Retro Yearly List #18 [1992: Mortal Kombat]

Right, when it comes to MK, I have to pay attention to how much nostalgia factor I'm putting in my reviews since it should be one of my favorite franchises of all time.

MK1 was one of my most played cartridges back on SNES times, for my journey here I decided to go with the Arcade version, and I just learned that the port is extremely underwhelming, the lack of blood and censored fatalities take out basically what makes those titles shine. I remember well the first time I got access to internet and all the inputs, and tried to perform the fatalities on my SNES, then I hit Johnny Cage's and was like... W%F was that ?

Talking about the original version, it's pretty good, even though the game was a banger for me in the old times, now I can see the effects of time on the first title.
Gameplay is pretty stiff and slow, and sometimes bugs will occur, you can't combo more than 2 moves here and even that is not that easy to do. Sometimes even special moves will fail to be cast, but fatalities inputs are ok here.

The graphics.. you know, it's a unique style, it blew our child minds when we first saw it, I would say it aged well.
The sound is nostalgic, but like any MK game, it just do its job, which adds to the mystic and shaolin atmosphere
of the time, I also miss that a lot on the recent titles.

The lore here tells the basics of a massive universe that will be formed in the future, it works for the game, already giving the characters personality and personal goals, and their endings are also alright. (Shout out to Raiden's ending epic last catchphrase: "Have a nice day")

Reptile as secret character was a great addition, although seemed to be a pretty rushed feature, it was nice to have something to have kids discussing about and trying to trigger the hidden battle, that's a pretty missed culture on modern gaming.

Difficulty will get on your nerves a lot of times, opponents will instantly unfairly react to your inputs, and oddly, this will happen at random times, regardless of the selected difficulty, but I cannot complain that much, knowing what awaits me at the next adventure.

Retro Yearly List #17 [1991: Sunset Riders]

Okay, wow.
This game is often mentioned when it comes to ranking the best SNES games of all time, so my expectations were high, but I was still impressed.

Sunset Riders normally would fall into the status of those "hidden gems" since it's just a one-game title, but it went far beyond that, becoming an undisputed must-play game. I can see the reason: the game is a blast.
The Western atmosphere, which is something not enough explored in games, is pretty well implemented here. For that same aspect, OST does help a lot, and by the way, what a BANGER, Stage 1 theme went right into my top game tracks of all time, I'm listening to it in loop while writing this review.

The graphics are what you expect from SNES, as beautiful as the Arcade version. The gameplay works very well for the way the game is constructed, I just could not get used to the slide properly for whatever reason.
The game's difficulty is most of the time balanced, with a few sections of high unfairness, usually, the first minutes of the horse levels, which are a huge mess that will require you a response time comparable to the bonus stages at full speed.
Chief Scalpem boss is also a pain in the ass, and the final boss is a bullet hell. Those elements didn't take away my satisfaction with the game, though. After finishing this I got instigated to play it again and again, beating it about 3 times, and that was after beating the Arcade version twice.

I've saved the best for the end: The bosses.
I love boss battles, even more when they have identities, unique patterns, and personalities, and that's the case here. Everyone here can be easily remembered by their catchphrases, for example. The El Greco easter egg with Cormano on the Arcades is also a genius touch.
Even the main characters have their own characteristics which is incredible, they really put work on this.

Well, so this is what Konami was like at its full power, huh?

Tried this just to check it out and got hooked, but the overall feelings are mixed.

20XX is Megaman+Roguelite, a genre that never interested me but the MM side caught my attention, this is a nice mix of genres resulting in an addicting experience.

I liked the controls here at first, just had some problems with the dash since it seems a bit slow compared to the inspired game, but once you progress to harder levels with challenging (and unfair) platforming will you notice that they could be a lot better.

The random aspect of the elements' positioning here can turn into a huge mess by the latest levels, creating sections that require almost perfect timing to not get hit, those ice and fire turrets annoyed me to hell, and on my last run, I just gave up on trying to beat with Ace after dying at the final boss and during the last escaping phase due to dumb positioning of mechanics like disappearing platforms (which they did not had to bring that from Megaman, geez) combined with the turrets I mentioned above, and everything else. It went from fun to frustrating.

The music is great and does justice to its inspiration, Vaculabs track is a banger.
The graphics are pretty meh and that was the reason I did not try this before, it looks a lot like a Flash game, but it works.
The game's content is huge if we talk about items, upgrades, and game modes, but within the game itself, it has repeated stages and enemies, getting stale quickly. I liked the bosses here although they are not my style, I'm more like robot masters, you know?

Oh and for whatever reason my game was glitched during the cutscenes so I could not get the game's lore, it looks interesting tbh, but who cares? It's all about shooting and slashing everyone while sprinting among platforms, like a true Megaman (X) game.