This is yet another Kirby game I had yet to play prior to this Kirbyathon. I was honestly feeling a 6 most of the time I was playing, and was thinking this is the best Kirby spin-off thus far (after Dream Course). Then the endgame happened.

Let's start with the positives first though. This is basically Kirby breakout and it's generally pretty fun. You break blocks by bouncing Kirby against the paddles, typical breakout basically. The twist here, besides being Kirby themed ofc, is 4 of Kirby's staple copy abilities are in the game and used as power-ups. Stone let's you destroy anything directly below you, burn anything directly above you, needle stops you in place briefly and let's you cling back onto a bumper and aim again and spark bounces you sporadically destroying any block in your path more effectively. This was probably the coolest part of the game. Like Dream Course, the copy abilities are implemented super well into the actual gameplay.

Each level also has a boss at the end, like Pinball Land, but unlike that game I was actually able to beat (almost) all of them this time around. They can be pretty fun but watch out you don't get thrown into the spikes. Luckily in the stage prior to the boss, you can get a sneak-peak at what the boss will be as well as the opportunity to get safety blocks that cover the spikes in the boss stage.

The OST was alright, I saw some reviews saying it was really good but I can't say any of the songs stood out imo.

Now for the endgame, the later stages can be quite annoying with their block placement and the use of 4 bumpers around the screen. The 10th stage, I even decided to save state past that first section cuz it was just so obnoxious. The hit detection on the bumpers can be wonky, which I can't discredit the game too much since it's still a Gameboy game, however it still led to some frustration in the endgame. That plus you can't even play the final level and get the true ending without getting a certain score threshold in each stage. I did this only once in stage 9, and it was by complete accident. I tried to beat the required score a couple of times in stage 1, but I think there's also a secret time requirement (from one of the reviews I read on here) and with how random the game can be with being able to hit blocks in time, yeah no thanks. I know they did this, so it would make you replay the game a bunch, however it's still a bummer.

Overall, it's a decent little game however the true ending being locked to a somewhat frustrating 100% and the endgame levels being kinda frustrating brings it down a bit. It's a fun little time waster, and definitely better than Pinball Land. And yeah, this is yet another game I technically wasn't able to beat due to the 100% requirement. At least I beat every other stage in the game otherwise.

It isn't Rewind Time...?

Mega Man 2 felt a lot better to play than the original game, but it also came with its own set of glaring issues. The new stages look pretty (for NES standards) and the toned down difficulty compared to MM1 definitely helped my enjoyment too, as I no longer had to rely on the Legacy Collection's rewind feature as much to progress through the game at a normal pace. However this is still a Mega Man game at its core, which means you can't just have a good time like that.

In the case of Mega Man 2, my main complaints come from two stages, two bosses and the insane amount of flashing lights thrown into your face whenever you beat a boss. Heat Man's stage revolves around a gimmick forcing you to guess where an invisible block will pop up next, causing you to proceed with trial and error until you eventually manage to land on such a block, just to repeat it over and over. Not a problem with the rewind feature as you can just "know" where the next block will pop up, but this was NOT the case for the players in 1989. A pretty frustrating trial-and-error experience in theory, even if it didn't affect me badly because of my ability to rewind. Next stage complaint, Quick Man's stage has a cool concept with the level closing in on you over time, so you're supposed to rush through the level. While it does sound cool at first, Capcom's vision for this idea were insta-kill lasers, so now instead of shifting the focus on the speed of the level, it's now all about how precise you're about to control through these lasers (and the timing for some of these falls are really relentless).

Okay, so these two stages have some trial-and-error, but did you know there are also actual roadblocks in Mega Man 2 if you don't meet certain conditions? I'm talking about the Stage 4 boss of Wily's Castle and the final phase of Wily himself. The boss on Stage 4 is a glorified puzzle, you need to use the Crash Bombs at specific locations in order to take down multiple turrets in the boss room. The thing is, if your Crash meter isn't full enough, you won't be able to beat this fight - every other weapon gets deflected from the turrets and some are guarded by walls. As for Wily in his final phase, for some reason he's completely immune to all weapons except Bubble Man's bubbles. Same issue as with the Stage 4 boss, if your meter is empty you can't win the fight. I feel really bad for everyone who played this back then, got to the final boss and couldn't beat him because of this laughable restriction.

Nonetheless I did have a somewhat good time with Mega Man 2, as most levels are big improvements over the ones in MM1 in terms of gameplay and design, but the aforementioned issues make it hard for me to give this game a higher score. Atleast I have heard many good things about Mega Man 3, so I'm looking forward to playing that one in the upcoming days!

Yeah I can’t bring myself to finish this one.

Really, really loved the original Legend of Zelda when I played it a few years ago but this one doesn’t do anything for me. It took a few hours and one palace before I started getting into the groove of things, but it’s just so punishing and unforgiving that it really started to drag.

Kudos to anyone that can/has beat this without save states. I accepted death gracefully for a while but honestly the death mountain maze broke me. It’s like the least fun version of the lost woods maze ever conceived, the trial and error made all the more frustrating by the ridiculous combat.

For some reason, each enemy feels as though they’re conveniently one or two pixels out of Link’s reach – but Link is, somehow, ALWAYS one or two pixels within an enemy’s reach. No matter how many times I pushed forward it never felt like I could consistently hit some enemies. Couple that with the overwhelming amount of enemies on screen at any given time, and it becomes impossible to prioritize or react to enemy attacks unless you’re playing in the most methodical, boring way possible, or cheesing hardcore.

There’s like ten other reviews that put this into better words than I could.

I don’t think I’m coming back to this unfortunately. Genuinely unpleasant experience.

Challenging but mostly fair, to a point. I did not use savestates (until Ice Man’s stage, kept running into a glitch where I’d clip through the flying guys you’re supposed to jump on).

Almost gave up on Yellow Devil until I learned the pause exploit, but then I have to do a boss rush too??? Sorry man. I’m throwing in the towel.

I was enjoying myself most of the time, too! There were some fun levels and boss fights to learn, but then some enemies like Electric Man and Ice Man just do Fuck You damage for no reason. Some levels have Fuck You death traps for ever. Instadeath ad infinitum.

Hate to drop a game this close to the finish line but I’m washed. I’ve got neither the patience nor the stamina to push through this. Sorry gamers

“THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES TO YOUR CRIMES AGAINST DRACULA…”

Honestly I don’t know what to say about this one. I don’t know how I’d give it a score.

At its best, this is like the side-scrolling sections in Zelda 2 but not nearly as mean, and it usually only sends you back a few screens if you die; at its worst, it’s trial-and-error, projectile spam, and a good amount of RNG.

The first half of this game is classic NES stuff. I’d recommend playing Castlevania for the first nine stages alone. It gets tricky starting on Stage 10 but nothing impossible. Stages 13 and onward are painful.

For the record, and I feel the need to disclose this whenever I’m playing a game on anything besides its original hardware, I did not use save states until Stages 13-15 specifically because the stage is very long, and the boss is very hard.

The final stages up to Dracula are difficult, but short. The game is also lenient enough to give you a checkpoint before Dracula that persists even if you Game Over. This was a huge relief.

Dracula’s boss fight feels like an interesting microcosm of the entire game. On one hand, it’s not particularly hard once players understand what they’re doing and what’s expected of them. It’s the fundamentals: positioning, timing, reflexes, etc. On the other hand, there’s some stuff in here that feels half-baked and is a lot more annoying than challenging.

Stuff like, for example, how Dracula will teleport on top of the player, giving them half a second to react before taking damage; or how you can only dodge Dracula’s second phase when he does a high jump, but during my numerous attempts, I couldn’t get him to activate this move consistently. The move seemed to occur at random.

I say, “seemed to occur at random,” because I don’t really understand if there is a random element to this fight, or if there’s actually some method to get him to do the high jump consistently. The easiest strategy for me personally was to stay close to him in his second phase, and whip him in the face when he started to shoot fireballs. I could hopefully hit all three fireballs at once, but otherwise I would usually be able to jump over the fireballs consistently.

So, it’s good that I could block that one attack consistently, more or less. But sometimes Dracula would just corner me and not do the high jump, and I’d end up taking – what felt like, to me – unavoidable damage. If he alternated between high jumps and low jumps, maybe that would’ve been easier to discern and plan around. As it stands, it just seemed like I kept loading a save state and hoping that he would Just Do The High Jump This Time.

I’m not really sure. It’s one of those things where I’m not sure if it’s a skill issue on my part, or the game being genuinely obtuse, or an issue with emulation or something.

I still really enjoyed my time with Castlevania and I’d like to play through it again at some point, but I am beginning to notice a trend that most NES games really ramp up difficulty-wise to a frustrating degree towards their conclusions. Obviously I believe games should have a difficulty curve but some of this feels far too demanding of most players. Also Castlevania isn’t the worst offender by a long shot.

There was a trend throughout most of the 2010s to call certain games “The Dark Souls of X” where X would be a series, or a genre, or a subcategory of some sort. Although it might feel like a cliché now, I kinda understand why reviewers flocked to using the expression. It captures the spirit of games that aren’t particularly concerned with concessions in the player’s favor, offering little in terms of accessibility or alternative difficulty settings. There is one experience. You either meet it on its own terms, or you don’t advance.

I’ll say this: the final level didn’t sap my enthusiasm for the title in such the same way as Mega Man, and for that I think it’s at least pretty good. You should probably play Castlevania at least once before you die!

Affectionately referred to as the "Sonic's ass game" during development, Crash Bandicoot was not only inspired by the blue blur, but followed a similar trajectory. The first three Crash Bandicoot titles are great but were followed by a slew of sequels that progressively lost sight of what made them work, sullying Crash's legacy until a follow-up faithful to the mechanics and style of the original games restored a healthy amount of good will. Unfortunately, we won't get a Crash Bandicoot 5 from Toys for Bob, just like we probably won't get a Sonic Mania 2 with Headcannon involved, assuming either of those games are ever on the table to begin with.

Once again, I'm straying away from the point of the review before it even begins, but all this preamble is to say that I both love the original Crash games and lament what the series became. I also want to keep the comparison to Sonic going just a bit more, as I think I feel very similarly about Crash Bandicoot as I do about the first Sonic the Hedgehog.

They're competent platformers, both have some really excellent and precise platforming challenges sprinkled throughout, and they also make many, many mistakes. In Sonic's case, its most egregious sin was requiring the player to slow down too much to engage in platforming which resulted in the flow of the game being constantly interrupted, in addition to having traps and enemies placed in ways that further disrupted the rhythm. Crash Bandicoot's greatest sins were borne from the fine folks at Naughty Dog confusing challenging design with abject cruelty. Road to Nowhere is more easily completed by jumping onto the very narrow ropes on the side of the bridge and just running to the end than it is to engage with any part of its intended design, and that is nothing if not a microcosmic look at how Crash is tuned. This is only amplified if you commit to getting the true ending. Collecting the gems is in no way fun. It's an exercise in patience, and your reward for seeing it through is barely any different than if you just beat the game like normal. Again, just like Sonic (I'm being hyperbolic, it's much worse.)

I'm perhaps more willing to look past Crash's faults because I'm so sucked in by its vibes, which I would describe as exuding a certain sense of incompleteness. I'm not implying that the game is unfinished, of course, but compare it directly to its two Playstation sequels and you'll probably get a better idea of what I mean. Those games feel robust, designed with a clear understanding of what Crash is mechanically, narratively, and aesthetically. Crash Bandicoot contrasts that self-assured design with a distinct feeling of uncertainty, which is felt in how the game just kinda drops you in without much context, how far between story beats are, the way certain level gimmicks and ideas just don't really work out, and level design that at times feels like it was made by someone still learning their craft. In a lot of ways it feels to me like playing a demo. Like, here's your vertical slice, one small part of a greater whole that you lack context for. There's a mood to that and playing Crash Bandicoot to me has always felt like playing a really long demo.

This is my version of people talking about Wet Dry World's "negative emotional aura." It's just the crazed ramblings of someone who has thought too damn much about a video game from 1996.

I would like to end this review now.

Maybe you just need to be blazed out of your mind, but level 2 & 3 were INSANE to me. So much trial and error that is so fucking fun to figure out, and so satisfying to finally complete with the flashing end game screen. An insane game for the Atari 2600, honestly.

Does everything right that the Atari is supposed to: making sure rooms are different colors so you don’t get lost (unless you’re a dumb bitch who had a tv that went in and out of color as a kid aka me), an easy starting level to get you used to the controls only to continuously get ramped up throughout the levels, new items to learn and use each level, added challenges such as the dark cave (God, even knowing that area in level 2 is a cave cause of the imagination the Atari makes you use lmao) and the bridge, the bats annoying the shit out of you by stealing anything it can touch only to realize you can trick it to grab the dragon away from you, etc etc etc.

Absolutely insane home console game for the time, and still able to tell a (simple) story when your character is a literal block. Maybe something that I’m gonna be the odd one out on for growing up with it on my only video game system until I was 5 (while you cool kids has PS2s I had little miss Atari 2600 as my best friend in the very early 2000s 😭), but it still always holds a special place in my heart.