Have you ever known someone who, at one point, you used to be really good friends with, but then out of nowhere they just… start to suck? Like, they become incredibly irritating to be around, become a massive asshole, or in the worst case scenario, did something horrible to where you can no longer comfortably associate yourselves with them. Then after you and everyone else distances themselves from them, they then try to do better, and by that, I mean they REALLY try, either by improving themselves or trying to make up for their past actions, and you can really see the effort they are putting in, to a degree, but at that point, the damage has already been done, and you kinda can’t trust them again. That is essentially how I would describe how I feel about The Simpsons video games at this point. Yeah, you all know the drill by now, it is The Simpsons: Bart & the Beanstalk.

At this point, they are REALLY stretching when it comes to whatever game they can shove Bart and the other Simpson characters into. I mean, we had an alien invasion game, one that takes place in a dream, one that is in American Gladiators, and one that takes place in a camp, so after all that and the several others I didn’t mention, where do we go from there? Why, a retelling of Jack & the Beanstalk, of course! Only an IDIOT would suspect anything else, really. But anyway, as you could expect, I was not looking forward to this game whatsoever, but I figured I would get it out of the way so I can go back to playing good games again, and from what I did play, I will give it this: it is the best of these bad Simpsons games so far. Nevertheless, it is still bad, not to the point of blinding rage like Bart’s Nightmare or Escape from Camp Deadly, but more so to the point of… I just don’t care, and I wish I could feel happiness again.

The story is… well, it’s Jack & the Beanstalk but with Simpsons characters, which is a fine enough plot for one of these games, and if you somehow don’t know the story of Jack & the Beanstalk, go read a book for once in your life… you know, after you are done reading this review, that is. The graphics are Game Boy graphics, but I will give it this, the sprite work for the characters, environments, and enemies/bosses are very well done, being a massive jump in quality from Camp Deadly, but not to where I would say it is one of the best looking games on the system, the music is somewhat good, with a nice main theme that is enjoyable to listen to, but once again, we have returned to having only one or two music tracks playing throughout the entire game, and it gets very annoying to listen to after a while, and the gameplay/control is about as great as watching the grass grow, and if you are not one who enjoys the immense pleasure one can get from watching a blade grow from the ground like that, then you probably have good taste and would rather play something else.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of someone you definitely have never played as in any other Simpsons game before……… Bart, go through a set of seven different levels through various environments you would expect to see from Jack & the Beanstalk, defeat plenty of enemies with your trusty slingshot that is about as reliable as using a drill to hammer a nail, gather plenty of coins to help you proceed through the level, while also sometimes healing yourself because money truly does heal all wounds, and take on several bosses that are about as fun to fight as it is to pay your taxes just one day before they are due………… can you tell that I am having trouble describing how boring this game is? It is a very, VERY standard platformer, one that does work well enough, but it doesn’t nearly do anything all that exciting or fun to make you want to play it over any other platformer that you can find on the Game Boy. I will give it this though… it does at least have one or two interesting ideas here and there.

Given how the game is themed around Jack & the Beanstalk, not only are the levels themed around the locations and hazards you would typically find in that setting, but also the level objectives as well. While it is still primarily about getting to the end of the stage most of the time, a lot of the stages do require you to collect a certain amount of coins before you are able to proceed forward to the boss or the next level, and at least one of them requires you to collect specific treasures as well. In a lot of cases, this could be seen as completely unnecessary, and it’s just meant to waste your time, which is completely accurate, but to be fair, it does offer a bit more complexity than just “hold right and jump to win”, and you are encouraged to explore all of the levels to find all the coins needed to proceed forward. Not to mention, there are some levels that are pretty creative themselves, such as one level that has you jumping from lump after lump floating around in the giant’s soup. It isn’t much, but hey, little things like that are worth appreciating.

Unfortunately though, there’s not much else to be found here that I can say the same for. It is about as barebones and basic as you can get for a platformer in most other circumstances, and while it can sometimes be challenging and throw a lot of bullshit at you, it is mostly just one big snoozefest, one that is over in about 20 minutes, but one that feels like it lasts for an eternity at the same time. A lot of the said challenges and bullshit that I just mentioned can primarily be found in the last two levels, both of which are auto scrollers, and are easily the worst part of the game. These levels have you running away from Homer the Giant by running through a level you had previously played backwards, and one where you are parachuting down the beanstalk in order to chop it down, and doing both of these things is definitely easier said than done.

The first one isn’t that bad, with there being some pretty tight jumps and questionable programming decisions made all over the place, but nothing you can’t beat, while the last level feels absolutely abysmal to play, as you need perfect precision to make it through while the screen is scrolling at a million miles an hour, and it feels practically impossible to get through without getting hit by at least one thing, since you are given so little time to move around and adjust yourself before needing to focus on not getting held up to where Homer can catch you. Thankfully, these stages don’t last that long at all, and you don’t need to collect a certain coin amount to beat them either, because otherwise, they would probably have made me quit due to that factor alone.

Overall, despite some bad stages and some slight changes at progression that I can somewhat appreciate, there is nothing here that makes this Simpsons game stand out from the others aside from its theme, and it is one of the most boring platformers that I have played in recent memory. Yes, it is definitely the best of these poorly made Simpsons games that I have played by far, but I can’t really give it much credit for anything else when it does nothing to warrant any more praise other then “It exists, I guess.” I would only recommend it for those who somehow like any of the other bad Simpsons games that we have discussed so far, because if you are able to somehow stomach any of those other terrible games, then this one will probably be a masterpiece to you by comparison. Hell, I bet you that there is probably a Jack & the Beanstalk game out there that is probably ten times better than this game that you could check out instead………… I’m not gonna look it up to see if there is for myself, but hey, it is a possibility.

Game #562

Little history lesson: this was a quick ‘time waster’ (in Nitrome’s own words) made within a month or so to celebrate the Christmas season. When their next game was released the following March, the hyperlink for this game disappeared from the site, rendering it inaccessible (unless you had the direct URL) for several years — a period which included my entire time frequenting the site. Now that I’m back, and now that this lost game (or, well, lost to 8-year-old-me, anyway) has resurfaced, I’ve now been able to discover that it’s… pretty okay. You’re tasked to find one given Christmas present out of the pile below you while under a timer — one that ticks down perpetually, with five seconds awarded for each correct guess. While it starts off easy, it becomes much harder to find the outline of the specific item you want: items on screen will start being placed sideways or upside down, the game will introduce new items that look rather close to ones you’re looking for (ice skates/socks, violins/wine bottles), and the thing you’re looking for will be planted in a sea of identically coloured items, making it harder to find the specific item when it’s layered under several others. It works well for what it is! It’s just that what it is maybe isn’t the kind of thing that especially excels at wasting my time. I could see somebody (meaning: a younger me) making more of a go at it and making a real attempt at a high score, but on my end… I got the vibe the first time around. Didn’t feel the need to go back for more.

Check it out, it's 14-year-old me with a GameBoy Advance speaker pressed against his ear canal, mouth open while he pipes the most goopy-ass version of Scrap Brain Zone directly into his skull.

You can add Sonic Advance to the growing pile of reviews where I state, "I haven't played this since it came out." It's in good company, the Burger King Trilogy is in there. It's been so long that abandoning my previously held opinions on Sonic Advance and going in with no expectations was easy enough, though I did assume the consensus from my mutuals would be that Advance is among the best and most cherished of Sonic's handheld outings only to find it's pulled around a 3/5 average. A little surprising considering some of those mutuals think more highly of Sonic than I do, but now that I've closed the 20+ year gap... yeah, 3/5 seems about right!

Congratulations to Sonic Advance, because that practically makes it the best "traditional" handheld Sonic I've played.

Like the Game Gear games, Sonic Advance doesn't match the pace and feel of the Genesis titles, but the better hardware does allow for a much closer approximation, one that's pleasant enough in hand and which is only noticeably off to the kinds of people who are entirely too invested in this stuff. Like me. I just bought another copy of Sonic Mania, I'm up to five now, so I'd like to think I'm qualified enough to say that the way Sonic and his friend make contact with destructible objects and how they bounce off them doesn't quite pass the sniff test with me but it hardly ruins the game.

In fact, Sonic's physics feel perfectly in place with the way levels are designed, and that's really the most important thing. For the most part, stage design is pretty good. There's a nice mix of platforming and speed and plenty of routes that are made or less accessible depending on who you play as. The game does completely hit a wall and burn most of its good will by the time you get to Angel Island, though. The introduction of numerous bottomless pits, many of which the level directly funnels you into, is aggravating, and it's a problem that persists into the two single act zones that follow.

Also, not a fan of Amy. Dislike playing as her immensely. She felt bad in Adventure and she feels even worse here. These zones aren't improved by shafting you with a character that has a lower speed cap and movement abilities that purposefully feel bad. I'm sure there's some lunatic out there waiting in the wings who has dedicated a significant portion of their time to perfecting Amy's tech and will insist that it's not the game, it's the player. I don't care, I'm putting Amy in the contraption now.

Despite Sonic Advance's sloppy end game, I was pleasantly surprised with it overall, and that maybe says more about my insanely low expectations for a handheld Sonic than it does the game itself. Uh, end of review.

Part of Spooky Season 2023.

If I had to describe Silent Hill 3 in one word, it would be intense. While not much in terms of gameplay has changed between this game and the previous ones, its structure and balance have been adjusted in a way that really stressed me out and made the horror more effective than it's ever been in the franchise. I actually had to take breaks and play through it over the course of shorter sessions because I found the game to be immensely draining, even despite its short run time. Silent Hill 3 is a treacherous, suffocating nightmare from start to finish, and is quite possibly the scariest game I’ve ever played.

The previous titles in the franchise had a general pattern they’d follow. You’d usually explore the monster and fog infested town of Silent Hill for a bit before entering one of the indoor dungeon-like locations. These mostly consisted of large, dark and decrepit buildings with multiple floors, long narrow halls, various locked rooms that you’d need to find keys for, as well as several puzzles that you’d need to solve. You’d usually fight a boss once you reach the end of these places as well. These locations were generally where the games’ horror was most concentrated, as rooms contained gruesome imagery and setpieces to experience. Once you successfully clear one of these areas, you usually experience a cutscene or two and then head back into town and explore it a bit more as well as develop the story further before traveling to the next big indoor location. Rinse and repeat until the game’s climax.

The treks through town offered the player a momentary sense of relief and a chance to breathe a little bit after making it out of those dark and terrifying labyrinths. Now, the town wasn’t completely free of danger, as writhing and contorting creatures still roamed the roads and streets, but because you were outside in a more open environment, you’re generally able to maneuver around them rather easily, to the point where they’re not too much of a threat. However, Silent Hill 3 does things a little bit differently. Here, you spend almost the entire playtime making your way through those indoor dungeon-like areas. From the start of the game until a little over halfway through it, you go from one horrifying maze to the next. You really don’t spend much time exploring the town at all. This dramatically lowers the amount of opportunities for the player to catch their breath, limiting them mostly to tiny rooms void of any danger where you can save your game.

In my review of Silent Hill 2, my main point of criticism was that the game gave you way too much ammo and healing items. This dramatically lessened the effect of the horror, as there wasn’t really anything stopping you from playing safe and shooting just about every enemy you come across. Silent Hill 3 feels like an angry, vicious response to that criticism. Not only are ammo and healing items much more sparse in comparison to previous games, but the enemies are also far more aggressive. A majority of them are also designed to be either really tall, wide, or both. Most enemies eclipse Heather in size. Since you’re constantly making your way through cramped and narrow corridors, it makes avoiding and moving around these enemies rather difficult. As a result, strategic decision-making and resource management during combat is extremely vital. Even though this game came out twenty years ago, it really feels like Team Silent heard my Silent Hill 2 complaint and went above and beyond to address it here, to the point where I feel like it borders on overcorrection. Still, I do think that Silent Hill 3 is better off this way as opposed to the stockpile of ammo and healing items you’re left with at the end of Silent Hill 2.

Once again, the art direction and sound design are both handled in true masterclass fashion. The art direction in particular is extremely visceral, especially during the Otherworld sequences. It’s very reminiscent of the corrupted industrial look of Silent Hill 1, but with the PlayStation 2’s higher graphical fidelity, the game’s visuals are more striking and impactful than ever. The reddish-orange color palette that covers many areas of the game and the sadistic and violent imagery really makes you feel like you’re trapped in hell on earth.

The minimal amount of town exploration, the lack of opportunities to safely collect yourself, the greater focus on combat and resource management, in addition to the already horrifying art direction and sound design on par with the previous games, all come together to make Silent Hill 3 an immensely stressful experience. The stress in turn made the fear and horror more effective than it’s ever been in the series. I was constantly worried about my resources in addition to already feeling tense as a result of the horrific environments you have to find your way out of. Aside from the other two Silent Hill games, my horror experience up until this point has been limited to Resident Evil titles as well as Signalis. None have been as successful at making me constantly feel sheer terror and dread as Silent Hill 3 has. I fully admit that this game freaked me the hell out, and I applaud it for that accomplishment.

My biggest complaint is that while exploring a couple of areas in the game, you can stumble into rooms or areas that I consider to be traps. These are rooms that have enemies in them but otherwise serve literally no other purpose. There’s no supplies you can find, no reward for combatting the enemies, nothing. If you wander into these rooms trying to find something that you need to progress, you’ll wind up wasting your very limited ammo and healing items clearing these rooms out, only to find nothing for your efforts. I will cut the game a bit of slack because I did notice that these “trap rooms” are often very close to save rooms, so you can reload a save if you end up wandering into one of them and wasting your supplies. Still, I think that their inclusion in general is pointless and frustrating. All they do is waste time, as well as needlessly confuse and punish the player for exploring.

My next biggest issue is one that’s shared with Silent Hill 2: the camera really sucks. Just like in that game, the camera will sometimes just refuse to cooperate in narrow halls, and trying to force it to will just cause it to spin around wildly and make it nearly impossible to see what’s in front of Heather. It’s especially frustrating here when there are enemies in a hall that you encounter, and you can’t tell if your gun shots are actually hitting their target, meaning you have no idea whether or not you’re wasting ammo.

In stark contrast to Silent Hill 2, storytelling is less of a focus this time around. After the very beginning of the game, cutscenes and story development in general mostly take a backseat until a little over halfway through. Despite that, there’s no less of a focus on strong themes. Silent Hill 3 is a game all about the fear and pain of being a woman. The locations you make your way through are mostly places that women have been known to be typically harassed at, either verbally or physically. There are constant, violent depictions of motherhood and childbirth. The fact that so many enemies are much bigger than Heather could also be reminiscent of how men are generally larger than women and able to physically overpower them. I don’t have especially strong feelings about the main plot. It does have some impactful moments, especially if you’ve played the first game, but as a whole, it feels rather poorly put together. I find the imagery, symbolism and the unspoken implications of the environments to be far more stand out aspects.

Silent Hill 3 goes all out in trying to make the player feel afraid, and in that regard it absolutely knocks it out of the park. The thing is though, fear is all the game really made me feel. The previous Silent Hill games made me feel a lot more in terms of emotion, especially Silent Hill 2. There was a sense of mystery and tragedy to them that isn’t as present in Silent Hill 3. Tragedy is certainly present here, don’t get me wrong, if you know, you know. But I feel like it's limited to only a single instance. If you’ve played Silent Hill 1, then it’s pretty easy to just assume what’s going on, there’s not really much in terms of a mystery to figure out here. If you haven’t played Silent Hill 1, then I feel like the emotional moments will just go over your head even if the game does try to accommodate the folks who missed out on it. This is an extremely minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still something I wanted to make note of because it was an element of the previous games that I loved and its absence really stood out to me.

This game really put me through the wringer, but in a good way. I think it’s the most well structured and focused of the Team Silent games I’ve played up until this point. The only aspect of it that’s lacking compared to its predecessors is the quality of its main plot, which again, isn’t really that big of a deal. Still, as great and successful as this game is, I ended up feeling extremely exhausted by the end of it. I have to admit that I don’t really want to play this game again for quite some time. I didn’t even play on Hard difficulty, yet I still found it to be very draining. I do highly recommend Silent Hill 3, but make sure that you’re mentally prepared going into it. This game still managed to freak me out despite the fact that I usually enjoy dark and gruesome media. If you don’t have a high tolerance for this sort of stuff, then I’m not sure if this is the right game for you. If you do have that kind of tolerance, or if you just want to challenge yourself, then I’ve yet to find a better way to test your courage than with Silent Hill 3.

I've reviewed each of the four main games separately already, so I'll just say this.

Shovel Knight Treasure Trove is the best game to come out of Kickstarter. It is the best retro pixel art game ever made. It is quite possibly the greatest 2D platformer of all time. Yacht Club Games have made one of the strongest debut titles from any gaming studio to ever exist.

Long live Shovel Knight.

I think I literally cannot cover this experience with all of the respect and nuances it deserves. Is less of a game and more of a retellling of the horrors a transgender woman had to go through. Is utterly devastating, and I found it very hard to even give it a star puntiation, 'cause this is not an experience I can quantify in the slightiest.

Sometimes I'm blind to the terrible experiences that other people had to suffer and continue to suffer, and its works like this, so beoutiful yet so painful, that open my eyes in a lot of ways.

''There was no dramatic music, nothing changed. I felt the exact way as I fel before.''

But in my parcial blindness, one thing I do understand is trauma, a feeling that eats from the inside out, a silent pain that makes you belive that there's no hope, but there is, and it's neccesary to make pain not silent, to make it heared to our loved ones... sometimes this can make them push them away, neglect us because of our hardships that we had no control over, but a lot will stay by our side, and we must do this to move forward, 'cause we have to live life, because it's worth living. There we will not be music as we all live this, no dramatic tracks, just a sensation of empiteness slowly feeling in, sometimes it will empty a little again, but in the end, it will heal.

I may have no say in this matter at all in the first place, since I'm not trans nor a sex worker and by that this horrible experience will never hit me as hard as someone that had the misfortune to live it, but I still do understand the pain, I understand the feeling of moving on.

I'm glad the creator did this. I'm glad that this little 30 minute retelling exists only as a way for her to cope. I hope she is ok.

Recommended by @ZapRowsdower (Thank you so much!)

We are still trying to find the key of eternal happiness when the answer has been right in front of us since 1993: using the shotgun in DOOM and one tapping every Imp you come across.

Today is one hell of a day for me huh? Not only it's the day I've FINALLY finished DOOM after multiple attempts at getting into it, not only this is my 150th review, which just saying it's fucking coo-coo crazy to me, can't believe I've written so many reviews on here in just a bit less than a year, but today also happens to be my birthday! So, today is the day, the stars align and my time it's right, it's time for me to shook the entire world with what I'm about to say, my opinion on DOOM will forever change the course of videogame discourse, so buckle up motherfuckers, 'cause this is it; Deemon's verdict on DOOM is..............









Yeah game good.


DOOM is, in a ton of ways, THE PC game, it's not only THE grand-father of the so called ''boomer-shooters'', but it's alsoTHE FPS; we now have the meme spawned by both the press and some players about how ''everything is Dark Souls'', but during the 90's, if your game was in first person, it was bound to get universally compared to DOOM in some capacity. It revolutionized the industry in such a way it's effects are still palpable to this very day, and it spawned a series that time and time again has caused discourse around it. Many people still put hundreds of hours replaying this game or trying many of the community made maps or levels, also known as WADs. It's a game that finds way to modernize itself while never truly changing, sporting level and enemy design that some of its contemporaries and even modern outputs could only dream of.

And here I am, 30 years later, 30 goddam years after it released, to talk about a game almost 10 years older than me. Out of all the games I've written about, this is the one that it feels comical to try to say something new, to add a new perspective to the conversation, because what’s left for me to say? What value can I contribute to the overall conversation around the legend of DOOM? The honest answer, being totally realistic, is… probably none, and while that may be discouraging… but that won’t stop me from trying to sing its praises and faults with my own voice!

And singing its praises I will, and to be honest, I lied. Game isn’t good. Game is FANTASTIC. DOOM’s approach to design is not to introduce as many elements as it can, to make very level distinct by making it have completely new stuff, but instead it focuses on only a bunch of elements and makes the absolute most out of them. You can count all the enemies with the two hands, including bosses, and yet, at no point the repetition settled in. Traversing this seemingly endless mazes, the variety on how challenges and encounters are designed is staggering; no two shoot-outs really feel the shame, and the seeing the non-stop moment that made Eternal so much fun for me being already present in 1993 made feel a certain feeling of happiness I really can’t describe. Kiting around enemies, dodging projectiles or running backwards from Pinkies while pumping bullets onto them produces that feeling of adrenaline so unique to DOOM. It isn’t scared to mess with you; new small rooms filles with enemies will open up after grabbing an item or activating a switch will open up out of nowhere, or maybe enemies will surprise you behind corners, right after open doors or hidden within darker areas, and it not only it never feels cheap or unfair, but also keeps you on your toes and makes it so certain sequences can be kinda scary and creepy, and make you doubt even the most innocent of empty rooms. But the greatness of the enemy placement only means something because of how fantastic the level themselves are: the three chapters have their own flare to own another and overarching elements, the first one for example is the one that introduces all the elements that will be explored upon in the next maps and focuses around shorter, more easy to navigate mazes, while the third one, Inferno, explores the limits of DOOM’s level structure and experiments upon that, one of the maps being a small sandbox.

Even beyond this chapter to chapter distinctions, no two levels feel the same; they all present an unique new perspective within the same ‘’find the correct color key’’ structure; they all feel like real places while at the same time being artificial enough to offer fun and weird- ass moments, and when you factor all the secrets, hidden weapons, power ups and the such, it compels you to look to each and every nook and cranny that the levels have to offer, and who knows, you may end up finding the wonderful BFG or a secret exit that might send you to an extra map. It’s all feels purposeful, natural and… kind of ethereal, the music manages work both as a perfect battle companion and as incredibly atmospheric background, like the grunts and sounds of demons heard across the walls. Those moments of quiet creepiness, like walking around the corpse filled rooms or seeing demons surrounding monuments to a greater superior being, blend with the non-stop weapon changing action and the 90’s dumb ‘’coolness’’ so well it still surprises me; a game that at the end of each chapter presents you with a overly stupid and cheesy ending text and basically makes you lose all your progress but still manages to be so fantastic and have so many more serious moments within gameplay, it’s a game unlike any other.

DOOM shys away from perfection: bosses feel unbalanced, like they Cyberdemon pretty much one-shoting you even at ‘’Hurt me plenty’’ difficulty, and even anti-climactic, like the final boss; some secrets feel too hidden and I think the backtracking, while mostly done excellently, in the final levels is too much and some of the exists should have been a bit clearer, and yet, despite this few gripes, I only walk away from this experience feeling a great sense of joy; DOOM is amazing, dumb in all the right ways and masterfully designed, everyone involved felt for this nothing but a great passion and work, and that it’s made clear through each pixel of this hellish lands. Such confidence emanates from this game that in a lot of ways, it feels like they already wanted to make a DOOM 2 in the future, and I only applaud them for it. Here I am, 30 years later, and having enjoyed this game as if it came out yesterday; Doom is indeed eternal, and even if some may not enjoy it, I think everyone should be compelled to at least try it. This is one of those games which I think everyone will feel completely differently towards, love it for different reasons, hate it for different reasons; maybe everything that has to be said about has already been told, but shouldn’t stop anyone from writing their own piece, from talking about it as if it was 1993 again. The magic of some games should forever relished, talked about, hell, some more flawed games also deserve discourse around them, both positive and negative. Because when everything is truly said, then there’s not much room for enjoyment or surprises, and those are the only things I felt during my playtime in the lunar bases and hell. What a Big Fucking Great Time…

And also, if it just so happens that today it’s also your birthday or it is at the time you are reading this… then happy birthday, and stay safe!

Ah yes, this brings back memories, back when I was a dumb kid that never even got past unlocking Mario and that genuinely thought that the 64 was because there were other 63 games before it... good times.

Nintendo is no stranger to remastering and porting their games, hell, the last generation and with the Wii U to Switch transition we probably got the most amount of ports we've ever gotten; but they are far more stingy when it comes to fully remaking their previous work. When it happens it’s this unexpected event, and with the exception of maybe the Pokémon franchise, most of their series have so little full-blown re-imaginations of older titles that most can be counted with only the fingers on one hand. So yeah, it’s a big deal when it happens if only to see how it ends up turning up, so I guess it’s kinda obvious to say that when they announced a remake of Super Motherfucking Mario the 64th, for their brand new handheld at the time and as a launch title, it was indeed a pretty huge deal. Even with the original being far from a favorite for me, I’ve said in numerous occasions that Super Mario 64 is an absolute monument of a game; while saying it alone revolutionized the 3D gaming industry is a bit of an exaggeration, it was for sure the most important game for the platforming genre, one that experimented with movement like few other games had done, and to this day it holds up surprisingly well and many play it rigorously to this very day, so it’s only natural to thing that a remake of it would still be talked about to this da- you know where I’m getting at don’t you?

Everytime the SM64 or even the 3D Mario sphere is in a conversation, 64DS is almost always left aside, and results into the almost meme worthy statement that is ‘’3D Land was the first 3D Mario in a handheld (64DS doesn’t count)!’’, like, poor game needs a hug, man… But to be completely honest, for the longest time I didn’t blame anybody if it just forgot about it; just the memories of those years back when I first played it were enough to put me in a bad mood: constant falls, terrible feeling controls, almost headache inducing camera, this was not just a mere case of me sucking at games yet again, this time… this time the game was ass. And so, I really dreaded returning to it, but it was just a matter of time; it is the only remaining 3D Mario game that I had yet to beat, and with the original game behind me, it was time to, yet again, finish what I started… and right off the bat, I think by far the best compliment I give this game is that it doesn’t suck even half of what I expected.

64DS is as much a original game as it is a remake of the original Super Mario 64, and right off the bat I can say it’s a pretty faithful remake; it doesn’t have as many changes as it does additions, and so practically all the levels were completely untouched, with only some sections to accommodate new missions within the levels or simply to make platforming not such a chore as it could be in the original game, like some changes in Whomp Fortress or a ground floor being added to Tick Tock Clock, which is like encountering an oasis admist the desert. Aside from those minor alterations, all of the World Portraits and Peach’s Castle are a carbon copy of their N64 counterparts, and that translates into all the positives I said about them mostly hold up: inspired ‘’toy box’’ design, a wonderful main hub area, fantastic ambience and even pretty funny dialogue, super creative missions, and pretty simple but fun boss fights; these latter two being even greater than before thanks to the new additions made in the remake. A whooping 30 new stars were added to the game, that, plus THREE brand new characters (this game is in fact the first instance of Luigi being playable in a 3D Platformer, so it gets points on that alone), prompted the addition of new small phases and even bosses, and these new content is honestly fantastic! The new mini levels are super fun obstacle courses, and fighting King Goomba and King Boo was a really unexpected surprise, but a welcomed one that references other parts of the series I really wasn’t expecting. So yeah, this game does have a ton of stuff that is pretty good, well that’s fantastic! Maybe this was hidden gem all alon- Yeah I should stop doing this bit, but anyway, the game still blows in many, MANY areas.

First, let’s address the elephant in the room, and no, not that one; the controls. Look, 64 DS was born as a way to showcase what the DS could achieve graphically first, there’s no denying that, but saying that the team simply slapped the game into the system without consideration is also a gross misjudgment. There tried, like, REALLY tried, they made the camera far more responsive and useful than it ever was in the original, they added the whole touch screen support thing to give the 360 movement, there really was attempt, but that’s what it was, an attempt. The D-Pad and the eight directions it can provide just don’t adapt to the complex and 3-Dimensional environments of Super Mario 64, they make the once so fluid action of just moving and jumping so much complicated and unreliable, and coupled with the fact that every action and button feels so cramped considering this a fairly complex game, it results in never truly feeling like you are in total control of ANY of the characters, and even if some sections were changed or made easier to accommodate that, that’s the equivalent of shooting the game with a shotgun and putting a band aid over the wound; that’s just trying to make less painful something that it didn’t have to happen in the first place. Controls are not the only thing that is problematic tho, the squad is here to also be kinda mid! I… do not really understand why there are more characters here, like, the idea IS really cool, but considering that the original game only had Mario to begin with and how it’s implemented, it’s once again a case of solving a problem that wasn’t there on thee first place. The Power-Ups are now grouped together in the singular Flower-Power-Up, which has an different effect on each different character and that, plus the fact that stars are made exclusive to character’s specific capabilities, like Wario’s super strength or Mario’s wall jumping, it does the total opposite of stream lining, it complicates once so simple and fun missions and turns them into a slog that in some cases you have to wait to even beat! Now granted, the fact that there are the hats that let you turn into another character does prevent this from becoming a DK64 situation, but it still can be a pain to get to were the hats are before getting the start itself, and if it just so happens that the start requires Yoshi, the you gotta exit the level and change into him, and oh, what’s that, there are black bricks outside Peach’s Castle? Welp, time to change into Wario! Oh? There are bars you cannot get through? Well, you better change into Luigi to grab the invisibility power-up you scoundrel! And would you look at that, you need to wall jump in this specific area! Time to change into Mario and get over it! Oh wow! Black bricks! Time to head back and- you get the aggravating picture…

And you know, this wouldn’t be half a problem if at least playing as all the characters felt unique and fun in distinct ways, and yes, in a way they do, so you’d think tha- WELL THINK AGAIN BUCKO. Yoshi feels fine enough, the flutter jump is pretty useful but overall he’s severely limited compared to the rest of the cast; Mario is as he was in the original, only worse because of how everyone controls now, and actions before super cool are now borderline impossible; Wario is a gross parody of its own character, it makes sense for him to be the strong one that has the shortest jump, but for him to be so goddam slow and barely acrobatic make him a slog to control, especially when swimming, and just giving him a couple of bonuses instead of a moves like the shoulder-bash and the dash so to make him faster in exchange of being harder to control and making him similar to his Wario Land self is a huge missed opportunity; and then there’s Luigi who is… who is just fucking insane. His backflip makes many of the challenges completely inconsequential, that and other abilities like his run and floaty jump make him by far the best character to play as and makes the rest completely obsolete. Is this terrible balancing and turns the game into essentially Super Luigi 64 but not in a fun or charming way? Absolutely! Do I found this hilarious as hell and love that is Luigi the one that’s so broken? Absolutely!

But the worst part, even if it’s not the worst thing with the game itself, it’s how hellbent it is to just refuse to make changes to the base game. As I said, there are some very minor changes to the levels and stars turned into character specific missions, but that’s it. All the problems I has with the original game are still present here, mainly having to repeat entire sections for different missions, something that was not only left unchanged, but it even plagues the new levels as well… and in spite all of that… it’s still fun.

How. How does the plumber fucking do it. Super Mario 64 DS is by far my least favorite 3D Mario, is the one plagued with the most design flaws, and doesn’t quite reach the same highs as other games in this particular sub series… but it was still fun. It has bad stuff, but nothing I’ve said I would qualify it as terrible; there is still a fantastic game here, with flaws on top of it as well as new good stuff. As absurd as it sounds, maybe it’s a game that with a true remake it could be even greater that the game it remade in the first place, but right now it has too much stuff holding it back. Nevertheless, it’s a great time, and it’s attempt that does succeed in a bunch of things, and for that only it deserves my outmost respect.

Thank you so much for playing my game…

The game being as flabbergasted at the fact 18-Volt is a nine year old as much as I was probably one of the most hilarious part of a game that quite literally made me smile and laugh every single moment I was playing it.

When making a game which its main premise is that it re-uses content from past entries, developers are faced when simple yet ever-present question: ''How in the all living hell do we make this worth it?''. Nostalgia and getting to re-experience past games or parts of them in brand new systems can be cool incentives, but I'd be hard-pressed to say they are strong ones; the content by itself it's nothing new, so why would we, as players, be interested on not only re-experiencing content that we have already played, but also pay for it?... Well, turns out WarioWare Gold found an answer, a trick...


The trick of haVING JIMMY T. ON THE GAME WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LET'S-A FUCKING GOO, GETTIN' FIT AND FUNKY BABY!

The decision of playing the rest of the series beforehand was one of the best I could have ever made, because what would still be a fantastic game into an even more impressive one; even if a majority of WarioWare Gold is stuff we have already seen, it manages to make it feel new thanks to a collection of elements that span the entirety of the series plus a new barrage of brand-new content. Gold is the best celebration the series could have ever hoped for: 316 micro-games are nothing scoff at, overpassing even Twisted and its almost 230 fast paced minigames, but as I said before, most of these are micro-games already seen in previous entries, including twisted, so what makes this number shouldn't be so special... but then you see the selection, and then realize this is pure FIRE. Because there was so much to choose from, they picked the best and ONLY the best minigames on the entire series; in the past, with maybe the exception of Twisted there were a few amount of stinkers that were clearly lacking in quality compared to others, and even tho they only lasted a few seconds, in a game so fast paced as WarioWare that still leaves a huge impression. Not anymore: every single one if the crème de la crème, even the new ones, and so everyone may not be here, but that doesn't matter 'cause the best sure are. It even has a Rhythm Heaven minigame thrown in there, you can't make this up! That isn't even going into the Challenges, where we find the expected but always welcomed micro-game towers, plus some new stuff like the fantastic Wario Interrupts, but most of all, the return of Wario Watch and Sneaky Gamer, the former my favorite mode in ANY of the previous games and the latter being the best part of Game & Wario, and after playing, I completely understand why. Now that I think about it, the only games that might not get any kind of representation are Snapped and D.I.Y, which makes sense, one is a departure from the series focused on creating the games, and the other one is... well, is WarioWare Snapped. The rest tho? All gameplay styles come back, even the microphone, and the one game you expect to not see, Smooth Moves actually has a ton of representation, with a couple of minigames being adapted to be controlled in the twisted section; if you think about a thing of the series which there is a way it could be implemented here, then it is implemented here, and that effort for consistency is commendable.

Now, I know I said at the beginning that Gold was more than a simple collection… to then proceed to list things that are returning, but as I also said, is how it manages that returning stuff plus the never seen content what makes it so special, and regarding that new content… Am I the only one that loves how this game handles humor? Like, I adored how past games handled story and humor: as the gameplay itself, it’s pure chaos, incredibly light of dialogue and centered around the bat-shit insanity that plagues everyone. Gold takes a different approach, not only having a pretty more involved story, but actual dialogue, like, REALLY good dialogue; the jokes and on point, and even when some cut-scenes are longer than in previous games, it truly doesn’t feel like it like it did in Touched; it’s still fast-paced and entertaining, only now with sublime voiceovers (in fact the Spanish translation and dubbing is also pretty phenomenal) and mini-stories that are as crazy as ever, only now they connect to the Wario and Lulu cinematics, which, I know that Wario is loved by everyone, including me, but here, his mannerism, his voice-over, his interactions with Lulu and the cast, the way he simply IS, this is by far the best iteration of the character in not only the WarioWare series, but in the entirety of the Mario series as a whole, I love this greedy bastard to death and love him to see him be as dastardly as much to see him fail, they just nailed him here. And that sentiment goes for everyone else, character shine like never before and whereas in the past I only really care about Jimmy T. and maybe Orbulon, I now adore this group of weirdos in a way I didn’t really see coming, like, this game made me like Fronk and fucking Joe, how do you even accomplish that?! This, with the more non linear game you can tackle the different leagues and how Diamond City is shown, makes it one of the most different WarioWare games by far, but every change introduced makes sense and it’s welcomed, and other new additions, like the missions and the store, on top of ALL the other stuff, like small side content like the extra minigames (which includes a Pyoro one and I for one I’m the happiest person on earth right now) and the ability to dub the cutscenes… yeah, this might just be the biggest package in the entirety of the series while also being the most fun by a landslide.

I knew I was gonna have fun, but MAN did this game make me happy; it made me feel rewarded for investing my time into this already amazing series, a love letter that even if released 1 year after the switch launched and doesn’t have a 3D option, I kind of really like that it’s on the 3DS? It still feels right a home, and hey, having two screens makes it possible to play Sneaky Gamer, so on that alone makes it worth it.

To me, Gold is the single best experience in the franchise, Twisted is to this day the best out the full-blown original games, but Gold fills me with such joy, is so fun, so consistently fucking amazing in almost every way, that I cannot for the life of me say it’s not my preferred game. I’m so glad I got to play this series in its entirety, and I’m so happy this is the send-off, or at least until Move It! releases, but until then, we found Wario peak…


…and you know, I could finish this review off with yet another Wario-related joke, but you know what? Nah, I’m good. For once, let the final note be how unironically great Wario is, and how this silly greedy garlic enjoyer, his crew and his dumb ass minigames can be so fantastic… holy hell, what a great franchise…