Wonder Flower gimmicks are cute until they turn repetitious, which they do by the end of World 2. The badges largely make up for a lack of platforming aptitude which, as a seasoned gamester, means I have to play the game wrong to accommodate their use. But I'm not gonna unlearn my Mario skills so I don't remember to use them outside of when they are clearly necessary for side objectives like an over-polished immsim. You mean I should use the Dolphin badge on the levels right after I got it? Wowee Zowee!

Broadly speaking this feels like an attempt to teach the kids that grew up with the Switch what Mario is about. The hypersleek UI elements, mountains of spoken text as a replacement for other markers of design intent, the badges, the Wowee Zowee, the oodles of characters, the gacha elements of the standees, the multiple currencies (and decimalisation of Flower coins to further litter the field with shinies), the little emojis, the lack of points. These additions and subtractions are by no means bad but I won't lie, it feels a little like I'm playing a AAA game from the 2020s. Because I am. It's hard to read Wonder as a creative reinvention and reinvigoration of Mario because I know it took thousands of people to make this. That every decision was subject to board meetings and focus groups. It's the same problem as your New Super games -- the formula must be adhered to. And even if the formula changes, it's still a formula. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I look for at this point in my life.

I'll keep playing it, I'll probably finish it. It's like a Coca-Cola Creation, y'know? You see it on the shelf, you think 'what the hell do '+XP' or 'Starlight' taste like, the first sip is novel and enchanting, before long you're still drinking Coke. If I want true innovation, I'll reach for the local-made can of kombucha flavoured with some berry I've never heard of before. Like Haskap. Uhhh, for the purposes of this analogy I guess the random shit I pick up on Steam and itch.io are the kombucha.

And I gotta say, I'm sorry but I can't hear the Mario Gang say Wowee Zowee without having flashbacks to Game Grumps Kirby Super Star Part 2 where Jon and Arin argued for like a minute straight over whether or not Arin had said Wowee Zowee before. Back then life was so simple. I was so young. Games held so much potential. Eleven years, gone in the blink of an eye. In another life, I'm the Mario Wonder kid, growing up on a Switch. Who could have known things would turn out the way they did, that I'd be the person I am today...

Feels like a rebrand to cover up some controversial past half the time.

WOAH JUST LIKE GAME GRUMPS 😱

This was awful wtf

So, Mania's strengths come from being a celebration of Classic Sonic's greatest hits, and then building off that. I had this expectation in my head that Superstars could be similar, but not from standpoint of celebrating Sonic itself, but the people who contribute to it - a new title across two developers with a soundtrack featuring old and new artists across the series. Even if the weak links refused to bring their best game (cough cough), there would be something creatively valuable about the grab-bag nature of the final product. And even if it wasn't complex or cinematic in the way 3K and Mania are, it could still be a nice comfort food game, like the 8-bit titles.

The first four zones of Superstars are good, with only a few hangups. And then Lagoon City hits, and the money runs out HARD. The visuals lose all their post-production VFX and lush topology, leaving a naked 3D tilemap and a ugly blurry skybox behind. The level design drops from that golden balance of rolling hills to fangame-tier boxy rooms with nothing but moving platforms and instant death crushers. The 2.5D loops from Bridge Island disappear for the rest of the game until Frozen Base for some reason. The already-sluggish bosses turn into auto-scrollers, the already-terrible boss theme gets replaced with the most embarrassing try-hard drivel I've heard in my life, level mechanics that were already stolen from other Sonic games start getting re-used in later levels (there are FIVE acts in this game with pinball mechanics), and so on.

And I have a right mind to blame Arzest for this side of the shit, cause everything in this game that feels miserable is a flavor they would've saved for whatever shovelware Nintendo would commission them for. The auto-scrollers, earthquake effects that are visually disconnected from the foreground playfield, the re-using mechanics across zones to pad out time, the random shmup section (i say this out of hyperbole but fr the fantasy zone reference is really cute), a final zone that makes you play the same act twice in reverse - tell me this isn't shit that would pop up in a no-name Yoshi outing. I'm a firm believer Sonic needs to diversify its inspirations if it wants to keep flourishing as a franchise, but all of these ideas feel totally incompatible with the structure, expected length and flow of a Sonic game, let alone one with consistently middling/bad level design. The only thing I can't hold against them, is knowing that even if they had better ideas, Sega-Sammy wouldn't have given them the resources to fully-realize it anyway.

If I can be generous, I'll rapid fire a few things I like:
+The snake that weaves across all of Sand Sanctuary is super cool, def my favorite new stage gimmick
+Emerald powers are a great new concept, they just need to replace the overly-context-sensitive ones. Fire/Timestop/Clones/Vines can stay, Vision/Water can go
+Trip's cute and really fun to play as and I look forward to fans injecting her into a better game

(side note - out of all of Jun's songs, most songs with good melodies are arranged mostly fine here (i like sky temple and press factory 1), and the ones that sound like ass aren't good compositions in the first place, so, my condolences to fan remixers trying and failing to salvage them)

Maybe I would've liked this more if I played it at a different time. I'm working on a vaguely Sonic-styled platformer as I write this, and who's to say that's not making me pickier about what 'belongs' in a game like this. I look at 3K, and I look at the sense of impact and propulsion that goes on in the balancing act of automation and platforming, and I really want to replicate that in a different structural context - so when I play this, and that philosophy is absent, it pisses me off. I could easily see myself replaying this in 2-3 years and coming out with a glowing smile.

But on the other hand, everything I liked here is done equally good in other Sonic games too.

And sixty fucking dollars holy SHIT-

After drudging through Sonic’s latest adventure through mediocrity, I felt thoroughly deflated. In all honesty, I was starting to think I was just completely tapped out for this series and it would never give me the same highs it used to. As it turns out, all I needed was a brief refresher with a personal favorite of mine. It’s been a while since this series provided me any pleasure, but boy lemme tell ya, when Sonic hits it really hits.

For many, the predictable choice here would be Mania or 3&K, but despite their obviously quality, it wasn’t the skew of Sonic I was looking for today. Not even Sonic 2, a game I’ve loved for longer than I’ve had cogent memories, would scratch the particular itch I was looking for. Instead I reached for Sonic CD, a game that continues to stand tall as a singular pillar of excellence in this ridiculously far reaching series of games.

If you’ve known me online for the past few years, you should already know how hard I’ve fought on the Sonic CD frontlines in the past, and as such I won’t reiterate everything I’ve previously said of the game in this log - instead I just wanted to gush incessantly for a little bit about one of my favorite games of all time.

In retrospect, bringing in the character designer of Sonic to direct the sequel to the first game was an inspired choice, and this is felt as early as the very first level. Visually and sonically this thing is unparalleled in it’s swag (but you didn’t need me to confirm that), levels and their layouts are as chaotic as the series would ever see in this format, and the pace at which you can breeze through each zone is comical even by Sonic standards. Later titles like 2 or 3&K arguably worked better as 2D platformers for normal people rather than absolute freaks, but no other Sonic game understands the appeal of the character quite as well as this, and it’s obvious in all areas of its design.

Even the time travel, something that continually gets mocked by detractors of the game, is so effortlessly cool and natural for the character that it’s kinda weird playing the other games without the mechanic now. The main sticking points for most have to do with the execution of time travel itself, and its actual mechanical use in the story. If you personally land in this critical group of goblins, I hear you, but I just don’t care. You’re so concerned with traveling through time just for it’s “intended” function as a vehicle for the true ending of the game, when honestly, the best way to enjoy it may be to focus on the purely shallow benefits to it. On my most recent playthrough I disregarded the robot generators entirely, breezed through all seven special stages, and continued to utilize the time travel nearly 40 times in the run just to change the scenery and layouts while leisurely bouncing through all 7 of the game’s magnificent zones. Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that bring the most pleasure.

While on the note of the time travel, this most recent playthrough was done on the Sonic CD Restored version of the game along with it’s massive time travel overhaul, and while I’ll always be able to hang with even the nastiest ports of the game, this cleans up the experience to an honestly absurd degree. In fact, it was such a smooth experience I can’t help but wonder if people’s hatred of the game comes more from shitty ports than anything. While some of the changes here could be argued to be somewhat superfluous (from what I understand, time travel in the original CD version of the game is around 35% faster than the 2011 port, with CDR’s time travel being around 16% faster than even that), it’s clearly the closest representation of how the game not only was on release, but how it was always meant to be. Sure the time travel is absurdly fast here to the point where it’s maybe a bit too easy to pull off, but the core of the game shines so clearly with this port that I think it doesn’t take away from the experience at all.



In the bad timeline we landed in where this series is just inconceivably fucked up with no way to turn back, it’s nice to still have a title that shines bright in a sea of never-ending shadow. This game tickles my brain in a way not easily found elsewhere. The joy of flinging this blue bastard through pinball mazes from hell. The joy of effortlessly seeing all eras of time just for the sake of it. The joy of beating a level in 30 seconds or 5 minutes dictated only by how you feel like playing the game rather than by some slapdash gauntlet level design. The joy of true and uncompromising play.

Well at least Justin's not here.

Slightly less ad-libbed, as repetitious as ever in its jokes and play. Space Applebees caught you offguard last time? Well here's Cheers under an alien's ass. In case you didn't catch that the slugs are on the salt planet, I'll tell you a few more times. Guys, Amazon workers deal with horrid conditions, get it? Knifey sure is violent.

The new pinball gun is the most interesting weapon in the game, adorned with three phat ass babbling blue boys. High on Knife mostly throws basic enemies at you as a realisation that the gameplay really isn't what you're here for. The bells and whistles providing some auditory relief. Press F to pay respects kill enemies instantly and get it over with. Surfing on walls is vaguely cool if poorly realised, especially with Knifey telling you the act itself is cool.

As paltry as the gameplay is, at least it can be engaged with while the cast is yammering. On the other side of the coin, whenever dialogue occurs it is usually two characters talking at you. Or three. Sometimes even four. Three quarters of the screen are eventually squatted in by characters in dark rooms with monotone pink walls and swarms of pink enemies. To call it an assault on the eyes and ears is to undersell it. Maybe it was because thirteen people were goofing in my ears the whole time. Even before the aggravations reach a crescendo, the eye drifts across a featureless white planet, and rote gunmetal corridors. Almost everyone is a slug or a cock with tits. There is simply nothing to break things up.

At least Justin's not here. Not a stammer in sight. As one-dimensional as he is, Knifey carries(?) the whole two hours thanks to Michael Cusack's performance. Though by the end I was hoping even he would shut up. And Tim Robinson. And Gabourey Sidibe. I wish they'd all just zip it for a second if only so my friends could hear my great jokes instead.

Beneath a fading silver sky, I found myself locked in a timeless dance of catch with a stranger.

Good +30

Our hands connected across the expansive field through the shared rhythm of a baseball's flight, while our hearts bridged the chasm of anonymity with every gentle toss.

Good +30

Amidst the soft thud of the catch, we listened heartfully to stories that spilled like fragments of a soul's journey.

Normal +20

Each throw, a moment shared, a piece of the intricate mosaic of their life.

Perfect! +50

I think overall it's a pretty competent shooter. The level design is super boring and the guns all feel extremely unsatisfying. The story is also a mess with a trillion left out details. It feels improved on the spot while also extremely tropey. But I think it's still fun and has plenty of neat ideas with the glaive and the viral infection preventing you from holding enemy weapons for very long. It's also interesting to see what served as some of the bones for Warframe. A game born out it the ashes of a different project who eventually rose from those ashes as massive burning phoenix that is still unstoppable today.

I find the post resident evil 4 era of horror games to be really interesting because it's a distinct turn for action oriented. Basically marrying shooters to more horror oriented elements while also missing why re4 was still effective at it. Dark sector at least has some really good atmosphere and monster design. I always like the concept of government agent gets mixed up in a bunch of horror stuff.

Despite some abso luxurious artwork and presentation here I'm left a little dry. One of the problems I keep running into w/ the princessmaker genre is in how little these games do to offer emergent expressions of lifegoal improv, i guess? Like once your child hits their middle age (13), you probably already have a ""build"" in mind, a desired outcome you're beelining to - in the form of hammering the same handfuls of classes or extracurricular activities to pump cold and unfeeling stats & numbers up. As funny as it is to have a scrunkly faildaughter, the game doesn't react to it in any holistic or meaningful way - lower stats means fewer doors open to you.
Granted, it's not a soulless spreadsheet simulator or anything - it really is a lavish production filled with events that trigger according to certain milestones being hit, the problem for me is in how much it rewards a straightforward and narrowminded grind rather than making tough decisions, reacting to your own daughters autonomy and wishes.
And there's little else to it, really - the cast here are a little charming and it's heartwarming to watch your lilbabie fill her boots in the vocation of your choice; but when the artifice falls out from under me i realise i've spent days clicking the same buttons, watching the same animations, hoping to increase my chances where I get an ending screen akin to whatever da hell I wanted my daughter's job to be. Full possibility my brain is not wired for this kind of game, I just wish it felt more like parenthood and less like EV training.

"Time to get moving! ^-^" ~ Level Select Music

There was a very specific time in my life where I did nothing but draw cars, trucks and other such automobiles with weapons slapped onto them in some form. Think dumb stuff like vans with buzz saws coming out of the sides and probably a big dumb laser cannon on the roof. It was all due to Twisted Metal, and that odd fixation made me gaze at video games with cars in them in a slightly more captivated way. If the car game had explosions on the cover? Oh baby, count me in! Blast Corps was a popular Hollywood Video rental back then, for a pretty good reason and it was because of the cool jet pack robot on the front, and a dump truck that I would come to despise in due time, but more on that later.

Your job in this game is to annihilate everything in the path of the world's most fragile to-the-touch runaway truck carrying active nukes. Some really serious shit for a game approved for kids, but regardless. These are the main carrier missions though, and once the job is complete you can re-enter the stage for a little bit of a break and explore for 100% completion and chill out to Graeme Norgate's OST. (Fun Fact, this piece of music is a remix of the boss theme from Donkey Kong Land. That really knocked me on my ass when I found that out, wish I could stumble upon old Game Boy renditions more often.) It was quite the vibe as they would say for tiny me, when you've got nothing to do you tend to really enjoy just walking around and jet packing with your cool mech friend trying to find that last little blinky light to activate. You think it's a waste of time, but that's just games in general. Checkmate non-believers. You also got challenges in the smaller stages, where you aim to either destroy things or race around a track in an allotted time and other such nonsense. They're a nice little change of pace.

As you would imagine, the Blast Corps have quite the array of battle deconstruction vehicles and mobile suits. Everyone's favorite of course is J-Bomb the jet pack robot, who was popular enough to get a Fangamer shirt that I have in my closet at the moment. Everyone's least favorite is of course, someone who may not need an introduction to fellow demolition experts who have played this. Many a philosopher around the globe in ancient times have pondered questions such as: "why are we here?", "why is the sky blue?", "why did Rare make the dump truck so goddamn awful?"

The dump truck's name is "Backlash", and I assume Vince McMahon named the WWE PPV after it because he's the only asshole I'd imagine who would love using it. To use Backlash, you must take it's dump truck ass and spin it into buildings to destroy them with it's dump truck ass. It's very unwieldy, and Makes one question why a trained demolition crew would bring a dump truck and spin it like an oversized Beyblade at shit instead of just using the bulldozer that's right in front of them. Believe me, I'm making it sound cool, but this thing blows ass, and unfortunately the dickbags at Rare knew it was awful, so they made the player use it A LOT in the final stages. It's dumb, I don't like it, and it's the only reason I can't five star this game despite my mastery at attaching rose-tinted glasses to my face and doing world class mental gymnastics to justify myself in front of a live courthouse full of people who don't give a shit.

It's a shame really, but regardless I stand by the fact that Blast Corps is easily the coolest and most creative game Rare has developed. It's presentation isn't as memorable as Donkey Kong Country 2's pirate adventure theme, nor is it that refined with it's wonky crate pushing physics and trees with hitboxes the size of Wisconsin. It's the way it drops players straight into stages and asks them to solve puzzles like getting a gold medal via a shortcut on a racing course, or how to explode some statue you found hidden behind the train you started in, which had J-Bomb hiding in it for some reason. What was your plan there J-Bomb? Who put you there? Fuck you Rare, why did you make the dump truck so bad?

Another one of those "I just think it's cool" type of games, totally give it a rec if it sounds interesting to you, and really it should, because it was Rare's last gasp before they got tied up in the Mascot platformer coal mines.

Coming to this after growing up on Pikmin 2 and 3 was harrowing - Pikmin AI is borderline nonfunctional, their capacity to take any initiative without your direct babysitting is obscene. Every enemy encounter is ruthless, something as mundane as a Bulburb can rinse 9-15 of your troops if you do anything less than completely dogpiling it. There's very specific quirks and annoyances that don't even feel like the result of its time, but intentional choices to make the world feel more hostile and out of your control.

But I liked it for that really. You gotta corral the pikmin around as if they were dawdling ankle-biters and you're a begrudging parental figure. Olimar says as much in one of the travel logs. And as any responsible father should, I took immense pride when my dumb idiot gremlins somehow completed their menial labor without falling in a lake.

The Children Yearn For The Mines.

It's easy to take the stuff you own for granted, it seems to go double for games I bought a while ago for PlayStation back when I started collecting physically for it when the prices were all roughly a third of what they are now. Back when Ridge Racer Type 4 was a measly six bucks on a rack at your local place, and the Armored Cores weren't currently being held at gunpoint by swindlers out to speckledorf newly curious modern fans of From Software who don't know what a duck or a station is.

The North American longbox copy of Starblade Alpha is something I already knew was particularly hard to find, because even back in like 2015 or whatever it was (The years started to blend together for me recently) there would only be so many copies online and they were always in rotten shape with the adhesive on the cover artwork being worn out by the dastardly tag team of Father Time and Bad Storage. I eventually ended up finding one in OKAY shape and shelved out decent money for it, primarily because I'm a strange person who absolutely adores the chaos that is the longbox era of PS1 titles. They are big and stupid, I like big and stupid. It should've stayed like this tbh, the uniformity of jewel cases ruined us all.

On topic with the game itself, Starblade Alpha is a port of the classic arcade title that is a massive influence to the rail shooter genre. My first experience with the game was in the vanilla version of Tekken 5 on PS2 that featured the original arcade game as it's loading screen and as an unlockable full game from playing Devil Within. So it's nice at least to have that as my frame of reference when I finally decided to take out the disc from this supposed jackalope of PS1 collecting and boot it up on my console. It's even nicer that I get to talk about Devil Within in a writing piece that has nothing to do with Tekken, but that's me gloating about a personal victory.

As a port? It is a decent bit choppier and uses FMV backgrounds, and unfortunately aiming felt abominable on the dpad (dualshock wasn't even a glint in the milkman's eye at this point). It has two modes, one that uses the original polygon look of the game, and another that remakes it with fully textured graphics. Personally, I prefer the original look since I feel it's rather obvious the ships were made with that appearance in mind. The Commander ship in particular looks like it recently went dumpster diving. I appreciate the effort at least, because otherwise the package is fairly barren like a lot of the early Namco ports during the longbox era of crazy eyes. Surely not a great alternative to the cabinet which is probably an awesome experience.

Well, is it worth the upwards of 300-400 dollars that a CIB copy is going for currently? Oh lord no. Is it neat that I own this? I guess so, it's nice I could sell this thing for a car payment if I end up in a desperate state of near-homelessness, but otherwise it's just another game on the shelf to me, despite how legitimately rare it seems to be, as opposed to some popular title that is obviously being grifted online because companies can't be shittened to give some goddamn respect to the consumer in making their products more accessible in the age of digital. If someone knocked at my door and offered me 500 bucks for it, I would take the offer gladly. If the same person offered me 500 bucks for my childhood copy of Spyro the Dragon, I would immediately respond by coldcocking them.

Maybe I secretly regret owning all this stuff in an age where emulation is a fuckton better than it was a decade ago, but one thing's for sure is that I don't regret at least having something to display my love for the system.

No joke, I care about the sampler disc that came with my PS1 more, which is probably going for McDonalds Happy Meal prices. Attachment can be so bleak at times...

1 minute and 38 seconds.

1 minute and 38 seconds is the total amount of loading it takes for me to get from boot to the Monkey Mayhem pinball table appearing on my screen in Duckstation. On my actual Playstation console it took 2 minutes and 19 seconds. How many things can you do in 2 minutes and 19 seconds?

-You could make 5 to 25 sandwiches depending on multiple factors.
-You can piss off the International Tea Association by boiling some water in the microwave.
-You could any% speedrun Myst twice
-You could eliminate Santino Marella from the Royal Rumble 92 times
-You could listen to this zebrahead song
-Take a massive dump.

All this waiting for what? Some dull pinball tables that look like they belong on Super Nintendo.

This was one of the very first games I remember playing on Playstation, and what a game to get myself acquainted with the console. Oh my! Load times! Wave of the future! CD-ROM is my new lord and master, those expensive-ass cartridges are goin' the way of the stone age now that I can boot up Extreme Pinball, and suddenly find myself with some newfound free time to go build a bottle in a ship while I wait for a half-animated JPEG to appear on my screen and hand me some visual nyquil to help me fall asleep.

Ruiner Pinball was more eventful, and the tables in this game don't even have Poppy Bros. Jr. kicking the shit out of some chickens. Imagine jobbing out to the Atari Jaguar, imagine getting squashed by a Game Boy game.

Bleak days ahead for the Playstation if this is what we're being dealt! SMH! Dead console!

I have to admit, I really commend whoever decided Action 52 deserved separate pages for it's games and giving me a shitload of free one-star ratings to add to my profile with Meong being the only half-star one, because it irrationally pisses me off like the other shit on that side of my rating scale.

However, you know what? Mash Man deserves it's own page, because this shit does nothing but make me laugh my goddamn ass off. I really want to meet the person in the brainstorm session who went, "hey what if we get this bald dude in sunglasses with big fuckin' feet goin' around stomping shit"? You think it's creative bankruptcy, but it's in fact creative masterwork. I want to smash Neil Druckmann's face onto the blunt end of a toilet seat until he realizes the sheer brilliance of this thing that is indeed a video game.

I get to cackle like a toothless crone with the very idea that someone could realize I rated Mash Man higher than the MercurySteam Metroid II remake or Skyrim. This shit fuckin' rules.

The significance of music is truly something I could never speak highly enough about. It comes in so many flavors and moods, and in such different styles that I find it hard to imagine anyone could possibly be grouchy and curmudgeon enough to go, "man, I fucking hate music. Get that shit out of here".

Sure, it's an old version of Tetris with the usual endearing clunk to be expected from it's day, perhaps even slightly more so going off the poor emulation I was using, but with someone like me who's too foolish to focus on the gameplay aspect, I could only find myself in a permanent state of zen thanks to the musical contributions of Jim Andron and the scenery of our beautiful planet. Even with the awful control scheme I had to use with my mouse and arrow keys, I didn't mind a damn thing, because I was happy as can be. Heartwarmed as always to find the wholesome comment section on Youtube of all places for Tetris CD-i's OST with Jim Andron himself there thanking everyone for enjoying his work so much later after the CD-i's demise.

I may have said it before already elsewhere, but I do truly love composers who put the work in no matter what game or system they're on task for. They're among my favorite people ever, and I couldn't possibly thank them enough for making video games even more memorable. Thanks to them, this particular version of the classic did indeed become a legend....