Coming off of Star Force 2 I would have never expected this to be the apex of not only Star Force but also the Battle Network series. Battles finally feel on par with if not above Battle Network with the return of some key mechanics (Area Steal and Style Changes) plus the introduction of the Noise system and Illegal Data making every battle worth finishing for new rewards to play with. The story is back to the tone you'd expect from Star Force and has a lovely ending that anyone would want from seeing this trilogy through. It all comes together so well that I actually felt compelled to complete its postgame unlike SF1 or 2's. Battle Network 3 is still a personal favorite, but I can't deny the polish this game has above it and the rest.

Replaying Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World has become a yearly thing for me somehow. I guess there’s a sort of simplicity to their design that makes them easy to come back to. Regardless, the simplicity of World even in comparison to 3 gives me pause in considering it one of the greatest 2D platformers.

Pivoting to 3 for a bit, it’s no secret that it has more than its fair share of short levels and autoscrollers, but something that I think it holds high above World’s head is its theming. Desert Land has the Angry Sun level and a Pyramid where you have to find the way out by breaking blocks with buzzy beetles. Water Land has a neat boat to interact with on its world map, plenty of water levels as you’d expect, and an abundance of Frog suits to facilitate movement through those. Sky Land’s world map starts you on the ground, but has a mini fortress that acts as an ascension into the actual sky part of the map. Pipe Land’s world map and even some of its levels are actual mazes traversed via pipes, and tons of the level design relates to pipes at the very least. The level design is not always stellar, but I find its attempts so admirable for an NES game.

That’s all to say that Super Mario World feels severely lacking in comparison. Its diversity mostly starts and ends at cute food themed level names along with a palette swap of the ground you stand on. Level design is certainly longer than 3’s, but often feels like a smattering of enemies rather than presenting anything interesting thematically or mechanically. I find that the game shines brightest in its fortress levels, where there’s little room to cheese its design, more vertical platforming, and more danger in the form of hazards rather than enemies which feel more engaging. But those fortresses are few and far between.

Another thing that feels a bit too simple in execution is the game's secret exits. They’re always simple solutions that amounted to coin havens in SMB1 or rare powerups in SMB3, and they either end up being abrupt ends to a level midway through it, or are placed at what is basically the end of the level anyway. Even the ghost houses which you would expect to have more involved exits are guilty of this; one of them just has the other exit some steps left of it. I think it would have been much more natural to have branching paths of a level that lead to different exits (which is ironic considering 3 has this with one exit and without allowing you to replay levels).

I know I’ve been giving World a lot of shit but I do think it’s a good game. I gave praise to 3 but it’s easy to lament aspects of it as well, however it’s hard for me to not feel like the developers did what they could on the NES. The same could be said for World in a sense considering it is just a launch title for the SNES, but I feel like it doesn’t excuse enough of its flaws. Platformers are my favorite genre and I always felt a bit weird seeing this game revered as one of if not the greatest 2D platformer ever.

The Libra and Sagittarius are souvenirs given to Olimar by his two children and are considered mandatory ship parts, yet they seem to be nothing more than two identical jewels on the sides of his ship. By not collecting these parts, you could essentially create a playthrough where Olimar's failure to leave the planet would not be from a lack of a functioning ship, but instead from not being able to live with leaving behind the gifts his children gave him. There's a lot I could say about this game, but this is the thought that sticks out to me the most.

Banjo-Kazooie worked as a platformer despite Banjo not being the most fun character to control because levels were generally small, dense, and self-contained with only one instance of necessary backtracking to 100% a level.

So naturally for this game Rare decided to make levels larger while keeping the same amount of Jiggies per level, remove the "breadcrumb" aspect of Notes that lead the player through the level and instead just make them a collectible scattered throughout, and create more instances of backtracking with split-up pads, character swapping and scenarios that activate things beyond their own levels. Considering Rare developer Gregg Mayles has admitted he got "carried away" with Tooie's world design and even called it "bloated", it really makes you wonder if this was for the best.

At least it has more bosses and instances of dialogue to add some charm into the game.

Let's get the positives out of the way: I'm a sucker for PS1 era pixel art and this game is no exception. The game has a pretty good soundtrack with Aqua Man and the Credits theme in particular being my favorites. My positives end there.

For me a majority of the negatives regarding Mega Man 8 stem from the gameplay. Mega Man's run and slide speed are slower than ever before (or at least they feel that way). A lot of level gimmicks don't feel particularly engaging and are long drawn out, with Astro Man's mazes and Tengu Man/Wily 2's autoscroll sections coming to mind in particular. Most stage minibosses feel like nothing but bullet sponges. Mega Man 8 is just slow. It doesn't do a good job of replicating the moment to moment gameplay the classic series is known for, and what it brings new to the gameplay table just isn't good.

Despite everything I've said I don't hate Mega Man 8. I don't even dislike it. It's just that when I'm looking for my classic Mega Man fix, this game is not the one I'm choosing, and probably never will be.

I like to call this one "The First Actually Polished Mega Man Game". The level design doesn't fall off a cliff at any point, and that's despite introducing a 2nd castle for more levels. All of the robot master weapons are actually usable even though some are clearly better than others. It has an actually good pause menu that would set the standard for the rest of the series. The list goes on, but despite my praise, I wouldn't say it's one of my favorites in the classic series for some reason. I just can't put my finger on the reason why that is.