I'm currently 20 years old. Having not been alive to see them, I've had somewhat of a fascination with the 1990s ever since I was very little. 90s games and animation in particular have always had a grip on my brain, being so off the wall, so different from what I would see on TV and the games my siblings were playing. Even now, I'm always playing 4th gen games of basically random quality while a lot of my friends are talking about whatever the big new game is that I'm totally clueless on. This month's was Pizza Tower, which piqued my interest because I had actually heard about it years ago. From everything I've seen over time, it looked like a game right up my alley, so I decided recently to give it a go.

At its core, Pizza Tower is an ode to all that 90s stuff that I love. It's a bit ugly in style, but in that deliberate Ren & Stimpy or Ed, Edd n' Eddy kinda way, and I warmed up to it almost immediately. There's also a ton of recognizable 4th gen influence here, but the most obvious gameplay comparison, the one proudly worn on Pizza Tower's sleeve, is Wario Land 4. If Wario Land 4 is this purely satisfying to play, then I might as well get around to it as soon as possible. This game is so fucking fun, dude. It's such a blast from start to finish. I love the movement so much, how expressive it is, how fun it is to goof around with. The music is killer as well, only elevating the aesthetic and overall experience further. It really feels like you're playing through an old cartoon series.

My only gripe I can think of is with the bosses. They're not that bad, but they're considerably less intuitive than the core gameplay. It's sometimes hard to tell when you can hit them, though this isn't an issue with the earlier ones. They also each have double the health displayed on screen, which is just really bizarre to me. As soon as you deplete it, it refills and a second phase begins with more shit flying around. I don't have a problem with a second phase, I just wish the full health was more clearly illustrated, you know? Anyway, it might just be that I'm not very good, but each of the bosses took me several tries. I find that it really disrupts the flow of the high-octane levels inbetween. Though I suppose if they attempted to keep that speed going, there's a chance it would end up with Sonic Advance 2-esque bosses. That would probably be much worse.

At the end of the day, yeah this is really fucking good. Believe the hype, etc etc. It's clear a lot of love was put into this, and I think the 5 or so years it spent in development turned out to be totally worth it. Whether you're some kind of 90s nostalgist (or someone who's just into that kinda stuff like I am) or you just like really fast, speedrun-friendly games, Pizza Tower should be quite a treat for you.

I finally did muster through Super Mario Sunshine after about three and a half years of leaving it on the backburner, and I must say I still don't get it. It's not all bad but it's like, not very fun to me at all. I found its best moments to be pretty decent, and put up against Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy I don't really think it stands a chance in most if not all fields. I did not gel with the aesthetic, controls, or level design nearly as much as in either of them.

The biggest thing that irks me about Sunshine, though, is it doesn't feel as open as it lets on. You can beat the game with a minimum of 50 shines (I completed it with 53), but rather than a basic threshold to close off the final level, like how you can get any 70 stars in 64 to reach the end, you are required to do all the first seven missions of each level. In order, too. You can't go out of order like you can in 64, you have to do mission 1, then mission 2, etc. This works fine in Galaxy because the level design reflects it better, it's already more linear to begin with in its design and progression. Sunshine's level design does not reflect its linearity, it presents itself as a lot more open and implies a lot more freedom than you're actually provided. The end result takes away the feeling of free exploration, and it begins to feel more like crossing off a checklist than finding things yourself and reaping the rewards for doing so. Some of these required missions are frankly quite awful as well. A few of the bosses (Petey Piranha 2, Manta) are super tedious and slow, and some other missions littered around are bordering on unacceptable. I could not locate any enjoyment to be found in the "chuckster" mission, for example, and there's just no way to get around it without enduring it. If you have a star in 64 you really hate, chances are you can just work around it, but such is not the case this time.

I figure you can warm up to this with enough playthroughs, but the first is deeply unsatisfying and unrewarding. A competently made and designed game for the most part, but mundane and unenjoyable especially in comparison to the high points surrounding it in the series. Why would I want to play it some more in order to warm up to it if the first playthrough was so consistently rough? How often do you want to replay something you thought was lame, especially with people breathing down your neck about how you're wrong? I dunno, man. It just doesn't really make sense to me. I really see now why this seems to be the most divisive of the 3D Mario entries, and try as I might to enjoy myself during its runtime, I can't seem to do so often enough to really call it something I like as an overall experience. I'm just glad I at least have it off my back now.

Paper Mario fanatics are kind of the worst, huh? They're like the most annoying attributes of Nintendo nerds amplified by ten; they constantly whine about how dead their series is, get into absurd fights over which game is the best, they shove their games down your throat without giving you room to breathe. I suppose it has died down a little since that recent installment for the Switch, but I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. It gets really tiring sometimes to hear the same things hailed as godsends, and instead of making me want to check them out it just drives me away out of annoyance. This can also be said for stuff like Outer Wilds and Hollow Knight, but I remember tracing this feeling in my head back to games like this.

All that being said, this game is damn near masterful in many aspects. The amount of heart and soul thrown in is just staggering. The story in particular is one of Nintendo's finest and most captivating. You probably couldn't count all the memorable characters here if you had four hands, and same goes for the songs featured throughout. It's also a really good RPG for beginners, seeing as the difficulty as a whole is very very low up until the final two chapters. There's a lot to love here. I do love this game, and ultimately I can indeed see how it reached its status.

A big thing about the ridiculous levels of hype, though, is that it makes the lower points sting that much more. This game is absolutely not free of those, I can tell you that much. Most notably, the backtracking can be pretty exhausting. In particular, Chapter 4's ridiculous amounts of wandering back and forth reduce it to a tedious nightmare, even despite the introduction of Vivian, whom everybody loves and everybody should love.

Less significant, but still worth noting is that the battle system started to wear on my nerves after a while, though I guess this is usually an RPG problem as a whole. I guess it's pretty hard to get that right, admittedly. But things like the Twilight Town/Creepy Steeple fiasco, or Chapter 7's asinine fetch quest...they really just make me wonder, what was the point? Was there not a better way to pad those chapters out? I don't know, man.

And the thing is, I probably wouldn't be as worked up about moments like this if its fans didn't tout it around as a flawless masterwork. It feels like the cracks are bigger than they really are, since everything good has been already said and then some. Sometimes when things reach this status it's just easier to talk about the negatives, even if it really is a wonderful time as a whole.

So for the most part it looks like the aforementioned loud, annoying fans were right. But really, in the end I still don't think a return to form for this series is necessary. It's part of what makes those early ones special, how one of a kind they are. Every series eventually declines with time, and it's not really a big deal how early or late it happens.

It's also just that like, projects like Bug Fables? That has "oh, this is for the REAL fans" energy all over it. That shit is annoying. Not touching it with a ten foot pole. Gootbye.

Anyway, uh, it's like 2 AM. This is a very scatterbrained and ranty review, if you can't tell already. I tried to bum rush through the last three chapters of the game today and I am totally out of energy. It's also deliberately my 500th game logged, though, so I wanted to write something longer despite being tired. Ultimately I'm glad I caved in and gave this a go. I think it was worth it.

After sitting around for about 30 minutes trying to think of something to say, I've realized Gunstar Heroes does a good enough job speaking for itself. It absolutely blows my mind how fucking fun it is, how good it looks, how well it establishes its cast with minimal dialogue. In all regards, it's maybe one of the best to ever do it.

A lot of people will recommend Alien Soldier over this from what I've seen, but it just has something missing compared to this one, probably due to being rushed out the door. I also find this to be a lot more digestible, less overwhelming, overall better to pick up and play. That's not to say you should miss out on Alien Soldier, though.