As far as quarter-munching arcade beat-em-ups go, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles '89 is one of the better ones. I would argue that among the "Konami licensed beat-em-up triumvirate" (just made that up) it is overall much more fairly designed than the likes of X-Men and The Simpsons. What I mean by that is, beating this game by yourself or maybe even friends to further confuse boss AI is possible to achieve with only perhaps 2 or 3 dollars worth of continues. Of course, that's if everyone involved is trying their best to understand the mechanics, or at least the i-frames the enemies are granted almost constantly.

The graphics were also pretty impressive, and captured the essence of the cartoon it's based on very well. However, as I mentioned before, fighting enemies can be cumbersome and their i-frames to ensure you can't absolutely trounce them with your mashing is annoying to say the least. I understand the notion, I just think the designers could've provided challenging beat-em-up gameplay in a different way. Although I can't even make suggestions that would've worked in the late 80s, I'm sure they were pushing limits with how much this game provided. Perhaps the enemy count couldn't get too high before things go internally haywire. Boss fights also amounted to quick 'touch-and-go' strategy, lest you get pummeled by their devastating attacks.

Overall, it's a fun game to learn and tear apart if you're willing to do so, perhaps even a good place to start you're trying to figure out the beat-em-up subgenre, but I think most remember it for just mashing buttons with friends for a good 5-10 minutes. Like many did in their popular arcades, or even Xbox Live back in 2007. There were pretty much random games happening all the time you could hop into at an instant back then. It was magical.

I was always confused why Mega Man 2 was regarded as one of the greatest games of all time. This is honestly so much like the original Mega Man, that it only gets the merit of a slightly higher score from me because the level design is noticeably less obtuse. They made this game in under a year, so I wouldn't give them much flack for not really attempting to evolve the design in any meaningful way. Perhaps a sign for how this franchise would be handled for decades to come.

Even so, Mega Man 2 is a satisfying little action platformer that I can enjoy from time-to-time. Something I have to force myself into doing is experiment with the different weapon types against things other than the bosses. I think that's where the real meat is, which I missed on back when I was a kid.

The amount of intrigue behind this game and its overall design can only be truly captured if you know the original game from head-to-toe. However, I think Dead Rising: Chip Till You Drop is not a good substitute for the original experience, or even close. And it's not because the colors are washed-out, not because the textures are blotchy at best, not because the cutscenes are all pre-rendered thus nullifying the fun in customized outfits, not because there's barely any zombies on-screen or items to use as weapon. It's because this is an entirely different game.

While I'm sure there are people who grew up with the game and had a good time with it, due to only having a Wii back in the late 2000s. I was not one of these folks, and didn't look into it until I wanted to analyze the game for myself. The gameplay is much more streamlined, and utilized the bones of Resident Evil 4, which made sense since the developers already got that working perfectly fine on said console. Nearly all of the design that differs from the original experience screams 'limitation' as they were trying to stuff this Xbox 360 game to look presentable on Wii.

The missions are never too interesting, usually amounting to a weird watered-down version of tasks you could complete (most of them optional) from the original game. The same music keeps blaring through your speakers when performing said missions, dissimilar to the original where the only thing you hear is the atmosphere of a regular shopping mall infested with the undead.

Back in 2009, I wouldn't bat an eye to someone who played this game because they only had a Wii. But in this day and age, the only reason I can see anyone with a PC or PS4 or Xbox One play this game is because they're morbidly curious after experiencing the original game or its proper ports. In fact, I would argue that most screenshots of Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop look like DALL-E results. Case and point;

https://i.imgur.com/QqPkB5L.png

My own personal "Deathman"! The only reason I revisited this is because I recall liking it as a kid and playing it with my brother a good amount of times. I feel like it would've been very easy for Judge Dredd to be sort of like NARC, or even Contra. A game based on a sci-fi action movie about a big brutish cop delivering justice in the form of bullets, make it a run-n-gun! Instead, it's a methodical action platformer where you have to take your time to take enemies out efficiently, and sometimes even arrest them for proper detainment. And clearing stages isn't as easy as getting from point A to point B, as you usually have to explore the non-linear area in order to make progress.

In all honesty, though the ambition this game bears doesn't make for a very good game. Movement feels very stiff, it's a surprise they put any sort of premium in platforming. The gameplay never changes, so you're just rinse-and-repeating looking around stages and performing very monotonous platforming tasks. Perhaps I should've kept this as a faint memory.

A sequel that goes in all sorts of directions, it begins to feel aimless. Crash Bandicoot: Warped takes you on a world tour where you not only run and jump, but also swim and drive different kinds of vehicles in linear platforming stages. The regular platforming stages are more than solid, providing high-quality design that we expect from Naughty Dog after they have proven their strength in that aspect through Crash Bandicoot 2. The boss fights, in my opinion, also saw improvement. While you still sometimes had to wait and dodge obstacles while the boss faffed about in the background before you can land a hit, others provided means for experienced players to make their own route and quickly dish out the pain through their spins!

It's pretty much the rest of the game's design that feels lackluster. I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say the vehicular stages are a really mixed bag. The tiger stages get irritating to complete, I think their hill-y designs compared to the polar bear stages in 2 are what make them less enjoyable. The jetski stages just feel slow and tedious, albeit showing impressive visuals and physics with the water back in 1998. Swimming stages unsurprisingly stink, and airplane stages are underwhelming. It was Crash in his motorcycle that I found the most enjoyment in clearing and getting fast times in. Which is funny, because I feel those stages get the most flack from fans.

Overall, it's still better than the first game, I think. Naughty Dog's last entry for the wily bandicoot shows that the team is willing to experiement and take risks after already proving their worth. Something that would become prevalent in their future titles.

Battletoads couldn't JUST be a beat-em-up, no sir. It needed to also be a platformer, a racing game, a puzzle game, all kinds of things blended into this action title . . . and be terrible on all of these counts!

Battletoads is notorious for its difficulty curves that made it infamous in the gamingsphere. And it IS tough, but it also just isn't fun to clear due to how unfair it all feels. Granted, a lot of games around this time were full of obtuse design like Battletoads. It's probably a miracle that Nintendo gave Rare a shot at one of their most popular IPs after this.

Something something Puyo Puyo. I remember being a kid and finding it weird that this played exactly like Kirby's Avalanche, not knowing better until excavating an early Wikipedia around the mid-00s.

Anyway, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Pretty Hate Machine is a game I played every once in a while, because--like Sonic Spinball--SEGA is very insistent in porting it on everything possible. I'd play the "Scenario mode" and get a few stages in, until the bot decides to wipe the floor with their fast, calculated moves. I decide I'm not smart enough for what is Puyo Puyo's simplistic puzzle system, and move on.

UNTIL TODAY. I fucking beat it. I finally got to see all the ugly bot designs I never actually saw, and that disgustingly (awesome) Robotnik design taunt me to the end. I got rocked pretty often against these asshole bots, but eventually won! Only for the ending to say "Now do hard mode" to which I said "Fuck you, no" and shut the game off.

I'm still not very good at this game, but I do understand that an easy way to get chain combos is to stack colors near each-other (something a child could figure out) and try to get single colors lined up correctly so they pop and fall in the right order. But time is of the essence, because your opponent can chain combos and throw blank balls onto your lane to mess up your strategy. So the constant question is, do you have enough time to stack up a chain to hit them hard? Or should you go for a quick 2-hit chain in order to mess them up briefly to keep up?

I don't find Puyo Puyo as engaging as other puzzle games, but it's got its own rhythm and sense of satisfaction. I probably would like the game more if I played the original version, instead of this weird product designed "for Western audiences" by coating it in the paint of this Saturday morning cartoon.

Twisted Metal 3 and 4 are two peas in a smelly pod. They are both equally shoddy games with equally hideous presentation. I'm convinced they were made around the same time, or with the exact same people. Granted, each game only had a number of months to be complete so for what it's worth, that in itself is impressive.

The only thing this has over the 3rd title is that the gameplay is slightly refined. Controlling cars feels a little less like shit, and flipping yourself over has no recovery frames. They likely listened to feedback regarding how people took the 3rd game back in the day and tried to improve it . . . nice job on that count.

Unfortunately, the gameplay feels just as monotonous and the stage design is still lacking, perhaps I just don't like these whimsical styles they went for. Things like the carnival, the kid's room, and even the Aztec arena feel more aligned with a Disney skateboarding game, not Twisted Metal.

The characters are also hideous with really underwhelming endings, the one thing that's revered more than anything else regarding this franchise. Frankly, I'm surprised Twisted Metal 3 and 4 are ranked as highly as they are on this website. I can't help but think narrow-minded nostalgia has a strong hand here. I was single digits when these games came out, guys. I was there too. It still sucked.

It's almost indescribable what Doom did for the industry and future generations of video games. It may not have been the first FPS game, but it's undeniable as the most influential. So many aspects of this game would inspire countless creators, including artists and game developers.

It's also modded and morphed more than pretty much any other game out there, with people still lovingly designing stages and mechanics for Doom to this day! I think it helps that the game itself is STILL awesome. Paired with very simple gameplay, it's responsive and has great feedback with every action you perform (varies among versions, but I'm mainly talking PC and any modern official port). It's about getting lost in these hellish halls as it is blasting demons in the face, all wrapped in exquisite sound design and kickass music!

Yeah, not really saying anything new here. And I probably never will. I just love Doom.

If I played through this whole game blind and someone told me it's one of those bootleg games stuffed into cartridges that were sold across Spain or some shit, the only thing that'd stop me from believing them is the amount of polish this game has. What I mean by this, is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The HyperStone Heist is a watered down, poor substitute for Turtles In Time on SNES.

The core gameplay is fine, albeit feels a bit less precise than said SNES game. That alone is what separates this from that bizarre Mario bootleg derived from the "Super Mario 9" or the "Speedy Gonzalez: Los Gatos Bandidos" hack that replaced his character sprites with Sonic. Because the presentation of this game is awful. I'm willing to bet production for this was heavily rushed, as much of the environment was considerably drab, almost lifeless (when that wasn't the point).

There's so few bosses as well, the only one that wasn't a recycling of an older TMNT game being Tatsu. Yeah, remember Tatsu? The master of the foot clan in the first film, who was known for his expertise in hand-to-hand combat? Well, in this game, his only form of attacking is shooting arrows. He literally has no melee attacks. It's just really bizarre and kinda tells me the developers involved had no funds nor time to actually create anything new for this demake of Turtles In Time SNES.

I don't really understand why this game came out so ugly, when I know the Genesis was capable of great visuals that easily rivaled SNES classics most of the time. Again, might've just been a budget issue. I'm sure back in 1992, this game sufficed for people that only had a Sega Genesis. But in this modern age of being able to emulate SNES or Genesis with a paperclip's worth of technology, there's no real reason to play through this game.

Silent Hill: Origins is your step-dad trying his best to be that father figure of yours, but you were already forming memories a while before your parents got divorced. The older you get, you appreciate the valiant effort he made trying to fill that hole in the family, but you know it just isn't the same. And, despite this new father figure's heart being in the right place, you want him to just stop trying to talk to you the same way your dad did.

This game marks the beginning of Konami outsourcing the "Silent Hill" franchise to Western devs as the team behind the original 4 games disbanded. And, in my opinion, their most valiant attempt at recreating the magic from those original games. However, its monster design is uninspired and the writing is especially poor. When it isn't boring, it's insulting, especially to those familiar with the 1st game that Silent Hill: Origins is basing itself on.

If I could say one thing, it's probably one of the best-looking PSP games. Some of the environment is impressive, but layering that with really annoying core design that is the "mirror" function is mind-numbing, especially for a game that puts a heavy emphasis on exploring.

From the horror to the puzzles, just about everything in this game is just a vain attempt at recreating the magic of the original games. One that I don't find suitable to play as part of the series, never-mind the very beginning.

What can be said about this absolute gem? The perfect Metal Slug title if there ever was one. Metal Slug 3 accumulated every piece of flawless design the team has concocted since the birth of this franchise and crammed it all tightly into an incredible experience that only cost a bucko 25 cents to try out, and probably half their college fund to finish! Unless you're trying to legitimately understand the game and the challenges it throws at you.

With that said, many consider the difficulty curve to be steeply unforgiving. I definitely thought so back when it was new, but absolutely adore it now. And the variety in presentation and artistry at display is simply stellar, this title contains some of the greatest sprite art in game history!

It's almost poetic that SNK shortly filed for bankruptcy and dissolved the original Metal Slug team shortly after this game's launch. I can just imagine the game developers readying for this production--fully aware of their fate regardless of the success this game could bring-- and thinking "This is our last show . . . let's give them one they'll never forget." And by god, they brought the HEAT for this. I still can't believe how much was stored for one of the greatest arcade experiences of all time.

Right off the bat, I'll agree that this game plays like total shit. It's insanely monotonous and unfair. BUT, this game is also nearly everything I grew to love about this old generation of games (and movies) and the way they were presented.

NARC gets a fairly high score from me because for the past two decades of my life, parts of this game won't leave my brain. From the stupid ass death cries, to the ear-violating celebration sounds from completing a stage, to the "BEEP-BEEP-BOOP '511 in progress' Drrrrdodoo* 'LET'S GO!" stage introductions in your character's dashboard, to the goofy-ass enemies portrayed by digitized actors, EVERYTHING about this game is so goddamn charming and hilarious.

I don't want to argue with my soul and give this a lower score, my heart won't allow it! You don't have to like cops to like NARC, but you probably do have to love the most obnoxious and insipid aspects of 80s culture of violence and mayhem to like NARC.

A lot of video game sequels usually aren't unwelcoming to folks that are starting with said sequel, at least from a gameplay perspective. They usually start with the basics so you can understand the controls and underhand its challenge in order to save its throwing power for later. Hotline Miami 2 decided it didn't want to do that, and instead treat the game's difficulty curve as if it was continuing right from Hotline Miami 1's ending! The "Mario Bros. Lost Levels" approach, if you will.

By that, I mean Dennaton made sure even the Hotline Miami experts are bound to have trouble clearing the campaign on normal difficulty! And sure, it got frustrating from time-to-time, but I still found satisfaction in clearing the stages once I finally learned how this was meant to be played as I tweaked my strategy and patience.

What made it all the more rewarding to me was the story mode. While I certainly appreciate the mystique of the original game's writing, the characterizations and emotions provided through the sequel just felt more engaging. And that's usually something I don't exactly like, but the mystique was still present for this sequel! I also adore the "NG+" scene, which--to me--emphasizes how much this game applies the medium of video games to itself in a narrative sense.

I recall people despised this sequel, but I think it was a genuinely great experience, and a good means to end this duology.