there are kinda two ways to look at this one now: first off, unless you own a cabinet yourself, the only way you're likely to get a genuine hands on experience with lunar lander is in an arcade. likely a very noisy place. so you'll get to check out the unique controls of the game, including what looks and feels like an actual thruster. really cool. that aside, though, i think there's an upside to playing this one at home, in the quiet, whether you're someone fortunate enough to have the cabinet or you're playing it on mame or something. ideally with a decent pair of headphones or some nice, bassy speakers. point being, there's an eerie serenity to this vector game in which you ever so gently land your craft on the surface of the moon. the only sound is the deep, gentle, very muffled roar of your rockets. and for me, even without that super cool cabinet, that's an experience worth revisiting now and then.

real primordial stuff, though emerging from the muck. i wouldn't recommend playing it without a guide unless you're really prepared to get down in there with this cryptic, moldy old thing and grind your way to understanding it. that said, i think it's an unfairly dismissed and even maligned game with some dope music and rewards for those who just find enjoyment in exploring the origins of action rpgs...! moving away from the original hydlide's ys-like bump action, this one's somewhat more zelda-like in that you attack with button presses. this time there's a class system, day/night cycles, and actual story/music! this is a real video game! and a good one, if not quite a great one.

yep. (arguably) the best final fantasy. of course, i felt this way about heavensward, too. if you have any contempt for mmorpgs or subscription-based games, but you love an above and beyond exceptional, emotional jrpg tale, it would be well worth it to overcome those issues and dive in. you can play all the way up to level 60 (which includes heavensward) entirely for free, anyhow. i've never known anyone to not completely fall in love with this game once they give it a chance, and shadowbringers is one of the best things square enix have ever made at its absolute peak.

i have always had a maybe silly amount of nostalgia for this game despite having barely played it in my teens, largely due to the love shown for it in the game magazines i read religiously back then (egm, gamefan, etc). i had my snes and zelda 3, but i was still young and couldn't afford much—shining force 2 was one of the foremost among the many games i coveted.

anyhow, suffice to say this game deserves to be remembered and rediscovered. if you've never played it before (perhaps if you've liked any fire emblem), give it a shot.

folks who play simon's quest nowadays and dismiss it as some overly cryptic, obtuse relic of a game are really missing out on what made it cool. even back in the day without romhacks and internet walkthroughs, people beat simon's quest. people shared information on how to progress, whether they read it in the pages of nintendo power or discovered it on their own through experimentation (given the unreliable hints provided by town npcs). it's not unlike, as an example, learning of how to confront the deceptive yurt in demon's souls before he kills everyone—whether on your own or in conversation with friends. i think that's great stuff.

anyhow. it isn't my favorite of the nes castlevanias, but it is a good one and it still feels good to just pick up and play. come to it with some patience.

for an early game made by rare, this one's extremely forgiving. infinite continues! you pick up right where you died! only your score resets upon death, but like... who cares. it's a bit awkward, with your attack button making kuros just kind of... waggle his sword around? but enemies will take damage from it even just by touching it without your input, and more importantly your damage output will instead quickly fall to the various weapons thou hath discovered - like the throwing dagger that acts like a boomerang. you'll get magic you can cast with the select button, too. and you'll be mashing that attack button almost constantly, with enemies flying at you from offscreen, from every direction... relentlessly. there's a weird, arcade-y slip n slide feel to the platforming and progression with smooth scrolling in four directions, doors leading into caves leading to doors emerging in previously inaccessible places - these levels are big! - and there's just a really fun loosey-goosey feel to the exploration and discovery. no knight has ups like this knight.

i like to keep this at the top of my steam wishlist, where it has sat for years and will persist for as long as this remnant lingers. if you can find the old prototype floating around out there like one of cayce's enigmatic and disjointed viral videos in w. gibson's pattern recognition (you totally can, it's not actually hidden or anything), you'll discover a piece of work abandoned (mostly) by its creator out of frustration with the linearity of its form as it took form (or so the paranarrative goes). it remains a compelling proof of concept nevertheless—an artifact of artefacts struggling to exist within the noise of the digital landscape.