Buckshot Roulette is a short and simple game of shotgun Russian Roulette between you and a… thing that calls itself “The Dealer”. The Dealer loads up the shotgun with a random number of shells and blanks, and you each take turns shooting the shotgun at either yourselves or your opponent. If you opt to shoot yourself, your opponent’s turn is skipped. You’re each hooked up to a defibrillator with a certain amount of charges that will bring you back to life if you get shot, but there is a limited number of times the defibrillator can be used. The game ends when either you or The Dealer run out of chances to use the defibrillator.

The game does spice things up a little bit by giving you items at the beginning of rounds that you can utilize to help yourself get an advantage. You can get a knife to saw off the end of the shotgun which causes it to do twice the amount of damage, a magnifying glass which lets you peek and see what round is currently loaded into the gun, handcuffs that prevent your opponent from taking a turn, a can of beer that lets you eject whatever round is currently loaded, and a pack of cigarettes that will restore a chance to use the defibrillator. However, The Dealer is also given these exact same items. This adds another layer of strategy to the game, where you’ll have to think about when you want to use the items you’re given, while also considering the items The Dealer has and when they will use them as well.

The game has a pretty cool, yet measured concept. Despite how intriguing The Dealer and the setting are, there isn’t really a narrative to speak of. If you win, you get a results screen and a case full of money. That’s all. The game itself can be figured out pretty easily and beaten in about 30 minutes. The core gameplay, while decent, doesn’t make for something that’s especially replayable in my opinion. I love its low-poly artstyle, and I really dig the techno track that plays in the background. Its presentation in general is really strong and immersive, especially given the game’s setup.

There’s just not a whole lot to this game, which is its only real issue. I had managed expectations going into Buckshot Roulette. I didn’t think that it’d be anything mindblowing considering it’s on sale for $3 on Steam (actually, I guess it technically is mindblowing now that I think about it…). I expected a short, but decent time and that’s exactly what I got. It’s a fun little flavor of the month type of indie game that I do think is worth the $3. Just know ahead of time that you’re really not going to get a whole lot of mileage with it.

Slowly this year is becoming the year of great reimagined “casino” games. Buckshot Roulette takes the simple premise of Russian Roulette and makes it an indie horror gem.

Gameplay is primarily passing a loaded shotgun back and forth between yourself and a dealer while using a mix of items and luck to turn the odds in your favor. A general run will involve chipping away at your opponent’s health bar before taking away life support to really up the ante. Once a run has been won you will unlock a double or nothing mode that spice ups items and become essentially endless if you are prepared to take the risk for bragging rights.

Buckshot Roulette seems to take place in some kind of secret backdoor Russian nightclub that lends itself greatly to the twisted washed-out horror aesthetic. All runs begin in a dirty bathroom as you pass through a walkway with loud thumping techno music before entering the dealer’s den. At all times you can almost always hear the music muffled through the walls as the sound design is honestly fantastic.

The simple premise makes it easy to pick up and the addictive double or nothing mode is great to try for a high score. With such a low asking price I can’t recommend Buckshot Roulette enough.

I honestly forget where I got this game, but I remember it was one of the first SNES games I ever played. The first was Super Mario World and I absolutely adored it. Because of that game, I got really into retro Nintendo games and some time after, I bought Yoshi's Island. Part of me thinks I bought this at my local flea market because it always reminded me of going there on the weekends. Yoshi's Island in general, is a big weekend game. I remember just playing it on my days off from school, and because of that it always gave off that vibe. Either way, I played through the game and loved it. I think since then, I only 100%ed it one other time or maybe not at all. So this was only, potentially, my 2nd time fully beating this game. I'm glad I did because just like Super Mario World, it's absolutely wonderful.

The most striking aspect of the game that you'll notice right away, is just how visually appealing it is. Its crayon-like artstyle is super pleasing to the eyes, and it also makes the most of the console and the newly created FX chip at the time. The FX chip was an add on to carts created by Argonaut Games (my beloved Croc developer). Basically, created to enhance the graphics of certain SNES games, and Yoshi's Island was one of the few games to use it. The FX chip, along with the wonderful artstyle, just gives the game this timeless look. Best looking game on the SNES imo, with Kirby's Dreamland 3 right behind it.

The gameplay itself is much more complicated than Mario World. In Yoshi's Island, you can run and jump and all that, but you can also create/throw eggs. Eating an enemy, and pressing down on the d-pad, let's you create eggs. These can be tossed at enemies and items and greatly enhances the regular Mario gameplay. You can have the eggs bounce off walls and based on the angle you threw it at, collect items you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get. You can have eggs skip across water. You can have eggs reflect against or be obtained by certain enemies and then thrown/hit back at you to get collectables. The egg mechanic gets utilized super well. This along with the varied level design makes the game a blast. Cuz yeah, the level design is super good in this game and is always throwing new things at you. Whether its the fuzzy enemies that make the screen all trippy, to the ski slopes in world 5, to the temporary platforms that disappear if you jump on them too much. And that's not even getting into the Yoshi transformations which are all fun too. Never was I bored with any level. Frustrated though? Maybe a little.

This is a good segway into the other half of the gameplay I wanted to talk about, the 100% requirements. See, unlike Super Mario World, you don't just have to beat each and every level and get all secret exits. You have to get a score of 100 in each level. There are three collectables that contribute to a score. Red coins, flowers and Yoshi's health. You must get all 20 red coins, all 5 flowers and have 30 health by the end of a level to get a score of 100. Then you do this in each world, 6 times for the normal levels and two times for each boss level. Then you unlock a bonus game and a bonus level. So why is this frustrating to do? Well, first it depends on the level. The early levels aren't too bad but some of the later levels are quite hard. The red coins appear as normal coins (tho there is a redness to them that is quite visible) so these can be tricky to find. The flowers are very obvious, you just have to be sure to find them. They hide both of these kind of collectables in some devious places sometimes. Usually it's not too bad but rarely, even now after having played the game before, I had to look them up because they're obtuse. This is all fine and dandy but the real hard collectable is the health. It all depends on how easy the stage is and how often they give you health in the stage, but sometimes it can be super difficult to have 30 star points (that's what the game calls the health) by the end of the game. Especially in that last world, hoo boy did I have to use an star point item in almost every one of those levels.

That's another thing the game has, you can get items (and live) from minigames at the end of stages. When you jump through the goal, and the ring stops on one of the flowers you collected in the stage, you can play a minigame. Like I said, it can give you lives but more importantly items. Some of these items suck but 2 of them give you +10 and +20 star points respectively. Seeing as, as long as you're alive, your star count always goes back up to 10. You can get hit as much as you want, get to the end of a stage, and pop a +20 and have full star points before ending a stage. Getting these items can be quite hard depending on the minigame, but the match cards game makes it super easy to grind these items out. You can replay this minigame as much as you want with the world 4 bonus game, so as long as you can 100% that world, going back to 100% every other level will be that much easier if you suck. Overall, I think the collectables are fun to collect and 100%ing the game isn't that bad because of the item system. The game can just be somewhat devious with its hidden collectables and its difficulty near the end game (that world 5 bonus level can suck it) which is why I found it a bit frustrating at points and not as replayable as Mario World. However, once I remembered you could at least cheese the star points in the endgame, this issue lessened a bit.

Something else I really liked were the bosses. Honestly, they're not all winners but they're probably better than any 2D Mario game. They all take full advantage of Yoshi's move set and egg mechanics and are also a treat to the eyes since they're usually so flashy looking too. I can really commemorate how creative they got with them. Like one of them has you getting eating by a frog and throwing giant eggs at the frog from within its stomach. There's a boss where you must use the egg water bounce mechanic to defeat it (or you can defeat it by killing it before the fight even begins, and Kamek has his own unique dialogue for doing so, so it's not even an exploit...it's a cheeseable method the developers put in which is hilarious). Just unique bosses all around. Baby Bowser at the end is one of the best final bosses in the series too I'd say. It takes a little getting used to with the whole change in perspective but its badass nonetheless. Also, the ending after that is so very heartfelt and feels good every time, I love it.

One other thing I wanted to mention was the game's OST. It's incredibly hard to dislike it, it's so happy and upbeat a lot of the time. The entire soundtrack is awesome but my two favorite songs are the Athletic Theme and the Underground Theme. They're my most listened to songs in the entire ost, and the underground theme especially is my absolute favorite in the game. That one always spoke to me and it out of any song in the game, gave me that whole weekend feeling I talked about earlier. I really don't know why, but I love it.

I originally had this game at a 9, and even despite my small criticism of the collectables, I can't help but bump this to a 10. I'd say I love Super Mario World slightly more but this is one of my favorite games ever and my 2nd favorite SNES game now. It's amazing, it's fantastic, it's wonderful. Go play it.

Within the first 5 seconds of freedom this game gave me, I immediately picked up the kitchen knife and used it in probably the worst way possible. The game didn’t stop me and it also didn't seem to care, and neither did I. But that was probably the worst way possible to start this game, because as it dragged on for hours the main thought in my head was, “We were cooking on the first route” which should have ended the game. Instead I was trapped in a torture chamber of nonsensical solutions and horrible dialogue delivery, with an ending that wasn’t even interesting enough to be worth the painful drawl. The image of Daisy Ridley’s weird polygonal feet are scarred into my brain forever.

While I find the trial and error bit of gameplay to be rather neat, it’s done in such an excruciatingly painful way here. Every do-over lacks the ability to skip the cinematics so you’ll feel your body rapidly age with every scene you’re forced to watch on repeat. The lack of options your character gets to work with are frustrating and unrealistic. The characters shamble around like zombies and there’s zero way to speed up the process to get back to a later segment in the timeline aside from some line skips. I guess had they implemented such a silly concept then the game would quite literally be 12 minutes long. Instead, you sit through hours of trying out the smallest changes, only to awkwardly miss-click something and have to redo the whole process again. With every make-out session your wife assaults you with unprompted at the beginning of every loop, the more reptilian I felt while playing this game. How icky it made me feel while I slowly became an iguana.

You’d think a game that allows you to stab the shit out of your wife in the first five seconds would have literally anything to say about violence or impatience or domestic abuse or literally anything? Maybe it’d point a finger at me and go, “You’re part of the problem!!” and question my immediate conclusion to stretch the game's choices to it’s most inhumane limits. Nope. It meant nothing, like it was just something cool you could do for the sake of it. Violence is actually the only way to siphon any useful information from any of the characters, in fact the peaceful communicative solutions don’t even open up until after you’ve murdered so it’s not like it’s not encouraged. But, it literally doesn’t acknowledge this as something awful nor does it affect your character in any real way. The game does not care, so why should you? Allowing me to start the game with the ability to do this really set itself up for failure. It never challenged my thought process, so I just simply progressed with not giving a shit. It's almost like game interactivity has a way of affecting the player if it's implemented in a meaningful way instead of just existing for "artistic" shock value.

At the end of the day, does it even matter? I went through all this effort just to land on a conclusion that I said out loud as a joke. When the twist happened and that joke ended up being the reality, oh fuck off. This is it. It’s just a game that let me murder my wife in the first 5 seconds of it and nothing else. Riveting stuff, guys.

How they got James McAvoy, Willem Dafoe, and Daisy Ridley involved in this is insanely hilarious. They sound like they’re phoning it in the whole time, like they don’t even believe in this game’s bullshit themselves. It’s artistic, I’ll give it that. But, am I buying it? No. I ate chocolate mousse while a man screamed at my wife and hogtied her to the floor right in front of me. Neat.

Still the king, baby.

Now, I already reviewed Super Mario World in the past and feel that I said everything I needed to say about this game there. However, as I replayed this game over and over throughout my life, I have yearned for ways to make each new playthrough feel unique. For a while, the randomizer did just that for me, and later on I would experience the joys and hilarity of the ROM hack where the game's stages and music were remade from memory. Now, I return to Super Mario World once more for another twist, focusing entirely on the soundtrack.

For this playthrough, I implemented a ROM hack titled Super Mario World MSU-1 Plus Ultra. For those unaware, MSU-1 is a custom coprocessor designed by the late Near that allows Super Nintendo games to play CD quality audio and full-motion videos. Many modders have taken advantage of this coprocessor to do insanely impressive things with Super Nintendo games. Look at this video of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, for example. This is what the coprocessor looks and sounds like in action!

Many games have been given MSU-1 upgrades over the years, and Super Mario World is no exception to this. In fact, MSU-1 mods for this game have had an interesting development history. At first, there were just mods that swapped the music for more orchestral sounding remixes of the music tracks, which is the standard protocol for these mods. Following these would come a more ambitious mod, titled Super Mario World MSU+, which not only swaps the original tracks for CD quality music, but also introduces voice clips for characters and implements the use of different remixes of the overworld music depending on which region of the map you're currently in. I've played that version and loved it, finding it to be a refreshing way to experience this game.

Years later after the release of this mod, however, we would be gifted with an even more ambitious mod in the form of Super Mario World MSU-1 Plus Ultra. Not only did this mod implement everything from Super Mario World MSU+. It also made it possible for every stage in the game to have its own unique remix. This means that the soundtrack of Super Mario World has been expanded to 130 unique tracks!

Needless to say, I've been dying to get into this mod and hear all the music within, and after a breezy 96 exit run of this game, I can say genuinely that this is an amazing way to experience (or re-experience) Super Mario World. It's exciting to drop into a stage and hear an entirely new remix. It could be orchestral, jazzy, rock, or something else! Your ears are certainly in for a treat with this mod!

The best part of this and other MSU-1 mods is that they are fully playable on the most recent models of flash carts, such as the FXPak Pro, for example. You're going to be hearing CD quality music and voice lines from characters in a day 1 Super Nintendo game all on real hardware! It's beyond impressive, and every so often as I play mods like these, I can't help but think of how much these advancements blow me away.

If you love the Super Nintendo and want to see what their games would be like if they had a bit of that Sega CD energy (complimentary) in them, I highly implore you to check out the MSU-1 Hacks Database and try some of these mods for yourself! They take a bit more of set-up to get running than your usual ROM hack, but the extra work is worth it to see and hear how these games get enhanced by this technology!

Outside of first-person shooters, you don't tend to see many other genres with a first-person perspective. Well, as far as I'm aware.
Before this game, I think the only other first-person platformer that I knew of was Jumping Flash for the original PlayStation.

Mirror's Edge is a first-person platformer, in which you parkour across rooftops, metro stations and crawl in air ducts, while unpacking a crime scene and saving Faith's sister, Kate.

I found the story pretty interesting, but I can't say that it completely hooked me from beginning to end. I can't tell you why, exactly.
But one thing I found very intriguing was the world-building. Like, I think it's clear that this game is trying to send a message. I'm not the best guy to try and say what that message is, but I found its subtle political commentary very interesting, especially when you see news articles on the elevators you ride on.

As for the presentation, while the music did not really stick with me, I think the soundtrack did suit many of the situations you go through in the game, and it's overall well composed. And the graphics are really good for the time, focusing a lot on primary colors, which helps a lot in navigating the player through the correct path. The cutscenes had an interesting animation style, and I get the feeling they might've been rotoscoped at certain points. They look good, but some of the animation can feel off.

And that leads me into the gameplay. Like I said before, it's a first-person platformer, and most of the time, you'll be trying your best to jump across various buildings and objects to escape the cops or to reach your destination. You can wall-climb, grab onto ledges, wall-jump, turn around on a dime, and slide under obstacles.
But the game also has combat and... I'm mixed on it. On the one hand, getting behind cops and disarming them, and using the guns against them was satisfying. It was really useful too in the later levels. But on the other, I wish the game didn't focus much on it, and focused more on you running away from enemies.
And you can do that, but when it starts getting harder later in the game, it's pretty difficult to do so.

A thing that I really didn't like about this game was how picky the game could be on whether or not I grabbed onto objects or not.
Thankfully, the game's checkpoint system is pretty decent, and you have infinite lives, but it got pretty frustrating repeating the same things over and over again, just because I messed up a jump, or this one cop killed me.

Overall, I had a decent time with Mirror's Edge. It was nice to see what this game was all about, even if I did have my issues with the game.