Decidedly less cool.

Replay. Very cool concept but sadly a little clunky in execution. A game where you wish there had been a sequel to really refine things.

It's fine. I don't like that title though.

Don't remember much of this beyond there being some long button combinations you had to do for specific sections.

Unique presentation although I didn't think it was an especially great game. Great title though.

Has the same problem of being visually unremarkable that 3 has, but I was actually able to finish this one, so that means it's great, excellent, etc.

Decent enough indie shmup, although it doesn't really have much visual personality.

A triumph. It was super hard and reading up on how the difficulty works made me do a big laugh with zero humour in it, but that's completely secondary to the music and the visuals here for me. A game I really, really wish I had played at the time because I would never have seen or heard anything like it. Maybe I'd be a completely different person now. That's the power I think Darius Gaiden might hold!

Looks and sounds pretty good but is just doodoo otherwise. It's embarrassing that stuff like this was getting released by this stage.

An interesting deviation from the standard belt scroller formula, but not very engaging beyond that.

A Simple Series game, and boy, does it show. There's a character that's clearly just supposed to be Tetsuya Watari though, and that's good.

Replay. This game is very, very boring, and at no point do you ever actually feel like Superman in it. Why am I not punching all these little Igors and weird goatmen into space? Why am I having to combo them?

Replay. Bad. Everyone knows it.

I've only played up to the initial reveal - it seems cool but I'd rather play it on PC.

Thought this looked cool but was otherwise unremarkable. Outdone by the sequel.

Still sitting unfinished. A cool look and concept but the race gameplay feels a bit sparse. I'll get round to it eventually.

Gave this a go because I've been interested in seeing the Tsui Hark film. Not really all that much to it and environments felt quite drab to me. Worse ways to spend the time though.

It's pretty cool, isn't it? I noticed the other day that I've finally been knocked off the top of my friends list by a few seconds. Raging. Will have to go back to it!

This is how you use a license, because it is 10x funnier to try and pass this off as a John McClane adventure. Mental game. There's a review on here that calls it the father of the Yakuza series and they're completely right.

From what I remember this was the sequel to Sorcer Striker? Hasn't really stuck in the mind much for me. Dimahoo is a very fun name to say though. Dimahoo, Dimahoo, Dimahoo!

Bad. Move on.

Oh, this is just Beatmania. Well cool, I like Beatmania! Also I'm terrible at Beatmania!

Replay. Old reliable. I love how the big blue laser looks.

Another good DoDonPachi. No really, I love that big laser!

Another shmup I am never, ever going to 1CC.

Metal Slug-ish. Not as good as any of those but still okay!

Now we're getting it. Still very playable and has one of the best title themes of all time.

Not a good game at all, but the obvious big thing here is that it's one of the first instances of microtransactions, and is pure evil.

Replay. King shit. Double Dragon II is a good-ass game.

Mainly played this port to hear the music. Sadly not as good as I was hoping, but this version also has a bunch of low-rent cutscenes where the Brothers Lee are Kenshiro clones with turn of the 90s anime hair. Dope.

This has about as much relation to actual Double Dragon as the movie does. Total slop, don't even think about it.

Trying very hard to be the NES games, but not quite managing it. A bit sad about this one.

At least, another actually good Double Dragon game! It can be frustrating at points (staring directly at the final boss) but I think the dodge stuff is really fun. Not huge into the 80s throwback stuff, it's always under about ten separate layers of irony, but it does have the single best rendition of the Double Dragon theme.

Understandably similar to the sequel. Love that box art.

Pretty standard shmup but with all kinds of weird cyberspace environments and enemies, it's really cool. The cutscenes where the main character enters cyberspace are the good stuff. The final boss of this game is Cyber-Hitler's skull, which has skeletal spider legs.

About as good as GT: Final Bout, i.e. not very.

Okay I don't remember this one.

Another PS+ game. I guess I don't mind Minecraft, but I haven't put much time into this because it keeps trying to get me to do story stuff that I don't care about.

Leans more towards Dragon Quest than it does towards musou for my liking. Takes forever as well.

A good take on the formula laid down by the D&D games. Just went on a bit too long for me at the time, but I want to get back to it.

Played this after watching the absolute garbo movie. Not particularly good, not sure why you'd want to play it over any of the more famous PS2 racing games outside of being a really big Stallone fan.

Another one where I think it's conceptually really cool but doesn't quite live up to it in play. Maybe I'll give it another shot at some point.

Replay. It's some more Tower of Doom. It's good!

Replay. Hell yeah man. A super ambitious game that combines Cool Adventures with some absolutely primo Capcom art work. I went through it solo but I bet this'd be a total blast on Fightcade. Only complaint is that the controls can be a little fiddly.

More of the same from Die Hard Arcade, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

Pretty standard stuff for the time, I guess. It's interesting to see what characters Sega were throwing out before they came up with Sonic.

Wanted to like this more than I did (due to it being a few characters removed from being called Dynasty Warriors).

Okay idea but I don't think EDF gameplay needed streamlining. Also pretty racist!

Free on PS+. I don't follow the UFC (a friend of mine refers to it as a putrid cretin spectacle and I may be forced to agree), and maybe that's just as well cause if I did I'd have ended up wasting my money on this. Series peaked with Undisputed 3, all downhill from there.

A throwback to Renegade, so not something I really want to bother with.

DIdn't like it. Open world just felt dull and full of copy-pasted stuff. Wasn't fussed about the story. Saying "wretched dung-eater" is funny but that's all I've got.

Replay. Semi-regular runthrough - I didn't write anything about it at the time because I honestly wouldn't know where to start. It's just one of my favourite games ever and hit me like a truck when I was younger. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

This is what I wish wizards in movies and stuff were like. Just firing huge amounts of magic shit at everyone constantly. Doing a highest level Dragon's Dogma spell 50 times a minute. ZAP

Replay. I'd started this aaaages ago and gave it another bash this year. It's very impressive, but there really is only so much you can do with Skyrim. It's a great effort but it's just not built on a good base.

Another cool Cave (kool Kave) game. Not into the look as much as I am ESP Ra.De. but it's fine!

Again, didn't like it as much as ESP Ra.De., but it's still good!

Knocked me for six. What a cool game! Boss health is excessive but that's my only issue. This one really got me itching to go on a run of shmups.

I liked ESP Ra.De. enough to buy this. Some tweaks, more content, fine by me!

Cool little idea. I like games with boats.

Fun throwback shooter - I'd never heard of it but a friend said hey, you might like this and they were right. Nice!

Not very good, is it? There's a kind of charm to it though. I think I will go back and finish this at some point.

Genuinely astounding effort for one guy. Awesome combo system, this was walking the Streets of Rage 4 walk before that game existed. Only problems I have with it are the lighting is a bit much at times and the main girl leans way too hard into anime fanservice for my taste. Genuinely really good game.

I have no love whatsoever for FFVII. This was free on PS+, so I decided to see if things would be different after nearly 20 years and a different combat system. Nope! I think I might like this even less.

Replay. The daddy. It definitely shows its age these days but it's still just so cool. Easy to see just how influential it was. What a game!

Doesn't really have any of the energy of the first game, sadly. Just kind of a slog. And it introduces Maki, who I think is chiefly liked by anime boys that you would not want to talk to. Not the fault of the game but it's hard to look past.

Better than Final Fight 2 for sure, but still pretty lackluster. There isn't even boss music! What the hell!

Completely odious game. I genuinely have no idea why or how this got made.

Pretty decent game! An oddity in that it's very clearly trying to ape the SNK/KOF look - not really something I associate with the genre. It's pretty basic, but short and sweet, worth playing if you can grab it cheap. You may also notice that this is the fourth game of this genre on the list so far that has Genzoman cover art. There can be too much of a good thing.

Did the Golden Deer route. Tooooo long for what it is. Not bothered about most of the characters either. I liked Awakening well enough but I don't think I have it in me to play Fire Emblem regularly.

Feel like I missed some controversy over this maybe? Had never heard of it but it showed up on an itch.io page I was on so I gave it a bash. Played it for 10 minutes and don't see myself ever going back to it.

Replay. I think this game is cool although it's often an absolute chore to play. If it was half as long it'd be great.

DIdn't really care for the style and the forced walking segments are a totally nonsensical addition, but there are some good boss fights here even if they run out of steam towards the end (final boss is really shitty). Don't know if it was just my control setup or what but I felt like I was fighting against an auto-aim a lot of the time in the ranged parts.

Replay. Went through this again for Halloween. Cool game! Tim Curry's attempt at a New Orleans accent is very endearing.

Impressive amount of playable characters by the end of the game but otherwise not really all that great, I thought.

More Gunvolt Burst. It's still easy, still fine to zip through if you have 20 minutes.

I do not remember a single thing about this game.

A better game than Lords of Thunder despite coming first.

It was good, but it's possible that Gaiden has ruined me for the rest of this series.

Don't have much to say about the game, but Joe Madureira should be outlawed.

Beatemup/adventure game hybrid that isn't too great but has some real slick animation. There's one kick in this that I've absolutely seen before but I can't place where from. I think it might be a KOF2002 animation.

Gave it a bash because of the associations it's had with Castlevania, but I wasn't that into it. That one track is still a banger though.

Fine I guess, but it can be really hard to make out what's actually going on in these polygonal ones.

Another great OST. Game is extremely hard, though.

The up/down/middle system of blocking and attacking is interesting enough for the time I guess, but this is too jank to really be fun.

Replay. One of the best games ever made. If you've never played God Hand, please go play God Hand.

Replay. I like this game still! The not-Conan world is really cool, love the big turtle village and the eagle stage.

Golden Axe II - it's like Golden Axe. I like Golden Axe. I like Golden Axe II!

The Golden Axers Once Again. It's still much the same, I still enjoy it, and I think the stage on the back of the giant eagle is badass. Good music here.

One of the best - maybe the best-looking arcade games of the era. Seriously, it's ridiculous! I'm amazed this has never had a home release. Gameplay-wise, well, it's yet more Golden Axe. If you like it you like it. I like it!

Replay. Golf It night with the boys. Get a solid custom map and it's a great laugh.

Looks really cool, but I wasn't too bothered about finishing it. I'll pick it back up at some point.

Another one that I think I need to go through again to really click with.

I'd probably be interested in checking out some of the later Gradius games, but this one didn't do much for me.

Another game I'd had sitting for ages and finally got around to finishing. The final stretch of this had me dancing about like a madman. Real highpoint of the series stuff.

Indiana Jones shoots hordes of animal poachers and also an alien (?). I dunno, I think this game is pretty cool!

Probably would have liked it a lot if I played it at the time of release, but this ended up being a big-time disappointment. Just felt sluggish and killing things took forever. Obviously looks awesome, though.

Much better than the original. Weird, kind of grotesque designs and Winkysoft doing a Winkysoft as hell soundtrack. Final boss music just sounds like a Masou Kishin track, which is a-OK by me.

Digitised guff.

Don't like Guilty Gear at all but played this with some friends who were trying to get into it. If I played it I would main Venom.

Definitely seems like Psikyo games follow a formula. Not my preferred style but this game still has some charm to it.