I think folk have been awfully harsh about New Super Mario Bros. in expressing their relief with Wonder. It's largely the same thing.

Despite the suggestions I've been seeing, Wonder doesn't represent a huge shift in 2D Mario design like 3 or World did. There's no innovation on par with the P-Meter, the world map, multiple exits or Yoshi. I might go so far as to suggest that the NSMB sequels did more to revitalise the core Mario gameplay. I think those games deserve far more credit than they're given for making 2D design mainstream again after a decade of tech-driven design. I'm not sure we'd have a Street Fighter IV without them. The real value in Wonder is in the soul it injects back into 2D Mario.

For as much as I'll defend the NSMB games, I won't deny they were sterile. You could enjoy playing them, but there wasn't much to love in them, with their sanded-down on-model characters, plastic levels and synthetic sound design. Wonder is focused on surprising and delighting its players. To "put smiles on the faces of everyone Nintendo touches". Wonder is frequently silly, strange and amusing, but kind and gentle in being so. Never obnoxious or upsetting. Even the Talking Flowers are soft-spoken and encouraging, never coming close to Omochao unsufferability. It's a game that will enthral fans, lapsed Mario players and children who are playing Mario for the first time.

It's no World, though. The focus on novelty holds back the depth of each level's appeal, and I don't really see myself coming back nearly as frequently as I would for my favourite entries in the series. With the exception of the Drill Suit, none of the new power-ups switch up the gameplay to the degree of SMB3's. The Power Badges are a welcome addition, but essentially just serve to bring back gameplay styles from more distinct entries like Mario 2. The game didn't feel like the kind of shift I'd expect in an all-new Mario game, but a post-Mario Maker NSMB sequel that had to do more bespoke stuff with its levels to justify itself. When I accept that, it's easier to appreciate the things that Wonder does well.

Within Nintendo, Wonder has been approached as an opportunity to give younger members of the staff more control within their most precious franchise, and it's clear that they've been very delicate with it, while addressing the tastes of 2023 audiences. They've clearly studied the series for inspiration, and Wonder incorporates a lot of features I haven't seen Mario touch in years. I really appreciated the funny little cutscenes after each castle, which are straight out of SMW, but they also help establish the sense that these disparate, wacky levels are intended to represent an overarching adventure. The online features are intended to encourage players who might drop out of frustrating, lonely single-player games, and I appreciate its inclusion, though it's not something I took a personal interest in. Even the concerning Talking Flowers do elevate the experience of retrying a level, with a voice cheering you on through the obstacles and enemies.

The diverse roster of new enemies and multiple playable characters really add to the game's sense of vitality. There's so much energy in their animation, and a lot of great little details. You can play as your favourite, and you're never made to feel like you're not getting the real experience if you don't choose Mario. Even the story's text boxes use a variable field for the character's name, so you can pretend this mission to save the Flower Kingdom was mainly the work of Light-Blue Yoshi, if you so choose. All the transformations are unique to your chosen character, and all of Peach's were really cute.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a really fun game, built with great care and talent. I just can't help but feel it regresses in areas that I don't expect from a new Mario title. Maybe that's the problem with bottling a beloved formula. I don't know if we're ever going to get another 2D Mario game that messes with its fundamentals as much as the new 3D ones do. With Miyamoto and Tezuka taking more hands-off roles on these projects, there's clearly a concern not to break what they established. Perhaps it would be better to follow in their sense of wild, daring creativity than to just play covers of their biggest hits. Maybe that's an unrealistic desire, though. Whatever. It's another good Mario, and I won't feel too hurt if they just make more of those.

No. You can't make me approach PaRappa with any degree of objectivity.

Let me tell you what PaRappa the Rapper is.

The PlayStation was such a revolutionary console, and not just because it did 3D pretty good. It was the first significant challenge to Nintendo's vision of the industry. Sega, SNK, NEC, whoever - they were just trying to adopt the established playbook for another audience. Sony didn't want to do that. They had a reputation to uphold. They were a gateway between music, film and art into the household. They'd follow through on that trajectory on their first dedicated videogame platform. They wouldn't only seek out innovative, talented game developers in Japan, Europe and America to define the console. Music and art would need to play a substantial role in shaping the PlayStation.

Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Alan Greenblat were two weirdos who could only have been who they were in nineties Tokyo and New York. Experimenters, producing quirky little projects with no obvious utility or market, and selling them to whoever could be convinced to put them in shops. Nothing speaks to how different the PS1 was to the PlayStation brand of today more than the fact that they not only funded PaRappa's production, but published it in Japan, America and Europe.

PaRappa can't compete against the pounding thrill of modern rhythm games. Its gameplay is very rudimentary. Just copy the phrases your teacher says. The feedback on what you did right or wrong isn't well illustrated, especially since the game encourages you to experiment with your own rhythms. Buttons are displayed on a phrase bar, and there's little on-screen indication of when you're jumping to the start of a new bar. It doesn't really matter how badly you do throughout each level, as long as you nail the last couple of bars. There's a ton of trial and error in PaRappa, and I can't blame anyone for finding it too frustrating to stick with. In a way though, that's part of the charm, and that's everything that the game has going for it.

The game's sense of humour is incredibly tame, and equally weird. Visions of toilets flying out the car stereo, and the pump over here coming with a truck. It provokes a reaction from anyone, and for me at this point, it's pure love.

PaRappa is an idyllic vision of summer in young adulthood. Sitting outside the donut shop, planning birthday parties. Sitting on the hill in sunset. All incredibly innocent, benign and lovely. PaRappa's journey of being taught to repeat single phrases, until he's eventually performing entirely original phrases, on stage. It warms my heart.

You can't overlook the overwhelming sense of 1996 weirdness in its visual presentation, either. It's odd to see PS1 textures with varying line thickness at all, instead of rigid pixels, but the pre-rendered stuff invokes the game with a sense of scruffy, handmade breeziness. They've crammed as many different kinds of objects as they could into the cutscenes, with (then) high-poly, shiny models, the flat characters, low-resolution backgrounds and even a cut to live action footage of a rocket launch as PaRappa shits himself. It's fiercely distinct. Uncopyable. Other aspects of the follow-ups and rereleases have improved different aspects of PaRappa's formula, but none have come within a mile of the PS1 game's charm.

It's not a game worth taking seriously, and I love it more for that.

I'm an unapologetic cynic when it comes to artsy indie games. Games that attempt to conjure some sense of wonder by having you stand atop a sacred monument, so you can float and glow as you acquire your new power-up. It's shallow and insincere. A painting you bought at B&Q. Fucking... products. I know where it comes from, and it's fucking ICO.

This isn't a game that's dated. It's always been this unique and defiant of trends, but I think people tend to overlook its strengths on the criteria of a standard videogame. It's like a surreal, somewhat realistic version of Zelda. Like a regular kid actually had to go through all of that, panting and wheezing through every climb and fight. It's not a game that gratifies, but it's so much more tangible and relatable for that. Puzzle pieces are obscured by the imposing scale of these giant halls and walkways. You're very small, weak and unsure of where to go. You'll enter a room you don't belong in, and you feel unwelcome. That's something everyone has felt before, and the game is so effective in conveying that emotion.

ICO is a real credit to the group at SCEI that would later be known as Japan Studio. The cutscene animator from Enemy Zero on the Saturn walked in with an experimental pitch video he'd put together and they supported his project from PS1 prototype to complete overhaul and eventual release on PS2. It's no wonder that when Uncharted 2 turned Sony's fortunes around and determined the trajectory that the company would radically shift towards, would they fire every member of corporate responsible for that decision.

The game runs on a consistent sensation of weight and frailty. The boyish tug at Yorda's hand. The sense of dread whenever you have to separate. The distrust of yourself before attempting a perilous jump that might be the route forward, and the subsequent fear when you have to ask the emaciated Yorda to do the same. Ico, reassuringly holding out his hand to catch her, but shaking in fear at the uncertainty. The relatable tangibility in all of that massively benefits from Ueda's background in visual art and animation. This game is a keeper.

Ueda has described his approach as "design by subtraction". ICO was seen as shockingly sparse and minimalist in its day. Even its most influential and daring contemporaries like GTA3 and MGS2 were still utilising floating power-ups, on-screen status bars and detailed objectives, and it was strange to see a game without them. Picking up an old save today, there's an almost instinctive search for a map screen as you try to recall your bearings. Ueda has frequently cited Another World as a primary influence, and it wouldn't be right to suggest that this style of game design was entirely his invention, but for a game with this level of nuanced interaction and free movement, it was quite daring. There's no old RPG mechanics holding this thing together. You're not looking at numbers and trying to determine the best strategy you can afford. It feels physical. If you need an item, you have to go find it and pick it up. You're not told what state the protagonists are in, or how strong the enemies might be, and there's a fear in the ambiguity.

I expect this is basic knowledge to anyone with a similar attitude towards games, but so much has been lost in the utilitarian homogenisation of camera systems today. The right stick swivelling around the playable character as its constant centre. It's so boring and limiting as a design principle. Back in the early days of game design, there was real thought put into what a screen needed to show. That one screen was your whole game, so it better be good. Predetermined camera angles have as much potential to games as they have to films. It's also good when your artists don't have to piss around texturing every pebble from every conceivable angle and just focus on making each moment look as good as possible. In ICO, you're always looking down at the characters. Ico and Yorda are always very small, and the full dimensions of the giant, suffocating castle are difficult to discern. In the action scenes, you don't always know where the shadowy figures are. Yorda might turn her head towards them, as a subtle warning, but that aide is gone if she's ever taken away, and it's a scramble to determine where she is. The emotion in the game wouldn't resonate nearly as effectively if it played like Ratchet & Clank.

Then there's the sofas. A surreal sight in the middle of these stone ruins. Ico and Yorda sit side by side on them and you can save the game. They don't exist in the scenario's logic. I don't know if I even want to recognise them as canon. They're brilliantly symbolic, though. A small home comfort in this desperate, lonely situation. You don't have to suffer through this. You save and return when you want to come back. Ico and Yorda sit side by side. There's no implication of romance or anything, just mutual trust, respect and devotion. The castle is intimidating, but there's nothing to distrust in these two.

The rigid, uniform, endless brickwork you find yourself trapped within, and the rare glimpses of the boundless, vibrant forest beyond. The catharsis you feel whenever you work against the castle's symmetrical, straightline logic.

Sometimes, I like to keep the game paused and let the ambience take over. The rolling waves and birdsong. There's a mood that envelops the room whenever I turn on ICO.

ICO is in no ways a perfect game. It's easy for current fans to overlook how obtuse an old favourite can be, or even admire it for that very quality, but it's not really an aspect of game design to be applauded. Anyone who has played an old adventure game will know the frustration of not knowing how to progress, rummaging around in desperation and fighting off the growing desire to quit. A first-time ICO playthrough has plenty of those moments to offer. They add to that important sense of powerlessness, sure, but you feel you need to be very gentle in recommending the game to potential players.

I sometimes talk about the frustration and anguish in ICO's combat. How that complements the setting. You know - I'm not confident it's fully intentional. With as much as folk love ICO, we tend to forget the scene it came out of. Have you played any of those late-90s hack n slashes recently? When was the last time you had a go on T'ai Fu or Ninja: Shadow of Darkness? I'm not confident that they're a million miles away from ICO's punishing repetition. This game was made by a small, somewhat inexperienced team, and it's probably a little pretentious to suggest that everything in the game was done with great insight and intent. When there's something really great in this game, you can typically attribute that to Ueda and not the handful of software specialists under him.

The surprising thing is that ICO remains very gamey. You solve puzzles by sliding big blocks onto platforms and lighting giant Tom & Jerry bombs. Puzzles are self-contained and utilise a small selection of playing pieces. Core Design-era Tomb Raider climbing and Pikmin 1 partner management. It's good. We like games.

Ueda has frustrated interviewers who have attempted to pry into the game's setting and lore with a down-to-earth, utilitarian attitude. He insists the ruins aren't intended to suggest anything. They were just a good match for the gameplay he wanted to explore. I don't think he's being dishonest. ICO is first and foremost a video game, and seemingly, any abstractions on top of that are only intended to guide the player's emotion. I've always enjoyed reflecting on the out-there ceremonial purpose of each location in the castle, but that's really just me seeing what I want to in this series of elaborately decorated puzzles. There isn't a fantasy novel behind this, though Ueda's never deterred audiences from their interpretations. ICO is just a distinctive, ambitious artist trying to make his own version of Kula World. If this was all a serious, dour exploration of the nature of trust, do you think he'd have put a hidden lightsaber in this thing?

Even though I haven't played through the original PS2 version since getting my CRT, I found myself sucked into the PS3 HD remaster this time. What can I say? I'm weak. I like wireless controllers and an internal hard drive. There are arguments to be made against the purist approach, though. Ueda was deeply involved in the remaster, and the level of detail in some of the more ornate texturework is really something to admire. It's still his vision, even I have my reservations about the sharp, high-contrast tiling covering every floor. I think a washed-out, foggy presentation really benefits ICO's atmosphere, and if there was ever a PS2 game to play on a CRT, this is probably it (please stick with me here, Silent Hill 2 fans), but there's appealing qualities unique to the PS3 release too. Don't get too high and mighty about it. It's a fine way to play. And no matter which revision you play, jumping on that piston always blows.

ICO is just a very different idea of what games can be. What we thought they might be when the PS2 came out. It's so richly evocative of that promise. The launch-era dream that makes me cherish my Horizontal Stand so dearly. The quiet before the Vice City boys got in, and Sony went full boar on getting themselves a Halo Killer. I couldn't put my finger on what was missing from them at the time, but the market's influence on this year's Zelda and Pikmin sequels really made me appreciate another run through ICO. No matter which direction the industry goes in, this game will still exist. The dream goes on.

You have chosen to read my Princess Peach: Showtime! review. This is on you, now.

I think it's worth reflecting on how Peach wasn't really even a character in the original Super Mario Bros. She was a destination. The MacGuffin you needed to reach in order to rightfully claim you'd won the game. The idea to expand beyond that in any way was largely an act of convience, as Fuji TV's Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic was rebranded as the second Super Mario game. They needed a roster of four heroes, and there had only been four sentient things in the Mushroom Kingdom that weren't enemies. They took the spritesheet for Lina and drew "The Princess" on top.

I don't point this out to demean or belittle Princess Peach. Far from it. The act of repurposing and rebranding is at the very core of what videogames are. Mario, himself, was the result of seeing what could be done with an unwanted Radar Scope arcade board, and missing out on the opportunity to use Paramount's Popeye characters. OXO, Tennis for Two and Spacewar! were all experiments to see if large-scale supercomputers designed for complex business calculations and global warfare could be used for the purpose of fun. Peach has quite rightly earned the title of Princess of Videogames. A direct descendant of the cathode-ray tube amusement device.

From her first playable appearance in Super Mario Bros. 2, she was treasured by little sisters, cartoon studios, and boys who valued the float-jump more than the societal pressures of homophobia and gender stereotypes. By Mario 64, her significance to the Mushroom Kingdom was fully fleshed-out, positioning the entire game within her castle, and illustrating her unwavering benevolence, ethereal presence, and also, her sense of fun with the introduction of her personally-commissioned Secret Slide. She was a true representative of videogames, and a welcoming presence for audiences who may have felt uninvited to the games gang.

In 2024, I feel Nintendo are more aware of the weight of their history. Back when they last tried this, with 2005's Super Princess Peach, there was an air of carelessness. It was a throwaway game, fobbed off to Chubby Cherub/Shrek: Reekin' Havoc devs, Tose, and launched to a market whose respect for Nintendo had already taken a beaten from the likes of DK: King of Swing, Super Mario Ball and Classic NES Series: Ice Climber. Now, Nintendo treat Peach with due reverence, having her host Universal Studios meet-and-greets in her own personal bandstand, as the highlight of millions of holidays. People are thrilled to meet her, regardless of how much spaghetti she's made for them.

Right now, we're in a very odd period for the Mario brand, overall. Nintendo have embraced the idea that there's no unified vision of what Mario is. In the last year, we've had a mainline 2D entry closely modelled on the art direction of Masanobu Sato, a major Hollywood movie that denied post-1994 backstories and reinstated the NES-era US canon, a remake of a very of-its-time mid-nineties Mario RPG, and the announcement of the remake of a very distinctly eccentric fan-favourite GameCube RPG. Mario has become Mr. Video again, appearing in all sorts of different projects, merely as a comforting presence. He's a doctor and an artist and a kart racer and an umpire and we're not supposed to take any of it very seriously.

The dynamic sits awkwardly in relationship to why New Super Mario Bros. took its iconography so seriously in the first place. Back then, it was a relief to see the series discard all the bullshit and get back on target, reinstating what was Real Mario Shit. Goombas were Goombas again, and if there were any weird offshot baddies, fans would need to adopt such convoluted nomenclature as "Mega Para-Biddybuddies". It felt like the programmers had taken more control, with the world defined by hard parameter references. There's a stiffness to that approach that I have a lot of affection for, and it was the lifeblood of the Wii U era (particularly in Europe and Japan). It brought us closer to the logic of the software, subconsciously making us better equipped to appreciate and understand it. It was fiercely objective. It's easy to see why this approach wouldn't resonate with the wider public, though. If Nintendo wanted to catch on to mainstream appeal, they'd need to foresake the concrete utility of their playing pieces and expand their surface-level appeal. During the promotion of the New Super Mario Bros. sequels, developers explained that Peach hadn't been made playable in the game because of how her float-jump would affect the balance of the level design. In Showtime, she doesn't even have the float-jump.

Ah - Here we are.

I don't really like Princess Peach: Showtime very much.

I could come out with excuses, justifications, characterisation discrepancies... I just think it's boring to play. Levels are formulaic and repetitive, there's little dexterity to its gameplay, the rewards system feels like you're playing the game wrong if you're not constantly digging at the scenery to find every hidden item, performance and presentation is way below where it ought to be for a game with this focus, yada yada yada... I don't think it really matters. I just didn't want to play the game very much. The first couple of days I had it, I was telling myself I was too busy to calm down and enjoy it. I spent multiple days away from it before completion, and only went back to it out of obligation. I really wanted to care less, and not bother coming back.

As much fondness as I may have for the character, I'm clearly not the target audience for this. And I don't mean to imply that it's a game strictly for young girls, either. But it probably is for fans of recent Yoshi games. I'm certainly not one of them. As I dodder around, looking at the nice artwork, but wondering what I'm supposed to be getting out of it. It's a bit of a shock to see Mystical Ninja's Etsunobu Ebisu come back to a directing role to make something so devoid of spark or humour. Though the different costumes grant Peach a range of diverse abilities, the structure of each introductory level is largely the same, and the bulk of her more intricate actions are automated. In a move that recalls Metroid: Other M, all core actions have been distributed between two face buttons, and if there's anything particularly acrobatic or impressive, it doesn't often feel like you were very involved in performing them.

Showtime is fun in theory. The level themes are bold and exciting, Peach's costumes and in-character voice clips are cute, there's a lot of great art and punny design. I saw one review compare it to Kirby and the Forgotten Land and became incensed. That's a game that loves being a game. It celebrates the medium, embraces all the tropes that come with being a platformer, and sets up young audiences to embark on a future, exploring many wonderful videogames. Showtime is like Paper Mario with all the jokes, strategy and compelling gameplay stripped out. It's an RPG without story or combat. If you wanted to dedicate a budget to having a team design a bunch of charming adventures for Princess Peach to go on, I can totally get behind that, but why make this game when your passions and energy were better suited to a series of YouTube shorts, or a pop-up book?

There's definitely things I wanted to like. I felt like I should have liked. There's several parts of the concept that feel like they're paying off on things they established with Peach's character years ago. The fact that Odyssey ended with her setting off to explore the world in a bunch of cute outfits feels like it was leading up to an idea like this. They're making a game with Cowgirl Princess Peach, for god's sake. How haven't I come away raving about it? It's just all so tame. Mermaid Peach sings underwater to guide helpful fish, and that sounds like something I should have adored, but they never take the next logical step with one of those trademark Nintendo Switch vocal themes. Why didn't they want this game to be brilliant?

Something that surprised me is how bothered I was by the stageplay concept. The notion that to some level, this was all pretend. That Peach is taking on the role of a character for each level. Her voice sounds different for a bunch of them. I don't really feel like this is a game about Peach. It's about her playing the part of generic characters. I didn't feel any sense of drama until the very end, when she emerges outside of the Sparkle Theatre, as herself. It was the first thing since the intro that the game was trying to convey as authentic. Maybe if I just believed in the game - like there was a real throughline that meant each level was an important new part of a story - I wouldn't have been so bored with it. You really don't have to do a lot to get me with this stuff. I honestly found myself crying when I first heard Odyssey attempt to finally convey Peach's perspective on her relationship with Mario. Is this what a good story has to offer a game? As it is, it felt like I'd bought a colouring-in book, and for some bizarre reason, it was important that I finish every page.

This is very much a 'me problem'. I hope I've established my criticisms as fiercely subjective. I can see some folk getting a lot out of this. I've heard some say that they loved Yoshi's Woolly World. I certainly don't want to convince Nintendo that people don't like Princess Peach games. It's just that I had to play through Sexy Parodius and Third Strike before I'd gotten through this, just to remind myself that I do enjoy playing videogames.

Hideo Kojima's career is fascinating, and it's not something you can hope to find out about from "The Official Version". You kind of have to dig into old interviews, and have first-hand memories of long-delisted websites and discarded promotional material. GW has erased the ugly details, but I can't say goodbye to yesterday, my friend. Kojima thrived on the sidelines. He was originally hired as a project planner on Konami's MSX team, in the offices that the management didn't pay much attention to. The high-stakes positions were all working on Famicom and arcade games, and Kojima spent the first decade of his career in the shadows, catering to a small, enthusiast market with Japanese home computer releases and text-heavy adventure games. It's easy to over-romanticise this era. It wasn't easy. There was a lot of mismanagement and the expectation for relentless crunch, with many members of staff spending days on end in the office without leaving, but the games that came from those teams were pretty special. They were purposefully constructed, delivering a clear worldview and commenting on the ethical dangers of scientific developments in a politically unstable world. Then MGS1 was a huge international success, and all eyes were on Kojima.

From the early days, it was clear that Kojima had a unique confidence and self-belief. Some may call it ego or even narcissism, but it's what gave him the drive and ambition to attempt blending dense, socially relevant stories with traditional videogame action. When the bulk of the Japanese games industry was still hiding behind publisher-insisted pen names, Kojima opened Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake with an introductory credits sequence, naming each member of staff, saving himself for the biggest credit. It made sense. MSX2 owners who'd played Metal Gear and Snatcher knew that there was a rare quality to Hideo Kojima's games, and Metal Gear 2 was the promise of the Kojimiest game yet. Policenauts would similarly promote itself on the name of its director, delving into the production process with behind the scenes books and bonus discs that were fairly uncommon forms of game merchandise in the mid-90s. Before MGS1 had made the west aware of him, Kojima was putting his face on soundtrack CDs. He wanted the spotlight, but he didn't know how demanding it would be of him.

Metal Gear Solid 2 was announced, and was propped up as the game for the new millennium. The one thing that would chrysalise the medium into a new form. In tandem with the growing interest in the internet, the significance of home computer ownership was really taking hold. DVD players and digital TV services were selling themselves on "Interactive" features, reportedly blurring the line between audience and participant (we didn't know at the time that the peak of this technology would be Beehive Bedlam). Sony were convinced that Windows PCs were too technical and business-focused for mainstream adoption. There would be no overlap between the computer and the living room. The word at the time was that the PlayStation 2 was going to be the thing to take people into this new, interconnected era, and traditional forms of entertainment would become a memory of the 20th Century. The promise of the "interactive movie" that had been dangled towards early adopters of CD-ROM, finally coming to fruition. From Final Fantasy X to Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, and perhaps most ridiculously of all, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, many new titles were selling themselves on the promise to bridge the gap between these mediums, but for many, MGS2 seemed like the best bet to accomplish it. That's a lot of pressure for a game where you navigate boxy rooms, avoiding blue vision cones.

Metal Gear Solid 2 trailers were bold. Not only were they promising a game with unforeseen levels of interactivity, but wild narrative swings. We were told Solid Snake was dead. We were told he was the leader of the terrorist organisation putting the world at ransom. We'd anticipated a game that would radically shift our perception of the prior one. When we eventually bought the game, we swallowed the bitter truth when a mysterious Navy SEAL popped up with David Hayter's voice, taking fire at a horny vampire.

Reading pre-release interviews with Kojima, it's clear that he was as convinced by the potential as anyone else. He talks about character movement being impacted by changing wind direction, the integration of voice-recognition and online support. The end results are so compromised that you might not even notice them in the game. The network support got nipped and tucked at so much that in the end, it became an online competition for the opportunity to have your name appear on an in-game dog tag, and a browser-only leaderboard system where you could post your completion stats after you finished. The voice support, adding user-expression to the long, dense CODEC calls? That's the ability to press R2 to have your character audibly think a weird retort. "WHATEVER!" These are the limitations of not only the PlayStation 2 in 2001, but the ability of a Japanese development studio to deliver an action game on new hardware in a three-year project.

MGS2 couldn't live up to those initial ambitions. It didn't fully satisfy those dreaming of something new and transcendent. It was MGS1 again with extra buttons. But oh, what buttons!

MGS2 has so many cool little stealth moves to play around with. You get a real sense of your own ingenuity as you figure your way through each section. VR Missions was everything that MGS1 gameplay could offer. The developers knocked their heads against the walls, spinning its systems off down every conceivable avenue. The frustration of these limitations directly inspired the techniques players could make use of in Sons of Liberty. Players would be able to interact with guards much more intricately, threatening them at gunpoint, disabling walkie-talkies, injuring specific limbs, and shaking them down for extra supplies. Snake and Raiden could roll (or cartwheel), hang from railings, and pop out of cover, ready to fire. Most crucially, you could now aim from a first-person perspective, allowing for much more deliberate action in shoot-outs, or just fuck about with the set dressing to see how many clips KCEJ recorded for the sound of shooting a frying pan with different guns. Shenmue had set a new precedent for how interactive a 3D world could be in a game, and MGS2 picked up the baton to explore how that degree of tangibility could benefit Metal Gear. Hardcore fans who had bought Zone of the Enders solely for the opportunity to play a small section of this game would become intimately familiar with all the quirks and potential of its gameplay, hungry to see how they would be explored in the full campaign. I'm not convinced the Big Shell was the best possible pay-off for these hopes.

It isn't just the fact that players got to spend more time with their favourite muscle man that makes the Tanker section so beloved. It's very purposefully designed to explore MGS2's mechanics, and refreshingly, it borrows little from the structure of the MSX games. Metal Gear had already spent multiple generations reworking and refining the same, familiar setup, and it was exciting to see the series do something different. There's no hostages, no NIKITA puzzle, no underwater facility entrance. It was doing new things, taking out security cameras, shaking down guards for supplies, and sneaking past an audience of a hundred soldiers during a speech. It was exciting. But those old tropes were waiting for us, just around the corner. Justifying themselves via a metatextual reflection upon the previous game.

MGS2 is discussed in hushed, reverential tones these days. If something seemed weird or stupid, you obviously didn't get it. It had been relatively easy to understand a story about genetic inheritance, but memetic inheritance seemed far more abstract. Snake was a son of genetic inheritance, being a clone of the world's most prized soldier, and Raiden, the son of ideological inheritance, with Solidus killing his parents and fostering him as his own brainwashed soldier. Every action he takes is accompanied by a question of how he's being manipulated, and by whom. There's an awkward balance in the game being both radically incisive and incredibly schlocky videogame trash. Whenever it did something too absurd or outright crap, we took faith in the notion that nothing was quite what it seemed. Like there was a hidden truth that would make it all cohesive and brilliant. It was up to us to find it, and if we couldn't figure it out, we could always just pester Kojima and Konami to produce a much more pandering sequel. Full of retcons, underwhelming reveals, and relentless goalpost shifting. Was there ever value in MGS2's outlandish paranormal activity? Did Kojima ever have an answer before his arm was twisted enough to yell "nanomachines" in response to every question? Are we ashamed of our words and deeds for ever thinking the whole of Shell 2 was agonisingly tedious?

Discussing MGS2's story is a sticking your hand in a can of worms and finding a worm-filled rabbit hole at the bottom. A dense, purposefully confusing, and often prescient script. It also has roots in Kojima's 80s action game design, where storybeats are mainly included to intrigue its audience enough to continue playing. Kojima's handwritten script is filled with footnotes, explicitly referencing the Hollywood blockbusters he ripped each idea from. MGS2 was the point where much of Kojima's games became dictated by the promises he'd made in press interviews and pre-release trailers. MGS4 staff have talked about spending months solely working on moments to include in trailers, and then retroactively having to build the game around those moments. That approach started here. Shallow instances of mindblowing spectacle, engineered to shift product with little concern for the long-term impact. Ocelot's arm, Vamp's superhuman abilities, basically everything to do with Dead Cell - they're weird twists, and typically just for the sake of having a weird twist. Vamp's gay relationship with US Marine Corp commander, Scott Dolph, appears to be entirely a sophomoric in-joke targetted at Kojima's then-personal interpreter. MGS2 is simultaneously an earnest musing on the nature of propaganda in the digital age, and a very stupid videogame with absurd arcade game bosses. I don't want to make out like all the silliness is purely problematic or mishandled. There's moments of fun and whimsy I enjoy. Slipping on birdshit and the guard taking a leak off the side of the Strut L. Fatman. It's not the focus, but the old frivolous MSX personality is still here. Just muffled by all the pretension surrounding it. On your first playthrough, you don't know whether you can just enjoy something as a daft joke, or if it's hiding some deeper layer of significance. MGS1 had one foot in gaming's history and another in its future, and MGS2 attempts the same, with messier results in either respect.

The game's English writer, Agness Kaku, has discussed the thankless job of attempting to make MGS2's weird, convoluted script sound engaging through its translation. A lack of reference material, character limits, and heavy rewrites from Konami resulted in the game we have today. It's also clear that she doesn't have much regard for Kojima's script, and attempted to inject it with a richer sense of character and more entertaining dialogue. Many gamers would feel take strong objection to someone, particularly a woman, tinkering with the script from a visionary of Kojima's status, but the bulk of MGS2's most beloved English lines are embellishments on Kaku's part, and her political and literary knowledge lined her up well for the subject matter. However, Konami's insistence on literal translations of certain lines, paired with her personal distaste for Kojima's writing, made the final script fairly patchy and inconsistent. As talented a voice director as Kris Zimmerman is, there are lines of dialogue that are delivered in very odd ways, suggesting the cast didn't really understand the intention behind them. By contrast, Kaku's work on Katamari Damacy presents quite an interesting dynamic. That was a similarly text-rich game, but one with a much more playful tone, and a less demanding writer. She was allowed to completely rewrite the game with very little direction, and the final result was a delight. Katamari writer/director, Keita Takahashi has gone on to learn English at a high level and now lives in San Francisco, where he's expected to speak it as his main language. I wonder if he's ever gone back to look at the English version of his PS2 game.

Metatextually, MGS2 benefits from a constant feeling of distrust. To know whether or not you're seeing the real version. There's an additional distrust of censorship thanks to the game's Q4 2001 release date, the story of terrorists causing destruction and political instability off the coast of New York City, and public sensitivity to the subject matter at the time. Following September 2001, there had been late-stage edits to the game, and as an audience, we can't be sure how compromised the final release is, but even without the real-world parallels, the game is filled with themes of how lies spread and ideas take hold. From the once-tortured child soldier, Raiden, to Peter Stillman's faked disability, to Otacon's disturbing family history, every character in the game has an uneasy relationship with the truth, denying their personal trauma to the world. By the Big Shell portion of the game, there's a question over whether they're real at all, or merely a projection of an elaborate AI construct. Sections of the game that are teased - boss fights with Fortune and Ocelot, as well as the bulk of Shell 2 - go unfulfilled. Raiden breaks through enemy security by lying about his identity, pretending to be one of them, adopting their uniform, and manipulating their body to trick a retinal scanner. Raiden's first quest in the game - disabling a series of explosives - turns out to be an elaborate decoy, while Snake discovers the real bomb off-screen. Snake is playing the real game, and Raiden is still in the VR replica. The Solid Snake game that had been heavily promoted at trade shows and plastered on magazine covers for years beforehand didn't exist. It was all just part of the simulation. This is the dynamic of MGS1 and 2.

The truth of the situation only comes through in the ending.
"It doesn't matter if they were real or not, that's never the point."
"Don't obsess over words so much."
"Everything you felt, thought about during this mission is yours. And what you decide to do with them is your choice..."
Kojima couldn't make something that transcended the medium of videogames. The Emotion Engine was merely a new CPU, comprised of silicon soldered to a circuit board, and shipped to millions of homes within SCE's new electronic toy. When the PS2 became something people could touch and own, the best it could do was play rushed versions of TimeSplitters and SSX that would soon be rendered obsolete by their immediate sequels. The dream was over. The boundaries were brought into stark focus. Metal Gear Solid 2 would be little more than The New Metal Gear Solid, despite the discussion, obsession, interpretation and reinterpretation it would provoke. With the constant focus from fans, it became more than it was. Value was seen in it, and thus, it was there.

Metal Gear Solid 2 changed my relationship with videogames, and not in ways that either its developers, or I, may have hoped. It made me aware of the inherent limitations. Before it, the future of videogames seemed like a boundless, infinite expanse. They could be anything. They could transcend physical limits. They were another dimension. A world of pure imagination. Afterwards, I became aware of just how tethered they were to reality. They were the result of project plans, processing speeds, staff sizes, managerial oversight, limited talent and budgets. They became infinitely smaller. Less significant. Cute. They didn't reflect the limitations of their creators' imaginations, but their ability to deliver a project with realistic expectations. It levelled the playing field. Now, MMOs, which promised entirely new worlds for players to live in, were dragged back to the same context as Pong. It made me realise what a game was. I came to the other side of that, and still loved it. To call it a disappointment is denying the growth that we needed to take. As fans, creators, and an industry. We're currently living through the investor class catching up with PS2 gamers, getting hyped for Final Fantasy XI, kidding on like we're going to spend all our free time in the fucking Metaverse. We all need to accept reality, and learn how to live in it. To appraise videogames with maturity. Let's all calm down and see how big a score we can get on Dig Dug today.

There's been this notion around the Sonic games that if Sega just stopped making stupid decisions, it'd be perfect and we'd all have a great time. You know, I don't buy that. Maybe I'm just a little sick of Sonic.

Despite everything else, the old Mega Drive games are still fairly precious to me, and I have some affection for a half dozen other Sonic titles, but I wasn't as bowled over with Mania as most seemed to be. There wasn't a lot of truly new stuff in it. I just don't know how fertile this formula is. If running around rollercoaster tracks and jumping when necessary is all that captivating, or if it can really be taken to interesting new places without a radical shake-up.

Don't get me wrong, Superstars is pretty crap. They've been understandably keen to promote the physics they've pulled from Sonic Mania, but that doesn't save the poor collision models, the rotten level design or the dogshit mechanics. Even if Sonic runs up hills properly now, it doesn't prevent the game from being tedious as all get out. It just doesn't seem to have been designed with much insight. Sonic Team have included a Fantasy Zone level in here, solely because they didn't get the joke when they saw Mania's Mean Bean Machine boss. I struggle to recall any moments where I had fun. Mostly, I remember the shock when I saw they thought to bring back the bouncy floor from Sonic CD's Wacky Workbench.

Oh, and everybody's already talked about it, but those bosses are truly appalling. I couldn't bring myself to replay a single level, knowing one of those were at the end of it.

There's pockets of positivity in the project. Basically all aesthetic. The character models are generally pretty nice, but their limited animation makes them look like they were extracted from a better game and dumped onto a Steam community page. Sonic Mania/Shredder's Revenge boy, Tee Lopes, has composed a few typically great tracks, and they stand out alarmingly in among the synthesised dredge from Sonic Team. The 2D animation sequences are nice too, as is typical of all the post-Mania stuff, and like those, they're let down by lacklustre music.

At its best, it's a halfhearted retread. It's attempting to mine nostalgia from a source that's been tapped out relentlessly for decades. Bold, youthful confidence used to be Sega's whole thing. They'd speed into new potential anywhere they saw it, and all their most beloved projects carried a sense of boundless energy. Now, they're sitting in the paddling pool, trying to make Samba de Amigo a thing again, and too scared to do a Yakuza game without Kazuma Kiryu.

I wasn't even excited for this, and I'm still bitterly disappointed. They've really fucked this one up, and if you bought it on launch day, you might have paid £55 for it. I can't recall the last time I've been this upset with a new game, and I'm in the middle of playing Flashback 2 right now.

Austin Powers Pinball features two tables. International Man of Mystery and The Spy Who Shagged Me. I remember watching an interview for Austin Powers 2 in a little Sky Interactive window about a hundred times. I would have been about 12 or 13 and very insecure about puberty. Hearing that Austin had lost his "Mojo" had me looking up the word in the dictionary, which told me it meant something like "sexual prowess". I didn't really understand and assumed the film was about Austin Powers being castrated against his will. I still have not seen Austin Powers 2.

When you first play Austin Powers Pinball, you will attempt to figure out which buttons are used to control the flippers. Pressing anything other than the correct ones will warn you that you have "tilted" the board and will lock you out of playing until your ball falls down the hole.

If you register your copy of Austin Powers Pinball with Take 2 Interactive, you will be entered into their free prize draw to win £100. Imagine what you'd spend that on!

There are two Pikmin 4s. There's the cozy, kid-friendly potter around gardens that lasts until the initial credits sequence, and then there's the game that creeps up afterwards. Adding full camera controls, a lock-on system, Splatoon/New Horizons character editor and a host of cuddly, chattering NPCs may worry traditionalist GameCube/Wii/Wii U fans, but they just have to hold their horses and push through the relatively brief introductory campaign.

Look, I welcome them opening up the franchise to new players. Nintendo want to explore the full potential of these mechanics and the depth of strategy that they offer, but the most important members of the audience have always been the kids. In his time as a kindly member of his local community, Miyamoto has encountered children who like Pikmin, which is evidence enough to convince him that there is an appeal for the under-8s. The harsh, ecological subtext is one of the main qualities I love the series for, and I think it's important for kids to start thinking about this stuff from a young age. I don't want them to be put off by complicated controls and stressful resource management, and if it takes a credits sequence to persuade them that they're worthy Pikmin fans, so be it.

I do want to stress that the old guys should stick with it. This is the biggest Pikmin game ever made, with the most stuff for those people. They're not littering the game with GBA and N64 references for Generation Alpha. They know we're here, and we want to play the game that Eurogamer's been teasing since September 2015.

You get a hint of this early on. Pikmin 4 somewhat obnoxiously adopts the mantra of "Dandori"; a suggestion that players should prioritise efficient planning and quick strategy in their approach. That's how Pikmin's design has always encouraged players to approach the game, but they're making it text here, and it's a fancy foreign word/compound kanji for kids to glom onto. Putting it in such focus has given the designers the freedom to explore some really taxing challenges. The Dandori Challenges themselves start out fairly easy, but there's rewards for doing them as efficiently as possible, with Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum rankings for meeting certain criteria. They're as hard as you want them to be, and the post-credits ones are often pretty bloody hard to start out with. If you want to meet every challenge the game has for you, you're going to be playing Pikmin 4 for a very long time.

The entirely distinct "Dandori Battles" are another beast altogether. Pitting you against an opponent, you have to fight them to acquire the most resources within a time limit. There's random power-ups and a lot of fluked victories. They're playing with Pikmin stuff, but they don't really feel like part of a Pikmin campaign. They feel like a silly multiplayer mode that you can play against a bot, because that's what it is, except they're mandatory parts of the main levels. I don't mind too much. They're not too much work. Just a little out of step with the surrounding design.

Again, this is a game that wants to appeal to veteran fans. 4 pulls so much from the previous games. Often in an "oh fuck, that's back??" way. Not the genuinely bad stuff, mind. 2's multi-level dungeons are back, but they're not tedious, randomly generated guff anymore. They're consistently clever, inventive and attentively designed. Series fans will be aware of how distinct each of the first three games are, and there's been real effort to incorporate as much of their appeal into one game as possible. Personal favourite, 3, gets the least attention in this regard, and I do miss just how much you were able to get done at one time with three Captains actively performing tasks at the same time, but you do get a hint of that gameplay with the big new doggy partner.

This isn't a retread, though. Acting as part of an expanding rescue operation, as opposed to fragile survivors, changes the vibe. It's not so lonely or harsh, there's no strict deadlines, and you don't feel the same gutpunch when you lose thirty Pikmin to a cackhanded decision. It's just a number that went down. It'll go up again after a bit of harvesting. Maybe that's stripping something out of the series that I love, but it makes me thankful that Nintendo are keeping the previous games relevant with Switch rereleases, and not shying away from making this a - somewhat intimidating - numbered sequel. If you want that harsher tone, play the earlier ones. They're just as easy to access. We don't need to hold the series back and keep it to ourselves. Let it expand. Let the new people in. Let it be the thing that gets new generations captivated with nature, space and science. Let it be the friendly face that subversively worms these thoughts into households that might be dismissive of them. Let it save us.

It's still a ton of Pikmin, mind. If you like that, you're in for a feast.

Ah - This is embarrassing. I guess I hadn't played nearly as much of Half-Life 1 as I thought I had. I didn't know there was so much... Valvey stuff in it. I've always thought of it as a kind of more grown-up Quake II. It's actually much more akin to its sequel or the Portal games than I realised. The vehicle sections, giant production line conveyor belts and cliffside descent. It's full of wee sections with their own ideas. Ambitious and exciting. Well paced and varied. Much longer than I expected too.

I've had access to the PC version for about 20 years, but picking up the relatively dated Gearbox PS2 port on Saturday was what finally got me hooked. I had it in my mind that there was something uniquely interesting about the PS2 version. Given some light research, it seems its primary USP is some local co-op stuff that I can't imagine many would be willing to sit through now, given how much the thing can chug in one-player. The thing that I appreciated the most is that the controls have been somewhat idiotproofed for the console market, simplifying the crouchjump command (something I felt was never really explained to me very well on PC) and including an optional lock-on system. That lured me in, I guess. All of a sudden, this juggernaut of PC gaming started to feel like Ocarina of Time.

I find the kind of time capsule aspect of retro gaming is something that's easier to appreciate on consoles than PC. If I loaded up Half-Life on Steam now, it'd be a rose-tinted vision of 1998, boosted with high resolution options and decades of patches. On PS2, the awkward save system and pre-title screen CGI rendered logo really evoke the era of £25 DVDs in cardboard digipacks and Rex the Runt.

Half-Life 1 is Valvey, but it's the "this was made by 20 guys in a rented office" Valve. It's not terribly slick, and the ideas frequently take precedence over the player experience. Unlike Half-Life 2, moments where you feel pinned down or overpowered frequently seem accidental.

I've long understood that Xen was the result of a team all pointing towards some wild, massive conclusion, and having nothing of substance up their sleeves. Actually playing it, it's miserable. Not a misery that's unique to Half-Life - It's pretty standard 90s FPS drudgery, not unlike many sections of Perfect Dark or Turok - but a massive step down from what had been established. Gonarch is particularly awful, and I'm not confident that the PS2 port is even doing it right. I did an honest playthrough of the fight on Half-Life: Source just to test my suspicions and turned on the cheats to power through on PS2 afterwards.

A lot of Xen is only made palatable on PC due to the game's quicksaves, but you can only make one at a time on PS2. If you're not careful, you can completely fuck a playthrough by using a gun too frequently or assuming there's going to be some health pickups around the next corner. I kind of liked that though. There was a more meaningful weight to decision making, even if I did cop out and Google the Invincibility code for a shit boss.

I'm embarrassed for asking for Half-Life 3 before I'd even finished the original game. It's far more reflective of what I like about the series than I had given it credit for. Playing it in 1998 likely felt just as exciting as Half-Life 2 did for me in 2004. I'm very sorry for chucking it on the "I'm never going to actually play this" pile alongside Unreal.

I think what fans value about the GameCube is its cruelty. Not presenting a challenge with fair parameters and sending you off to give it your best shot, but tripping you up and hammering at your skull every step of the way. The warping, shifting eyesore levels in Super Monkey Ball, or seeing thirty Pikmin fall off a cliff and destroy your entire playthrough, or every aspect of F-Zero GX's design. It's a hostile format, and it's unlikely you'll accomplish much on there without becoming emotional. Double Dash is absolutely the GameCube's Mario Kart.

This bastard game.

There's malice in its code. Opponents can out-drift your red shells, while attempting to nullify an opponent's red shell by dropping an item almost never works. If an opponent bumps into you, your items are gone. There are traps and narrow, winding walkways that are tricky to drift over, and if there's a single surprise element like an opposing racer with a speed boost, or a rogue obstacle, you can guarantee that you're going in the drink and getting your items taken away from you. This is anecdotal, but I don't hear many people say they loved Double Dash as a kid. This was the game for college-aged competitors, with players going outside afterwards to swing punches.

The pain comes from the fact that Double Dash isn't actually hard to play. It's a fairly simple Mario Kart, lacking the coins and ramp tricks that fans of the newer games have developed instinctive responses to. If you're lucky, winning a race doesn't feel like a big deal. Not something you had to put a lot of effort into, and quite often it goes that way. It's when you're going for those Gold Trophies and 100% completion status where they'll throw in the last-second 8th place finishes.

The game's tone seems designed to irritate. The origin of Baby Park and "HI I'M DAISY!!". Garishly saturated colours, and constant noise from co-pilots switching positions. Hell as a theme park. The bitterness in your Spice Orange.

When you win, though, you are the bastard. The world's worst man. Death is coming, and has been earned. Enjoy these fleeting moments on your throne.

I dearly love Double Dash.

Dig Dug is my favourite classic arcade game. Something where both its mechanical depth and its immediate charm work spectacularly well in tandem. The experience of learning how to get good at an old arcade game often involves outside learning, reading up on clandestine techniques discovered from decades old Japan-only player guides and deeplearning AI bot routines, but Dig Dug gives you enough on-screen to intuit how to become a better player.

It's comparable to Pac-Man and QIX, but offers a far more compelling set of rules than either of them. A single-screen game where monsters roam and chase you, but you can move in any direction. You create tunnels as you move, and when an enemy gets in your tunnel, they beeline straight for you. This can be exploited to lead them towards traps, crushing them with rocks, or if you get desperate, you can take them out by getting your pump and inflating them until they burst like a balloon. The lower on the screen you kill an enemy, the higher your score, and if you manage to crush multiple enemies at the same time, that'll increase your score further.

I think a lot of people try Dig Dug, only use the pump, and dismiss it as a bit of a cute novelty, but once you learn that your priority should be crushing enemies, it really starts to come together. That's when the draw towards trying again becomes truly powerful.

When you become really familiar with the game, you'll start to learn the characteristics of Pooka and Fygar AI. You'll be temporarily inflating enemies and running away, to keep them at bay without blowing the points you could get from them. You'll develop strategies you'll lean back on in specific scenarios. I've developed a very specific route through Level 1, in an attempt to reliably maximise my score early on, but I don't even know if it's the best way to approach that layout of tunnels, rocks and enemies. That's what I like so much about Dig Dug. I'm leaning back on what's worked for me, but another player might have completely different solutions. It's why I've largely tried to block-out professional and speedrunning communities. My relationship with the game is the one sacred element in my enjoyment of videogames. I don't want to be told the "right way" to do it. Just leave me alone with Dig Dug. I don't need to get Twin Galaxies in on this shit. I'm not interested in learning someone else's dance routine.

It's that freedom that Dig Dug presents. You can go in any direction at any point. It's Pac-Man, but you're creating the maze yourself. You can get greedy and invite the whole screen of enemies to chase you towards a trap, but you'd better know exactly what you're working with. An unexpected detour could be the death of you.

On my best sessions, I've been setting up false paths to slow down enemies, and seeing them reliably waste their time in empty corridors while I construct my master trap elsewhere. When you know what you can really do with a Dig Dug screen, there's no denying that this game is lightyears ahead of its competition. There's so much freedom, and the threat of failure is always real, present and on-screen. The risk/reward dynamic is so tangible and alluring. Knowing my own tastes, it's a game I'd strongly recommend to classic Metal Gear fans.

One thing I'd like to make clear is that players should be wary of the console ports. If it's not running the arcade version, you probably don't want to waste your time on it. I've been really impressed with the MSX version, replicating the precise AI quirks of the arcade game in a version with more rudimentary presentation, and I'm able to approach scenarios with the same techniques I've learned on the arcade version. The Famicom/NES version tends to get ported a lot, and I'd strongly discourage the purchase of My Arcade systems that emulate it. If you really want to challenge yourself to learn the depth of the game's quirks, I'd encourage you to try the PS4/Xbox One ARCADE GAME SERIES: DIG DUG release and chase the "Dig" achievement, where you have to clear an entire screen of dirt while keeping at least two enemies active on the screen. It's not something you'll be able to do without knowing the game inside out, but again, you'll be able to intuit all of that by playing it.

Dig Dug is a game I'll never stop playing. Something that has really built my respect for Namco and simplistic game design. Everyone likes a Pooka. It's knowing how much you can get from them that really makes Dig Dug great.

It's always been a bit of a shame that this was the first Katamari game we got in Europe. We didn't even know if we loved Katamari when we bought it. There's few gaming sequels as heavily predicated on the player's familiarity with the original game. It's practically a fan disc.

The game's setting regards everyone loving Katamari Damacy and The King of All Cosmos gaining a huge ego about it. The levels are sillier, and frequently, more gimmicky than those in the original game. There's a couple daft new renditions of Katamari on the Rocks, with a wild acapella arrangement and one sung by animals, but I really just wanted the original back then.

All this time later, after playing the NTSC/J original, practically every sequel, and the REROLL remaster, We Love Katamari makes perfect sense. We do love Katamari. We're ready for it now.

I don't think it's quite as good as Katamari Damacy, despite the quality of life tweaks and a more varied set of levels. I think it's a bit more hit or miss. There's some levels that are a bit of a struggle to have much fun with. There's a couple that are basically just dumb jokes (the Cow/Bear-themed level doesn't make as much sense to English-speaking players as the Uma/Kuma one would have made to the Japanese audience), and they break up the flow amusingly, but they're a bit of a pill if they're a substantial portion of the Katamari content you have access to. The soundtrack sometimes approaches the heights of Katamari Damacy's, but they feel like b-sides to the original's world-blazing chart toppers.

Likely the best thing about We Love Katamari is how much fun they've had setting up little scenarios with the animals, vegetables and minerals scattered around the levels. A pirouetting ballerina leading a parade of swans. Armed policemen who immediately start firing at you when you approach. Elephants spinning around on top of giant mushrooms. We Love Katamari is very funny.

Keita Takahashi was making a lot of noise about the similarities between Wattam and Death Stranding's themes when they were both coming out, but really, most of his games seem to be about that. Appreciating all aspects of the world and connecting them together. From paper airplanes and towers of AA batteries to oil tankers and a legally-distinct Ghidorah. It's lovely. I'm glad there's Katamari.


(Disclaimer, edited in months after initial publication: I have been privately and considerately called out on the uma/kuma thing. "Uma" is Japanese for "horse", and not cow ("ushi"). I often have Japanese horses on my mind, and jumped to a false conclusion that I had cracked the code, though I later realised my mistake. I didn't want to edit it out of the review, as I think there's value in the assumption that things that don't make sense to you might just be a joke that went over your head, but I don't want to spread ignorance either. Please continue to respect Mr Takahashi whilst you deal with the conflict of not understanding what he was doing with that level)

I'm constantly fascinated by the transition from 2D to 3D. How designers approached this with, literally, an entirely new dimension to consider. The sacrifices they made in doing that. The contrast between A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time is held up as one of the clearest examples of a team iterating on ideas they introduced in 2D and attempting to flesh them out in 3D, but Metal Gear Solid had its own 2D predecessor that was possibly even more influential to its design. It's just not a game that nearly so many people have played. A lot of Metal Gear Solid and Hideo Kojima's specific eccentricities are a direct result of where they came from. I think if you really want to understand the series, it's quite helpful to have played the originals.

I don't want to make Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake sound like an early prototype, or a demo recording of what would go on to become a classic song. It's an elaborate technical achievement in its own right. While other teams were struggling to draw multiple moving sprites on the fairly rudimentary MSX2 hardware, Kojima's team were creating a dense military base with distinct locations and patrolling enemies actively swarming off-screen. This was still 1990, and if Konami wanted a complicated action game, they'd ask their arcade or Famicom teams. The MSX was more associated with visual novel-style adventure games and conversions of early 80s arcade hits. They were underdogs, attempting the impossible. Metal Gear 2 on the MSX2 is like if they'd made Super Metroid on the Commodore 64 (and back with the schedules and budget constraints of the time, not some endless homebrew project).

I think I ought to talk about Metal Gear 1 a little. That was the result of a lot of compromises and inexperience. Hideo Kojima went into the games industry, excited to find a job that would allow him to express his own ideas and thoughts about the world around him. He was hired by Konami and dumped into the undesirable role of "planner". After some success working on Penguin Adventure, Kojima was tasked with designing a war game for the MSX. Kojima hated war, and it was a challenge to do intense action on the hardware. He decided to subvert the task he'd been given. Inspired by The Great Escape, he came up with a game where you try to avoid conflict and prevent the war from starting. Metal Gear was rushed and crude, coming from an inexperienced team. It controlled like an old Falcom RPG, and the stealth mechanics didn't go much further than having enemies who would fight you if you stood in front of them. There were some really great ideas in it, though. The cardboard boxes and remote-control missiles immediately became hallmarks of the series, though the sequels would make much better use of them.

Kojima went on to create Snatcher, which better allowed him to indulge in his passions of worldbuilding, science fiction, and tales of corporate deceit (a theme that has bitterly mirrored his own career). It also brought him closer to the home computer adventure games he was playing himself, like Yuji Horii's Portopia Serial Murder Case. He was able to explore human drama and complex, multi-layered conspiracy. He put more of himself into it, and each game he directed from that point on would carry a much stronger sense of its creator's voice. It was public demand that pushed him to revisit the Metal Gear concept, and it greatly benefitted from his newfound confidence and insight.

Much of Metal Gear 2's tone and logic is straight out of those 80s adventure games, only with a unique political bent. The age of nuclear deterrence has ended, but Zanzibar Land, a rogue state in Central Asia has been attacking international disposal facilities and amassing the unused warheads. Global oil shortages have caused an energy crisis, and the Czech biologist, Dr Kio Marv has developed a microbe capable of synthesizing petroleum to solve the problem. Dr Marv is kidnapped by Zanzibar Land soldiers, hoping to become the dominant nation in this era of peace. FOX-HOUND sends their top agent, Solid Snake, to recover the scientist and prevent the terrorists from launching a strike.

Metal Gear 2 is equal parts pet-project sincere and blurping moonman whimsy. It can often feel like someone bulked up their Warhammer army with GI Joes. You trick a guard into thinking it's nighttime by hatching an owl from an egg and making it hoot. In a sombre moment, Snake comforts a woman in her dying moments with ludicrous ice skating puns. Snake taunts a horde of poisonous hamsters with cheese rations, and shoots them all dead so he can recover an MSX cartridge from a mousehole. This is the game for those who thought Metal Gear Solid's scented handkerchief and diarrhoea guard didn't go quite far enough.

I think a lot of the reason that this is one of the least played entries in the series is how close it plays to the sequels, while falling short of a lot of the stuff their fans take for granted. Despite all the 45 degree angles and how closely you perch yourself behind each corner, there's no wall-hugging here. You can call for advice on your radio, but your contacts' messages are very rarely relevant to your situation, and most of them barely ever answer your calls. So many of MGS1's big setpieces are ripped straight from this game, from fighting a former comrade in a Cyborg Ninja suit, to the HIND-D battle, to the stairway chase and elevator siege. It's all far more rudimentary in this, though, and not as justified by the surrounding scenario. I can see why many people would skip this and just go to the time they got these ideas right, but there's far more to the game than what MGS copied, and there's an appeal to seeing it all attempted on such early hardware.

As much as I love MGS1, a lot of the ideas that it iterated on fit better within MG2's structure. MGS is focused on keeping right on top of the narrative drive, and it tries its best to avoid backtracking, despite how much the surrounding design seems to suggest it. In MG2, you do have to keep track of armouries and ration locations. You'll probably have to come back to them to stock up before a boss. In MGS, the spawns are generous enough, and the combat is flexible enough that you can likely brute force your way through any encounter with enough ingenuity. MG2's approach is more tedious, but more consistent. The knowledge of the work associated with reacquiring health and ammo plays into the tension of avoiding detection. MG2 is a more bitter game, but an acquired taste appreciates that about it.

You know what? I kind of like backtracking. Maybe it's something I appreciate more in old games, when the new ones are busy forcing you through a bunch of single-purpose environments that their designers and artists broke their backs to give us, but I do enjoy feeling like I'm "in a place". Becoming familiar with the layout and the safe routes. It's part of what I like about the old Resident Evil games. Metal Gear 2 is an embarrassment of riches for backtracking fans. MGS1's structure is largely modelled on MG2, with its three main buildings, connecting bridge that gets blown up, and delivery vans to fasttravel between each of them. You don't really have much use for that ability in MGS, though. You never have any reason to go back from Sniper Wolf's snowfield outside the final building. I suspect the game's original plan was a little closer to Metal Gear 2, in that respect. Here, the first building is littered with locked doors you won't have access to until the very end of the game. There's no way to tell what level of key card you'll need to open them, but trial and error will get you there, eventually. The PAL Card heating/cooling bit is straight out of MG2, except it's far more brutal here. You have to traverse the entire map for it. It's divisive, and this may be Stockholm syndrome talking, but there's something I enjoy about it. I like reflecting on how far I've come, and finally accessing those mysterious rooms I've been held out of for so long.

Story and characters are much less of a draw in the first two games. There's moments, but few and far between. You get Gray Fox and Big Boss, but their motivations and backgrounds are far less well-developed than the following games would have you believe. Anyone who thought Snake and Meryl's relationship was rushed, adolescent, and perhaps even a little sexist, are not prepared for Holly White's dialogue. Look - It's the height of life-or-death instinct. These people don't know if they'll see tomorrow. They're incredibly horny. Cut them some slack.

There's iconography in the game that's still unique to it. Metal Gear D's design came from kitbashing Kotobukiya military vehicle sets and drawing the resulting experiment as an in-game sprite afterwards. The game's cover art was drawn by model kit illustrator, Yoshiyuki Takani, and that 80s helicopter otaku vibe is all over the game. It's an entirely different vision of near-future war than the one KCEJ would explore little over a decade later. There's a style to the HUD and in-game tech that reminds me of the fanciful, far-out depictions of military tech in 80s films I grew up with on home-recorded VHS, like Commando and Short Circuit. Even just seeing Solid Snake in green combat fatigues is a little interesting, given the high-tech Sneaking Suits and Octocamo he's become associated with since then. As much of a Yoji Shinkawa stan as I've become, I still feel a little ennui from seeing his sprites in newer releases of the game, replacing the blatant Sean Connery and Albert Einstein portraits from the original. There's less visual consistency, with the rust and exposed wiring of the 1990 game. Metal Gear 2 is a very different idea of what this kind of top secret mission should look like, and it resonates with me more than the slick, semi-organic nanotech of the more futuristic titles.

The atmosphere in Metal Gear 2 is so rich, and that's largely owed to the soundtrack. The music is consistently brilliant, and researching this iteration of the Konami Kukeiha Club helps paint a picture of how much talent was in the team. Composers who went on to score games as diverse as Demon's Souls, Kirby's Epic Yarn, GuitarFreaks and Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, though it's likely Snatcher and Policenauts composer, Masahiro Ikariko, whose style is easiest to pick out. Kojima got a lot of shit on MGSV for abandoning David Hayter in favour of Hollywood talent, but I'd suggest the precedent was set when he sacrificed Konami's legendary in-house composers to butter up Harry Gregson-Williams on MGS2. That Escape from New York influence didn't stop at Snake Plisskin. The soundtrack is dripping with John Carpenter pulsing, electronic dread. I don't know if there are many people who Metal Gear 2 is an easy recommend for, but if you love MGS1 and Snatcher, I'd really encourage you to give the game an earnest effort.

The aesthetic isn't mere window dressing. It affects your attitude. Your acceptance of the task at hand. Slotting your rigid body in the enemies' blindspots, and entering undecorated boxy room after room of ammo pick-ups. It feels right, and it's the tone and atmosphere that convince you of that. You really want to play Metal Gear 2? Try it on an MSX with inch-high keys that give you carpal tunnel before the first boss.

I accept all of Metal Gear 2's flaws and readily present them at face value. I get a little anxious if I hear someone else is going to try playing the game. I doubt that anybody could see this awkward, ramshackle collection of ideas the same way I do. I can't deny my affection for it, though. It's the game that made me an MSX2 owner. To give it anything less than a perfect score would be disingenuous on my part. I first played it in the early 2000s, and I couldn't stop thinking about it as I started each new sequel, vibrating with glee if they ever did anything that so much as resembled something from this early entry. There's outposts and road markings in The Phantom Pain that mean the world to me. Back when in my early internet days, I used to frequent fansites from MSX-era Metal Gear fans, who would cover MGS as well. Somewhat reluctantly. Those guys were my heroes, and I still think of them as the authority on this stuff.

I can't shake my personal history with Metal Gear 2. I'm forever biased towards it. It's clear whenever I touch it that its effect on me hasn't diminished. It's still pretty much the definition of what I think of as a "real game". No polish, no concessions, just running around big square rooms and looking for stupid items. There's an elemental purity to it. Stick the cartridge in the slot and press the power button. This is The Game, and I fully expect you'll find it very boring.

I've got to come clean, here. I'm not really into most horse racing games. I mean, I like the idea, but pretty much everything I've tried has been really stat-heavy and management focused. They generally seem tailored towards those who are heavily invested in gambling, and following the fine details of what makes a reliable bet, rather than those who just want to play a nice horsey game. There are exceptions. Obviously, I'm really into the horse stuff in the Zelda and Red Dead Redemption games, if I'm ever lucky enough to come across a Final Furlong cabinet, that's a great day, and for all the convoluted design elements that comprise Bomberman Fantasy Race, there's a really fun arcade horse racing game at the heart of it (even if the horses are cartoon kangaroos and bipedal rhinoceroses). For a straight-up good horse racing game, though, I've never found anything that could compete with Pocket Card Jockey.

Its premise is actually quite relatable for me. Your protagonist wants to be able to win horse races, but has no aptitude for it. They're better at card games. Through a deal with god, you're allowed to compete in horse races via the medium of quick-fire games of solitaire.

This isn't just a fun facade to put on the front of a card game, though. It's not like a licenced pachinko or pinball machine with funny animations. This is a horse racing game first, and a solitaire game second. You choose a good horse based on their natural statistics, develop their skills as much as you can in each race, and attempt to carry them through a career before they grow too old and get sent to the farm to produce offspring. Between each game of solitaire, you'll need to decide where best to line them up with the rest of the pack to maintain speed and stamina, while sticking close to the inside lane for oncoming corners. You're making decisions as a jockey, and relying on your abilities as a card shark to stay competitive.

The solitaire stuff is dead simple, but deliberately so. Cards are arranged randomly in the tableau in front of you, with you drawing cards at random from your deck. If your drawn card is one number higher or lower than the one on top of a stack, you can remove it from the game. Clear the board quickly, and your stamina loss will be negligible. Don't clear it in time, or run out of cards before all the cards are removed, and you'll really feel the impact. One bad hand can ruin an entire career, and you'll be struggling to make anything of your horse before it's time to move to a new one.

It's how frequently your focus is shifted that makes Pocket Card Jockey so addictive. In the heat of each solitaire game, your whole attention is on drawing the right numbers, and looking out for good sequences of cards to leave on the table for a big combo down the line. Then you zoom out, and you're back to the race, watching stats and trying to find the best place to set yourself. Then you zoom out further, and you're looking at your horse's career, trying to pick the best races to put them in, and buying items to boost their abilities. And you can zoom out further still, trying to make sure you've got a good horse waiting for you afterwards, and picking out good breeding pairs. There's constant distractions, but that sense of momentum never goes away. It's all headed in the trajectory of becoming a champion.

This is all well and good, but what really holds Pocket Card Jockey together is its charm. If you hadn't known already, this is a Game Freak joint. While they're, understandably, most known for Pokémon, I feel their true character comes through most in their independent games, like Jerry Boy, HarmoKnight and Pulseman. They're relentlessly creative, and have a history of consistently lovable titles with great art, music and writing behind them. Pocket Card Jockey is a surprisingly funny game, and can blindside you with its dialogue and characters, while maintaining a friendly, unassuming appearance. It isn't afraid to go full shonen anime for the more intense races, transporting your steed into a neon-filled techno dimension as you rapidly draw cards looking for a 7 to place on a board full of 6s and 8s. Something like this could easily become dry and predictable, but Game Freak have enough tricks up their sleeve to make sure you're always having a good time.

Pocket Card Jockey was initially a 3DS eShop game, and was later revived as the Apple Arcade mobile title, 'Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On'. That's the game that's been ported to Switch. There isn't too much to distinguish between the two games, with the bulk of content, including the script, horses and races, being pulled from that original 3DS entry, though the fully modelled 3D races are a flashy new tweak. There are some low-level changes to the ruleset beyond that, but after a race or two, you'll forget all about them. The real change is how the game has been reconfigured for a single-screen format, and subsequently, a home console. The sacrifices are comparable to Splatoon or Mario Maker's Switch sequels, without a second screen to provide useful information. It also plays a lot slower with a pad than a stylus, with a lot of the design clearly tailored towards a touchscreen, though you don't have to give that up if you're playing in handheld mode. The controls have been mapped quite carefully for those who do opt for the big screen experience, though, and there's a real satisfaction in flicking the right analogue stick to draw a new card. It's not a game that works as well here as it did on the 3DS, but they're trying their best.

Be honest with yourself, though. Are you really going back to play your 3DS on the reg again? If you are, good for you. I'm sure you'll enjoy the original. For the rest of us, we're much more inclined to turn to the Switch when it's time to play a game, and it's great to have Pocket Card Jockey as one of our selectable games. It's welcoming, cheap, compelling, and sessions can run from five minutes to all day, depending on what you're willing to put in to it. Look at my top five favourite games, and you'll see that four of them are available to play on the Switch. In a robust library of all-time classics, it's really great to see Pocket Card Jockey come into the fold.