Mechanically simplistic but quite solid, which is to be expected from a Konami brawler in 1991 - athough by that same token, it actually doesn't look or sound as great as you might assume from them. It maintains some of the more madcap, cartoony aspects from the original (basically that game's only defining feature) while bringing everything else more or less up to FINAL FIGHT code. But great news, the mincing, humping, and licking leather daddy enemies are back! And this time if you're not close enough to them, they'll just dry hump a lamppost to satisfy themselves! (Unsurprisingly, they were scrubbed from the western release, as were the humping dogs - oh yeah, don't worry, they're back too.) The rest of the enemies have ... less personality. Besides the bosses, who get big splash screens introducing them and some dialogue, which is more than most contemporaries are bothering with at this stage. Again, this is Konami, so, maybe to be expected to some degree. Although there are four of them, the playable characters are impressively boring. In the opening cutscene, they're all quickly introduced along with the lady good guy, and they're all in a group shot together, so you think, oh cool, I get to play as the chick ... and then she fades out of the picture and some text comes up saying she got kidnapped ... lol. Oh well. Anyway, the only cool one is the blatant Hulk Hogan stand-in for the obvious reasons - he is balding, has a blond mullet, and can do elbow drops on downed enemies.

That's about it for notable stuff. After you beat the last boss, there's a little suprise boss rush where you have to take them on two at a time, but this actually doesn't feel too cheap or bad really because the game is otherwise quite short and the bosses are easy, so it's more of a welcome challenge. All around, not a bad time, but still not as good as you would hope from Konami doing their own OC instead of licensed work.

As a brawler - a little cool, a little weird, a little boring. The art and music are really lush and quite good, although both repetitve and odd in their own ways. The character designs are somewhat original - our mostly-medieval warrior heroes are battling some kind of clockwork alien race? - but the designs (especially the bosses) are overused and get stale. Combat is boring as hell - one-button, single-attack, no combo stuff. Big yawn. And the two characters aren't even any different moves-wise, even though one is roughly two times larger than the other (at first you think it's the standard beat-'em-up formulation of Normal Guy and Big Guy, but then the Big Guy is roughly the same size as all the enemies, so it makes it seem like the normal guy is just some kind of silly little hobbit).

Worth a look for the vibrant pixel art and the soundtrack, but doesn't really do anything too interesting to back it up.

Off-kilter in many minor ways but also kind of a gnarly good time.

Number one, this has to be one of the easiest arcade beat 'em ups ever in that there's literally nothing stopping you from just running full speed past all the enemies straight to the end of the level, lol. Can't do it on the (quite good, settings-justified) vehicle/auto-scrolling areas, but still.

Graphics are very detailed and well-drawn but are overall kind of static and the backgrounds are too washed out, giving an odd feel. Likewise the music is kind of strange, with sparse instrumentation, and at times legitimately ... mellow? Which weirdly does work occasionally, but still, interesting choice. Also I don't know if I was playing a weird version or what, but there was an absolute eff-ton of spoken German dialogue throughout the entire game? Like basically nonstop? I don't ... I don't know, man.

For the fighting, most of your moves are context-sensitive rather than button combos, which I like less, but you can still just mash your way to victory and have fun doing it, so I didn't mind at all. The other two characters have some variety, but come on, you're playing as frickin Rastan. He has a sword that's like seven feet long, get real.

No luminary of the genre but it's an easy, good time with a bit of it's own personality. For a brawler that's a thumbs up.

I have now tried on three separate occasions over the years to get through this and I just can't do it. There's nothing really bad about it (besides excessive and somewhat poorly designed completionist-type stuff) but it's so easy and slow it just puts me right to sleep. Also, the charming yarn aesthetic is kind of blown by them showing the seams, if you will, with the map screen and in-engine cutscenes exposing rough edges and the low poly count, seemingly from angles you weren't meant to see the models from. KIRBY'S EPIC YARN did it's story and menus in ways that gracefully sidestepped this, maintaining the one perspective. That's just one of quite a few ways in which this game does not compare favorably to its spiritual predecessor. Maybe a kid would be super into this, especially two-player, but I dunno. Not doing much for me.

Ugh, where to begin. I really didn't like it! Not quite as much as I didn't like the first one, but that's saying next to nothing.

- Starting with the biggie - the story. Hey, check this out - it's an incredibly simple plot (with basic ass themes) told in the most deliberately abstruse way possible to pad it out, and which ends with no resolution whatsoever except for vague DLC/sequel bait. Quick, which Remedy game from the last fifteen years did I just describe? This house style of theirs REALLY bothers me at this point. Here, let me sum up the entire plot of this one for you:

>>Alan Wake, still trapped in a nightmare dimension following the end of the first game, has been replaced in the real world by an evil doppleganger who wants to destroy reality with a magical artifact. In an attempt to stop him, Alan makes contact with psychic FBI agent Saga Anderson and sets her on the double's trail so that she can stop him, but in so doing endangers Saga's family.<<

That's fucking it. But those two sentences are stretched out over twenty-five hours and buried under layer after layer after layer of pointless, self-indulgent obfuscation and repetition that exists to make it seem like there is a lot more going on. I find it so tiresome. And man, oh man, does this game feel long.

- Everything that's initially impressive about this game is really just fluff. Tons of cool metatextual bits and visually awesome effects and FMV and mixed media stuff (in Alan's story, especially) that is, on the surface, quite engaging - but it's not accomplishing anything! It's not saying anything new! It's not moving ANYTHING forward. It's JUST masturbation - grating even if you try to overlook how much writer Sam Lake himself is right there in the middle of it, in person. You can't just be weird and outre over and over just for the sake of it, it has to dooooooo somethinggggggg

- The combat is so bad it's baffling. Just don't have it if you can't even reach the standards of the (terrible) first game. (Seriously, just cut it! This thing is like 75% puzzle-adventure game/walking sim anyway. Just go all the way!) Nothing is balanced right, your character moves like they're underwater, all enemies are laughably spongey, you can get comboed to death in seconds with a full health bar, the dodge is SOMEHOW WORSE, and to top it off the autosave is allllllll over the place in this dumb game, so if you die (and you will) be prepared to pick up a bunch of shit over again. You can and indeed should run from most combat.

- This ostensible horror series has bravely graduated from having -literally no scares- to having ... jump scares! Tons of them! To the point where the characters voice their displeasure! Awesome.

- The woman playing Saga is flat and kinda bad I didn't buy her at all. Accent slipping all over the place, dead-eyed look the entire game (maybe a quirk of performance capture), weird line misreads. Just, nope. She doesn't have it. No juice.

- For the entire game, the emotional stakes of our player characters hinge upon threats against two of their loved ones who are people that we literally never see in person. I think you call that good storytelling.

- I like the conceit that our hero Alan is ultimately just a shitty writer and a self-centered asshole who constantly wrecks everything - that's great in theory - but that doesn't make LITERALLY RUNNING AROUND INSIDE HIS HEAD FOR TEN HOURS all that compelling

- Loads of bugs and glitches, ranging from distracting to annoying to gamebreaking. Trophies fucked up, items permanently lost, combat clipping into cutscenes leading to fail states during a chapter break, broken triggers, softlocks, fuckin seriously, you name it. Glad I paid full price for this digital-only game.

- Boy they sure have a lot of Finnish people and love their Finnish culture in this Pacific Northwest small town huh

Anyway, Remedy continues to frustrate the shit out of me. (I did enjoy CONTROL, but that was mostly for the excellent gameplay. It shares many of these same hallmark problems.) I really struggled with whether or not I was even gonna play this game after my painful run back through the remaster. And I'll tell you what, as of now I don't think you could pay me to play a sequel to this. These guys have so much potential and are thinking way outside of the box presentation-wise in ways that are really exciting. But they just cannot for the motherfucking life of them tell an actual story. I feel like someone much smarter than me could write about 50 pages on how they continually break every rule in the book, starting with not even coming close to having any kind of ending. Maybe after the astroturfed Sponsored by The Game Awards fellation period for this ends, someone will tackle it in earnest.

Meanwhile, it's Remedy who's still trapped in the REAL "Dark Place" ... lodged irretreivably up their own ass.

It's fine. This was my first real experience with the chill 'normal thing simulator' genre, so maybe my expectations just weren't calibrated correctly, but it was just a bit slower than I wanted it to be with regard to level progression and upgrades and whatever. I know that killing time is essentially the point, but I did occasionally slip over the line from relaxed into bored territory. Still, it's basically the perfect podcast game and has a cute little unobtrusive story and lots of little quirks to enjoy.

First of all, don't get too excited by the title - it's just a cynical attempt to cash in on '90s fads. Not a whole lot of ninjutsu going on here, is what I'm saying. Just a dumb clown punching and kicking stuff like normal. This seems to be one of the earliest US-made brawlers, so the art feels different from its contemporaries - kind of an EARTHWORM JIM or Ren & Stimpy type vibe. It does have at least a little personality (which is more than you can say for many) but the animation is so herky jerky that the look suffers nonetheless. And the sparse frames means it plays like crap, too, of course. If it were smoother, the passable mechanics might have felt okay, but as is it just feels pretty bad to play. At least it's short.

Notable for featuring one of the most confusing map screens of all time which is not helped by the fact that the game lazily repeats its levels over and over. There are three stages called "Streets" ffs.

So, what exactly is the "wonder" of the title? Put plainly, it's one unusual, psychedelic bonus area per stage, usually where you are empowered or altered in ways that no Mario title has ever tried before. Is that addition enough to justify the game, and set it apart from the NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. series? Sure! I was compelled to play every new stage for more than just completion - I was genuinely interested to see what was next. Can't always say that for these latter-day 2D Mario games. Is it challenging? No, absolutely not. Aside from the unbelievably cheap and pointless bonus levels you get for 100%ing the game, nothing here is going to give anyone any trouble, even if you're a completionist. But does that matter? Not for what the game is going for. It wants you to feel wonder, and that doesn't require any meaningful challenge, really.

So, it's fun! And it's gorgeous. And the platforming is as tight as ever - so it's good! But is absolutely anything in this game going to stick in your mind for even as little as a week after you beat it and put it on a shelf? Probably not.

The whole coins thing in this game is interesting because you couldn't really pull it off with any other series and have it be this effective. For so long, Mario coins meant exactly one thing to us and were precious in a very specific way and doled out and withheld from us in a very specific way. This exploits those multiple decades of history in kind of a profound psychological trick, just showering you with them in a way that, upon starting the game, if you have any experience with the series at all let alone a long and deep connection, is going to give you an undeniable dopamine dump and shoot lightning through your most base lizard gaming brain like nothing else. And the excess extends to everything - NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII was already insanely generous with powerups (seriously, you were never more than a screen away from at least a Fire Flower in that shit) but they crank it up even further here, and for what I believe is the first time in the series, the lives counter goes up to three digits. And boy, you're gonna need that extra zero on there, because besides getting multiple hundreds of coins per level now and green mushrooms flying every which way, this game is just absurdly easy. Comparing it to its two immediate (extremely, extremely mechanically and structurally similar) predecessors, this feels like the same game on some kind of baby mode. Levels are flat out designed in a much more forgiving way, and the focus is squarely upon arranging fun and surprising ways to earn more and more coins rather than any kind of meaningful platforming challenge. I went through multiple worlds in a row - WORLDS, not levels - without losing a single life. Without even getting to small Mario status!

All of that together certainly does amount to a new vibe for the series. Levels feel less like gauntlets and more like playgrounds, or silly high score events. It's almost like some kind of joyful celebration of the series, a game-long bonus round, a veritable Mario heaven. But really, that high only lasts for a little bit. At some point the novelty wears off, and it isn't replaced with anything else, leaving you playing a very, very easy carbon copy of the first one where you wade through a neverending sea of coins, caring less and less every level about about how many you're getting. You plow through areas barely even noticing the themes behind the waves of gold, get to world bosses so simple you might think they're a first phase or just a joke or something, and then the series' second consecutive auto-scroller final boss, and then that's it. There's no way you're as pumped by the end of this thing as you were when it started.

Credit where it's due - this is more "New" in some respects than the other ones, but cashing in (har har) on our hardcoded expectations of video gaming's most ubiquitous item, while clever, isn't really a compelling basis for a whole game, let alone one that we have otherwise already played more challenging and better versions of.

Is the multiplayer enough to excuse how safe this game is? It was certainly a big deal, and justifiedly so - it is great and terrible in a system-defining way. But damn if this isn't just dull as hell, otherwise. And it shouldn't be! The control and platforming mechanics are probably the best the series has ever been, and even the motion control gimmicks aren't half bad. That little waggle air spin that gets you more distance on a jump - divine. But I would give absolutely anything for more interesting levels, characters, map layout, secrets, music, art, a final boss that's not terrible ... anything. Just so bland. Like eating a perfectly-made gourmet rice cake.

It's so hard to know how to rate this, because it's mechanically perfect and technically does do stuff the series hasn't ever before. But boy does it not feel like it.

A fair bit better than I've probably been giving it credit for all these years. It's still aggressively bland from an aesthetic standpoint - just nothing interesting going on at all - but mechanically and as far as level and overall game design go, it's quite strong.

Upon starting it (especially if coming right off of previous Mario games, as I just have) the controls feel very slow and slippery, which is, of course, a necessity given the smaller view of the handheld and how much of the screen Mario now takes up. But if you stick with if for just a little while, you can quickly get dialed in and discover some of Mario's exciting new abilities, like the really good, chunky wall-jump. Another issue you have to retrain your brain on a bit is the hitboxes, which are always going to be worse with 3D models, especially low-count ones like these. But if anything, they're generous, with you being able to fully clip into Thwomps, etc. a little bit without them killing you. You just gotta go with it and trust the behind the scenes math - Nintendo's guys still know what they're doing better than anyone when it comes to platforming, and in the end, it all works just fine.

On top of some overall top-notch level design (which features a shift further into breaking each stage down into sequences of discrete challenges, reinforced by the offshoot feats needed to get each level's three big coins - a great addition, imo), I also really like the structure of the world maps. Along with the big coins, the more prevalent branching paths design folds a kind of minor collectathon aspect into Mario, evolving the exits from SUPER MARIO WORLD and expanding it into a meatier completion system. It's great! You can mainpath it to the end pretty quick even without warping if you want to, but you're not going to see nearly all of what the game has to offer if you do. I think this is one of the more rewarding Mario games to 100%. (I mean, not in terms of unlocking anything meaningful or whatever. Goodness, no.)

Aside from the beyond-boring look and sound, and little lamenesses like the nothing final boss and a couple too many autoscrollers (although they do each have unique spins on the idea, at least), the game is quite good and lives up the legacy of the series well enough. It may have begat a solid decade of dull retreads, but I guess I probably shouldn't let that skew how I feel about this one specifically.