Going into this one, I had a bit higher expectations than I did the original Wario Land games. I mean, its a big jump from the Game Boy to the Game Boy Advance, and this is also the game I've been hearing is the best one since way before I've started my little Wario Land marathon here. I think I'd ultimately say that, out of the ones I've played (don't currently have Shake It but I will get it shortly and I never played the Virtual Boy game), this is probably the best one. Just a lot of fun. Obligatory disclaimer: I played this on Wii U. Thankfully I did not need to use Restore Points at all, unlike my playthrough of the Game Boy games, so I played this as if it was on the GBA. This one was actually shorter than the other games for me, only taking 16 hours whereas its predecessors all took at least 20 hours.

Jumping straight into gameplay here, Wario Land 4 carries what seems to be series tradition of taking the base formula and changing things around to make it feel like a different beast from the others. For one, Wario isn't immortal anymore, which I have mixed feelings on. I think I do ultimately prefer the heart system this game introduces, but I'm not sure why they changed it considering immortality worked well in the previous two games. Its not a big deal, though. I think that, when it comes to overall design, Wario Land 4 is definitely the best. In my opinion, it sort of has the best of both worlds, taking some strengths from 2 and 3 while introducing its own ideas into the mix. WL3 had that Metroidvania nonlinear style of finding four different treasures in every level that are gated by progression through powerups you gradually get, and this is echoed in a much less time consuming way through the gem shards you can find in a level. You need to get the four shards in each level to be able to enter the boss room for each world, but its nowhere near as obtrusive as it was in WL3 since you have your full move set from the get-go and nothing is gated off. Similarly, WL3 had a focus on nonlinearity, which is present here in WL4 since each world is available right after you complete the tutorial level. The elements of WL2 are mostly just because that game established the groundwork that made this series truly unique. What makes Wario Land 4 so much more fun than the other games to me are a few different factors: great level design, great core gameplay loop, boss fights that are actually fun and don't feel like a chore, fluid fun movement, collectibles that are smartly placed but don't feel too difficult to find...there's just a lot of things this game does right in my opinion. I love the dash move they gave Wario, it makes a lot of sense both for Wario to be doing in general and for complimenting the game design. I think its part of how this game seems to be promoting a considerably faster pace than the other Wario Land games; for one, each level only ends when you jump on the blue frog thing, which activates a time bomb that you have to run back to the portal you entered the level from to escape. It made me think more about the great level design, since, of course, I'd need to plan my escape route or at least just know where I'm going. Sometimes even more secrets open up only after you activate the bomb and you have to race against the (admittedly quite forgiving) clock to be able to get everything. Genuinely, this feels like the peak of the series gameplay to me so far, but I'll see if going through Shake It makes me change my mind. No, I'm not playing the Virtual Boy game.

To no one's surprise, there's no real story here, so I'm skipping that yet again to talk about visuals. Wow, this game looks really nice. It's very colorful and fun with a ton of personality; feels like a natural progression of the Wario Land series while still being very unique in its own right. If I'm not mistaken, some of these visuals were either inspired by or taken from WarioWare, which, if I'm right about that, is a really nice way to sort of tie Land and Ware together more. The levels themselves are pretty creative. For every standard grassland, jungle, swamp, and volcano level, there's also a level based on a hotel, a fridge, Arabian Nights, and a glorious golden palace. In particular, the levels in the Topaz Passage stand out a lot for their charming vibrant arts-and-crafts theme, like how the first level is based on toys and toy blocks. The bosses...well, for one, they're actually fun to fight now whereas in every other older Wario Land game they're either very unfun or mediocre, but that's besides the point. Design wise, the bosses stand out so much for how cartoonishly grotesque they look, almost like some of them came out of a '90s gross-out cartoon. The bosses have probably the most exaggerated expressiveness out of any character in the game aside from maybe Wario himself, though that's not to discount the sheer amount of zany goofy expressions pretty much everything with a face in this game has. It's just delightful.

Overall, I think Wario Land 4 is easily the best game in the series that I've played so far. Big improvement over the others, with its own charm and personality to boot. It was a blast to play through, earns a spectacular 4 stars from me. I was very close to putting it at 4.5 stars, but I don't think it was quite THAT good.

Moving straight from the first Punch-Out to this game was certainly an interesting experience. Super Punch-Out is very much based on the same formula as its predecessor with much of the same elements, but with the nice addition of letting you duck to dodge attacks. It also makes a very welcome change of having the timer be much more forgiving (I didn't get timed out a single time in this game whereas I did quite a few times in the previous game), which seems to have been adopted by every other Punch-Out game going forward. The difficulty felt about equal with its predecessor to me, both games had one opponent that gave me way more problems than others. For comparison, it only took me two defeats to beat the champion of the previous game (Mr. Sandman) but it took me nearly 1 hour and 30 minutes worth of retries to beat the champ of this game (Super Macho Man). He was also the only opponent I felt I had to abuse the save state feature on, like how the previous game's problem opponent I had to keep using the save state for was Pizza Pasta (the semifinal opponent of the previous game). Also, this game loops endlessly just like its predecessor, so I just decided to end my playthrough after beating Super Macho Man and earning the champion belt...then losing to the Bear Hugger rematch. Ouch.

As far as the overall game feel of Super Punch-Out, I think it gets closer to the modern games. Unlike the previous game, which I felt mostly motivated the player to be very aggressive, this game wants players to be more opportunistic; just like the NES, SNES, and Wii games, just constantly throwing out punches will result in most of it being blocked unless you land some punches that interrupt their attacks (much easier to get away with on the first two boxers - Bear Hugger and Dragon Chan - than the others). I'm not sure if I just got more used to the arcade Punch-Out style after playing the first game, but dodging felt much more smooth to me this time around and the delay on missing punches was not nearly as punishing to me. The inclusion of ducking is a nice way to spice things up a little, but unfortunately I think that this mechanic influenced the design of the boxers too much. My fights against Bear Hugger, Super Macho Man, and especially Dragon Chan all felt very gimmicky since I was just waiting on them to use their attacks that you need to duck under (and the attack you need to duck under for all those opponents are also their strongest moves, go figure). That makes three out of five boxers that all have their strongest attacks as something you duck under to avoid and then punish for big damage. On the plus side, it did make the fights against Vodka Drunkenski and Great Tiger really stand out since ducking isn't practically required (unlike Super Macho Man) or a way to make mincemeat out of them.

Oh, one minor nitpick I have that seems to only be a feature of this Arcade Archives rerelease is that the audio is...very weird. Watching Zallard1 play through this game made me realize I'm not alone on that, I think this release uses the Japanese voices or something since there were a few times I could not understand what the announcer was saying or he said something in a heavy accent...or even the name was completely different from their actual name (he calls Super Macho Man "Super Body Build"). There may have been a setting to change this that I just didn't see, but if that's true its pretty odd considering that the announcer sounded just fine in the previous game.

Overall I think this is a pretty solid game. It does fix some problems with the original game, but this game does still feel pretty archaic (I wouldn't expect an arcade game to be as smooth as a modern game though) and I don't think it fixed enough to be given more stars than the original. Nonetheless, I'm happy to say I have now played every Punch-Out game.

After seeing this game often praised by Donkey Kong fans, I was very curious to try this. Having just beat it after typing this, I definitely understand why people call this game one of the best on the Game Boy, its a great time and its my favorite on the console so far. Unfortunately the iconic bait-and-switch of this game pretending to be a port of the arcade game just for it to be a huge game all on its own was not a surprise for me, but the game did still manage to shock me with just how much content is in it. It took me 22 hours to beat this game (though that's counting the times I left my 3DS on without playing the game so its not entirely accurate); frankly, I would have never expected to get anywhere near that amount of time on a Game Boy game that isn't an RPG. Honestly that is a bit of a negative for me since I much prefer when Game Boy games are short, though this game at least doesn't overstay its welcome which I'm very appreciative of.

Its interesting to me just how much mileage this game gets using the relatively simple style of the arcade Donkey Kong. It introduces some new abilities, like the backflip, handstand, and handstand jumps, plus it lets you pick up enemies and items like in Super Mario Bros 2 USA. Nonetheless, it still feels like a spiritual successor to the arcade game, taking its style and improving on it in meaningful ways. Small parts of this game's design actually take inspiration from Donkey Kong Jr., too, which I think is pretty neat since that game tends to go forgotten. The influence is mainly in specific stages, which will have ropes you need to climb to get to your destination, enemies that block those ropes, and fruit on those ropes that you can use to defeat the enemies.

Donkey Kong 94 has some very creative level design that I love. Trying to figure out how to get the collectibles in each stage and finishing the stage in general is handled in a way that is engaging but not overly complicated aside from a few standouts that I needed to watch a guide to complete. Whenever I sought outside help for the puzzles, I found that the solution was always just something I wasn't thinking of, so it never felt unfair to me. Your main goal in every stage (except for the Donkey Kong showdown stages) is to find the key and reach the door, but the stage design finds many creative ways to make you think about how you're going to get that key over to where the door is. One of my favorite stages is 5-9, which takes you through an area with a bunch of platforms that switching levers will turn on and off. Those levers have been present in many other levels before this one, but I had to really think about how to beat this stage and when I figured it out I felt so clever. In my opinion, the last three worlds - Desert, Iceberg, and Rocky Mountain - were definitely the peak of interesting level design in this game.

This game controls so nicely. It has probably the best controls out of any game I have played on the Game Boy. Mario's movement feels precise and fluid, I never felt like the game screwed me over through his movement. My only real problem is that jumps are very committal, but that's not new for an old Mario game and the game is balanced around this quirk. I just felt I should mention that since the Game Boy is an older console, so clunky controls sometimes happen in games. The only jankiness I have experienced in this game is that it feels like hammers just don't work on occasion; sometimes you'll still get hit by an enemy even when you're swinging your hammer at it. This was very rare, though, and it was the only potential glitch I recall encountering in this game.

As someone who was introduced to Donkey Kong through the Country games and was never much a fan of the original Donkey Kong, I was surprised by how much I really enjoyed this game. Its interesting how this game released so close to Donkey Kong Country and was pretty much the last game to have DK's classic design (of course before Donkey Kong Country introduced modern DK and revealed that Cranky Kong is classic DK). The ending also sets the seeds for a potential friendship between Mario and classic DK, which I think is a neat touch considering how modern DK became a good guy and has a decent friendship with Mario in the spin off games. Maybe it rubbed off on him from classic DK / Cranky Kong making amends...uh, my unwarranted DK lore spiel aside, I think this is a really good game, but its not quite going to get 5 stars from me. I'd say 4 and a half stars is a good ranking to give it.

Super Mario Land 2 is one of those highly praised Mario games I hadn't played until now. Just like the other Game Boy Mario game I visited (Donkey Kong '94), I found myself enjoying my time with this game. It's short, but honestly sometimes I'm just looking for something short to blow through while still having fun. I find that the Game Boy is a great source for these kinds of games, perhaps because developers tended to want to emphasize the "Take it on the go" aspect of the Game Boy.

Admittedly, I haven't played the first Super Mario Land for more than a minute or two through a friend's copy, so I won't be mentioning that game more than a few times when talking about its sequel here. I think the core gameplay of Super Mario Land 2 is good, maybe even great. The physics are a little odd to get used to at first, mainly just because Mario's jumping feels slower and floatier than in most Mario games I've played, but once you get the hang of it Mario feels good to control. This game has a very basic platformer move-set, but hey this is classic Mario so I'm not gonna complain about that. One thing I will say is that the game does experience some occasional slowdown and screen crunch, but frankly those two quirks feel pretty much inevitable to pop up at some point with the Game Boy (although I'm no Game Boy connoisseur so take that with a pile of salt) and it was never the cause of any deaths for me. If you're really worried about it, just keep a steady slow pace and always be on the lookout for incoming enemies. Something I really like about the gameplay of Super Mario Land 2 is the way its structured. As soon as you make a save file, you get the choice of which world you want to go to in a hub area that's a bit similar to Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World. With the exception of the final area, everything's available to you right out the gate, so you can finish the worlds in any order you want. Might not matter to some, but that freedom of choice is pretty nice for others. Also, the difficulty curve manages to feel pretty natural for the most part even despite the freedom to pick any world as your first. The final level definitely beat me up a few times and gave me my first (and second) game over, but I expect the final level of a game to give me a tough time and its not some kind of tough as nails platformer.

Something I want to give props to is the visual design of this game. It looks really nice for a Game Boy game, although unfortunately I wasn't able to play it in color because the 3DS never got an option to use GBC colors on GB games and I will never understand why they didn't do it. The sprites are a bit big, unfortunately, so that adds to some extra screen crunch than what would've happened if things got scaled down (kinda like what happened with Donkey Kong Land but not anywhere near as terrible). Not too big of an issue, though. I love how the worlds are so strange and goofy, there's no way we would get a Halloween themed world or a level made up of bricks that look like LEGOs in a modern 2D Mario game. One of the enemies in that Halloween world just straight up has a Jason Voorhees style hockey mask and that was so weird to see in a Mario game. Yea, some levels have more generic themes than others, but there's also some pretty creative and fun visuals here. Space Land is pretty cool, although I don't get why Mario needed to wear an astronaut suit when he can indefinitely swim underwater with no need to breathe. That world also sees the return of Tatanga, the boss of Super Mario Land...which, as far as I know, is basically the only thing that ties this game to the first Super Mario Land. Overall, some pretty memorable and cool level designs here.

Unfortunately the music is less interesting than Super Mario Land to me. The fact that pretty much every song in Land 2 is a remix of the main theme or incorporates it into the melody in some way (I'm not a music guy I don't know what they call that) is rather disappointing, especially after Land had a great soundtrack of all original tunes. They're good and serve their purpose but I can't help but feel a bit disappointed with it.

Overall, pretty good game and definitely one of the greats out of the Game Boy games I've played. I rate it a solid 4 stars.

I'm kinda shocked by how good this game is. Granted, I don't think its the best 2D platformer (my personal bias will probably never let a game surpass the Donkey Kong Country classic trilogy for me), but MAN this was such a fun time and I loved every minute of it. Great breath of fresh air after everyone got tired of the NSMB games. Those were still fine mechanically, but this game just blows it out of the water in terms of creativity and fun factor in my personal opinion. I was one of those people that thought new 2D Mario games couldn't beat the really smart player creations in Super Mario Maker 2 and this game made me feel stupid for even thinking that with the sheer amount of variety stuffed into the vast majority of levels here. I truly believe the dev interviews where they talk about how they really thought outside the box for this one; while there's nothing groundbreaking or genre-redefining (tbh with how long platformers have been around I dunno if there can be any), there's a lot of amazing and pretty creative ideas all put into this game.

The gameplay just feels really nice. I'm hearing some people say this has the same physics as the NSMB games, but, if it does, I must have been fooled into thinking it was entirely unique because I thought this felt much smoother than NSMBU Deluxe. That might be because of the Badge system, which I think played a good part in freshening up this game mechanically. At the end of the day, you're still doing the same things you've been doing in 2D Mario since forever, but the various changes to your repertoire of moves that the Badges offer is really neat. Apparently a lot of folks just stick to Parachute, which is the first one you get, and say the others aren't worth messing with, but I found myself swapping through a few different Badges and still found 'em pretty useful in their own ways. I used Floating High Jump the most since getting extra jump height inherently is just great to have, plus the little float you do is like a weak version of Yoshi's flutter jump. Grappling Vine was also pretty good for challenges where you need to get dangerously close to poison or lava to get a collectible. Dolphin Kick is basically a necessity for water levels. Other Badges are much more niche or just enhance you sorta like a powerup, having different effects like magnetically attracting coins to you or letting you get one free jump to save yourself after falling into lava/acid. I also really love the sheer amount of playable characters in Super Mario Bros Wonder: you get to play as Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, the Toads (blue and yellow), Toadette, as well as four different Yoshis and Nabbit. Yoshi and Nabbit are this game's easy mode where you don't take any damage from enemies but you can still die from falling off pits or touching certain hazards, although honestly there's no reason to play Nabbit over the Yoshis unless you REALLY like Nabbit...which, admittedly, I do, so sometimes I played him over the Yoshis. The reason is because the Yoshis and Nabbit are both immune to enemies, but Yoshis can also flutter jump and eat enemies whereas Nabbit can't, making them straight up better than him. I already praised the hell out of this but the level design in this game is just so cool. The vast majority of levels always have at least one thing fun and unique to throw at you, helped by the Wonder Flower gimmicks being so wacky and varied. Also, I really liked all the powerups in the game, although admittedly I didn't really have much fun using the Bubble Flower as I did the other two. Drill Mushroom was pretty gimmicky but also really useful at times and the Elephant is just so goofy that I adore it. I looked forward to trying every character just to see how goofy they look as an elephant. Helps that its a pretty useful powerup, too.

This paragraph is gonna serve as a section dedicated to sharing a few nitpicks I have about the game. I have no huge complaints about the game, though; these are all just little issues I can easily overlook. Biggest one for me is the lack of use for any extra Wonder Seeds, which are the collectibles you get at least two of - one hidden and one guaranteed at the end - in each level. Most worlds have WAY more levels than you'll ever need to bust open Bowser and Bowser Jr.'s castles, and, as far as I could tell, there's no incentive for going the extra mile there. As soon as I noticed this, I felt much less motivation to get every seed in each level, especially after hearing 100% completion nets you basically nothing (though to be fair this is just hearsay and I haven't seen it myself). Part of this is on me, though, since I have an irrational hatred for continually getting stuff I have no use for, like in my Sonic Frontiers review when I complained about the fact Skill Points keep building up even though you complete the skill tree pretty early in the game. Another pretty big complaint from me is the bosses. The final boss is amazing imo, easily the best Bowser fight yet...but every other boss is just Bowser Jr. Now, to give credit where credit is due, they did find unique ways to have the Wonder Flower turn each fight around enough to be entertaining, but its still just Bowser Jr. and he does the same attacks every time so the only thing changing is the area around him. I also think the difficulty curve in this game is pretty strange, mainly regarding any level that isn't ranked five stars in difficulty. The five star levels are hard as hell but I rarely struggled with most levels that were four stars in difficulty, though there were a few exceptions like some of the levels in the final area leading up to the Bowser fight. I think my last nitpick of note is that there are zero consequences to using the invincible easy mode characters, so, if you really wanted to, you could beat the whole game with them alone. I know they can't cheese platforming challenges so you still have to beat those fair and square, but being completely immune to enemy damage is a little much to just be letting you do imo, especially in a game that's already pretty easy (but will still give you a decent amount of deaths if you're like me especially if you're looking for secret Wonder Seeds). Still, though, most of this game's challenge comes from platforming stuff imo, so I can ultimately understand why they wouldn't penalize you from playing Yoshis or Nabbit.

Gonna dedicate this semi-final paragraph to the fluff stuff here I really enjoyed, mainly visuals and voice acting. After the blandness that was NSMB's art style...well, I don't mean to keep hating on those games, but its very relevant here. Super Mario Bros Wonder was a MUCH needed visual overhaul in my opinion. So much personality and charm is put into nearly every animation in this game and its just so wonderful (pun fully intended) to see. Even the little details like Goombas preparing to bite as soon as you get too close or the characters putting on a determined face if you hold the Y button by standing still are here and accounted for. This game is so damn colorful and cute and I can't get over it. Unfortunately, this game does mark the beginning of character recasts for Mario games since...I think the GameCube era if I'm remembering that correctly. I will always miss the iconic voices of Charles Martinet (Mario and Luigi) and Deanna Mustard (Daisy), but the new voice actors are still doing good work. The new actor for Mario and Luigi - Kevin Afghani - was a portrayal I actually really liked since the voice he put on for them both remind me a lot of Martinet's more youthful Mario and Luigi voices from back in the day. Before the recast, Martinet's performances for his Mario characters were very noticeably getting deeper, especially Luigi and Wario. That wasn't a bad thing, but I find it interesting that Kevin's acting is sort of hearkening back to the days before that change. Also, this game has a flower that has something to say at least once in every level and it somehow never managed to get annoying. Big achievement if you ask me, big props to his voice actor Mick Wingert.

Overall I think this game is excellent. Top contender for the best 2D Mario imo, next to Super Mario World, Super Mario Land 2, and Super Mario All-Stars (though that's cheating a little since that's a combo of all three classic NES Mario games remade for SNES). Gains a great 4.5 stars from me, SO close to a 5 star but my nitpicks do knock it down a tiny peg. If I could rank this one it'd be like the closest to a 5 star that could be possible from a 4.5 star.

Seems like opinions are pretty split for this one. Folks either love it or hate it. As someone who admittedly doesn't read Spider-Man comics, I was always really excited for this game since I love Venom and the black suit arc in the Spider-Man media I engage with (Animated Series, Raimi Spider-Man even if SM3 wasn't exactly good, etc.). I really enjoyed both the first game and Miles Morales's own game, too, and I think this game is ultimately better than both, at least when it comes to core gameplay. It does seem to be missing some small stuff, like no New Game+ (doesn't affect me at all since I never play NG+ modes in games anyway), but its still a good package overall imo.

The gameplay is fun. Spider-Man 2 is one of those sequels that just takes what the previous game established and expands upon it a little. You get a new little wheel of cooldown moves that you gradually unlock new ones for over the course of the story, so now you have both those and gadgets from the first game. As a result, combat felt a little more mashy to me in this game, since a lot of the time I found myself relying a LOT on the little gadgets and stuff whereas I felt like I was actually using the core combat more in the previous games. They try their best to make the boss fights epic and cinematic, in which they succeed, but the actual fights always felt kinda underwhelming in comparison outside of the really cool cutscenes integrated into the gameplay. Some of them drag on too long in my opinion, which can get annoying if one is opening a can of whoop-ass on you, lol. Dialogue repeats every time, which I sorta understand since I never want to miss it, but it does make dying to the same boss a lot extra aggravating. The fight against Scream was particularly annoying in my opinion since it feels very gimmicky and not in a fun way, and you have to beat her down like four different times. That being said, I'm genuinely enamored by the smoothness of PS5 games, where there are basically no load times at all and everything just feels so seamless. This game takes advantage of it big time for an awesome movie feel, which seems to be something Sony games in particular have practically made part of their brand. Call me easily impressed but I really was so surprised by how they did this. Overall, combat is far from the greatest, but was still pretty fun imo. My favorite part was by far that one bit where you get to play as Venom; after having to play as an agile guy that dies pretty quickly, its satisfying playing a big brute smashing through everything. And...I mean, its Venom, who wouldn't love playing as him?

The story seems to be the main selling point here, and I did quite enjoy it. I don't think it got really good until closer to the end since I felt there's just a little too much unnecessary side stuff thrown in there. Not that every part of a story needs to be related to the direct plot, of course, just that these diversions were a bit much to me. Exploring the new science building Harry made with Peter, going to Coney Island with Harry and MJ, going back to Peter and Harry's old school and suddenly playing through a flashback of their time escaping from the school, having MJ and Peter talk to each other in the house...doesn't help that they do this annoying movie game thing I've talked about before where they make segments where nothing happens into interactive walking simulators for the sake of being more "immersive" when it would've been much better off as a cutscene in my opinion. Characters are talkative and actions you make can completely interrupt their dialogue, especially in boss fights, which is like the one thing I really dislike about the presentation of these cinematic games. Also, they tend to come with dumb little minigames, like shooting basketballs or playing a rhythm game. I know these smaller moments are there to make you feel more attached to the characters (and frankly I'd have to be a miserable soul to not enjoy these characters going to an amusement park) and I understand why they're here, but I couldn't help but feel like a lot of it was filler. There's still great moments in the early game, though, like the introduction to Kraven or when Peter and Harry work together to free Tombstone. Speaking of him, Kraven was a pretty good villain in my opinion. I don't get why he considers himself such a master hunter when it feels like his lackeys do most of the work to bring them to him, but he serves as an intimidating presence for the story and it was cool to hear how exactly he killed off some of the villains from the first game. I really liked seeing that a few villains actually had successful redemptions until Kraven came along and killed them (or tried to in some cases). The last few parts of the game are all about the symbiotes and I was loving that; very cool to see Venom make these symbiote nests and try to infect the world in his twisted idea of "healing the world". I tend to prefer my Venoms on the goofier side but I do still like how they handled Harry as Venom here. At first, he's a good guy trying to help out Peter, and his design reflects this since he looks exactly like Agent Venom (which really surprised me) in the comics. But as the symbiote becomes more corrupted after latching onto Peter and feeding on his negative energy, once it eventually goes back to Harry he becomes the Venom we all know and love. I was pretty unsure about black suit Peter at first, he acts barely any different from regular Peter until he eventually goes nuts after enduring a lot of stress from having to fight a bunch of villains. I like the idea of that, but before he gets the suit taken off he spouts a lot of stuff that just felt kinda uncharacteristic for this version of Peter. Dude develops a huge ego about being the hero of this story and his behavior in this state is pretty much the reason Harry becomes Venom in the first place. I have a bunch of other stuff I could describe or nitpick about the story but I'd be here a long time if I were to do that and, frankly, my typical reviews are long enough.

Overall I think Spider-Man 2 is pretty good. Despite all my nitpicks, I do think the game has a lot of great stuff in it and feels like an overall improvement over its predecessors. I'm going to revisit the game to do all the side content (probably not gonna go for the Platinum trophy though), but I figured I'd review it now since I just beat the main story. Pretty good, earns a solid 4 stars out of me.

For me, Deadpool is one of those games that isn't SUPER fun to play, but the other aspects of it really hold it together and make it worth at least checking it out. The game didn't take me too long to complete and I was enjoying most of my time with it. Unfortunately, I don't have an exact time, which seems to be a common trend among games I've been reviewing lately. Would love if more games told you how long you took to beat the game, but, alas, not all of them do that. I do know that I started my playthrough in March, but I took a long break from continuing the game since I was juggling so many other games at the time...so, now its November and I can finally say I beat the game.

Big sidenote: I'm not a big comic book guy, just recently got into reading them and my focus has not at all been on Marvel stuff. I jumped into this game without being very familiar with Deadpool as a character; I just knew he has a tendency to break reality and the fourth wall a lot. I found him to be quite entertaining in this game and pretty fun to actually play, but recall hearing some people complain that he acts out of character. That may be a valid complaint, it may not be. I can't give an opinion either for or against the stance considering just how little I know about the character. Can't help but wonder if the voices in his head that are a big part of him in this game are like that in the comics. My lack of experience with the character is the reason I'm not comparing what happens in this game to any comic books.

So, from what I've heard, people tend to dislike this game. Honestly, I'm not sure why. Sure, it's a pretty barebones mission-based hack-and-slash with light platforming elements (almost reminds me of the Ninja Gaiden reboot games but with much more simple and easy combat), but I never felt it was really trying to be anything more than that so it didn't bother me. I ultimately found the gameplay fun for what it is, it's not deep but it's fun to smack around goons with the three different weapons you get as well as blast them with all the different kinds of firepower you can grab. There's a shop system that uses Deadpool Points, or DP for short, as currency. You get DP either from finding it in the world, grabbing it from dead enemies, or as a reward for pulling off combos. You can buy new guns, explosives, and melee weapons from the shop, as well as various upgrades for those items. You can also upgrade Deadpool's personal attributes, like increasing his health, letting you get critical hits occasionally, making it to where you regenerate health after getting a combo, and more. Sometimes enemies drop powerful artillery that is very satisfying to blow other enemies to smithereens with. The guns themselves felt very fun to use for me, you can keep pressing or holding down the Right trigger to blitz your foes and there's an aim button for more precise shooting. There's a decently wide variety of guns, but the plasma guns and the shotguns are definitely the best (though I did still get plenty of use out of the pistols and SMGs). I feel like they're much stronger than the melee weapons, and I was even using the Hammers which seem to be the most powerful melee. The game also has a few small mechanics to use, like Momentum attacks, which are pretty much super moves to use when you're overwhelmed by enemies or you're fighting an enemy with a lot of health. Momentum is filled up by a bar as you fight enemies, but grabbing the taco boxes that drop from enemies also gives you some Momentum.

If there's one thing about the game I can understand being very polarizing, it's the humor. If you don't like meta humor, you will despise this game's jokes since there's a LOT of meta jokes here. Deadpool loves to both criticize and praise the developers, for instance, and he will constantly remind you of the fact that this is indeed a video game. There's certain parts of missions in the game that reference other games (usually retro games like Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, and Final Fantasy) or are meant to emulate game glitches. I found the comedy to be hit or miss; I'm not sure why, but a lot of it seems geared towards teenage perverted "memelords" that like dumb edgy humor, boobs, and retro games. Nonetheless, it was charming in it's own stupid way and I didn't hate any of the jokes (well I could do without the perverted fanservice but it didn't ruin things for me). They throw a ton of jokes at you, so the bad ones don't linger for too long. Despite its flaws, I find that the humor and the visual presentation are the main selling points of this game, they're both quite hyperactive and charming. It's primarily silly amusing things, like how Deadpool makes a joke in the beginning of the game about games giving you achievements for nothing only for you to get an achievement right after. There's a scene where you slap Wolverine to try waking him up and you can repeatedly press a button to slap him for several minutes for an achievement. It was cool how, when you meet a new plot important character, Deadpool sometimes takes you on a short montage through comic panels of that character to explain who they are. Of course, cutscenes also have some spice added to them by Deadpool's zany overexaggerated personality and the fact that he avoids exposition like the plague. Usually the game also tosses in little short quick-time-events just to add more to the game's flavor of dumb random comedy, like when Deadpool is so bored by one of Cable's explanations that a prompt shows up for you to "Press R2 to make it stop" (making Deadpool shoot himself). Sometimes you get achievements for doing the quick-time-events in a certain way, like how you get one from always choose the option to be patient while waiting in a line for a circus-like theme park ride (because that happens in this game). Something I found rather amusing about it is that, if you deliberately wait to press the button needed, you don't get punished but you do get commentary from Deadpool. Things like this are cool little features that really add a lot to a game's likeability, which I think makes up for how unremarkable the actual gameplay is. However, I will say that it will be very grating and actually make the game unlikeable if you hate how Deadpool is in this game.

The story...well, it certainly exists. It pretty much just serves as another vehicle for comedy for the most part, Deadpool is in a gritty world but his wacky antics basically bends the world around him to include weird stuff. As I mentioned earlier, Deadpool is aware of the fact that he is in a video game. In fact, the entire story starts because Deadpool gets a call from Peter Della Penna - an employee at High Noon Studios (the developer of this game) in this story - saying that they won't make a game based on him. Apparently Deadpool had a bomb planted there because he pulls out a remote bomb trigger and presses it, then immediately gets called back by Peter to have the game be made. From there, Deadpool goes on a quest to do stuff that I already forgot because it did not feel important at all. I actually like this approach to story honestly; the game doesn't pretend to have more story than it actually does, so instead it just has Deadpool chewing out the scenery and doing ridiculous things. He hates exposition, so whenever someone tries to tell him something about the story he will not be listening or doing some weird goofy thing instead. I have heard that people really don't like how anticlimactic the ending is, but honestly I was not expecting it to be anything all that crazy anyway and I found it to be very fitting. At the end of the game, Deadpool beats the tons of Mr. Sinister clones thrown his way, then the real Mr. Sinister comes out and effortlessly strikes down the X-Men. Deadpool's response is to talk to the player and gleefully reveal the surprise he's been planning all along. You, as the player, get the honor of seeing the secret through a quick-time-event: press triangle (on PS4) to make a Sentinel boot appear and crush Mr. Sinister. Roll credits.

Overall, I give the Deadpool game 3.5 stars. I think it was a fun experience with gameplay that is basic but fun and a sense of humor I found relatively appealing. I can't stress how much the presentation elevates this game above a 3 star for me.

Goodbye, Geno. I will always hope that you will be able to return in the flesh in literally anything one day, but, at the same time, I can't really blame Square Enix and Nintendo for not doing that considering how underutilized you are and how old your debut game is. I like to believe that Rosalina takes care of you alongside the Lumas. Maybe one day you will be promoted to an actual fighter in Smash, that's legitimately the best shot you have at ever appearing in anything again and that's already a low chance...for now I'm fine with pretending I'm playing as you with the Mii costume.

With that out of the way, yea Super Mario RPG is a very basic RPG (I even get why people would call it middle of the road or mediocre) but I really do enjoy this game a lot. It's just very special to me, partly because of nostalgia and partly because it feels very unique. The other two Mario RPG series - Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi - carried the spirit of this game and I'd say that they're better in their own ways, but they just aren't the same. In the current age of Nintendo, there is no Mario RPG in sight; Paper Mario games have moved away from the RPG formula since Sticker Star and the Mario & Luigi series has been in limbo since AlphaDream had to shutdown in 2019 due to bankruptcy. In my eyes, there's no better time for a remake or even a sequel of the original Mario RPG than now, but of course Square Enix and Nintendo have no real reason to care for this game so that probably wouldn't happen (would absolutely love to be proven wrong though). I'm hoping it at least shows up on the Nintendo Switch Online SNES game service.

Alright, let's talk about the actual game now. I'll start with how the game looks. Super Mario RPG has a very distinct visual style. As far as I know, everything in this game was modeled in 3D and then converted into sprites for the SNES, kind of like the Donkey Kong Country games. You can actually find renders online of the 3D models for most of the enemies, characters, items, and even some of the weapons and armor your characters can equip in Super Mario RPG. However, this design choice does make it to where the game's visuals didn't age the best. I personally don't mind it and I even think it adds a lot of charm to the look of the game, but you will not like how this game looks if you don't like that late 1990s / early 2000s 3D style. The game is still very colorful, so it doesn't look bad, but it's obvious how much the game is trying to be 3D. There's even a few cutscenes that seem to replicate the 3D models that the sprites were based on, but they are very rare. My only real personal issue with this style is that the pseudo-3D look of everything can make it tricky to tell where exactly something is, which can really mess you up when you're trying to do precise tight platforming (which thankfully this game doesn't ask of you too much outside of certain instances). It also asks you to make semi-3D movement on a controller that was never meant to be used for that; it feels fine honestly, but expect to be holding two directions on the D-Pad very often.

Also, I figured I would take a paragraph to mention a big visual issue with this game: if you are sensitive to flashing lights, you will absolutely hate certain moments and attacks in Super Mario RPG. As far as I know, this has mostly been fixed on the Wii U and SNES Mini/Classic versions, but I was playing the original SNES version and got treated to some eye-bleeding flashing. Some special moves have a strong and unpleasant strobe effect. Bowser has a specific type of weapon - the ball and chain weapons - that causes a few irritating white flashes for a few seconds whenever you use it. For the record, that is literally every time you use a regular attack on a character that is built to pretty much only use regular attacks. I had to use a weaker weapon, lowering my overall damage output in the brief moments I had the Koopa king in my party, just because I didn't want to have to deal with that flashing. Another notably irritating example was with the Axem Rangers, who are big fans of flashing (makes sense considering they're parodies of the Power Rangers) and the fight against them in Barrel Volcano used flickering light very frequently, especially once you defeat them since it causes a big explosion with a bunch of flashing lights. This is the only game I have played in recent years where I had to look away from the screen a few times because of the annoying flashing lights, I can't imagine how bad this would be for someone that has seizures when a bunch of lights flash in their eyes. Maybe some people are cool with this but I absolutely despised that blinding lights were present, to the point where I had to find workarounds like deliberately using weaker weapons for Bowser or looking away when an unavoidable flash happens.

Something I find very noteworthy about Super Mario RPG is the quirky dialogue and characters. This game was essentially the progenitor of the trademark witty humor that it's successor series - Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi - became very well known for, and, if you've played those other games before, this is very noticeable. There's usually some kind of gag, joke, or silly thing a character says thrown in most interactions in the game. I really enjoyed that aspect of the dialogue, but it definitely feels like it isn't going to hit for everyone. The quips and jokes thrown in can feel very out of place in the Mario universe and even within this game's own strange rules, like when Mallow rhetorically questions if Mario thinks he's Bruce Lee (apparently he exists in this world) and that moment when Toad says "I forgot my bazooka at home" in response to Mallow asking him why he didn't stop Croco. One of the main recurring gags is Mario's ability to literally transform into other characters, which is something he only ever does when recapping or demonstrating something that happens to other characters. Usually it's also followed up by very overexaggerated movement and body language that he can't do by himself in any other context. Personally I like how, even though Mario doesn't speak and can barely emote in this game, he still has a personality portrayed through his behaviors, like in the scene where Mallow meets his parents and Mario puts up an umbrella because he knows Mallow is about to cry (Mallow's powers make it to where the area around him rains when he cries). All the jokes are not meant to be analyzed, but I wouldn't blame anyone for finding them too jarring, forced, or random. Nonetheless, I love this game's bizarre dialogue and characters. I've had an attachment to Mallow, Geno, and a few of the other characters ever since I was a kid and the writing played a big part in that.

The story of the game isn't really anything all that special, but it is interesting in its own way. The story is one of the first blatant subversions of the Mario formula. Super Mario RPG starts you right off at Bowser's Castle to save Peach from him like usual, but, once you defeat him, an earthquake sends Mario, Peach, and Bowser flying out of the castle. Mario lands at his Pad, going through the conveniently placed warp pipe roof entrance. Interestingly, this just might be the first instance in Mario game history where we get a good look at the place the Jumpman himself calls home, not counting the animation of Mario sleeping in his bed in SMB2 USA. The game does not say where Peach and Bowser landed at, but of course you do eventually find them and, in another interesting subversion, both of them actually join your party at some point so you can play as them (not technically new for Peach since she's playable in SMB2 USA but Super Mario RPG is the first time Bowser has been playable in the series). Anyway, after Mario gets blasted, he goes back to Bowser's Castle. At the castle, he sees that a giant sword with a face named Exor has taken over the castle in the name of the Smithy gang. Once Mario explains that to Toad, Toad tells Mario to go to the Mushroom Kingdom. Once you get to the Mushroom Kingdom, that's when the journey really starts. After explaining what happened to the Chancellor (the game just kinda treats it like the Mushroom Kingdom has always had a Chancellor), you get an introduction to the first of many wacky side characters you will meet on your journey. Mallow is a cloud boy who thinks he's a frog, which gets explained later in an honestly pretty touching cutscene with his adoptive grandpa. When Mario meets Mallow, the cloudy lad got his coin stolen by a purple crocodile man named Croco. You agree to help Mallow once Mario sees him cry, which makes rain fall because of his magic powers. I think Mallow and Croco's introductions here serve as a good way to show the player a weird new hero and a weird new villain. It also hints at the fact that every new place you go to after leaving the Mushroom Kingdom is entirely new terrain for Mario that hasn't shown up in any other spin offs as far as I know, although you do revisit the kingdom a few times in the story. So, after leaving the Mushroom Kingdom, the story focuses on exploration, expanding on the world, and helping other characters on their own quests. The wider narrative is hinted at by various characters, like Mallow's wise frog grandpa, but it isn't fully explained until you meet Geno, a wooden puppet from a kid that Mario played with in Rose Town. Geno was brought to life by a star, who's purpose is to repair the legendary Star Road by finding the titular seven star pieces and beating Smithy. The Star Road is a cosmic place that grants people's wishes, but it's being sabotaged by the Smithy gang. Side Note: a pretty amusing detail about the star taking over the Geno doll is how the star's name is technically ♡♪!?, but he took the doll's name because his real name is impossible for a human to pronounce. Nonetheless, after meeting Geno, the story's main goals are to collect the seven star pieces, find Peach, and explore around to help anyone else you meet. A bunch of other stuff happens along the way in the many different weird places you find, the characters you talk to, and the villains you fight, but I took long enough just to explain the first few story events so I won't divulge much more. I will say that Booster was definitely the best villain in my opinion, he is such a strange character in that he has no sense of social awareness or decency at all (he's a creep that tries to force Peach into marriage) and doesn't understand basic concepts like what crying is. He also looks like a knockoff Wario and that's pretty funny.

As far as gameplay goes, Super Mario RPG is a very standard RPG experience. You have a party of up to three characters that are unique in their own ways, whether it's through stats pushing them to fight a certain way (like how Geno's low defenses and hard hitting attacks make him a glass cannon that prefers killing enemies as fast as possible) or some other factor. As you continue the story, you get access to more characters, and you can customize your party once you get four characters since you'll have to bench one of them. Unfortunately you cannot bench Mario himself, though I suppose there's no real reason to not want Mario in your team. There is a total of five playable characters in Super Mario RPG: Bowser, Geno, Mallow, Mario, and Toadstool (AKA Peach) I spent most of the game with the basic team of Geno, Mallow, and Mario. Mallow is weak at first but can become very strong as he levels up to improve his stats and get more special moves. Mallow is basically this game's archetypal mage, so he has many specials and they hit hard, but his regular attacks can be just as good as everyone else's which is nice. Geno is a glass cannon as mentioned earlier but he can also boost his allies stats which I found to be VERY useful. Mario is kind of an all-rounder but I specialized in Attack for him so his standard attacks hit like a truck, even more than Geno does. As for combat itself, whenever you run into an enemy in the overworld, it takes you into a typical turn based RPG battle. Beat up the bad guys to get EXP and level up. In every fight, your options include the following: regular attacks, special attacks that use a resource called Flower Points (FP for short), an Extras menu that gives you the option of either running away or using your turn for pure defense, and the self-explanatory Items menu. Worth noting that, whenever you use an item, there's a seemingly random chance that it will be a Freebie. This is really good whenever it happens since it means the item gets instantly put back in your inventory after you use it. There's also a few status effects in the game; some function pretty similarly to the ones that typically show up in other RPGs, like Poison, but others are more weird like Mushroom and Scarecrow. When you're a Scarecrow, for example, the only thing you can do other than defend is using special moves. Probably worth mentioning that some enemies have different resistances, like some enemies are especially resilient to special moves but take massive damage from regular attacks and vice versa. Of course, the big thing Super Mario RPG's combat has that sets it apart from the others is a system called timed hits, which makes it to where, if you press the A button again after using a regular attack, you deal more damage. When you do it right, it's indicated by an extra animation and a sound effect. I found that all the regular attacks are easy to get timed hits with, but some of the special moves can be pretty tricky to get the timing right on. Healing specials give you more health when you get the timing right, for example, but it's easy to fudge it if you don't memorize the timing. I think this whole mechanic adds a nice bit more complexity to the combat, but it isn't really a huge game changer and it's not difficult to pull off in most cases. You can also time your defenses when an enemy attacks you, but it doesn't work against special moves unfortunately. Nintendo must have liked timed hits since both the Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario series have used the system at some point. As for the special moves themselves, each character has their own special moves with unique effects that can range from healing, inducing status effects, buffing your own stats, and/or dealing massive amounts of damage. Typically, special moves also have unique effects when you utilize good timing, like how Geno has the infamous Geno Whirl that will instantly kill any enemy (except for most bosses) if you can follow the very tight timing.

Sometimes I take a paragraph to praise the music of a game, and, considering how much I like this game's soundtrack, yea I'm going to do that here. Super Mario RPG's soundtrack was composed by Yoko Shimomura and I think she did a phenomenal job here. Then again, I have not heard a single song from Shimomura that I did not like. I find that the soundtrack overall has a very whimsical feeling, with only a few songs going out of their way to feel more foreboding or ominous and only when it makes sense to do so. Most of the songs have a certain sound to them that I really like, but I can't really describe what it is unfortunately. "Hello, Happy Kingdom" (the Mushroom Kingdom theme) is probably my favorite song in the game, it pretty much never fails to put me in a good mood and start humming along. So, yea, the music is great, but I do have some minor issues with how it is used in the game. For example, I really think there should have been two or more regular battle themes to cycle through instead of the same one every time; its a little grating when you're the kind of person that tries to beat every enemy you see on screen like I do. This is a general problem with many old games and I think its because of hardware limitations, but I find that many of the songs only take about a minute at most before they start to loop again, which I mostly didn't mind but got on the nerves of my brother who was in the room with me when I played the game.

Overall I think Super Mario RPG is a fun game with a lot of heart to it. Probably the game's biggest problem is that it is pretty unremarkable gameplay-wise, so I wouldn't recommend it over something like the Mario & Luigi series just based on pure gameplay. Also, when you're playing, I can't stress enough to please be wary of the flashing lights. If you hate them or have medical problems related to it, cautious. Nonetheless, this game gets a solid 4 stars from me.

I'm very surprised by how well this game aged; with the way people talk about the original Pokémon games, you'd think they were broken messes. I enjoyed my time with Pokémon Blue. It took me 38 in-game hours to beat the game, so it isn't that long for RPG standards but it can take a while for sure. Took me about a week or two to beat since I took long breaks from the game and I was playing other games in-between. The team I used to beat the game included a Venusaur, Gyarados, Marowak, Hitmonlee, Magneton, and Moltres.

I'm just gonna take this paragraph to do a run-down of version differences for clarity's sake. There are zero differences in the story, gameplay, and overall design of Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Blue Version in the USA. It is true that, in Japan, Blue came after the original two games - Red and Green - to fix some problems and give the sprite work a facelift, but Red is pretty much the exact same as Blue in the USA so I will be referring to them interchangeably despite having played the Blue Version. I say "pretty much" because Red and Blue do have one difference: the availability of certain Pokémon. For an easy example, Vulpix is in Blue but not Red and Growlithe is in Red but not Blue. They did this to encourage in-game trading between people, which was pretty smart and it's the reason there's always been two versions of every mainline Pokémon game. Nonetheless, the version exclusive Pokémon are only a problem if you want to complete the Pokédex - which I didn't bother with doing - or you just really wanted the Pokémon.

Pokémon is one of the few RPGs I can think of where simplicity is king, and nowhere is that more evident than in the story and characters of Red and Blue. Its all incredibly simple and that's honestly for the better in my opinion, at least for this duology that started it all. Your goal is to travel around the Kanto region and beat the Gym Leaders so you can go fight the Elite Four and become the Champion. Not much different from any other Pokémon game, but of course it gets some novelty points for being the first. Along the way, you are also tasked with completing the Pokédex by finding and catching every Pokémon, but this is just a side activity so you can choose to not do it. When you're on your journey, you take down Team Rocket too, who I imagine need no introduction but they're basically a mafia run by doofuses. The game is very linear with little to no side activities, but sometimes the main quest feels like a side activity since it tends to have you go out of your way to do stuff unrelated to the main goal so you can progress. For example, when you reach Lavender Town and go into the Pokemon Tower there, you can't see the ghosts, so you need to go to Celadon City and fight Team Rocket there to get the Silph Scope which will then let you see the ghosts. You also rescue Mr. Fuji there and help put the spirit of a grieving ghost to rest. Little things like this make the world feel a little more lived in. As for characters, the first major character you meet is Professor Oak, who gives you and your rival your starter Pokemon and the Pokedex, but you never see him again until the very end when he congratulates you for becoming the Champion. Your rival is the grandson of Professor Oak. The rival's canonical name is Blue in the United States and Green in Japan, but you can name him whatever you want (I called him Bogus). I suppose that would make his surname Oak unless there was a surname change along the family tree. Something I find interesting about Blue is that, for a long time, people had a tendency to mischaracterize him as an egotistical jackass. Yes, Blue is overconfident and he likes to make childish remarks, but he really isn't anywhere near as bad as people said he was and he humbles out later in the story anyway. He even congratulates you sometimes and regards you as a friend. Unfortunately, there aren't any other major characters; everyone else is either a random NPC, a side character that helps you out, or essentially a glorified obstacle to your goal (Gym Leaders and Elite Four). There are a lot of NPCs in the game to make the towns feel more populated, but a lot of what they actually say to you is just tips on game mechanics or dropping some miniscule worldbuilding lore. Of course, as a longtime Pokémon fan I already knew all the advice they told me, but its good that it's there for anyone new to the series. It's especially important for these games to have since they're the first (I know I keep reiterating this point but it's important).

I may be biased since I have a good amount of experience playing through Gen 1 before my current playthrough, but I found that, for the most part, figuring out where to go and what to do was relatively straightforward. Of course, that's very much intentional since the Pokemon games have always been intended for anyone to be able to pick up and play. I did get stuck in Silph Co. building's maze, but that can be chalked up to me just being awful at puzzle solving. The only thing that tripped me up as far as progression goes was finding out where I needed to go for some of the HMs. The Surf and Strength HMs are accessed through the Safari Zone; Surf you get from finding the Secret House there and Strength you get from finding Golden Teeth to give to the Safari Zone warden in Fuchsia City. Its stuff I genuinely would not have thought to do. Unfortunately most HMs are required for progression since it teaches your Pokemon moves you can use in the overworld to progress. One HM, Fly, is completely optional but is basically a must-have considering that it serves as this game's fast travel. You find this...in the house of a random person near an ordinary route. I genuinely think I would have completely missed this if it weren't for the internet and that would have sucked considering just how useful Fly is. I figure something like that would be more transparent to find, but oh well.

In my opinion, there is a certain charm to the simplicity of the gameplay of Pokemon Blue (and, by proxy, Red). It's a fun glimpse into the past of this series, before it seemed to know just how gargantuan it would become. It feels like it has just the bare essentials of the core formula since this was a time before the series had a lot of features that are considered staples in the current games. Gender, breeding, Abilities, Natures, Shiny Pokemon, double battles, berries, friendship evolutions, some evolution stones, the Dark Type, the Steel Type, and the Fairy Type all didn't exist in Red and Blue. Unfortunately that does come with some design quirks that were patched up in the newer games, some of which are quite annoying even when playing the game casually. Notably, this was before the Special Defense and Special Attack stats existed; instead, both are grouped under "Special", which frankly was not a good idea in my opinion and I'm glad it got split in two later. Critical hit chance was defined by speed, too, so fast Pokemon could hit you like a truck. The types of some Pokemon and moves are also entirely different here and some of the type weaknesses are different too. The Psychic Type is infamous in Red and Blue for having essentially no weakness since almost every Bug Type move is garbage and the Ghost Type does not effect Psychic even though it is Super Effective to Psychic in every main series Pokémon game after Yellow. You can usually take them down with strong physical attacks (Psychic Types tend to have terrible Defense), though, so they're not that overpowered in casual play. Some types also just felt way more shafted than others in Red and Blue, particularly Ghost Types, Poison Types, Bug Types, and Dragon Types. There is only one Dragon Type move in the entire game and two Ghost Type moves, and both types have a move that only deals fixed damage (the one regular damaging move for Ghost Type also sucks since its only 20 base power). Poison Type is awful offensively since its highest damage move only has 65 base power and it is only Super Effective to Grass Type and Bug Type (which both tend to have Poison Type as a second type anyway), but it does at least have some utility since the Poison status effect is decent. Bug Type is the worst type in the game because all the moves are terrible and its weak to a lot of types. There are only three Ghost Type Pokemon and three Dragon Type Pokemon, and they aren't bad Pokemon necessarily but it feels like they can't make use of their special unique type. Another problem is with the Pokemon learnsets. They are just very bizarre to me, since a good amount of Pokemon either don't learn any damage moves of their types or only learn very low damage versions of those moves for a long time. Sometimes this can work out for them, like Gyarados is Water/Flying Type and it gets good use out of hard hitting Normal Type moves, but I find in most cases its kind of weird. TMs and HMs help fix this, but, since TMs are limited use, they aren't super helpful. I was surprised by just how common this issue was, I'm glad I found these looking through websites for info on building my team so I didn't have to end up lugging around one of these Pokemon the whole game only to not have it learn anything of its type. Worth mentioning that some Pokémon just fundamentally don't seem designed to fit into their type. This is because each type has a specific damage type assigned to it: physical or special. Some Pokémon primarily learn moves of a type that use physical or special despite that stat being low on that Pokémon. A funny example is Hitmonchan, who's whole learnset gimmick is that it learns punch moves of a few different types but the damage is awful because they all use Special and its Special stat is abysmal. It's also another Pokémon that does not learn any damaging moves of its type until a high level. The final minor gameplay design annoyance I'd like to mention is the fact that there aren't viewable descriptions of what the moves do. Of course, in this internet age, it takes five seconds to go on Serebii or Bulbapedia and read move descriptions there, but it would have been nice to have a little in-game blurb for each move. Otherwise, you would have no idea which moves are good and which aren't. But, all in all, Red and Blue just had some major growing pains that can ultimately be overlooked since they were the first games of the series, but may be a deal-breaker for people revisiting these games. That's why I gave this such a long in-depth section. Its kind of fascinating just how weird Red and Blue's core design can be.

Overall, Red and Blue are pretty great for the time. They have a bad case of what I like to call "first-game-itis", which really shows in how bizarre the game balance can feel at times. Nonetheless, I think it can mostly be avoided by knowing its faults...not that you'll need to worry too much since the game is easy. I was able to stomp the Elite Four my first try with a comically underleveled team by just exploiting Super Effective moves and buying a lot of healing items. Nonetheless, I did find it to be a fun experience. I believe it has too many flaws to give it a four star so I went with three and a half stars. It's overall solid and deserves props for starting such an iconic series.