One of the greatest visual novels I've ever played. The game presents a wonderful mystery wrapped within its own world of supernatural science fiction.
The character writing is fantastic, and in order to demonstrate that, I'll compare it to another popular visual novel, Danganronpa. Danganronpa's characters all fall flat and only exist to serve the various murder mysteries the game throws at you. None of the characters truly feel like the grow as people, and when they attempt to they are usually punished by being murdered. Within the first chapter you understand exactly what they'll be like for the rest of the game. Danganronpa's characters are all one-dimensional stereotypes as well, meaning there isn't much interesting to learn about them, and when there is it's almost always used for some shock factor. Ultimately what Danganronpa lacks in its characters is empathy for them.
The opposite is true of 999's characters. Every single character is more than what they appear at first glance. Let's take Lotus for example, the scantily clad woman of the group. Danganronpa would've made her one character trait sexual promiscuity and would have blamed her choice of dress for the sexual advances of the male cast. Instead in 999, Lotus is shown time and time again, despite what the other character's assume from the way she dresses, to be an independent and exceedingly smart and clever individual, often working with or against the main character throughout the game as the character's situations and opinions change. 999 looks upon every character with empathy, and everyone is written equally as an individual, with their own experiences, outlooks, and choices. There aren't any one-note comic reliefs and every character experiences some amount of change by the end.
The world-building is fantastic as well, dropping hints toward key ideas throughout the various escape room sequences in the game. The game has a strong emphasis on parapsychology, which gives the game a somewhat interesting supernatural twist, however despite that it still remains grounded in it's own fiction, spinning a web that connects various unbelievable concepts into a fictional reality that compliments the narrative.
The escape room sequences themselves are also fantastic, with many tricky puzzles. It probably won't be very hard for the average Professor Layton player, however make sure to have some note taking paper around and get ready to do a lot of math.
Overall this is a game that you'll be thinking about well after you've played it. It's an impressive accomplishment in digital story telling, and a visual novel that anyone should play, familiarity with the genre withstanding. The amount of things it does so well is almost shocking.

Virtua Fighter 2 is the quintessential classic Virtua Fighter, unfortunately, it's still classic Virtua Fighter, and whilst I myself am a fan of the weird floating jumps and everything, it's for sure not everyone's thing.
The Saturn port is great this time around, finally giving the Saturn a decent 3D fighting game with hardly any visual hiccups. Although it's worth noting this is not an arcade accurate port in terms of visuals, there had to be some workarounds to make the game run as nice as it does, so character models aren't as detailed, and backgrounds are not rendered in 3D like the arcade original. That being said what is here looks and feels great.
Overall a pretty fun game and decent showing for the Saturn. No idea what's up with the Dural fight though, slowing everything down just made the fight easier.

King of Fighters '96 marks the start of traditional KOF. Despite that, it's still a lot of fun to play today, and whilst being the first to use the style of gameplay it's sequels would expand upon, it still holds its own very well.
Port wise, the Saturn port is fantastic. It uses the Saturn's RAM Cart, allowing the game to have impressively quick loading times, meaning unlike prior SNK fighting game ports on CD based consoles, you won't be stuck waiting at a loading screen wishing you were playing the game already. The visuals look amazing as well, with not a detail missing. The only thing I can fault it for is being a very bare bones port, no palette editing, no training mode, none of that. You get the most basic modes and some settings to mess around with, however that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows you to get into the game very quickly, which coupled with the games speedy load times, results is a very fast boot-to-play time.
Overall I can't recommend this game enough, whilst it's main formula is expanded upon in '97 and '98, what's here is still incredibly fun and solid, and is worth your time to at the very least try it.