BansheeNeet
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E3 2004. Possibly one of the most famous moments in E3 history occurs when the audience at Nintendo’s conference gets their first look at the next Zelda game following The Wind Waker, something completely different. Darker colors, a more “realistic” looking world, the words “Blades Will Bleed” show up on the screen, and everyone cheers because there’s BLOOD in a ZELDA game. There’s a strong focus on combat, and some text about light and darkness that hints at the story of the game, which currently has no title besides just being the new Zelda game. If there’s something gamers love to do, it's scream at a giant screen showing a new game, and this is considered to be one of the best moments of this tradition, but I could never really get into the excitement and joy of this video, mostly because of what had to precede it for this reveal to get this reaction.
E3 2002. The new Zelda is revealed and it's completely outside of what anyone would predict. About a year or so before this trailer, Nintendo showed a Zelda tech demo featuring Link and Ganondorf, modeled after their Ocarina of Time appearances, sword fighting. The demo was said to show off the power of the upcoming Gamecube, and people had it in their heads that THIS was the next step for Zelda. So when Wind Waker shows up completely unexpectedly, there’s a strong reaction. Kiddy, immature, a step back from the direction the N64 Zelda entries were headed, why does everything look like that, these are NOT next-gen graphics. The term “Celda” starts to get thrown around, which I guess is supposed to be an insult for the game since it uses cel-shaded graphics, which is bad, according to the insult. I don’t know, as someone who was like 4 when this all happened and didn’t actually play the game until around 2010, the whole backlash seemed absolutely insane to me, how are people mad about just the IDEA of cel-shaded graphics. But as I got older and looked more into it, I got a better picture of how this all happened. Not only was the Spaceworld demo on everyone’s mind, but there was also this idea, one that I honestly still come across to this day, that things from our childhood should grow up with their audience. Zelda should have more cussing and blood because IM AN ADULT NOW, Pokemon should get fucked up, Mario should have a gun. I understand why this attitude happens, but it’s honestly ridiculous to expect every single piece of media you interact with to have a “cool adult version” so you don’t feel insecure about being a fan of a children’s series. But to be fair, this trailer comes as we’re entering the era of edge, where everyone needs to get a little more brooding, start saying “damn” a little more, and those guitars need to start fucking chugging. Nintendo releasing Wind Waker to this audience at this time, well no shit it went the way it did.
Now, just because I understand why Wind Waker got the initial reception it did, doesn’t mean I think the people that reacted this way were right, in fact, they were very wrong and also stupid. And this is why the E3 2004 reveal video doesn’t sit right with me, because now these people are being rewarded. It’s Nintendo giving in to the angry mob by giving them the Gritty Violence Zelda they were crying over losing to Wind Waker. “Look, this one has cool sword fights, the horse is back, it’s adult Link, it’s basically Ocarina of Time 2, that’s what you pigs want, right?” And that was my impression of Twilight Princess for a very long time, a crowd of insecure people getting a dumb edgy Zelda where Link turns into a Wolf and says fuck, with Wind Waker having been rejected for actually being a good game. That’s why whenever someone said TP was their favorite, I reacted negatively. I had this idea in my head about the kind of person who says that. You know, the kind of person who gets really mad at someone giving their favorite game getting an 8.8.
Now, this is all some pretty heavy baggage to bring into a game. But I went into it with an open mind. I put aside all my preconceived notions of Twilight Princess and its fans, and all of my feelings about how good Wind Waker is, and just let myself experience this game. And I have to be honest, I was wrong about what this game is. First of all, describing this game as the “edgy” Zelda is somewhat foolish. It’s not really going for Hot Topic Tim Burton, which is what I thought it was, as much as it is going for, to borrow a phrase coined by PansyDragoonSaga, “cozy pastoral pseudo France/Holland Ghibli steampunk fantasy carnival vibe”. In this game about light and dark colliding, this aesthetic represents the light side while the dark side uses an angular, ancient alien technology type aesthetic, also with its own healthy dose of Ghibli-isms. It’s not really edgy, it’s just fucking weird, and I love it. The NPCs look as odd as the N64 NPCs but now made semi-realistically. I genuinely admire Nintendo for being willing to make people this weird-looking, and to make a world as alien and strange as the Twilight Realm, while never condemning it as a purely evil place. As for the color, while it is more muted than previous entries, it’s not necessarily another case of “7th gen brown game”. The game is going for “fantastical world with realistic touches”, so the color is more restrained. In terms of environments, I don’t find it to be all that interesting outside of a few of the dungeons, but it’s a valid choice. So like I said, while this game can have serious, genuinely unsettling moments, and do them well, it also has some of the goofiest and out-there shit I’ve seen in a Zelda game, to the point where calling this “the dark Zelda” is like, only kind of true. I’m just thinking about everything involving Malo, this weird baby with a cynical personality who all of a sudden starts running a business and eventually takes over the most expensive store in Hyrule Castle Town and turns it into a store where everyone inside is constantly dancing and begging to have something sold to them. This game is delightful in how strange and alien it’s willing to be, especially impressive considering how often it recalls parts of Ocarina of Time.
This is another part of the game I thought I wouldn’t enjoy, the number of different references and similarities to Ocarina of Time. Several sections of the world share names with famous OOT locations, some of them even geographically in similar places, horse riding is back in the game, it takes place in Hyrule Field again, Gorons and Zoras play a big role as they did in OOT, it intentionally parallels OOT a lot. This is a pretty big difference from Wind Waker’s approach to referencing OOT, which was to drown the whole world of that game and build on top of it. WW felt like a big leap into something completely different, centuries removed from the events of previous games to the point where most of these events are considered old myths, and the traditions inspired by them have become so old no one bothers asking why they’re traditions. Twilight Princess’s approach to OOT is different but just as interesting. There are a lot of similarities, but it doesn’t line up completely. Locations are very different in appearance and structure from their equivalents in OOT, and while it has similarities in world-building like the three goddesses and Ganondorf, the events around them aren’t close enough to OOT to make this a direct sequel. The village that Impa built for the Sheikah tribe is shown, and it could be inferred that it's the same one from OOT, but it’s just off enough that you can’t be completely sure. I think this is ideal for a Zelda game, where it can carry the weight of the series' history and iconography while also not worrying about where exactly it fits in the timeline or in relation to any other game.
While I’m talking about story generally, the cast here is pretty decent, I don’t think any of the village kids outside of Malo are that strong, Ilia and most of your allies throughout the game are okay, but the big standout is Midna, who may be the best character to be in any Zelda game. I love this piece of shit creature who puts on an image of being above everything around her and seems to enjoy mocking other characters as weaklings, only to end up a big softy who obviously and deeply cares for everyone in her journey while carrying a shitton of baggage as someone from the Twilight Realm seeing the world that cast her people out. She’s so well animated and expressive, the made-up language she speaks in is cute, and she’s got a big fucking hat, I couldn’t get enough of her in this game. Also, unlike Navi, she often had some actual advice I could use when I asked her for it. I don’t think any companion in the series is going to surpass her.
One thing I want to touch on is this game’s combat. It’s heavily emphasized in that first trailer at E3, and there is more going on there than in previous entries. There are 7 sword skills to learn in the game on top of previous moves from Ocarina of Time. The parry attack from Wind Waker is absent, probably in favor of allowing the player to have more direct control. Obviously, this doesn’t turn combat into a character action game or anything, but there are more options than ever. However, I don’t think this choice pays off that much. Combat in previous games was definitely simple but was capable of generating great moments of quick thinking and reaction. Here, sometimes combat feels a little too much like “if this move doesn’t work, do this one, and if that doesn’t work, try this one, and so on”. Despite having more options, combat doesn’t feel more free form so much as just offering slightly different ways to kill what are still relatively simple enemies. Emphasizing combat also means that a lot of enemies feel like they take a bit longer to defeat. Having to use a finishing move on certain enemies to avoid them getting back up is cool, but significantly less so when there are multiple of them in one place because in those situations I can’t help but fall back on just using the basic swing, which means they’re all getting back up and taking several more hits. Sometimes it hits a sweet spot, but I never felt it surpassed what was going on in Wind Waker. WW also had additional things like the boomerang which could stun all enemies and not just certain ones, the grappling hook to rob enemies of spoils, and the ability to pick up other enemy weapons. There were more layers when it came to figuring out how to handle combat with multiple enemies, and those layers not being present made this game’s equivalent of the Savage Labyrinth from WW a lot more boring.
As a big Wind Waker fan, I don’t just want to sit here and say this game should be more like that one, but I do miss mechanics like picking up weapons and stealing spoils from enemies. The spoils bag was fun because each item became its own sidequest you could follow, and as I said earlier, spoils added a layer to fighting large waves of enemies. I guess when it comes to picking up weapons, they thought it would disrupt the combat system they set up, but I still miss it. Another thing about spoils in WW is that the items in it served as alternate rewards to just getting rupees, and I think this game needed something like that because nearly every treasure chest in the game is more rupees. The economy is in fucking shambles in this game, in no time you’ve overfilled your wallet and have to leave every chest with rupees in it behind. Getting the first upgrade isn’t bad at all, but getting the 1000 rupee wallet is easy to miss if you’re not paying complete attention to the collectible needed to get it. Say what you will about the Triforce shards section of Wind Waker, it was an effective way to not constantly be holding the max amount of rupees. It just kills me to have to leave treasure chests behind constantly, this game needed something else it could give players, which you think wouldn’t be as much of a problem given that hearts are now made up of 5 heart pieces.
Another criticism I have of the game, one that I think a lot of people share, is the way dungeon items are utilized in the game. Items are often at their most useful in the dungeon you find them, and very rarely find a use later on in the game. And the thing is that a lot of the new dungeon items rule in this game, and they make the dungeons in this game some of the best in the series. The spinner is fun as hell, but it deserves so much more utility in the game (and also should be faster when not on rails). The ball and chain is a fun weapon but also barely ever finds use outside of the dungeon it is found in. The dominion rod is basically a more fun version of the Command Melody from Wind Waker, and the dungeon for it is maybe the highlight for dungeons in the game, and this item definitely doesn’t completely disappear after you get it, but it deserves so much more time. In a way, it feels like the devs of this game really wanted to make unique items and scenarios for a Zelda dungeon, but ran into the problem of not being able to integrate them into the structure of a Zelda game. Thankfully, the double hookshot, up there in terms of the best all-time Zelda items, gets plenty of utility and never gets stale. I’m also not in love with Hyrule Field in this game. It’s got good music and horse riding is a good time, but I feel like it doesn’t have much in terms of out-of-the-way sections and pockets like Wind Waker. I understand why they sort of reign in the open world to be more reminiscent of Ocarina of Time, and to cut out the slow in-between travel that was a complaint from Wind Waker players, but the trade-off wasn’t worth it.
But I finished the game, with most of the side quests done. This game was a very pleasant surprise, I was very happy to be proven wrong in this instance. I forgive you, Twilight Princess fans, you are no longer cringe. In fact, I think it’s kind of baller to say this is your favorite Zelda. Skyward Sword is up next, gonna wait a bit before jumping into that one considering this game took me THIS long for some reason. Looking forward to seeing that, I never really understood why that game, in particular, has to bear the title of Worst Zelda Game, but I would love to find out whether that’s true or not.
E3 2002. The new Zelda is revealed and it's completely outside of what anyone would predict. About a year or so before this trailer, Nintendo showed a Zelda tech demo featuring Link and Ganondorf, modeled after their Ocarina of Time appearances, sword fighting. The demo was said to show off the power of the upcoming Gamecube, and people had it in their heads that THIS was the next step for Zelda. So when Wind Waker shows up completely unexpectedly, there’s a strong reaction. Kiddy, immature, a step back from the direction the N64 Zelda entries were headed, why does everything look like that, these are NOT next-gen graphics. The term “Celda” starts to get thrown around, which I guess is supposed to be an insult for the game since it uses cel-shaded graphics, which is bad, according to the insult. I don’t know, as someone who was like 4 when this all happened and didn’t actually play the game until around 2010, the whole backlash seemed absolutely insane to me, how are people mad about just the IDEA of cel-shaded graphics. But as I got older and looked more into it, I got a better picture of how this all happened. Not only was the Spaceworld demo on everyone’s mind, but there was also this idea, one that I honestly still come across to this day, that things from our childhood should grow up with their audience. Zelda should have more cussing and blood because IM AN ADULT NOW, Pokemon should get fucked up, Mario should have a gun. I understand why this attitude happens, but it’s honestly ridiculous to expect every single piece of media you interact with to have a “cool adult version” so you don’t feel insecure about being a fan of a children’s series. But to be fair, this trailer comes as we’re entering the era of edge, where everyone needs to get a little more brooding, start saying “damn” a little more, and those guitars need to start fucking chugging. Nintendo releasing Wind Waker to this audience at this time, well no shit it went the way it did.
Now, just because I understand why Wind Waker got the initial reception it did, doesn’t mean I think the people that reacted this way were right, in fact, they were very wrong and also stupid. And this is why the E3 2004 reveal video doesn’t sit right with me, because now these people are being rewarded. It’s Nintendo giving in to the angry mob by giving them the Gritty Violence Zelda they were crying over losing to Wind Waker. “Look, this one has cool sword fights, the horse is back, it’s adult Link, it’s basically Ocarina of Time 2, that’s what you pigs want, right?” And that was my impression of Twilight Princess for a very long time, a crowd of insecure people getting a dumb edgy Zelda where Link turns into a Wolf and says fuck, with Wind Waker having been rejected for actually being a good game. That’s why whenever someone said TP was their favorite, I reacted negatively. I had this idea in my head about the kind of person who says that. You know, the kind of person who gets really mad at someone giving their favorite game getting an 8.8.
Now, this is all some pretty heavy baggage to bring into a game. But I went into it with an open mind. I put aside all my preconceived notions of Twilight Princess and its fans, and all of my feelings about how good Wind Waker is, and just let myself experience this game. And I have to be honest, I was wrong about what this game is. First of all, describing this game as the “edgy” Zelda is somewhat foolish. It’s not really going for Hot Topic Tim Burton, which is what I thought it was, as much as it is going for, to borrow a phrase coined by PansyDragoonSaga, “cozy pastoral pseudo France/Holland Ghibli steampunk fantasy carnival vibe”. In this game about light and dark colliding, this aesthetic represents the light side while the dark side uses an angular, ancient alien technology type aesthetic, also with its own healthy dose of Ghibli-isms. It’s not really edgy, it’s just fucking weird, and I love it. The NPCs look as odd as the N64 NPCs but now made semi-realistically. I genuinely admire Nintendo for being willing to make people this weird-looking, and to make a world as alien and strange as the Twilight Realm, while never condemning it as a purely evil place. As for the color, while it is more muted than previous entries, it’s not necessarily another case of “7th gen brown game”. The game is going for “fantastical world with realistic touches”, so the color is more restrained. In terms of environments, I don’t find it to be all that interesting outside of a few of the dungeons, but it’s a valid choice. So like I said, while this game can have serious, genuinely unsettling moments, and do them well, it also has some of the goofiest and out-there shit I’ve seen in a Zelda game, to the point where calling this “the dark Zelda” is like, only kind of true. I’m just thinking about everything involving Malo, this weird baby with a cynical personality who all of a sudden starts running a business and eventually takes over the most expensive store in Hyrule Castle Town and turns it into a store where everyone inside is constantly dancing and begging to have something sold to them. This game is delightful in how strange and alien it’s willing to be, especially impressive considering how often it recalls parts of Ocarina of Time.
This is another part of the game I thought I wouldn’t enjoy, the number of different references and similarities to Ocarina of Time. Several sections of the world share names with famous OOT locations, some of them even geographically in similar places, horse riding is back in the game, it takes place in Hyrule Field again, Gorons and Zoras play a big role as they did in OOT, it intentionally parallels OOT a lot. This is a pretty big difference from Wind Waker’s approach to referencing OOT, which was to drown the whole world of that game and build on top of it. WW felt like a big leap into something completely different, centuries removed from the events of previous games to the point where most of these events are considered old myths, and the traditions inspired by them have become so old no one bothers asking why they’re traditions. Twilight Princess’s approach to OOT is different but just as interesting. There are a lot of similarities, but it doesn’t line up completely. Locations are very different in appearance and structure from their equivalents in OOT, and while it has similarities in world-building like the three goddesses and Ganondorf, the events around them aren’t close enough to OOT to make this a direct sequel. The village that Impa built for the Sheikah tribe is shown, and it could be inferred that it's the same one from OOT, but it’s just off enough that you can’t be completely sure. I think this is ideal for a Zelda game, where it can carry the weight of the series' history and iconography while also not worrying about where exactly it fits in the timeline or in relation to any other game.
While I’m talking about story generally, the cast here is pretty decent, I don’t think any of the village kids outside of Malo are that strong, Ilia and most of your allies throughout the game are okay, but the big standout is Midna, who may be the best character to be in any Zelda game. I love this piece of shit creature who puts on an image of being above everything around her and seems to enjoy mocking other characters as weaklings, only to end up a big softy who obviously and deeply cares for everyone in her journey while carrying a shitton of baggage as someone from the Twilight Realm seeing the world that cast her people out. She’s so well animated and expressive, the made-up language she speaks in is cute, and she’s got a big fucking hat, I couldn’t get enough of her in this game. Also, unlike Navi, she often had some actual advice I could use when I asked her for it. I don’t think any companion in the series is going to surpass her.
One thing I want to touch on is this game’s combat. It’s heavily emphasized in that first trailer at E3, and there is more going on there than in previous entries. There are 7 sword skills to learn in the game on top of previous moves from Ocarina of Time. The parry attack from Wind Waker is absent, probably in favor of allowing the player to have more direct control. Obviously, this doesn’t turn combat into a character action game or anything, but there are more options than ever. However, I don’t think this choice pays off that much. Combat in previous games was definitely simple but was capable of generating great moments of quick thinking and reaction. Here, sometimes combat feels a little too much like “if this move doesn’t work, do this one, and if that doesn’t work, try this one, and so on”. Despite having more options, combat doesn’t feel more free form so much as just offering slightly different ways to kill what are still relatively simple enemies. Emphasizing combat also means that a lot of enemies feel like they take a bit longer to defeat. Having to use a finishing move on certain enemies to avoid them getting back up is cool, but significantly less so when there are multiple of them in one place because in those situations I can’t help but fall back on just using the basic swing, which means they’re all getting back up and taking several more hits. Sometimes it hits a sweet spot, but I never felt it surpassed what was going on in Wind Waker. WW also had additional things like the boomerang which could stun all enemies and not just certain ones, the grappling hook to rob enemies of spoils, and the ability to pick up other enemy weapons. There were more layers when it came to figuring out how to handle combat with multiple enemies, and those layers not being present made this game’s equivalent of the Savage Labyrinth from WW a lot more boring.
As a big Wind Waker fan, I don’t just want to sit here and say this game should be more like that one, but I do miss mechanics like picking up weapons and stealing spoils from enemies. The spoils bag was fun because each item became its own sidequest you could follow, and as I said earlier, spoils added a layer to fighting large waves of enemies. I guess when it comes to picking up weapons, they thought it would disrupt the combat system they set up, but I still miss it. Another thing about spoils in WW is that the items in it served as alternate rewards to just getting rupees, and I think this game needed something like that because nearly every treasure chest in the game is more rupees. The economy is in fucking shambles in this game, in no time you’ve overfilled your wallet and have to leave every chest with rupees in it behind. Getting the first upgrade isn’t bad at all, but getting the 1000 rupee wallet is easy to miss if you’re not paying complete attention to the collectible needed to get it. Say what you will about the Triforce shards section of Wind Waker, it was an effective way to not constantly be holding the max amount of rupees. It just kills me to have to leave treasure chests behind constantly, this game needed something else it could give players, which you think wouldn’t be as much of a problem given that hearts are now made up of 5 heart pieces.
Another criticism I have of the game, one that I think a lot of people share, is the way dungeon items are utilized in the game. Items are often at their most useful in the dungeon you find them, and very rarely find a use later on in the game. And the thing is that a lot of the new dungeon items rule in this game, and they make the dungeons in this game some of the best in the series. The spinner is fun as hell, but it deserves so much more utility in the game (and also should be faster when not on rails). The ball and chain is a fun weapon but also barely ever finds use outside of the dungeon it is found in. The dominion rod is basically a more fun version of the Command Melody from Wind Waker, and the dungeon for it is maybe the highlight for dungeons in the game, and this item definitely doesn’t completely disappear after you get it, but it deserves so much more time. In a way, it feels like the devs of this game really wanted to make unique items and scenarios for a Zelda dungeon, but ran into the problem of not being able to integrate them into the structure of a Zelda game. Thankfully, the double hookshot, up there in terms of the best all-time Zelda items, gets plenty of utility and never gets stale. I’m also not in love with Hyrule Field in this game. It’s got good music and horse riding is a good time, but I feel like it doesn’t have much in terms of out-of-the-way sections and pockets like Wind Waker. I understand why they sort of reign in the open world to be more reminiscent of Ocarina of Time, and to cut out the slow in-between travel that was a complaint from Wind Waker players, but the trade-off wasn’t worth it.
But I finished the game, with most of the side quests done. This game was a very pleasant surprise, I was very happy to be proven wrong in this instance. I forgive you, Twilight Princess fans, you are no longer cringe. In fact, I think it’s kind of baller to say this is your favorite Zelda. Skyward Sword is up next, gonna wait a bit before jumping into that one considering this game took me THIS long for some reason. Looking forward to seeing that, I never really understood why that game, in particular, has to bear the title of Worst Zelda Game, but I would love to find out whether that’s true or not.
2022
Don't be tricked into thinking this is another Wordle clone, it's more like a crossword where you don't need to know old people newspaper trivia. Ends up turning crosswords into sudoku, really great to be able to pull up on your phone whenever you want.
1990
Ultimately I think Pilotwings 64 is better, both in controls, variety, and fairness, but I think this is pretty fun. I think the use of Mode 7 in this game is still impressive, there were times it managed to trick me into thinking it was actual 3D, but no vehicle besides the light plane and helicopter ever feel completely right. I have no idea how to stop drifting in the rocketbelt, and both skydiving and hand gliding are fine until the arduous process of landing begins. One thing that I thought I was gonna hate was having to do all of the missions in a row for each lesson, but I actually think the idea works, since missions are short and it encourages getting really good at each one. Would still prefer the ability to retry any mission over and over like in 64, but I thought this game's loop was neat. If you like Pilotwings 64, you will enjoy this, but you'll also see how much that game improves on this one. Also, the last mission is bullshit, but the last missions in 64 were also kind of bullshit so I guess it's just series tradition.
2001
So I've recently been reading through some old Nintendo Power issues I got my hands on. They serve as great little time capsules of a completely different era of games, as well as an interesting look at the things Nintendo prioritized at the time. All four of the issues I have are the months before and after the release of the Nintendo Gamecube. All of the big previews and reports are on its presence at that year's Spaceworld, each issue has several pages dedicated to a different launch game, they're making this console sound like it's gonna make Luigi real. And yet, this is kind of an awkward time for Nintendo when it comes to their console releases. The N64 is winding down with games like Madden 2002 and Tony Hawk 2, so there isn't a lot for Nintendo Power to try and sell their audience on. Because of this awkward middle period between the N64 and Gamecube, the GBA and GBC saw quite a lot of coverage. I mean, games like Pokemon Crystal and Advance Wars were always gonna get promoted heavily, but I noticed a lot of games that I'm pretty sure would have never gotten the features they ended up getting if it hadn't been for this vacancy. Every issue I read had multiple pages dedicated to Dragon Quest Monsters 2, and when it finally got a review from the outlet it got a 7. Lara Croft on Game Boy Color, several Jurassic Park games, Klonoa on GBA, Spyro on GBA, obviously these aren't all the same level of quality, but seeing them getting large previews or multi-issue game guides was just odd. Among those games, the one that stuck out to me the most was Lady Sia. See, all those games I mentioned in that previous sentence are all either well known or at least from series that are well known, and yet here's Lady Sia, a completely new game and character from a company that dealt almost exclusively with licensed games before this one. Each issue I have has a full-page advertisement for the game, and one of them even has a guide for the first two worlds of the game. Not only that but in the letters to the editor section, someone sends a message complaining about the lack of girl characters in games, and the editor's response has this quote: "...there's not a gamer alive who wouldn't call Joanna Dark, Samus Aran, or Lady Sia a hero." OK, so, the game literally hadn't even come out yet, so I think several living gamers wouldn't call Lady Sia a hero and be reasonable in saying so. But more importantly, this certainly gives an idea of how they were trying to make this game a thing, which is why I was so curious about it that I had to play it for myself.
So it turns out Lady Sia is incredibly basic. Like, to the point that I was pretty disappointed, it's a bad ending to the paragraph of setup I did and now it makes even less sense for me to have gotten this invested. It's a very basic platformer with very basic combat. You run-up to an enemy and mash the B and R button over and over until they die, they usually manage to get one hit in on you, but who cares because there's almost always a health pick-up nearby. Platforming is mostly okay, except you're weirdly slippery, which can trip you up but it's still completely manageable. The story is very generic fantasy, except there's also some technology, but I wouldn't call it steampunk, things just kind of show up in this game. Some bird enemies started showing up and they were really bad to fight, but I still made it past them and up to the end of the second world. That's when the Retroid Pocket I was playing this on decided to start having really bad controller issues and made the game basically unplayable. It was here that I had to decide if I wanted to do all the levels I did again on a different platform in order to finish the game, or just end my playthrough here. I simply stopped playing.
I guess if I had to give the game some points, the animation on the opening cutscene and the character sprites are kind of impressive, it's not a bad-looking game. I could see someone back in the day being won over on the visuals alone considering this is very early in the GBA's lifespan. If I were a child and the only game I had on the GBA was Lady Sia, I would finish it, I might even finish it a second time. Again, if I were a kid and this was the only game I had.
Nintendo Power gives this 4 1/2 stars out of 5, higher than the scores they gave to Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, Mega Man Battle Network, and Pokemon Crystal, games that are also covered in the issues that I have. The score is high but no one in the review really says anything all that glowing about it. "It's not bad, just a little too straightforward" "The gameplay isn't very challenging, but that may just make the game more accessible to younger gamers" "With stylized art, great control, and a lot of variety in action, Lady Sia is a very pleasant surprise. The only thing that keeps me from giving it a perfect five is the repetitive music" I know Nintendo Power gives out high scores like candy, but there's so little about what the reviewers say that sells the score, even the quote of one person saying they would give it a perfect score. It's just a little baffling, trying to figure out why this game got pushed so hard, besides the most cynical and obvious assumption of being paid to do so. If so, I guess if a publisher like TDK interactive had to push any game, it would be their original property. According to MobyGames, RFX Interactive went back to licensed games after this until RFX Interactive closed down in 2003, along with TDK getting bought by Take-Two. There even was a Lady Sia 2 in development, and it seemingly got decently far in production until the closure of the studio. It's kind of sad now that I think about it, this developer that's only known for making licensed games trying out the start of a big new franchise, getting this big Nintendo Power bump, only to end up getting all that cut short due to the brutal nature of the industry. I don't think Lady Sia is a bad game, and I bet a sequel could have made things better, but regardless of quality, I find it to be a pretty interesting case of a game just totally falling into obscurity despite its best efforts. I know this isn't much of a review, but I felt like I needed to let people know about this strange obsession I've had over the past couple of weeks. I might even try to go back and finish Lady Sia someday, because I bet there is some cool stuff I haven't seen yet. I don't wanna let the Lady Sia fandom down.
So it turns out Lady Sia is incredibly basic. Like, to the point that I was pretty disappointed, it's a bad ending to the paragraph of setup I did and now it makes even less sense for me to have gotten this invested. It's a very basic platformer with very basic combat. You run-up to an enemy and mash the B and R button over and over until they die, they usually manage to get one hit in on you, but who cares because there's almost always a health pick-up nearby. Platforming is mostly okay, except you're weirdly slippery, which can trip you up but it's still completely manageable. The story is very generic fantasy, except there's also some technology, but I wouldn't call it steampunk, things just kind of show up in this game. Some bird enemies started showing up and they were really bad to fight, but I still made it past them and up to the end of the second world. That's when the Retroid Pocket I was playing this on decided to start having really bad controller issues and made the game basically unplayable. It was here that I had to decide if I wanted to do all the levels I did again on a different platform in order to finish the game, or just end my playthrough here. I simply stopped playing.
I guess if I had to give the game some points, the animation on the opening cutscene and the character sprites are kind of impressive, it's not a bad-looking game. I could see someone back in the day being won over on the visuals alone considering this is very early in the GBA's lifespan. If I were a child and the only game I had on the GBA was Lady Sia, I would finish it, I might even finish it a second time. Again, if I were a kid and this was the only game I had.
Nintendo Power gives this 4 1/2 stars out of 5, higher than the scores they gave to Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, Mega Man Battle Network, and Pokemon Crystal, games that are also covered in the issues that I have. The score is high but no one in the review really says anything all that glowing about it. "It's not bad, just a little too straightforward" "The gameplay isn't very challenging, but that may just make the game more accessible to younger gamers" "With stylized art, great control, and a lot of variety in action, Lady Sia is a very pleasant surprise. The only thing that keeps me from giving it a perfect five is the repetitive music" I know Nintendo Power gives out high scores like candy, but there's so little about what the reviewers say that sells the score, even the quote of one person saying they would give it a perfect score. It's just a little baffling, trying to figure out why this game got pushed so hard, besides the most cynical and obvious assumption of being paid to do so. If so, I guess if a publisher like TDK interactive had to push any game, it would be their original property. According to MobyGames, RFX Interactive went back to licensed games after this until RFX Interactive closed down in 2003, along with TDK getting bought by Take-Two. There even was a Lady Sia 2 in development, and it seemingly got decently far in production until the closure of the studio. It's kind of sad now that I think about it, this developer that's only known for making licensed games trying out the start of a big new franchise, getting this big Nintendo Power bump, only to end up getting all that cut short due to the brutal nature of the industry. I don't think Lady Sia is a bad game, and I bet a sequel could have made things better, but regardless of quality, I find it to be a pretty interesting case of a game just totally falling into obscurity despite its best efforts. I know this isn't much of a review, but I felt like I needed to let people know about this strange obsession I've had over the past couple of weeks. I might even try to go back and finish Lady Sia someday, because I bet there is some cool stuff I haven't seen yet. I don't wanna let the Lady Sia fandom down.
2004
Played this for like 10 minutes, which mostly involved getting yelled at by a British man while just barely understanding how the game works. Did 8 puzzles, turned it off, and decided to never play it again. No score. I hope Mr. Pants is dead.
2005
You know, I can't really bring myself to dislike this game. There's plenty wrong with it, don't get me wrong. I mean, if you go off the intended path of the course, you slow down, as if flying over grass is slower than flying over dirt. Courses tend to get a little aimless towards the end, the game doesn't look or sound all that great, and it's very easy to lose a lead in a way that is completely random. You're driving in first totally fine and then the guy who's been on your ass the whole race gets a boost and rams you off course and now you're in fifth, happens way too often. And yet I find this to control much better than Super Circuit, the flying aspect doesn't add much but it does control well. I certainly have a better grasp on the turning here than I do in Super Circuit or Super Mario Kart. The mechanic of doing a flip in order to avoid an item is genuinely good as well, it's a good counterbalance to how often items come at you and how most of them will not miss. It's not anything super special, but I had a decent time with it. I finished all the cups even, although I'm not doing the Grunty GP versions of them any time soon. One last thing, I'm surprised how obvious it is that this was originally going to be Diddy Kong Pilot. The results music straight up uses the monkey sound effects that Diddy's victory fanfare in DKC2 uses, the music for the first track sounds like Jungle Japes but just different enough to pass as something else, and Mumbo just has several sound effects that I swear are lifted from DK in DK64.
Could be fun but it needs to be more clear on what objects and enemies are on which square, as well as where tiles end. The process of memorizing a stage in order to get through it with minimal mistakes is actually fun, but it's too sloppy to keep the fun going. Got to the level with conveyor belts and gave up after losing all my continues to that nightmare. Sorry I'm not a real Frogger Gamer.
1998
There's a certain feeling I hate getting when I'm playing a game, one that is a clear sign that what I'm playing is not worth the time of day. I was in the middle of the second level of Blasto when I said to myself "Oh god, is this all the game is?".
"Like Tomb Raider mixed with Duke Nukem" is the quote I would give this game if I was working for a game magazine in the 90s. The game's premise of "manly action hero full of one-liners wipes out a bunch of aliens and also there's Sexy Babes there" isn't the only thing this game borrows from Duke Nukem, as it seems to adhere to the boomer shooter tradition of "go here, hit a switch, ok now go back there, hit that switch, ok now that part is open, find the switch here, etc". Blasto's moveset resembles Lara Croft's in a couple ways, being a tank-controlled third-person shooter with a focus on jumping, though Blasto is much less focused on puzzle-solving, instead going full action. It's also a lot faster than Lara Croft, the jump is definitely more reliable for platforming. It's not like any of this is doomed to fail, but good god Blasto employs the most boring and annoying possible level design. On top of all the backtracking I mentioned, every couple steps you run into a section full of enemies spawning out of thin air, many times behind your back in such a way that getting to them before they hit you is impossible. The game is generous with health and extra lives, but that almost makes it worse because it feels like it knows it's shit and is trying to last-minute balance itself. Seriously, by the time I got to level 3 I felt like I was going insane with how much this game repeats the same tricks every couple seconds. The same flying enemies spawning everywhere in large numbers, the same on-foot enemies spawning right in front of you, the same switches and platforming challenges, it became miserable very quickly. Just, imagine Tomb Raider if instead of a Tomb to solve it was a big hallway and every 10 seconds you had to stop and fight 10 bats and 10 dogs.
There are a few redeeming qualities to Blasto, ones that keep me from giving it the lowest score possible. For one, Blasto doesn't actually control that poorly, if you're used to tank controls you mostly won't have a problem when it comes to trying to fight enemies or make jumps, it's really the level design and enemy encounters that kill this game. Secondly, hearing Phil Hartmann in anything is a joy, even in this. The lines he's given are pretty bad (the opening cutscene does 3 Uranus jokes and the game definitely takes place on Uranus only because it wanted to make those jokes), but he sells the hell out of them. A damn shame his talents were wasted on Blasto.
Anyway, check out the tcrf page for this game, it's got a naked woman on it.
"Like Tomb Raider mixed with Duke Nukem" is the quote I would give this game if I was working for a game magazine in the 90s. The game's premise of "manly action hero full of one-liners wipes out a bunch of aliens and also there's Sexy Babes there" isn't the only thing this game borrows from Duke Nukem, as it seems to adhere to the boomer shooter tradition of "go here, hit a switch, ok now go back there, hit that switch, ok now that part is open, find the switch here, etc". Blasto's moveset resembles Lara Croft's in a couple ways, being a tank-controlled third-person shooter with a focus on jumping, though Blasto is much less focused on puzzle-solving, instead going full action. It's also a lot faster than Lara Croft, the jump is definitely more reliable for platforming. It's not like any of this is doomed to fail, but good god Blasto employs the most boring and annoying possible level design. On top of all the backtracking I mentioned, every couple steps you run into a section full of enemies spawning out of thin air, many times behind your back in such a way that getting to them before they hit you is impossible. The game is generous with health and extra lives, but that almost makes it worse because it feels like it knows it's shit and is trying to last-minute balance itself. Seriously, by the time I got to level 3 I felt like I was going insane with how much this game repeats the same tricks every couple seconds. The same flying enemies spawning everywhere in large numbers, the same on-foot enemies spawning right in front of you, the same switches and platforming challenges, it became miserable very quickly. Just, imagine Tomb Raider if instead of a Tomb to solve it was a big hallway and every 10 seconds you had to stop and fight 10 bats and 10 dogs.
There are a few redeeming qualities to Blasto, ones that keep me from giving it the lowest score possible. For one, Blasto doesn't actually control that poorly, if you're used to tank controls you mostly won't have a problem when it comes to trying to fight enemies or make jumps, it's really the level design and enemy encounters that kill this game. Secondly, hearing Phil Hartmann in anything is a joy, even in this. The lines he's given are pretty bad (the opening cutscene does 3 Uranus jokes and the game definitely takes place on Uranus only because it wanted to make those jokes), but he sells the hell out of them. A damn shame his talents were wasted on Blasto.
Anyway, check out the tcrf page for this game, it's got a naked woman on it.
2000
Competent enough kart racer that I can't fault it too much, but not very noteworthy at all in anything it does. Of course, children around the time this game came out would gravitate towards it, I remember spending several tokens at Chuck E Cheese playing it just because I could be Spongebob in a car. But I know for a fact that if you gave this game to me as a kid I would play it for like a day before going back to Diddy Kong Racing or Crash Team Racing. The pleasures of Spongebob in a car are only fleeting.
One fun fact about this game is that all of the voice lines for the racers are ripped directly from episodes of their respective shows, to the point that you can hear the background noises of the episode in some lines. Good thing Nickelodeon would never forget to provide actual voice acting for their video games ever again :).
One fun fact about this game is that all of the voice lines for the racers are ripped directly from episodes of their respective shows, to the point that you can hear the background noises of the episode in some lines. Good thing Nickelodeon would never forget to provide actual voice acting for their video games ever again :).
1996
[whispering to date while playing Gubble when Gubble first appears on the screen] That's Gubble
2000
My only experience with this game was going over to a family friend's house where they and my older brothers played this while I watched. I never saw this game again after that, despite visiting that house several times afterward, but the memory of seeing this game always stuck with me for some reason. All I remembered was the most prominent character on the box art and watching all 4 racers run right into a knife and get their heads chopped off. That sounds like it would be the kind of thing I remember because it was scary, but this is just one of those memories where you wonder why you retained this specific moment in your brain for so long. Like, how many names has my brain removed from my memory for the sake of remembering Micro Maniacs Racing?
It wasn't until today, the day I decided to revisit this foggy memory of a game, that I realized this is meant to be a part of the Micro Machines series, which makes it even more of its time than it already was. This generation of consoles saw a lot of strange attempts to keep series that started on the NES/Arcade relevant by going into 3D. Pac-Man is a 3D platformer now, Break Out has an adventure mode and the bar has eyes and friends now, several puzzle games, several puzzle games create a "3D mode" that is much less fun than the actual normal game. But all of these examples still feel reasonable for their series, or the series is such a blank slate that you could apply anything to it and have it fit, whereas Micro Maniacs just screams late 90's/early 2000s in its attempt to make "fucked up Micro Machines". Now instead of little cars, it's little fucked up X-Men type guys who run around and kill each other, but not too violently because we need that E rating.
This game has a whole backstory you can read where all these characters were shrunk down by a guy planning to shrink down all of humanity to solve world hunger, and he needs to find the strongest warrior that can begin this program, and every character has their own lore; as I said, it's all extremely of its time. The cast even has the mandatory "This guy JUST came out of the INSANE ASYLUM and is here to KILL" character that strangely kept showing up in things. I kind of admire how much effort went into this very dumb idea, and while I'm talking about everything besides the gameplay, can we talk about this game's NTSC title? "FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing"? As a kid, I assumed this was a Fox Kids show and that's why their name is in the title, it would certainly fit right in with what was airing at the time, but Fox Kids just sponsored this game, I mean who wouldn't it's obviously a gold mine. It's not even "FoxKids.com Presents Micro Maniacs Racing", just "FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing", truly one of the titles of all time.
The game isn't great to play, there's no getting around it. It's like Micro Machines but if your car was slippery and could jump. The controls and movement are mostly fine but the slipperiness becomes a problem due to how cramped the stages are. Each stage is some sort of everyday location, but now it's huge because you're small. It's a fun theme that's been in other Micro Machines games, but as the game goes along stages feel like they're only one character-wide, and any deviation from the path is immediate death. This is made much worse by the fact that the game will not let you off the path of the course at all. Trying to cut a corner or make a shortcut will send you back, and this is very odd considering how easy it is to slip off the main path. Trying to get back on will often just kick you further back into the track. If the game wants you to not get off the track so bad, why not put up walls? Or make you go slower when you go off course? Since the A.I. is actually pretty brain dead, and will often fall for traps on the courses several times in a row, the bad traction and course design are what will kill you. So yeah, not actually fun to play, but not like, awful. I can see a kid earnestly having fun with this, there's a lot of variety in stages, to the point where some will have you using different vehicles instead of being on foot. Also, one of the stages does this buck wild shit. If I was stuck with this game as a kid, yeah I would probably clear the challenge mode and unlock the characters, but I would very much have to have no other options for games.
Why did I write this much about FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing? I think I just need people to understand this weird thing that's been occupying my brain for too long. I think I've heard zero people ever talk about this game in all my time of being online. It is now your turn to think about FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing. Your turn to think about this weird man.
It wasn't until today, the day I decided to revisit this foggy memory of a game, that I realized this is meant to be a part of the Micro Machines series, which makes it even more of its time than it already was. This generation of consoles saw a lot of strange attempts to keep series that started on the NES/Arcade relevant by going into 3D. Pac-Man is a 3D platformer now, Break Out has an adventure mode and the bar has eyes and friends now, several puzzle games, several puzzle games create a "3D mode" that is much less fun than the actual normal game. But all of these examples still feel reasonable for their series, or the series is such a blank slate that you could apply anything to it and have it fit, whereas Micro Maniacs just screams late 90's/early 2000s in its attempt to make "fucked up Micro Machines". Now instead of little cars, it's little fucked up X-Men type guys who run around and kill each other, but not too violently because we need that E rating.
This game has a whole backstory you can read where all these characters were shrunk down by a guy planning to shrink down all of humanity to solve world hunger, and he needs to find the strongest warrior that can begin this program, and every character has their own lore; as I said, it's all extremely of its time. The cast even has the mandatory "This guy JUST came out of the INSANE ASYLUM and is here to KILL" character that strangely kept showing up in things. I kind of admire how much effort went into this very dumb idea, and while I'm talking about everything besides the gameplay, can we talk about this game's NTSC title? "FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing"? As a kid, I assumed this was a Fox Kids show and that's why their name is in the title, it would certainly fit right in with what was airing at the time, but Fox Kids just sponsored this game, I mean who wouldn't it's obviously a gold mine. It's not even "FoxKids.com Presents Micro Maniacs Racing", just "FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing", truly one of the titles of all time.
The game isn't great to play, there's no getting around it. It's like Micro Machines but if your car was slippery and could jump. The controls and movement are mostly fine but the slipperiness becomes a problem due to how cramped the stages are. Each stage is some sort of everyday location, but now it's huge because you're small. It's a fun theme that's been in other Micro Machines games, but as the game goes along stages feel like they're only one character-wide, and any deviation from the path is immediate death. This is made much worse by the fact that the game will not let you off the path of the course at all. Trying to cut a corner or make a shortcut will send you back, and this is very odd considering how easy it is to slip off the main path. Trying to get back on will often just kick you further back into the track. If the game wants you to not get off the track so bad, why not put up walls? Or make you go slower when you go off course? Since the A.I. is actually pretty brain dead, and will often fall for traps on the courses several times in a row, the bad traction and course design are what will kill you. So yeah, not actually fun to play, but not like, awful. I can see a kid earnestly having fun with this, there's a lot of variety in stages, to the point where some will have you using different vehicles instead of being on foot. Also, one of the stages does this buck wild shit. If I was stuck with this game as a kid, yeah I would probably clear the challenge mode and unlock the characters, but I would very much have to have no other options for games.
Why did I write this much about FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing? I think I just need people to understand this weird thing that's been occupying my brain for too long. I think I've heard zero people ever talk about this game in all my time of being online. It is now your turn to think about FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing. Your turn to think about this weird man.
2017
Lovely pixel art and presentation in general, but these sorts of physics based balance games were never really my thing, so I'm not in love with it the way I saw some people were. Will probably be playing this on and off whenever I have nothing else to play on my Switch instead of making time to play it. Also I don't know if this is a problem other people had, but I wish the medals for each stage had a text description for what they are, because I often found myself staring at the small pixel art representation of the medal and going "well what the hell is that supposed to be".
1986
An interesting attempt of making Mappy's equivalent of Super Mario Bros. Levels end up being way easier than Mappy in terms of fully avoiding enemies, and I don't know whether it's the game or lag introduced by Nintendo Switch Online, but jumping to a platform off a trampoline definitely isn't as smooth feeling or snappy as regular Mappy. But I really like the introduction of traps to get out of what often feel like unfair situations in Mappy. It was just pleasant enough that I could definitely see myself doing all 4 loops that the game has, if it weren't for the god awful 4th stage. Breaking away from the usual stage format, it tries to put the Mappy controls and mechanics into like, a regular platformer level and it sucks so bad. Moving from trampoline to trampoline feels awful when they're moving, it's extremely easy to die of fall damage, and the whole level feels like the game is trying to reject it from its body because of how much it does not work. Rest of the game is neat, but that level alone makes me hesitant to recommend this or revisit it.
This review contains spoilers
Growing up, one of the most important games to me was Kirby Air Ride. To this day it's one of my favorite games ever, but if I'm being honest there are about 2/3rds of that game that I really could care less about. Like most fans of that game, for me it was all about city trial. This isn't a Kirby Air Ride review so I won't go into what made City Trial so special, but one of the biggest factors to me was the ability to simply get off your air ride and walk around as Kirby. This fulfilled a strong childhood feeling I had about kart racers which was "I want to get out of the kart". It wasn't that I didn't enjoy kart racers, but when Mario Kart 64 had Peach's castle in Royal Raceway, I just felt so frustrated that there was no way to get out of the car and go in there. In Diddy Kong Racing there are cutscenes showing the characters outside of their vehicles and I so badly wanted to just move around the hub world as Tiptup or Timber (not Banjo, that guy already has his own game). So City Trial having this mechanic of being able to hop out of your vehicle at any time and walk to anywhere on the City Trial map was extremely fulfilling. In the main mode, walking around and not being on a vehicle is bad if you're trying to win, since you can't pick up power-ups or get anywhere quickly, but then we have Free Run mode. No time limit or power-ups, just you, the map, and every vehicle in the game. I spent so many hours here either making up games to play with my siblings or doing some honest-to-god RPing with Kirby running around the map, it was here that I fully fell in love with the idea of Kirby in 3D, I knew it was possible because the little taste of it I got in Kirby Air Ride was immaculate to my child self.
In a lot of the ads for Super Mario 64, and the N64 in general, there's a lot of emphasis on "freedom" and "liberation". At the time everyone was excited to leap into the third dimension, even if not everyone had a great plan for it because it was the obvious "next step", the way the media and industry framed it, there was no choice. 3D games freed us from the tyranny of 2D games, and it was time to escape (Funnily enough, it kind of sounds like how people talk about transitioning to open-world games nowadays). And yet Kirby had managed to skip this process entirely. Kirby Air Ride is just a spin-off, outside of that, every Kirby game has taken place on a 2D plane. Pretty wise on the developer's part, because we saw plenty of well-liked series try their hand at 3D and immediately regret it, and it's not like Kirby ever really had to become 3D at some point. The series had plenty of great entries in several different styles of 2D games, but Star Allies showed some stagnation, a need for something to change. So much of that game felt like Kirby running on auto-pilot, and while it had a lot of great stuff carried over from previous entries, I think the last thing anyone wanted was another one of those. Similar to my feeling of wanting to get off my kart in a kart racer, I wanted to get out of the format the Kirby series was stuck in, I knew Kirby could work in 3D, I wanted that freedom.
Now, I can't hide this any longer, so I'll just admit now that a 3D Kirby game has been one of my dream games since I was a child, and I really can't emphasize enough how blown away I am with the way it's executed here. Kirby controls as good as I hoped he would, the level design really captures a lot of the strengths of the best 2D Kirby games, and so little about what makes 2D Kirby great is compromised for this game, the transition is so smooth it feels like this game has always been here. But just making a good-feeling 3D Kirby game isn't enough to revitalize the series, so we get this completely new, exciting post-apocalypse that helps add a really good flavor to the usual grass and water levels. The Waddle Dee town is not only adorable but allows for the large amount of extra content the Kirby series is known for to exist in a brand new way. The bosses are a wonderful breath of fresh air from Star Allies, capturing the fun of Kirby bosses while adding extra layers of thought and strategy, and a fucking DODGE ROLL. Mouthful mode and the Treasure Road levels give us some great feeling obstacle course style level design, the music pops off the way any good Kirby soundtrack should, Dedede is there, this is all I could ever ask for.
Now I think a lot of the complaints I've heard from other people on this site are completely valid, and I can see why someone would leave this game thinking of it as middle-of-the-road or disappointing. The abilities have been kind of watered down for the sake of transitioning them smoothly to 3D, and for some abilities, it's not a huge deal but for others, it's kind of a shame. Cutter isn't all that fun because doing melee attacks with it feels finicky in terms of finding how close you need to get to an enemy to do it, and hammer is missing its spin attack. Not to mention there are also a lot of unfortunate cuts from the ability list, obviously, they can't bring every ability back for this one, but it just feels wrong for something like plasma or fighter to be missing. My true hope for a follow-up to this game is that they'll be able to not only introduce more new and old abilities but give them something more closely resembling the extensive movesets they had in Star Allies and the games leading up to it. I've always sort of half-joked that the ideal 3D Kirby game wouldn't be a collect-a-thon Mario 64 style, but instead a character action game. I mean, platforming has always been kind of de-emphasized in Kirby games, since you can often just float over it. It's more about trying out different abilities, solving environment puzzles, and effectively fighting enemies and bosses, and if Kirby could just go full Metal Gear Rising on an enemy when he has the sword ability, I genuinely believe that would be the truest to the previous entries in the series. If I'm being honest, fighting the final boss with the hammer only and no extra power-ups felt like baby's first Dark Souls in a way I was extremely into, so they're already halfway there.
This is really something special, and I believe a sequel in this style that improves the things I have a problem with would be just straight-up exactly what I've always wanted. And hey, maybe there'll be some DLC involving playing as other characters, something else I loved in Allies and I wish was here? No matter what, I've never been more excited about the Kirby series than right now, I'm ready for anything. Also please keep this Dedede design, he's finally cute again like in Kirby 64. Did you see that part of his second boss fight where he got on all fours and went full beast mode? Sickest shit ever, God I love this game.
In a lot of the ads for Super Mario 64, and the N64 in general, there's a lot of emphasis on "freedom" and "liberation". At the time everyone was excited to leap into the third dimension, even if not everyone had a great plan for it because it was the obvious "next step", the way the media and industry framed it, there was no choice. 3D games freed us from the tyranny of 2D games, and it was time to escape (Funnily enough, it kind of sounds like how people talk about transitioning to open-world games nowadays). And yet Kirby had managed to skip this process entirely. Kirby Air Ride is just a spin-off, outside of that, every Kirby game has taken place on a 2D plane. Pretty wise on the developer's part, because we saw plenty of well-liked series try their hand at 3D and immediately regret it, and it's not like Kirby ever really had to become 3D at some point. The series had plenty of great entries in several different styles of 2D games, but Star Allies showed some stagnation, a need for something to change. So much of that game felt like Kirby running on auto-pilot, and while it had a lot of great stuff carried over from previous entries, I think the last thing anyone wanted was another one of those. Similar to my feeling of wanting to get off my kart in a kart racer, I wanted to get out of the format the Kirby series was stuck in, I knew Kirby could work in 3D, I wanted that freedom.
Now, I can't hide this any longer, so I'll just admit now that a 3D Kirby game has been one of my dream games since I was a child, and I really can't emphasize enough how blown away I am with the way it's executed here. Kirby controls as good as I hoped he would, the level design really captures a lot of the strengths of the best 2D Kirby games, and so little about what makes 2D Kirby great is compromised for this game, the transition is so smooth it feels like this game has always been here. But just making a good-feeling 3D Kirby game isn't enough to revitalize the series, so we get this completely new, exciting post-apocalypse that helps add a really good flavor to the usual grass and water levels. The Waddle Dee town is not only adorable but allows for the large amount of extra content the Kirby series is known for to exist in a brand new way. The bosses are a wonderful breath of fresh air from Star Allies, capturing the fun of Kirby bosses while adding extra layers of thought and strategy, and a fucking DODGE ROLL. Mouthful mode and the Treasure Road levels give us some great feeling obstacle course style level design, the music pops off the way any good Kirby soundtrack should, Dedede is there, this is all I could ever ask for.
Now I think a lot of the complaints I've heard from other people on this site are completely valid, and I can see why someone would leave this game thinking of it as middle-of-the-road or disappointing. The abilities have been kind of watered down for the sake of transitioning them smoothly to 3D, and for some abilities, it's not a huge deal but for others, it's kind of a shame. Cutter isn't all that fun because doing melee attacks with it feels finicky in terms of finding how close you need to get to an enemy to do it, and hammer is missing its spin attack. Not to mention there are also a lot of unfortunate cuts from the ability list, obviously, they can't bring every ability back for this one, but it just feels wrong for something like plasma or fighter to be missing. My true hope for a follow-up to this game is that they'll be able to not only introduce more new and old abilities but give them something more closely resembling the extensive movesets they had in Star Allies and the games leading up to it. I've always sort of half-joked that the ideal 3D Kirby game wouldn't be a collect-a-thon Mario 64 style, but instead a character action game. I mean, platforming has always been kind of de-emphasized in Kirby games, since you can often just float over it. It's more about trying out different abilities, solving environment puzzles, and effectively fighting enemies and bosses, and if Kirby could just go full Metal Gear Rising on an enemy when he has the sword ability, I genuinely believe that would be the truest to the previous entries in the series. If I'm being honest, fighting the final boss with the hammer only and no extra power-ups felt like baby's first Dark Souls in a way I was extremely into, so they're already halfway there.
This is really something special, and I believe a sequel in this style that improves the things I have a problem with would be just straight-up exactly what I've always wanted. And hey, maybe there'll be some DLC involving playing as other characters, something else I loved in Allies and I wish was here? No matter what, I've never been more excited about the Kirby series than right now, I'm ready for anything. Also please keep this Dedede design, he's finally cute again like in Kirby 64. Did you see that part of his second boss fight where he got on all fours and went full beast mode? Sickest shit ever, God I love this game.
1985
Been practicing trying to beat this game with no save states or rewinds on and off over the past month and finally did it, although I was still using the continue code (or cheat? I don't know what to call it, it feels too reasonable to call a "cheat"). Turns out Super Mario Bros is really fun! It's a really great entry into the NES library as a game that's simple but also genuinely challenging without ever feeling unfair, maybe with the exception of the Hammer Bro marathon at the end of 7-3. People talk about Mario controlling stiffly in this game, but I honestly don't have a problem with this game's movement and acceleration at all. In fact, I was pretty impressed by how fluid this game can feel, it encourages a flow state of running and jumping on instinct, but also rewards careful and thorough play with items to find. Don't really think it'll ever be my favorite 2D Mario, but this definitely deserves the reputation it has and there's still value in playing it today.