It suffers from almost unbearable slowdowns, and the framerate is absolutely inexcusable. Gameplay-wise, Arthur loses his ability to shoot up and down, which makes defeating enemies way more difficult and annoying than it should be. You do have a brand new double jump, which lets you escape from troubling situations, but I still won't consider it a good trade-off. 

And yet somehow, Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts manages to balance out their flaws in every other aspect.

The graphics are gorgeous and very detailed for a 1991 game; the franchise has never looked any better on consoles, and the music is delightful from start to finish, making it one of the best video game soundtracks in the Super Nintendo's early days. 

Levels are big and inspired; there's no two quite alike, and each and every one has their own unique gimmicks, making the experience never boring. 

I still think it's not as memorable as its predecessor, but it's a really good addition to the series.

Toaplan #07

Unfortunately, I'm having a lot of problems emulating this one. Sometimes the emulator won't read the ROM, random visual glitches will pop up out of nowhere, and for some reason my controls won't work after getting refueled. 

So, sadly, those issues stained my experience with the game.

That aside, there was nothing in Rally Bike that rocked my world. It's an alright racing game with not much to offer.

Toaplan #08

Trust me, being a massive shoot 'em up and run and gun fan, I'm well aware of the influence Truxton had in the genre and the multiple nods it has received over the years (in much better titles, may I add).

However, I couldn't enjoy playing it at all. I feel like the power-ups suck compared to other Toaplan classics, and its enemy patterns, especially the bosses ones, are all over the place; they are not very well designed and are almost unreadable at times, at least for me, of course.

The music is nice, and it has some genuinely great moments, but I would not consider it one of the company's best.

The absolute vibes in this game, though!

Cosmic Smash is an absolute blast, a weird yet compelling tennis (puzzle?!) game that's always delivering unique and challenging levels. There are also branching paths and bonus points you can get depending on how fast you are and if you've performed one of the bazillion special trick shots the game has. 

I need to keep going with my backlog, but if there's a game I'll definitely come back to, it will be this one, since I feel like I haven't unraveled all of its mysteries

If videogames like Cuphead or Gunstar Heroes are called 'Run and Gun', Alisia Dragoon needs to be called a 'Walk and Gun'.

I see her going at the speed of sound on the title cards before every level, yet the moment they actually start, she just moves as if she were shopping at Target.

Not only that, but the developers had to make her even more stiff by having to press the D-pad twice in the direction you want to go, which more often than not will result in her not being able to react in time and getting hit.

This is also one of those games where everything and everyone can and will hit you; not only do you constantly have to look out for all sorts of hazards, but enemies will attack you before they appear on the screen, while they are on-screen, and even once they disappear from it.

The biggest issue for me, though, is that Alisia has a giant sprite, but enemy projectiles are microscopic; they just get you from all directions without you even noticing; it feels as if you were getting your health bar drained by invisible bacteria.

So, does this game have any redeeming qualities? Well, the music is nice, the graphics are cool, and the Japanese cover art is pretty. So, yeah, there's that. 

Well, I have a lot to say.

I'll start by saying that the music is absolutely outstanding, on the same level as the absolute best Sonic games in the franchise, and the graphics are delightful. I love how they have a very unique yet Sonic-esque look; they are super detailed and stylish. 

Now, for the bad.

The game is just outright boring. I find it fascinating how only Yasuhara and the Sonic Mania team managed to understand what makes Sonic games fun: they are full of unique enemies, different kinds of platforms, gimmicks, environmental hazards, obstacles, and things that will change the way Sonic plays. Sonic and the Fallen Star has so little going on; the vast majority of the game is just a very pretty-looking running simulator. There's no neat or original ideas, nothing sets one level apart from the other besides the obvious change of the backgrounds. It's just a rough sketch of what Sonic games can and should be. I also find hilarious the complete overabundance of checkpoints since the game has quite literally nothing that can kill you.

Even the special stages are about the most uninspired thing I've ever seen; it's just a small loop that repeats over and over again until you've completed enough laps. I don't joke when I say that even the Sonic 3D blast special stages were better designed.

Now, there are a couple of things I really liked about the game: All of Sonic's power-ups have a unique shape, like the bubble one, which is now a square, the electric one, which is a triangle, and the fire one, which even plays entirely differently now, allowing you to perform a triple jump. 

Bosses are, for the most part, pretty cool too, and I definitely can see the inspiration in the advanced titles and games outside the franchise, but that's just about it. 

So, yeah, very pretty, but where's the substance?

Toaplan #09

While I appreciate the effort of trying something different, the end result is not great at all. 

Hellfire is one of the hardest games I've played, but that's hardly a compliment since its difficulty feels consistently unfair.

First of all, the game expects you to switch to the right shooting type at the exact moment, and the issue is that there's absolutely no way you can react as fast as the game expects your first time playing, so the challenge comes down to trial and error since enemies come at you incredibly fast and projectiles can very quickly fill the screen with bullets with no way to get out if you don't destroy them in time.

Not only that, but since there are four different shooting styles and they are all designated to the same button, you'd have to press it as much as three times in order to get the one you need for a specific situation.

There's also a severe lack of imagination in the ending levels, as they heavily rely on repeating the same enemy coreography over and over again for far longer than they should.

Bosses suffer from some notorious inconsistency; some are bullet sponges, and others are a complete joke. I kid you not, the last one died in less than 15 seconds. 

There are some neat sections and sudden sparks of imagination, but they are rare occurrences and not a good representation of the game as a whole. 

Music is alright I guess.

Toaplan #10

I was going through my review of 'Zero Wing' when I suddenly remembered I never wrote one for this one.

That's mostly because, well, Twin Hawk is a super forgettable experience all around. I will say it's a slight improvement over Flying Shark, offering a cool gimmick that lets you summon multiple ships to help you out, but it's not on the same level of quality as Twin Cobra or Tiger-Heli. The loop is also a lot shorter, and there aren't any interesting boss battles, just re-skins of those games.

Nothing to see here, folks.

Toaplan  #11

This is the first time going through Toaplan's titles where I had to switch from the original arcade release to its Mega Drive port because the former has an almost unbearable flickering effect every time you destroy an enemy ship, the whole screen turns red, and there's no way to get rid of it—super bizarre stuff.

Anyway, I have to say, it saddens me to see so many people giving negative reviews of this game.

It's a perfectly serviceable, horizontal shoot 'em up with a killer soundtrack and good-level design. Instead of having to switch between four different shooting styles, like in Hellfire, Zero Wing offers a selection of three: A homing one, a penetrating laser (I know you guys like this one), and a spreading attack that works pretty much like a shootgun. 

It also has a very fun gimmick in which you can abduct enemy ships and use them as shields; you can even throw them back and use them as projectiles—great stuff. 

There's also a PC-Engine CD version, and that one looks outstanding for its time, with CD music quality and enhanced graphics. I will definitely give that one a chance once I finish my journey going through every single Toaplan title.

Toaplan #12

Aw man, why did this game not get more popular? It's so obscure; it only got a very rare and limited PC-Engine CD release when I think it deserved an international Mega Drive one at the very least. 

Anyway, Demon's World is a fun run-and-gun game with an auto-scroll where you beat the unliving heck out of horror creatures such as zombies, skeletons, and Japanese yokai.

The controls take a little time to get used to, especially the double jump, which is a bit finnicky, but the level design is good enough to make up for it, and its quality is consistent. 

It gets a bit silly with its difficulty at the end, but the checkpoints are super fair for the most part, so I will excuse it.

It's neither Cuphead nor Gunstar Heroes, but I think it deserves more love.

Toaplan #15

Ok, so this is more like it!

Out Zone is the first of Toaplan's games, which I can confidently call really good.

It's a frenetic top-down, run-and-gun game in which you have to fight numerous waves of enemies while avoiding countless bullets. 

The action is just top-notch, offering a lot of variety on each level and delivering very cool boss battles.

On the negative side, as is usual with Toaplan games, the final levels get unreasonably hard; there are just too many enemies coming at you at once, and there's barely any time to react, so just spamming your bombs is by far the best strategy.

On the other hand, the last boss battle was a complete pushover and offered almost no challenge at all. Again, classic Toaplan. 

That aside, I found the experience to be quite enjoyable—definitely a Toaplan classic.