See, there are two kinds of remakes: the one that explores new ideas, polishes gameplay, fixes previous issues, and expands on the original game by crafting new areas. Something like, let's say, Resident Evil 1 Remake, and then there are just one-on-one recreations of the original one.

This is a one-on-one recreation. That wouldn't necessarily be bad on its own, but the fact that they made these beautiful, detailed sprites and backgrounds for such a simplistic game feels like a big missed opportunity, especially taking into consideration that Kirby Super Star and Dreamland 3 (which were much more ambitious in terms of gameplay, puzzles, and versatility) came out years after the original one.

It's not a bad one, but it does feel a bit obsolete compared to its predecessors.

One of the most boring beat 'em ups I have ever played so far.

Repetitive as hell, the sprites are huge and the screen small, so you are constantly waiting for the enemies to appear, and when they do, they drain your life in three seconds. Good visuals, though.

I ain't gonna bother finishing this one; I was halfway through, got stuck on a difficult spike, and I just couldn't care less, so I watched the last 20 minutes or so I had left on Youtube and called it a day.

I have many games yet to play, and the two hours or so I dedicated to this one felt like a huge waste of my time.

It took me over 20 years to finally sit down and play this through to the very end, and it was fun!

I've got to say, at least on a personal level, that the Sega Genesis will always be, for me, the system with the best-looking games ever, at least if we are talking about pixel art. There's something just so charming about its very limited yet extremely versatile color palette. This, the Illusion games, Sparkster, Dynamite Headdy, Beyond Oasis, Thunder Force IV, and Sonic 3, among many others, will forever be the peak of how video games can and should look.

While I was looking for a longplay on this game to solve a puzzle that I couldn't figure out, I read one comment that said, "Graphics never got any better than this," and I can definitely agree with that statement.

Your main weapon, the plunger gun, is such a cool idea; you can stack them up against a wall and use them to climb, or stick them into an enemy and grab the handle of a plunger to use them to ride on them... I just wish it was implemented in more ways, as it feels like there are so many unexplored possibilities, and that's my overall biggest complaint with the game; as fun as it is, it feels a bit simplistic in its design.

Levels feel kind of bland towards the middle of the game, with Maharajah and the South Pole being the best examples of this, and that's what's stopping me from giving it a higher ranking, as well as the fact that some bosses have very finicky hit boxes and can be a pain. You just feel like the game is trying to give you a hard time for no reason other than to annoy you.

The ending is silly, and I loved it, and the music is fantastic—not the best in the vast Genesis catalog, but still up there.

But yeah, other than those two complaints, I loved it, and I already see myself playing it many, many more times in the future.

This is not a very easy title to sum up, so please bear with me while I try my best to describe the Nights into Dreams experience with my broken english.

Nights into Dreams is not an easy game to understand at first. This is mostly because the game won't tell you anything about how it is meant to be played, and while visually it conveys enough information for players to manage their way for a couple of levels, you'll soon find out that the game won't allow you to play the last ones if you haven't mastered its gameplay, which comes with a lot of guessing, experimentation, and good old trial and error.

Simply put, Nights into Dreams is a very peculiar game, truly one of a kind. You fly through its levels, collecting all sorts of items that will affect Nights in various ways:
Going through rings will raise your boost meter, which allows you to go faster; collecting stars will give you points, which are necessary to get a better score at the end of the level; and spheres, which are required to beat all four of the level mid bosses. Every time you collect one of these items in a row, regardless of which one, you'll form a "link" combo. The more items you get without stopping your momentum, the bigger the combo, and the better the game will evaluate you at the end of the stage, ranking you from F to A depending on how well you did. Now, the trick to getting high scores is to defeat the midboss first and then explore through the section without heading towards the goal right off the bat. Instead, you need to aim for a high link combo, do all sorts of acrobatics, and find special eggs so Nightopians (this game's mascots) can hatch from them. So as you can see, it has a heavy focus on going through the levels several times in order to memorize where everything is, plan ahead, and create your own path to make the largest link combo possible.

Once you beat a level, there are boss battles that are all unique and hard to explain. You'll mostly use Night's dash attack to bounce enemies and cause them damage, but everyone behaves differently, so it's possible that you won't be able to defeat them the first time you fight them. One of them will make you bounce it through a large corridor until you reach its end, and there's another one with the same exact moveset as you that will try to bounce you back for a change, just to name a couple.

As original as the game is though, it does have some notable flaws: if you lose a boss battle, you'll be forced to play the level all over again regardless of how well you did; the gameplay is simply too fast; and if you are playing with a regular Saturn controller, your thumb will start hurting after long sessions because it requires fast and precise input reactions, it can get pretty intense. Sometimes there's too much visual information on screen, and more often than not some parts of the levels will overlap with each other, which can be very confusing, but once you understand what you are doing and get a hold of it, it's very satisfying to play, and it rewards players for sticking up to its particular design.

Artistically, this is top-notch stuff. Not many games of this era come close to what Nights into Dreams accomplished with its dreamy visuals, incredible character design, and vibrant backgrounds. It's no surprise to find out that Naoto Oshima was behind the game's conception, working mostly as the main director. This game has his mark all over the place, and it's a great experience to play something made by such a talented, creative artist. The music is also amazing; props to Sega's sound team; they were at the top of their game during the Saturn era.

I can definitely see why people won't get into Nights into Dreams or just won't have the patience necessary to learn it, and I have to admit, this is a pretty eccentric game, but I persevered and enjoyed a fantastic experience as a reward for my efforts.

Stick Canyon is a horrible level, though, jesus Naoto, give me a break, man.

Oh boy, I have a lot to say about this one.

Let's start with the good:

Right off the bat, I can tell a lot of love went into the making of this game, from the sprite animation to the large cast of characters to the various in-game references to Hololive lore, the music, etc.

Sadly, all of Holocure's positive aspects are superfluous, and this is because, well, the game is simply not good or fun at all.

You are basically moving very, very slowly while a hoard of enemies try to kill you, getting increasingly larger in number the longer you survive. By defeating enemies and gaining experience points, you can unlock a vast number of upgrades, such as slightly increased moving speed, slightly increased attack and defense, new attacks, etc. But very few of them actually affect the gameplay in any meaningful way, and there's no way to use them at your will since they are set to a timer and your character attacks on its own once the timer is reset with no input from the player. The only thing you can do is move in all eight directions; there's no dash, no parry, no jump, no switching between weapons, no nothing.

The game's level design is very poorly crafted too; you are forced to go through very boring, uninspired, bland maps for 20 minutes before the game offers a true challenge, and if you get killed that far into the level, well, you've got to play through it all over again. Enemies also behave more or less the same, and as good as they look, most of them don't have any interesting patterns. Big enemies help a bit in breaking out of the monotony, but they are very few and far between.

People are calling these types of games "Vampire Survivor-like" or simply ,Survivors." But these remind me more of a very old arcade game released in 1982 called Robotron 2084—a far, far better, more dynamic, visually impressive, and frenetic title than whatever this one released 40 years later is.

There are so many magnificent videogames to spend your time in, and unless you are a massive Hololive fan and are happy to see the talents in a game other than Idol Showdown, I can't see why anyone would prefer this over, let's say, Hades, Isaac, Zombies ate my neighbors, or the already mentioned Robotron 2084.

Except for the waifus. The waifus are great.

Experience the thrill!

Play as a character that can receive fall damage by falling 2 feet to the ground!

Introducing a new ghost hit mechanic! the only acclaimed title in which enemies weapons can go through walls and kill you, but yours will never!

Over 100 bugs and glitches to enhance your immersion! Watch as many of our poorly crafted bosses run through walls, going beyond the boundries of existence!

Do you hate music? don't worry! This game has no music! we got you covered, your EARS covered!

And finally achieve redemption as your character burns himself to death. In the end, there's nothing like fire to purify the absolute sin that is this game!