Nothing says “Gameboy” quite like a kitchen sink aesthetic and slightly melancholic music. Ok and slowdown, flickering, ghosting, compromised platforming, short game length…

I’ve actually played through this on og hardware a few times in the last couple of years, but today I played the whole game while Conbaby was napping. Sweet Prince… u would have loved Mario Land. I think this is a remarkable and charming game even though it’s basically an early tech demo for Mario Land 2.

But don’t let the HATERS bury the REAL STORY: the koopa sprite in Mario Land 1 is the CREAM of the crop. Conbaby core. The itsy bitsy teenie weenie… sprites are WONDERFUL.

When it comes to playing a basketball game, you expect a few things. I want to be able to slash, cut, dunk, and drain threes. I don't care if it's arcade-ish, or simulation focused; the controls should be tight. I want to be able to control my player with precision and to also be able to depend on animations to know if my shot is going in or not. If any of these aspects falter, i'm probably gonna drop it. As a bit of a basketball junkie, i'm willing to offer some leeway, but not too much.

When you ask people what are the best basketball games pre-3D, it's almost unanimously NBA Jam. I don't have much experience with the arcade version. I'm sure it's a fine game, but when I tried out the Genesis "Tournament Edition" I couldn't help but feel disappointed. The controls were whatever, the presentation was nice, but the game felt too floaty. I'd figured that maybe these games were simply before my time, and I stuck to playing 2K.

When I started up NBA Hangtime, I was cautious and didn't expect much. Besides, everyone says NBA Jam was better anyways, why bother? Boy was I wrong. NBA Hangtime would put any NBA Jam on a poster dunk. It would give NBA Jam it's Kodak moment. Seriously, this sequel is better than the OG in many, many aspects that i'm confused myself as to whether or not I didn't play NBA Jam properly, or everyone is blinded by some heavy nostalgia goggles.

For the uninitiated, NBA Hangtime is a 2 on 2 basketball game with an arcade flavor, and it's so much fun. For an SNES arcade port, this game looks quite good. The sprite work is nice and players are discernable enough for a SNES game. I tried out the codes on the VS screen to check out the alternate courts the game offers in secret. They're arguably better than the main court and offer some cool scenery to chew on. I for one really dug the Jungle court, with the court lines being delinated with greenery. Unfortunately, the roster is a bit lacking here. No Shaq or Jordan, and really any historical rosters. You also can't player as a real life player and have your teammate AI be your custom character. But the other heavyweights provide just enough entertainment.

This game just seems to get basketball mechanics just right. Although we're limited by a 2D plane, I found myself being able to crossover, hit a corner three, and find my man with comfort. Sure their may not be animations for all of these, but the sheer freedom you get to be able to do it is important. On the defensive end, rebounding could get some getting used to but getting blocks and steals is responsive. The steals usually have you push the opponent, so this is perfect for the 4 Bill Laimbeer fanboys. Or maybe I should say Draymond Green fanboys? Besides games, there's no extra minigames. Although I don't mind the leaness of the game, you may find yourself a bit disappointed. As per usual for NBA Jam games, the AI also borders on unfair at times to keep games close.

Whether you're sinking buckets, or blocking layups, the SFX here is fantastic. The euphoric basketball swish we all know and love is there, but the dunks sound even better, as do the swish of the ball when you pass, or the thud you hear when you get a nasty block. The music also gets a bit repritive by the time you get to your championship game, but it's hard to expect a full soundtrack from a title and time like this. The little "oof" you can hear when you injure someone is also kind of funny. I guess it'd be euphoric though if you're Draymond Green.

Unique to NBA Hangtime, is the player creation feature. You get points every 5 games you win, and by the time you win the championship, you can be CP3 on steroids (5'7, 160 lbs, but with all 6 stats maxed out), but it features just enough depth so you can tailor make your own players. I had a lot of fun simply playing the game, and even if you're not that upgraded, you can still be competitve until Hard difficulty or so. Once you get to Very Hard, you need some good stats. Even on Normal difficulty though the game is challenging enough. As an arcade game, Hangtime has aged very well in that the difficulty of playing the game is applicable more to your skills rather than to the AI. It's a difficult thing to pull of sometimes but this game was able to do it.

After looking for an arcade basketball game, everyone said doesn't get much better than the NBA Jam games. I say forget about all the Tournament Editions and whatnot, NBA Hangtime is well worth the time. It might be a bit lean, but it packs quite a punch and is worth it even if you're not a big basketball head.

Don’t know if I’m quite as taken with this as the fanbase at large is, but it’s easy to see why it’s such a favorite; for all the fine-tuning around the progression system and the changes to the weapon lineup, it’s the big narrative moments that make this such a strong experience. With some hindsight, a real strength of the Zero sub-series is that they flow pretty naturally together when played back-to-back, meaning that all the unresolved tension of 1 and 2 are given a game’s worth of space to play out here. It can be hard to think of a portable game as ever really being “AAA,” but Inti Creates plays out these moments with such conviction that the betrayals and revelations about the characters land with some real weight, despite the tinny bombast that it’s been presented with.

Nowhere near good enough to comment on some of its deeper changes, (like, I assume the recoil rod is something you can get a huge amount of value out of if you’re a fiend- I am not that person) but structurally, it’s a massive improvement over the other titles, mainly for the fact that it bolsters the midgame by having you rematch against three bosses from the prior games, and cuts down the finale to two levels, giving the action some real momentum at a time when things would normally start to drag down into their most familiar. Combined with the strong narrative elements, and it's the entry that's the most exciting to just casually play through- compelling even as your letter grade starts to nosedive.

Despite the months-long break between playing the first two games and now this, there’s still a bit of series fatigue that’s no doubt cooled my impressions on this, but it’s undeniably satisfying seeing an entry smartly build on and improve its predecessor's foundations.

There's an in-game bookstore in The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa which predictably sells books which Ringo can read. They all have slightly parodic, possibly copyright dodging titles but are all clearly based on existing words of literature e.g Odysseus - > Ulysses, Brothers -> Brothers Karamazov etc.

Reading each of them involves figuring out the slightly obtuse method of finding a bench and using the right shoulder button and letting the slow progress bar fill up. If you've read the speed reading books in the school library you can speed the process up but it will take a significant amount of ingame time to read through the longer novels like Ulysses and Anna Karenina. There is basically 0 mechanical benefit in doing so, negative, if you factor in opportunity cost. Well, there is one female friend of Ringo's who has unique dialogue if you've read any of the russian novels but other than that (and the achievement for reading them all I suppose) like in real life you basically have to read for shock horror its own sake.

It is perhaps silly, but The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa's particular roleplaying, simulation charm had such a grip on me on replay that I sat on a bench in the park on a sunday and would periodically pause reading The Brothers Karamazov to light up a cigarette and continue where I left of, then stopping to put it out. I can't even really put my finger on why, perhaps its because for all the maturity of the subject matter and perceived adult-ness (which is even addressed in one of the conversations with Ringo's bookworm friend declaring that Adults didnt watch anime) its the kind of thing that taps into that dormant desire to make up stories of our toys of childhood; when play and learning went hand in hand.

Its also because smoking in a game is as close as I'll hopefully ever get to it IRL after giving it up a few years ago. Reading whilst smoking brings a nostalgia for one of the worst years of my life when I was 18 and had just started university in a different country.

I don't smoke anymore, but I've been getting back into reading. Reading Rumble Fish recently it was hard not to notice the influence in Ringo's story, a tale of a troubled teen gang leader's deep existential emptiness and misplaced idealism about the "rules" of chivalry supposedly involved. Even the scene in RI of Goro staring off into the lit up city across the river wondering if there's anything greater out there, a naïve hope of escaping the ennui of their hometown into a mythical "other place" smacks of a particular chapter in Rumble Fish; seemingly the only time at which the main character is comfortable is when drunk and surrounded by the pretty lights and party atmosphere of the city, shortly before being mugged.

I'm currently reading through Winesburg Ohio, I suppose I could have waited until i read through all of the books to come back and replay Ringo and do some kind of overlong comparative analysis of the influences, but I can't be assed right now. Maybe I will do that in the future. In replaying Ringo there was the unfortunate realization that the combat is kinda shit compared to Fading Afternoon and a few bugs got a bit annoying, as well as the confirmation that the pacing of the final few weeks was as weird as I remembered it, but everything else about the game was stellar, and I think I enjoyed it even more than last time. Ringo is a bit like Paprika and other works I love to revisit in that it feels like you're finding something new every time. For as obtuse and even abrasive as the design philosphy of Yeo's games can be, they are equally mesmerising.

For example, I discovered upon replay that you can squat to recover health. I also learned that story events do not trigger if you have your gang with you, which is both useful in setting the terms of the progression but thematically appropriate: Ringo's friends are coming apart, him seemingly the last one to realize this, and his various activities calling upon him to be alone and not keeping the gang together accelerates the process. That ending still hits fucking hard man. God. Y'know what? Fuck it, for all its faults, this is a 5 star game for me now. I don't think it will be most people's cup of tea but I humbly ask for everyone to play it at some point, even if just for a few hours

Sable is my Breath of the Wild. An open world design staple that is second only to the super condensed A Short Hike.

Stellar art and music. Lovely map design that invites you to sit down and take the world in.
Writing, both dialogue and world building, is very good and often can get emotional. Sable's world is intriguing from the get go and unravelling its history was very fun.

It's a tragedy that a game this pretty and clever runs so very poorly.

I took my time with Sable's Gliding and did nearly everything the game has to offer, part of me didn't want to let go of the beautiful desert scenery and serene music. Part of me didn't want to let go but as the game keeps telling you - Journeys must end and that's part of what makes them special.

My past self: ''Y'know, I think it's time I give Breakout a shot! It'll take me what, 10, 20 minutes to get something out of it? I'm sure I'll be done in a while...

My present self (2 hours later): ''Y'know, I used to be fucking stupid when I was younger!''

And you mean to tell me that founding Apple is Steve Wozniak's highest achievement? But... this shit is better than the MacBook!

Despite so many years of playing Breakout in different versions and in scattered moments, it never truly hit me till now how much fun of a game it actually is. You could have fun by yourself in Pong, it’s just like bashing your head against a wall: even if you end up enjoying, it’s not gonna last very long before something caves in.

Breakout answers to that idea by making that wall fun to bash against! It’s a back and forth against yourself that feels rewarding beyond the mere act of seeing the number score getting higher; dismantling that multicolored wall piece by piece is as simple as it is addicting, which it’s a lot.

Even tho Breakout’s pitch is pretty much ‘’Pong but singleplayer focused’’, I also like to think of it a sort of reinterpretation of pinball machines into videogame territory. A really simplistic one to be sure, but that lifts of elements from it that fit —like the strike system, with a certain number of balls given to you per coin to get a high score—, but also shifts away from the ‘’choose your own path/route’’ that the best machines make you feel and instead puts your objective in front of you. Am I overthinking things? Most likely! But it’s hard to not let your mind ponder over the little things as you break away and have a fun little time.

It’s one of those games that just works… except when it doesn’t. The rather clunky hit detection that was already present in Pong hasn’t gonna go anywhere, I would like to say that it’s just a matter that the paddle’s hitbox as the paddle itself, but it seems to depend more from where the ball is coming, sometimes making contact is enough, others you need to line up perfectly, and it can feel a little discouraging when it messes you up when you are having a good run. It does fix the speed of the ball on spawn tho, it makes it pretty much impossible to miss in your first throw and eases thing into getting as fast as hell, so ya win some ya keep some, I guess…

Breakout is still very much a win, and it doesn’t need dragons on the cover art to show that, it’s another piece of the massive domino that was the arcade industry of the 70’s, piece that would lead to amazing games like Space Invaders, but also a great piece on its own.