challenging if you end up missing but the earlier ones always have your gauge at maximum so you’ll have more chances to mess up early on. depending on your character, the combo objective will either be simple or an absolute pain, especially later on when the combos they ask you to become much longer. if you want a tip from me: hold on to the Gravity Circle Sub-weapon. using it on your opponent once will guarantee you a 9+ combo, trivializing this specific objective. the early Heart ones are easy at first since your opponents are just easy to deal with Zombies, but odds are near the end you'll likely have to deal with collecting a lot of Hearts while having to deal with a Trevor Belmont that’ll not only never leave you alone, but also try to steal away the Hearts on the ground, oh yeah there’s a time limit too. while typing this I also remembered there’s another objective where you have to make sure objects in the stage aren’t destroyed during the time limit. the problem is that your opponent is going to try their hardest to make sure those objects are smashed so you’ll have to try and hold them off in a corner for a good while, yeah that one sucks.

if you end up failing an objective or lose all your health, not only do you lose your Sub-weapon and Hearts, but you’re also sent back to your last checkpoint, meaning there’s a chance you’ll have to redo some rooms all over again. every six or so rooms you’ll run into a room that lets you save your progress and restore health when you complete it, which is the only way to fully replenish your health in this mode outside of losing. you can go back to this checkpoint to save and restore every time so don’t make the same mistake I did during my first attempt where I not only didn’t realize this, but also had to backtrack to the rooms I skipped, so yeah save often. a thing that’ll make that a little annoying to do is sometimes when you move around the map, you’ll have to go through an enemy ambush. the early ones are very easy since you’ll only have to face off against Zombies and Mermen, but when you complete more and more rooms Iron Gladiators and Minotaurs are added into the mix and they can deal a ton of damage if you’re not careful, especially if they have the attack boost added to them. oh yeah later on the rooms you go in will buff your opponents such as giving them attack boosts, no knockback, or even regenerating health while you’ll have restrictions in comparison like decreasing health and attack power.

out of all the modes, Castle Mode feels like the most creative and replayable of the bunch, though I do think there could have been a little more improvement. the only enemies you’ll ever fight in the monster rooms are nothing but Zombies and Mermen, with an Iron Gladiator or Minotaur at the end. why stop there? why not add some Skeletons or Axe Armors? They’re very iconic Castlevania enemies so I’m surprised they weren’t included. hell they could have added Medusa Heads in the Clock Tower stage, I mean yeah they’d be annoying to fight but you can’t have Clock Tower without them. the lack of monsters is a little disappointing, I’m sure it couldn’t have hurt to have added at least a couple more to increase the variety. another thing that surprised me is that the second-to-last room is always a fight against the enemy monsters, wouldn’t it make more sense to battle Death instead? I mean he’s Dracula’s second hand man and they already have him as a playable character, it just makes sense. you know I actually can’t think of many more improvements at the moment, this mode is just really solid, perhaps the best part of this game even. if you don’t have other people to play with and have no interest in experiencing this game’s interesting writing, Castle Mode should be your go-to way of playing the game. I’d actually recommend doing this with multiple characters since completing it with the character you chose unlocks their artwork and theme song in the Viewing Mode for you to view and listen! (cough cough internet)

after all of this you might be wondering: how is the character balancing? a bit wack. now I’m not saying that it’s completely all the rails like, I don't know, Super Smash Bros Melee. where half of the characters aren’t that great (SSBM you’re cool but you’re also messy), but I think it’s safe for me to say that some characters are a lot better than others. as someone who’s played every character in Story and Castle Mode, as well as the big mistake of using every one for True Story Mode, I was able to make my sort of personal in-game tier list of our 14 fighters, mostly based on 1v1s rather than their capabilities in Castle Mode. my tier list went something like:

Dracula tier: Dracula
the OP ones: Maria, Cornell, Eric, Shanoa
the good ones: Grant, Trevor, Sypha, Aeon
the okay ones: Death, Alucard, Simon, Carmilla
slop tier: Golem

I wasn’t kidding when I said Golem’s only here to be a heavyweight character. if you ever played a heavy character in Smash, imagine that but worse. at least in Smash the heavies are still really fun to use, here Golem has three good moves: his two dash attacks and his roll, everything else is….not good. most of his moves are two slow to be worthwhile and his slow speed and big size means he’s going to get juggled a lot, especially against the higher level CPUs, don’t even bother using him for Castle Mode unless you can stomach using him for so long. Golem was built to be juggled by Grant DaNasty, what a jobber.

Carmilla felt like the character type that has weak attack power but great speed and combo potential, however there’s already a character in this game that does that better and his name’s Grant, I just could not get a feel for Carmilla. forgive me for yet another Smash comparison (can you tell I don’t really play other fighting games) but her playstyle reminds me a bit of Bayonetta so she could probably be dangerous in the right hands, I’m just not the person to do that. As for Alucard and Simon, I’m grouping the two of them together since they’re basically the beginner characters, though Alucard is a little better in my opinion. Being the jack-of-all-trades they’re not terrible but they also don’t have anything amazing, though an interesting tidbit about Alucard is that he’s the character that’s used for Arcade Mode speedruns, so maybe he has some secret sauce I haven’t found yet. as for Simon, Trevor’s a better whip wielder overall, which is ironic since Trevor doesn’t use his whip as often, I guess he’s just a better character. Death seems like he’d be pretty powerful which would make sense because he’s….well Death, but I don’t know he’s just alright. his scythe moves are quite fun to use but I couldn’t really find anything else that’d make him amazing, R.I.P.

Aeon’s another character that’s probably amazing when given to someone who knows what they’re doing, I am not that someone. Aeon has this super cool Hyper Beam type of attack that I saw him perform on the game’s highest difficulty, but I never really figured out how to pull it off so you’ll have to find out how to do it yourself, I don’t know I guess Aeon’s playstyle is too big brained for my goofy ass. Sypha’s kinda average in most aspects except for her spells. Frost Wall into Icicle Blades is all you need to deal with CPU opponents for the most part, and Fireball into Triple Blaze is also nice for zoning, though these moves probably won’t be as effective against an actual player. whipping with Simon feels like you’re slapping your opponents, but whipping with Trevor feels like you’re hitting them with a metal pipe. Trevor just feels way more powerful, which makes sense since he probably has more experience with the Vampire Killer, plus he also has a really good dash attack where he just PUNCHES you complete with an “ORA” if you switched the voice language to Japanese. Grant’s whole shtick is moving around fast and locking you with a bunch of combos. on top of that he has the easiest Super to land as well as a dangerous attack known as Thousand Edge that can eat an opponent's HP away if you can manage to land it. Grant's a pretty great pick, plus his CPU is a pain in the ass to fight against.

Shanoa has a lot going for her, her neutral bow attack is good for zoning, a lot of her attacks can combo into each other, and she has the best guard breaker attack to the point where using it as a combo finisher can be viable. that said, you still need to put in a little work if you want to make her a menace. having a Sub-weapon to keep up combos will help though. then you have Eric where you don’t really need much work at all, that goddamn Alucard Spear has ridiculous range! Eric’s very straightforward just maintain a moderate distance and keep spamming your regular attacks and your opponent should go down eventually, maybe even mix a guard breaker in case they’re blocking, maybe Eric was right about his big dumb spear. Cornell is solid on his own but the thing that puts him this high is the Rage Mode that’s powered by his Skill Gauge. Rage Mode gives him not only a more powerful moveset that goes through blocking, but it also give him super armor for its entire duration. don’t even bother with his Super, a single Rage Mode duration will help take over half of your opponent’s HP with else. The thing holding it back a bit though is it takes about a second to activate, which means you’re wide open to being attacked and making you have to activate it all over again. once it ends it’ll also leave Cornell vulnerable for a brief second so there’s a chance you’ll give your opponent a free combo starter, that said the positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion, Cornell is excellent. I’m glad Judgment continues the trend of Maria Renard being OP because yeah she’s OP. all of Maria’s moves are at the very least good and her special moves are excellent. Suzaku Call is great up close and is a free lead into Byakko Call, the two moves are very spammable and with Byakko Call if your opponent is blocking then you control it to move away from them and give yourself some distance. there’s a chance that Maria will crash during the end of the move that I’m not sure what the specifics are of how it happens, but if it occurs it does leave her open for about three seconds which might be her only true downside outside of her regular attack leaving her in a floaty position if it misses. oh yeah her guard breaker lasts a good while and can be used to end off combos–ok nevermind Guardian Knuckle is the best guard breaker. and now for her best move, “Seiryuu Call”. this is ridiculous lol. it’s insane how spammable this move is, that combined with its great power means that it’s possible to win by just spamming waves of water at your opponent for the whole match. well it’ll be a little difficult to pull off against higher level CPUs but the monster room becomes freebies if you’re using Seiryuu Call over and over, I love water.

lastly we end things off with Dracula himself. just three words. Hellfire. Dark Inferno. Dracula has a lot of moves but for the most part, these two will all you will need to net yourself an easy win. Especially spammable, good damage, hell you don’t even need to move to win, you can just stand there throwing out Hellfires and Dark Infernos all the time, that’s what I did for his Story Mode. if that is still not enough and you’re still dealing with the CPU’s treachery, Dracula has a little he can where he floats in the air by pressing the jump button, and now his attack button sends fire pillars from where your opponent is standing and they do ridiculous damage. there’s a chance where they can still somehow reach and attack you which sends Dracula back to the ground, but you can just jump right up and continue scorching them in no time. I guess being #1 is a little debatable but if you’re able to decimate your opponents without even touching the control stick then that’s good enough for me. now there’s a reason my tier list is focused on 1v1s, and that’s because Castle Mode is a whole other ball park. Dracula’s goes from the best character to the worst when you need to use him for something other than battles. remember the freebie Clock Tower objective? that’s one of the most difficult things for Dracula to do! his movement speed is so slow that there’s a good chance that he won’t be able to escape from the falling gears in time and ends up getting ringed out. slow speed means collecting objectives is also a pain in the ass, and boy there sure is a lot of them in Castle Mode. how ironic it is that Dracula has the most difficulty going through his own castle, even Golem does a better job! anyway that’s my personal tier and I know what you’re thinking: “What the point?” well yeah fair I mean, who the hell’s playing Castlevania Judgment in 2023 whose name doesn’t begin and end with “K” and “B”? I just thought I’d give my overview/advice on all the characters and mechanics to show that the gameplay is actually more solid than most think it is, now it’s no Tekken or anything, but for what it is, I think this game did a serviceable and acceptable job.

would you believe I’m this far in the review and I haven’t even discussed probably the most controversial thing about this game? now if you’re this far into the review, you most likely know what all the character designs look like, and if you somehow don’t know then you can look them up right now and maybe perform a spit take. Fun Fact That You Might Already Be Familiar With: the character designs for Castlevania Judgment were done by Takeshi Obata, the artist of Death Note. this has nothing to do with the review but apparently this dude got arrested one time for possession of an army knife, can’t believe we live in an anti-knife society. now I haven’t watched Death Note myself, at least not yet, but as a first big impression of how Takeshi Obata makes character designs, this is….interesting. now if I was 2010 YouTuber, you probably hear me go “AAAAGH THESE DESIGNS ARE CRINGE AND STUPID AND NOT ACCURATE TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL”, however I will choose the more insane option and confess that I don’t really mind a lot of these designs. yeah they’re a little too busy and over the top, but bro we’re living in a world where people think gacha characters are peak character design you got no room to talk lmao. now I wasn’t a fan of Alucard design at first but looking back it seems neat, it’s like a fusion of Sephiroth and that Guilty Guy knight dude. this is definitely a hot take, but I actually like Maria’s design in this game it’s pretty stylish. that said, I'm willing to admit that that’s not Maria lmao, they have the same color scheme but that’s it. now for a colder take, Simon….yeah no I can’t defend that. his outfit looks way too goofy for my taste in my opinion and it doesn’t really suit his character, plus internet culture has familiarized me with Light Yagami and I can’t unsee him everytime I look at Simon’s face. Sypha kinda has some drip going on and it’s a funny departure from her original design which was “blue robe and hood”, nice design but we all know they only gave her that breast size just so Maria could comment on it. Grant is a similar situation for me where I actually like the design but it doesn’t suit his character in the slightest. I originally thought he was sent to the time rift while he was still a monster but no, the game makes it plain and clear that this Grant takes place after Dracula’s defeat in CVIII, so this design makes no sense unless Dracula really beat him up so bad that he has to go around looking like a goth hunchback mummy. If there’s one thing Golem shines at, it’s his design. not only is he obviously the golem enemy but he has cues and inspiration from Frankenstein’s monster as well which is also a Castlevania enemy, plus the purple lightning is cool too, you did good Golem. Eric has to be my least favorite of the bunch, now he doesn’t give you an eyesore or anything, in fact he’s the most normal looking of the cast, but I just can’t stand his interpretation in this game that he transcends to being the one I genuinely hate, also he looks like that dumb Fairy Type brat from Pokémon Scarlet & Violet so that’s not doing him any more favors. Carmilla looks stupid but she is the fanservice character so I guess that’s okay? honestly I’m not a fan of the pink, if it was a different color like red or black then she’d look a bit better. Cornell’s design is genuinely awesome, and probably the only one that’s actually better than the original design, not that there was anything wrong with the original. metal wolf demon, do you really need me to say anything else? if you’re a near-sighted person like me, then Trevor looks pretty cool from a distance, just don’t stare at his character artwork for a long amount of time, it gets pretty wack the longer you do so. now there was no topping Shanoa’s original design, but the one she has here is actually quite nice and one of the easier ones to look at. I’m not sure why she’s wearing a nun hood, but eh it works. Death’s okay, compared to most of his previous designs this one doesn’t compare, but if you treat this one like his second form designs where he usually looks more battle-ready, then I’d say it does the job. Dracula looks different every game so the only way you could mess him up is with a lame art style, Judgment doesn’t have that so he looks cool here. lastly being an original character, Aeon doesn’t have other design to compare to and he still ends up looking neat, though I’m mixed on the 100% white colors he has going on, his alt with the black and red color scheme fixes that problem, combine that with the Sunglasses accessory and he ends looking real dapper. oh yeah you can unlock cosmic accessories in this game for your characters by performing certain tasks in the game, most of them being found in Castle Mode. you know if you didn’t think the characters looked goofy enough, you can also slap cat ears on them or put a mustache on their face or put stuffed rabbits and beetles on their shoulders. you can even have Trevor wear the Eyepatch accessory, you know even though he already has an eyepatch on default. now you can give him mismatching eyepatches to make him look like an absolute dumbass! man people need to stop taking this game so seriously.

if there’s something more understandable to be disappointed over, it’s that this looks like an early PS2 game. now I’m not saying that it's really a bad thing, I mean I enjoy how the environments here look even if the color choices could be more….colorful, but a big pet peeve I have is that all the character models have just one neutral expression. you have all these crazy and wacky looking characters and all they can do is make the same static face, having to rely on the voice acting to help them feel more alive. btw the voice acting’s alright, a lot of the English voice actors did work on previous Castlevania games so they got some experience, that said hearing the same voice clips during battle over and over as well as “MY NAME IS AEON!!! SHALL WE BEGIN THE FIRST TRIAL???” everytime you choose not to skip the cutscenes in Story Mode, it’ll get very repetitive so I wouldn’t blame people for switching to the Japanese audio. some good audio to listen to however is the music, and yes it’s probably one of the best parts to come out of Judgment. now this review’s already way too long so I’m going to half-ass this segment by posting the OST right here to let you pick your favorites and there’s nothing you can do about it there’s over 8000 words in this Doc I have no problems taking shortcuts at this point (fun fact the Vampire Killer track in this game is the exact same as the Smash one thought you should know that)

TL;DR for the readers that skipped through everything and scrolled all the way down here (I know who you are) this game is very flawed and I spent a lot of time critiquing it, but I still think the game does a bunch of things right to where I’d say I like it more than I dislike it, in fact I don’t really dislike it all that much I enjoy it a lot more than I should. I think one of the factors that helped out was streaming the game’s story to a few friends, we all ended up experiencing the whole thing blind so we kinda joked about it together and had some fun for the most part (until we got to the Time Reaper lol). can we move past the circlejerk about Judgment being irremediable trash with no good qualities, this isn’t 2010 anymore we moved past the AVGN clone era, at least I hope we did. is this game “cringe”? no, it’s CRINGEKINO. and so what? if I had the choice of playing through a generic AAA game with movie length cutscenes and a bunch of walking around with quiet noises in the background, or the choice of playing a game that is essentially 2000’s edgecore that makes a bunch of ridiculous and unique decisions, I’d choose the later in a heartbeat.

it’s not that bad. it’s no Citizen Kane of gaming but it doesn’t need to be. yeah there’s better Castlevania games and better 3D fighters as well, however this gets the job done and for the most part it’s harmless, well besides selling terribly. the game took a risk, it flopped, but damn I’ll say it was a fascinating shot. for me this game is a fascinating recommendation, especially if you’re already familiar with Castlevania. if you want to have a good time, gather some friends of yours (it doesn’t matter if they’re CV fans or not), try to have fun, and don’t try to take it seriously. if there’s something to take away from all this: try the game for yourself, and don’t let NPCs on the internet decide your opinions for you, just play it and form your own decision. anyway yeah I don’t know how to feel about this being the longest review I’ll write on this website, you’re definitely not going to find anyone else go into this much detail about Castlevania Judgment in the current year of 2023 (I’d like to be proven wrong though). to those of you who sat down and read the entire thing: thank you, and I’m sorry. to the ones that just skipped through most of it: I don't blame you.

“Well, besides having my heart ripped out, guess I did all right.”

I somehow managed to find an arcade cabinet of this in the outside earlier today, man this game takes me back

you pop a quarter in, select your chosen bounty hunter, then run wild in the Wild West shooting a bunch of outlaws while you run on top of a stampede, engage in horse chases, blast outlaws Duck Hunt style, and even spend some time in the saloon with the ladies! it's a bunch of good old side scrolling shooting and I love those type of games. shoutouts to that really cool intro that plays when the game's idle, I was always amazed when I saw it since it looked like something straight out of those old western shows my great grandma used to watch. the game has some great and goofy animations that are sure to give out some laughs, and each boss having a voice clip at the beginning and end of their fight is really neat too, oh yeah I can't forget how each stage starts off with a bounty poster of who you'll face at the end of the stage, pretty kino. the characters you chose are slightly different too, Steve and Billy shoot out singular bullets while Bob and Cormano shoot weaker multiple bullets. you can also find powerups throughout the stages that can either give up rapid fire bullets or a second weapon so you can go duel mode, both of these stack so once you have the two of them your damage output becomes amazing, just make sure you don't lose a life or you'll lose them and have to regain them again.

anyway this is a certified hood classic. I own this game on Arcade Archives and was finally able to complete the whole game that way, but it was nice to be able to play this on actual hardware again after so long, even if I only made it to the third stage. a lot of people seem to be nostalgic for the TMNT Konami cabinets but I never really saw those back in the day, it was always Sunset Riders where I come from and I am not complaining. if you manage to spot this game and want to have some fun side scrolling shooting action, go over and get your stack of quarters ready, even better if you have three friends around to increase the chaos and fun.

Cormano bros where are you at