I think the best way to express my love for Tboi is by naming off the items that make this game what it is for me. These items are the reason I keep coming back to this game over and over again, and for that, I would like to thank them.

Brimstone
Broken Modem
Book of Virtues
Little Horn
Spindown Dice
Member Card
Rock Bottom
Mega Mush
Chaos
Urn of Souls
Lemegeton
Magic Mushroom
Tech X
Eden’s Blessing
Psy Fly
The Stairway
And of course, my all time favorite:

Spider Mod

As an experience, it’s a pretty alright package. It definitely took a while for this game to actually feel truly finished, but the mechanics are still pretty fun and I quite like the character cast.

The thing is about Aces to me personally is that I have, or at least had, a very strong connection to it. The gameplay was strong enough for me that I got incredibly invested in online play. Over the summer I got better and better to the point where all of sudden, I was in top 30 of America, then top 20, even top 10. I would drop by on the Twitch streams of people who I had just played and comment something like “Hey, did you by any chance play against a Rosalina just now”. I’d face top three opponents and either put up a good fight or get my ass handed to me on a silver platter because pelupelu was an absolute menace.

I remember my last match before putting the game down for months was against a fellow Rosalina main who also resided in the US top ten with me. The match was by far the longest, most intense match I’d ever had up to that point, with volleys going on for God knows how long and the match extending deep into tiebreaker. I managed to just barely squeeze out a victory as my heart slammed against my chest, and I realized that this was it. This was the peak. The chance of having a match that great will never happen again. I’d been feeling a little bit of burnout at the time and this was the exact type of match I wanted to end it on.

I’m truly sorry if this came off as an odd flex rather than a true review, because to be honest, it probably is that, but this is how Mario Tennis Aces lives in my mind, and I really just need to get this experience off my chest. No way I’m talking about this irl that’s for damn sure. Really, I’m just happy this game was able to give me an experience like that. It was a bit of a cringy time in retrospect, but it was fun.

BIG[MAD], if you ever find this, I just want to say that that was a good ass game.

I have a pretty interesting connection to Lost World (Only the 3ds version), because on the same day I got this game, I also learned that night that if you break your arm to the point that it’s facing the wrong direction, you will still feel your arm in the place where it’s supposed to be.

Playing a 3ds game with a cast on in a hospital room while constant doses of Tylenol sapped at my energy wasn’t my most satisfying gaming experience, but even after my recovery, I can’t say this game is anything more than mediocre. Sonic is fine to control, and the first moments of the game are pretty fun, but the level design really starts to become beyond asinine a little before the halfway point. I don’t want to talk about that snow world ever again.

Still, as per usual with mid sonic games, the music carries. Windy Hill’s theme distracting from the dull pain my arm felt makes it one of my favorite vg tracks of all time, so the game gave me that at least.

Encounter an enemy
Stop
Wait for flash
Parry
Kill
Repeat

Truly elite combat on display here

Okay I’m being a little harsh here because I do like the bosses a lot but the general combat is way too clunky and poorly paced for its own good.