Bongo is a big rat in a jumper. There is also a roaming enemy character that I fear may be an caricature of gypsies or something. This is the kind of risk you run into when playing games like Bongo on Commodore 16.

Did you have any games as a child that you didn't know how to play? I think California Games was the classic example around friends who had older brothers. They'd just sit in a box, and you'd be warned if you ever asked to play it, but maybe this could be the time you'd both figure it out. This is the experience of Bongo.

Bongo is arranged similarly to early 80s arcade platformers like Mappy or Nintendo's Popeye, with a stack of horizontal platforms on a static screen, littered with interactive objects. What the sprites are intended to represent are largely up to personal interpretation, but there are big slides, trampolines, open doors and giant B-O-N-G-O letters. There are also smaller B-O-N-G-O letters that float around the screen. Bongo must collect B-O-N-G-O by using the big B-O-N-G-O to transport himself around the level, while avoiding the... enemy. There are no play instructions printed on the Anco C16 inlay, so much of your time playing the game will be spent figuring out that you're supposed to press Up and Space simultaneously in order to interact with anything. There appear to be instructions on the German Kingsoft release of the game, but they are in German. Not figuring out the "two buttons at once to perform the only action in the game" trick will mean dying within two seconds.

Bongo also features "The Bongo Construction Kit"; a level editor, allowing you to create a limitless volume of Bongo. This may seem reflective of good value to potential customers, but in the end, you will still be playing Bongo.

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)

A puzzle game for fans of garbage blocks. It's like Puyo Puyo, but the garbage blocks are falling constantly at an overwhelming rate. They're all coloured blocks though, and if they fall next to a block of the same colour, they'll both disappear. This adds a wildcard dynamic to them as you're trying to line-up combos, and seeing crucial sections of your construction disappearing or getting buried. I think you have to be a pretty big Puyo Puyo player to get a lot out of this, as it's a much more aggrivating twist on its formula.

Having lived with a hoarder, I found the game paradoxically traumatic and cathartic, digging through these piles of shit being thrown my way. You're just throwing crap at each other until one of you dies. Toxic as fuck. Good though.

One of the greatest compliments I can pay Rollerdrome is that it feels like a game from twenty years ago. You know, when they made stuff like SSX Tricky and Quake III and Tony Hawk's 2. Infinitely replayable, unique games with no real skill ceiling. You can get really good at this, and every new hurdle you get over feels great.

It's a rollerskating arena shooter. This could have gone badly wrong, but everything's well considered. Your movement is largely based on momentum, while you aim in all directions around you. If you need to take a sharp turn, you can use the same dodge roll you use to evade rockets and sniper fire. All the enemy types are instantly readable, with their own attack patterns and weaknesses. You're constantly balancing distance, quick kills and major threats, looking after your health and combos. Get good enough and the THPS stuff becomes second-nature. It starts to feel like Geometry Wars. Just one where you can throw grenades at fuchikomas while backflipping.

The aesthetic's pretty cool too. Like a very specific branch of early 80s sci-fi. Not like those ironic American parody throwbacks. It feels part of the scene.

Rollerdrome is very difficult, and it plays entirely by its own rules. Familiarity with Tony Hawk's (or better yet, Aggressive Inline) will definitely help you out, but there's a lot to take on board and practice until it's second-nature. The game's structured so you have to get better than you think you can be before it lets you onto the next set of levels. You can kind of flub your way through a lot of the early stuff, but you feel each new level of competence you gain, and it's exhilarating.

Do not pass this one up.

The purchase of the Japanese Metal Gear Solid Premium Package inspired a lot of thoughts regarding how much I love the game, so I thought I'd write some of it down while I'm feeling like this.

Metal Gear Solid One is the main thing I like. A great deal of things that I like, I like because they're a bit like MGS1. It's the most sincere reflection on genetic inherentance, the disparity between nature and technology, and the state of global conflict in the 21st century, all wrapped up in a deeply earnest videogame with big muscley baddies who shoot you with a tank and laugh. It's the pinacle of early 3D action game design, fully reflective of the decades of fun, lovable game design that came before it. It's 90s anime and late 80s action films. At any point in the game you can call one contact to tell you about the flora and fauna of Alaska and another to tell you about international attitudes towards the use of nuclear weapons. It's the perfect thing for me to like.

I love how rigidly and logically it plays too. Literal cones of vision that you have to slip between, button inputs that always serve one function, and great big surfaces that all sit on 45 degree alignments. It's Solid. That's satisfaction. That's what I like.

I love the romance and coldness of MGS1. Dirty metal walls, corroded by gunpowder, sitting within pure thick white mist. It's people who have only known to fight learning that the value of living is found in love. It's so achingly earnest about that. You either have to be cool and dismiss it or just spend the rest of your life bathing in the beauty of METAL GEAR SOLID for the SONY PLAYSTATION.

I could mention any tiny piece of minutia regarding MGS1 and wax lyrical about why I love that stupid wee thing, but it's just every part of it. I love Level 5 PAN cards and the sound effect when you scroll through your inventory and Alaskan field mice and the Colt Single Action Army - the greatest handgun ever made - and the Super Baby Method and the big industrial freight elevators that descend diagonally. Metal Gear Solid is why I'm like this.

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!

The best games aren't the flawless, slick-as-all-get-out games. They're the ones that have very unique appeal. An itch you can't scratch with anything else. That's why Chibi-Robo fans are such a rare breed.

Chibi-Robo has similarities to a lot of other games, but there's nothing else with its blend. It's a game that revels in repetition and limiting your agency. As soon as Chibi-Robo enters the Sandersons' home, he's a source of resentment. Another expensive gizmo that the childish, impulsive father can't afford. Slowly, by accomplishing little tasks, and helping out with housework, Chibi-Robo becomes welcomed, appreciated and eventually, the subject of intense gratitude as he helps fix the family's problems. The more Chibi-Robo does, the more he has access to.

I'd be deeply suspicious of a game that attempted a similar story arc these days. I know it would be either cloyingly mawkish or shallow and insincere. Chibi-Robo, on the other hand, is dumb, dated and disarmingly weird. Toys come to life at night, and there's something off about all of them. The first you meet is some kind of Buzz Lightyear knock-off, but because of the unique balance of surrounding cultural influences where and when the game was made, he's more Kamen Rider than Buck Rogers, and the localisation team aren't equipped to make sense of that for a western audience. It's just another weird thing in this weird game, and you accept it. There's a load of stuff like that in Chibi-Robo, and it's a big part of its appeal. I don't want to spoil the stupidest plot twists the game has to offer, but there's stuff in here that I couldn't fucking believe.

The appeal of what I refer to as "wee guy" games is very much here, though it's probably easy to overstate in something like Chibi-Robo. You're running around a big house, trying to find hidden pathways and ascend to the highest points. In retrospect, it kind of feels like an N64 platformer with iffy level design. There's typically only one or two routes up through each room's furniture, and the paths aren't always terribly intuitive or readable. There's parts where you'll need to attempt a gap multiple times, finagling the camera into an awkward position and having to retread about three minutes of shelf traversal each time it doesn't work. To players of a certain age though, there's a kind of comfort to this. This is how punishing games are supposed to be. There's an honesty to each fall, and with the domestic settings, the moving platforms and obstacles are thankfully rare. It's like those throwback bags of Opal Fruits you can buy - I don't know if the old approach is better, but it's what you want sometimes.

It goes without saying that Chibi-Robo isn't for everyone. It's a lumpy, stupid game where you can't do anything that you want and you get sent back to the starting point every five to fifteen minutes. Only those of very cultivated tastes will find it charming. It's completely indespensible to me though. I've never played another game does what it does the way it does. I hope I never stop coming back to it.