The last Mario game I played was ah, a time, but this is exactly the kind of cozy Mario game I was looking for. Instead of the “you can’t go any further unless you head back to this world and do more chores” design of 64 or Sunshine, we have a whole world full of things to collect, with the minimum required to progress readily available and and a massive amount of them for completion’s sake waiting for you if you want to find them. Maybe if you pile up goombas then this down-bad goomba lady will give you a moon, maybe if I smack this rabbit with my hat he’ll, etc. And unlike my last experience, plenty of reasonable checkpoints and a whole slew of coins to pool from if you happen to lose a life, so now you can jump into pools of lava and poison sludge, or bump into a goomba or koopa shell, completely consequence-free. Oh sure, by all means do whatever you can to The Graduate Bowser’s latest forced-wedding service with Princess Peach, but now it also includes sightseeing, occasionally looking for collectibles if you want to, giving up if you really don’t, and amassing a huge wardrobe.

And after the difficulties I suffered with Mario last time, the costumes in this was an exercise in pure retributive sadism. How much physical and psychological harm can I inflict on this goofy little man by making omnipotent decisions on what he is to wear? Oh, are you in a desert land with blazing sun above and hot sand as far as the eye can see? I’m putting you in a down parka and winter boots. A frozen wasteland of ice and biting wind? Well, you better enjoy your fingers and toes while you still got em, cause you’re only in your skivvies now. And if you need to swing by a bustling metropolis full of modern cosmopolitan men and women in fancy dapper suits, I’m putting you in a poncho and sombrero, everyone’s going to think you’re a freaking racist. I’m going to make you stare down certain death at the hands of a hulking electric dragon in a clown suit, or maybe flippers and a snorkel, very good for mobility those. What a beautiful beach resort land full of bubbly sparkling clear water. Would be a real shame if someone were to make you wear full samurai armor. I have deep closets, I have clashing golf ensembles, French chef outfits, even the ugly purple and yellow work uniforms from the retailer that all the costumes come from. You hurt me once, Mario, and now I’m going to make you look fucking ridiculous

So... ah, was "Lord Bassoon" trademarked, or what? Guys, you were making a FAN TRANSLATION, with all the 20/20 hindsight, after the fact, "I experienced a popular culture in North America" that comes with it. THIS WAS A CHOICE.

Otherwise a wonderful game. It's like Ico except I found myself shouting "will you stop doing that and get over here, you dumb bitch?!" a lot less this time.

Confirmed #bats

Fine and would have been 3.5 stars otherwise but from now on I am taking a full star off any game on the DS that makes me blow into the mic. I lost half of my day today trying to figure out which core has a button that emulates it only to find none of them work, plugging in “walk through walls” cheats when I needed to bypass it otherwise only to find you also have to blow on a map too! Why does Nintendo have to make every single console of theirs double as a fuckin bop-it? Who is asking for this shit?! I don’t want motion controls on my switch, I don’t want to blow these damn ass candles out, I don’t want to swing my Wii nunchucks around every time I want to hit a bagompagomplin with the master sword. I suppose it might all just there for anti-piracy purposes. Well, if it is, it worked! Good job, Mario inc, now no one is playing “extremely okay Wind Waker 2 on a touchscreen” in 2024, guaranteed.

Also the old man in the beginning needs to chill out. Link just got done rescuing the whole world from reincarnated Ganondorf the scourge of Hyrule himself, wielding the master sword of legend and bearing the triforce of courage to boot, just for this geezer to be like “mmMmM tHerEs MoNstErs OuT tHerE, leT mE TeaCh YoU HoW to UsE a sWorD.” Oh no, a bunch of chuchus and bats, anything but that. My man, I’m pretty sure I already know how to use a sword.

Looks like this is the last game I can play before I finally need a kneeling chair for my desktop. Between this and The Minish Cap I guess I just can’t get through a Zelda game without injuring myself.

Out of all the non LTTP Zeldas I like this one the best. The hero in this one is finally a real person! He wants something very specific and he makes choices to get that thing, and he reacts to what other people say and do to him. Check out this little scene, for example. It’s sad cause he misses granma Link! And then it’s funny, because Tetra is a sassy pants to Link! He emotes now! The whole game is like this too, a cute lil Link who does cute fun stuff and then there’s fun sailing to get lost in if you want the heart pieces and sometimes the dungeons and fetch quests are a little bit of pain in the ass. You know, a real Zelda game! Oh, but it’s not a hundred hours long with a huge sandbox open world that’s been repurposed twice and full of swords that break after ten swings, so I guess it’s not the greatest game of all time

Also, thank you everyone on www.backloggd.com for letting me know about the late-game triforce fetch quest. It's exactly the kind of blatant padding I don't want to participate in, and a major reason why I just put in a code that put the triforce already on my hand. In-emulator cheats are a hell of a drug. I suppose I should take off a star because I'm sure I would have disliked it if I DID choose to make it my problem, so, four stars.

Also, why is the wind palace earthy and the earth palace windy?

The songs are genuinely good here, especially the frog reggaeton/Shaggy rapper’s song, so much so that I’m not going to mention Daffy slamming his penith in the car door or Batman watching his parents die even once in this whole review. Also this cartoon dog rapper and his talking flower girlfriend is probably the most I’ve ever cared in my life about a straight dude trying to get out of the friendzone

Probably not ever going to play it for real though, the YouTube video I watched was an hour and change long and it included all the times the guy lost. He even said in the comments shit like “😭 I’m on an emulator and the lag is impossible 😭😭😭 if you don’t like it I’d like to see you try it 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭.”

When it is tasked upon me, Mario 64-like, to collect adorable waddle dees to make a whole bustling town of waddle dees:

“Oh no, not my waddle dees! Not my sweet little waddle dees! Don’t you lay a finger on my dees, don’t you harm a hair on their precious heads! Don’t worry dees, I’m coming to the rescue! There is no journey too far, no mountain high enough or river etc, that will stop me from bringing you all back to safety, every last one of you!”

when one of the conditions for rescuing one of those waddle dees involves beating an enemy without taking damage:

“Eesh, ah… yeah, just sit tight for a while there and ah… I’m on my way, I just gotta… figure out how to ah… well, one way or another I’ll um, maybe after a couple stages or something I’ll get around to it. Don’t worry, I’m coming…”

when one of the conditions for rescuing a waddle Dee is participating in a nonsense-car timed race with unintuitive controls:

“Fuck you, ya little fuckin asshole, I hope you rot in that cage forever”

This was good enough, so "better than I really thought it would be," so incredibly not bad, so remarkably "at least worth a look, I guess," that I'm going to go through this whole review without mentioning Scott Pilgrim EVEN ONCE. It deserves at least that much.

It's just as good as Rygar and better than Faxanadu, if that means anything to you, and it has a nice goofy anime from like the late-70's feel to it that belies its sci-fi pulp cover. Baddies have big bug-eyes and bounce around, and the main character is a big himbo who whimpers when he hits his head on the ceiling Mario-like. I like it! Sure it's hard, and it's pretty impossible to navigate without a guide, but that's like every NES game. If "difficult and obtuse" were actual barriers that one could never hope to surpass without save states and a YouTube play through from a channel literally called "U Can Beat Games," then what NES games are left? Besides, it's well known that I'm a big stupid dumdum idiot and I need a walkthrough for everything. I probably needed a walkthrough for the first Castlevania.

I was almost going to play what purported to be a patched version of the original Japanese game, Dengeki Big Bang!, only to find that it was localized like ah, this. Guys, YOU'RE the ones fan-translating it. If you can't do it right the first time, well then, you're the only one making you translate an old NES game.