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.

There's a lot of criticisms that can be said about Key's writing, many of which I agree with. For one thing, similar to Key's Air, the story takes place around a central adult male main character who develops a friendship with a young, or visually young, female character with an implied mental handicap, who is incapable of taking care of herself. In fact Key is often cited for helping develop this trope, known within anime fandom as "moe". To be frank, I find this trope incredibly uncomfortable. Perhaps it comes from the fact that as someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD, I find the kind of infantilization present in this trope kind of problematic. Due to this, the story was a bit difficult to get through for me, however that being said there is a lot of worth in it's story, even if it is quite generic.
Despite starting off incredibly pessimistic, it ends with a message of hope, promising that although things feel grim, it will get better. This message is told through the relationship the main characters share, and it's done decently well. I just feel that my whole experience was soured by how the female main character was depicted, and that it really sours the message of the work as a whole. She only really exists as a catalyst for the main character to change his world view, having no agency of her own. Perhaps then it is fitting that she is a robot, an object, perfectly symbolizing the way the genre has depicted these characters up to this point. A more optimistic view may see this as satire, but looking at how the story depicts and uses this character, and the overall tone of the work, it's clear to me that it isn't.
Overall Planetarian is a deeply flawed work, and while miles better compared to some of Key's other works, it still falls into the same old tropes, exhibiting the same old problems.

Virtua Fighter's Saturn port was rather embarrassing. Despite being a pack-in game for the system, it was an awful show of it's capabilities, graphically faring worse than it's arcade Model 1 counterpart. Unfortunate for a system expected to bring Model 2 games like Daytona USA to home consoles. Sega had to think of a solution, and they did indeed come up with one. A little over half a year later they released Virtua Fighter Remix, which replaced Virtua Fighter as the Saturn's pack-in game.
So how does Remix compare to it's predecessor? It's the same game with prettier graphics. Instead of flat shaded polygons, everything is textured now, and the game no longer suffers from the many graphical glitches that plagued the first game. Other than that it's good old Virtua Fighter. If you're wondering whether you should pick up this or the original, go with Remix. Both games play the same, but Remix's graphical changes gives the game new life and leaves you with less eye strain.

Well, this sure was a rough start for the Sega Saturn. A lot of people have commented before on the Saturn's rather weird 3D rendering, and it's very apparent through it's port of Virtua Fighter that many of the people developing the initial few games for it didn't know how to take advantage of it. Unfortunately this means a lot of the Saturn's early 3D games aren't great examples of what the console is capable of. Virtua Fighter for Saturn is a fun game, don't get me wrong, but there was so much room to improve, especially in the graphical department. To be fair, whilst graphics did take a hit, a lot of effort was made to get the game running at a smooth frame rate and the gameplay itself is pretty solid. However if you're looking for a 3D fighter on the Saturn you have plenty of better options, even within the same series.

Kirby's Dream Land 2 is an excellent early entry in the kirby series. Whilst still being quite limited in comparison to what would come after it, it still ends up being a very impressive gameboy title, with each copy ability having four different abilities depending on whether or not you have an animal friend and which animal friend you have. Overall it ends up easily being one of the better action games on the system. The game is also significantly harder than a lot of kirby games, though that's not to say it's a hard game. Story wise there isn't much for kirby-lore-heads to chew on, however it is the start of the dark matter trilogy of games that brought many interesting themes and concepts into the series. Overall if you haven't played it I absolutely recommend it!

Super Puyo Puyo is a fun puzzle game. Unfortunately the game has been overshadowed by the later games in the series. For one thing, the game uses 5 different active Puyo colors in the game, instead of the 4 of later games, making it difficult to put together combos. It also doesn't give you any counter against garbage sent to your side like the later games do.
Outside of that the game is still very fun. Characters are very expressive and even have their own little quirks during cutscenes and gameplay, such as Harpy's poor singing, or Zoh Daimaoh's puyos shaking the screen when they are dropped. Overall a very fun and cute game.

Whilst being a game held in high regard by many, Final Fantasy IV still feels a bit too early in the series and far too rough around the edges. This game is the first in the series to introduce the ATB (Active Time Battle) System and it shows, the system is quite bear bones and isn't very fun, especially when compared to later implementations of the ATB System. Being a JRPG, these aspects can be looked over if the game has a great story, however unfortunately for Final Fantasy IV the story is a huge mess. Constant character death fakeouts and late game plot twists make the story feel far too busy, whilst character development is limited to a few characters and a couple scenes. Overall one of the weakest entries in the series.

Easily one of the best, if not the best NES game. It takes a lot of the quality of life features seen in other NES games and uses them all within one game. Of all the NES games I've played this is one of the only ones I would recommend to most people. Kirby's Adventure is an excellent addition to it's series and the best NES game I've played so far. It also gets points for introducing the copy ability to the series. (Touching on the 3D remake specifically, it's pretty much the same game, the 3D is alright but the game is still fully playable without it if it isn't to your tastes, overall an excellent port of an already excellent game.)