I was forged in the fire of this game.

Probably second only to Tetris in play time throughout my life, Tecmo Super Bowl tends to be the first game I load up when anything NES is happening. Whether it's my childhood console and cartridge or emulation; This game is getting played. Most recently I've stumbled across the wonderful world of retro gaming handhelds and all the fun they have to offer. I've had a "Miyoo Mini" for about a year now and just finished up yet another season of Tecmo Super Bowl rather than exploring something new in the retro world.

There's gimmicks, exploits and ways you can game the game. It's aged. It's missing features you wish a football game had. It's got its many quirks. But it's still fun. It's up to you to handicap yourself in certain ways. Avoid those exploits. And you can still be challenged thoroughly. Especially come playoff time! While I brought the Bears to the promised land my last season playthrough, I fell short with the Chargers this time. QB Bills was tossing bombs in the AFC championship and Thurman Thomas could not be contained.

Always fun. Always a trip back in time. I love it.

[Played on Miyoo Mini v2]

Ufouria/Hebereke 2 was developed by a small team from a new development studio called Tasto Alpha, the heads appear to mostly be Grasshopper Manufacture alumni. From what I can tell this is only their second game, the first being a card-based RPG from last year. The sound director for Ufouria 2 was one of the composers on Godhand, the director was one of several planners on Rule of Rose. The game has a charming aesthetic, great new remixes of tunes from the original game, and a good sense of humor. It's structured less like the "search action" style of the original, and more like a scaled down Amazing Mirror with extremely lite Rogue elements. The game is about 3 hours long and the last chunk is mostly mirrored versions of previous levels.

2 months into 2024, this is the most fun I've had with a new game this year. In fairness, there are a lot of games that I would be unsurprised if I had more fun with them when I eventually play them, and some of those games are already out. Maybe I'll like Infinite Wealth more than this, but I want to play other games in the series first. Maybe I'll like Relink more than this, but when that game launched it wasn't on my radar.

A couple weeks ago Penny's Big Breakaway "shadow dropped". I don't want to be too hard on it, because it's definitely an interesting game, because I think I could reasonably speculate on what could possibly be going on in the games industry climate for them to want to rush a sellable product out the door as soon as possible, and because some of the issues I have with it could be patched. One of the main things I've found myself thinking as I try to make more progress through the game is whether or not I would care about the game's collision issues, audio problems, and general "jank" if it were a PS2 game. Next to the latest Nintendo platformers Breakaway falls a little short, but it's clear sense of style and sheer amount of content for a game of its type would have made it a must-buy a couple decades ago. It's the exact kind of game you could imagine Treasure making if they were still around today, but the standards a lot of players have today are likely part of the reason Treasure's future exists mostly in rumors.

Ufouria 2 is a much easier game than the original, but could a game with those kinds of expectations still appeal to the intended audience of the IP? We're stuck with a classic problem of bringing back a piece of media like this, is it hard enough for returning adult fans while being easy enough for the possible new generation? A longplay of the original NES game is about half the length of my playthrough of the new one; even if the game's semi-random level layouts offer a bit of padding, it's definitely of comparable length, probably just a bit bigger. If Ufouria 2 was an NES game, or a SNES game like the many Japan-only spin-offs, would we remember it? Does Ufouria: The Saga already give us the answer to that question?

Would I recommend Ufouria 2? Do I think you should wait for a sale? These are absurd questions. If enough small teams existed around the world making games of this exact scope that one game like this released every week, I know exactly how I would spend Friday night every weekend. I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less. I hope these guys were paid well.

Ufouria 2 is a genre of game that needs its own name. It's a real hollow nothing bullshit kind of game and I don't mean that derogatorily. The game has such a wonderful cast of characters and a beautifully simple aesthetic and all I want is to have a good time with that core appeal. It's what drew me into playing it in the first place. While mechanically the game is shallow, it is very modern philosophically. The different zones are randomly generated on entry which makes them fresh on revisits, which as a metroidvania, happens frequently. Upgrades are dished out at well calculated intervals. It makes me FEEL like I'm progressing. I don't need to master mechanical complexity in every game I play. Sometimes I just want to enjoy an aesthetic, exist in a world, play a role. But doubly, I dont want to be bored by the game. So while these tricks with the progression and level design may seem cheap (and they admittedly are) they serve the ultimate appeal of the game, which is it's charming aesthetic, and they provide the exact amount of satisfaction and engagement (for my monkey brain at least) necessary to make the short run time fulfilling from beginning to end. The newer Yoshi games could learn a lot from this game.

This stupendous megawad has very rightly been hailed as some of the best that Doom modding has to offer. Attention
is often drawn to its brisk pacing, snappy combat, witty humor, phenomenal use of Doom 2's stock textures, palpable atmosphere, and its singular vision as a one-man creative project. But I want to point out something else that Going Down does very well, which is its difficulty. Doom aficionados who play exclusively on ultra-violence will often point to this as one of Doom's most difficult offerings, but those who cower at that warning (such as myself), fear not. While ultra-violent is the bread and butter of most seasoned Doom players, the lower difficulty settings in Going Down are just as well-balanced. What has the reputation of being notoriously difficult is, in fact, more accessible than you might think. Either way, Doom casuals shouldn't let Going Down's difficult reputation and penchant for "slaughter maps" (somewhat debatable) put them off. This is a brilliant work of horror comedy fun that no FPS fan should miss.