Bubsy is one of the many...specimens that appeared in an attempt to rival Sonic the Hedgehog in the early 90s, and he was less doomed from the start than you would initially believe. It sold pretty well, better than Sparkster oddly enough, then Accolade pressed their luck a few more times and now Bubsy has just about mainstream infamy for his piss and shit games. The games are probably more known nowadays for their poor quality than even games featured in early AVGN episodes. I was wondering today, though, if the first title was really that bad. I've played some absurd bullshit and was kind of expecting to get around to this one sooner or later anyway, so might as well quit delaying.

What I learned is that it sucks ass, but it's not necessarily unsalvageable. This is about what I was expecting, a mediocre platformer at its core that was then rendered nonsense due to a few glaring flaws. The biggest issue is probably the combination of screen crunch and Bubsy's utter incompetence. He is probably three times as fragile as a glass bottle. It seems like they were more focused on making various ways for Bubsy to die than making actual fun platforming. He has a downright strange amount of death animations for a game this old, and they're always provoked with a single touch. If you take one hit he'll melt or shatter or split in half or some other shit. There are lots of old games where you only have one hit, but imagine if you were playing like Vectorman or something and he was that weak. That's what the screen crunch is like in this, it's another one of those games where the level layouts really don't match the screen size at all. Also he builds up ridiculous speed too, so you'll constantly crash into things that weren't even on screen long enough for your brain to register that they exist. Truly delightful.

At the start of each level, Bubsy makes some lame quip of sorts. You would think "oh, good, at least he doesn't talk as much as later installments," but it also plays over again each time you die, which is bound to be a ton of times. It gets incredibly grating. I don't see what the point of that is anyway, when instead you could just fade to black for a second and spawn back at a checkpoint instead of looking at the level's title card every time and hearing him spout dumbassery. It sounds like a minor nitpick, but it really starts to wear on you fast when you're the one with the controller.

The thing is that I feel like this game could definitely be fixed. If Bubsy himself had better physics, he had more hit points, and the screen was zoomed out a bit, it would probably be pretty serviceable. I don't at all think it's one of the worst ever, but it's got a lot of insanely frustrating issues. Not as horrible as a lot of content creators would lead you to believe, but still pretty goddamn bad and not worth a play.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors basically had me at the end of my rope yesterday. I was annoyed about ditching it so close to the finish line but I really don't think I could take anymore. Instead of taking a break like a normal person would and should, I figured I should replay something I know I enjoyed, and it turned out I played the first Donkey Kong Country so long ago (january 2021) that the ROM wasn't even on my current computer. My memory was hazy, it was on the GDQ schedule, and I figured now would be a good time to check it out again.

I think I appreciate it more this time. It's got bad screen crunch at times, the bosses are humdrum (all of them), and a lot of enemy models aren't near as appealing as the more detailed ones like Donkey's and Diddy's, but that's really all I can think of for negatives. It's a lot more fun than I remember and also a lot better looking than I remember, and with greater knowledge of the SNES library than I had three years ago, I can now further appreciate its significance both overall and for the time.

The soundtrack remains the true highlight in my opinion, though. Everybody loves Aquatic Ambience of course, seriously incredible for a game OST back then, but my personal favorite makes its debut a few stages later, in the form of Life in the Mines. I have a lot of silly memories relating to Simian Segue as well due to its inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which I owned as a kid and made lots of joke levels in the stage builder with my brother that used aforementioned song. We thought it was funny as fuck back then for some reason.

DKC1 is great stuff all around. I vividly remember 2 being better, but I'm very glad I revisited this. Definitely revisiting 2 soon as well.

The magnum opus of the NES, for my money. Nothing really comes quite this close imo, it's honestly breathtaking even today, especially for the hardware. No idea how it was pulled off, but you can tell it was just barely, because the most common complaint is pretty copious amounts of slowdown. I find it to be quite manageable, especially because this game is really easy, but it's worth a mention. Also copy abilities are in a bit of a rough state at this point in time, they're fun to use and all but if you lose one getting it back is much more of a hassle than it is in future installments. That's it for gripes though, this is completely insane given the limitations and it always brings me bundles of joy even tens of playthroughs later. Very incredible stuff.

Excerpt from "list of things that can kill silver surfer with minimal trouble"
-frogs
-ducks
-turtles
-various small fish
-eyeballs
-cartoon ghosts
-pumpkins
-small hands
-any wall in the known universe
-hats
-the green giant

My friends and I butt heads a little about this one, usually because I personally am not a fan. Kirby's Adventure has wowed me since I was just 12 years old, playing it all the way through on my old Wii in my very first dosage of Kirby gameplay. And with later years and more playthroughs, I've only come to appreciate it more. For a 1993 release, its art and presentation are fucking stunning, outshining plenty of games on the more powerful, more sought after consoles at the time. Minor issues are present, but not once has it particularly weighed down my experience with the game. It holds up perfectly even today.

Now, this game is a direct remake of Kirby's Adventure. Yay! But, it's for the GBA, a supervillain of sound design in gaming. There is no sound chip, and oftentimes it just sounds really fuzzy or half baked. A lot of games on it feature MIDI-sounding compositions, and this is one of them. Gone is the bounciness and fun of the original release's soundtrack, drowned under MIDI trumpets and steel drums and shitty sounding bass. Not every song is necessarily butchered or anything, but I find it very drained of character and energy.

This leads me to the facelift the game was given as a whole. I've never been a fan of the GBA/DS era of Kirby in terms of art, it has always felt rather bland to me especially compared to the much more cutesy earlier and later eras. This looks the weakest of those four imo, and it really comes to your attention when compared to the wonderful backgrounds and charm of the NES version. It's serviceable I guess on its own, but compared to the original it just feels so sterilized and even drab and a bit sad to me. Butter Building isn't even yellow, for example? And the interior is far more samey looking than before, as are pretty much the majority of levels. Grape Garden and Rainbow Resort are my personal favorites in the original, due to how much variety there is in the scenery. In the original, I can even tell each level of those two worlds apart, but here they all blend together. They feel much more like really long individual levels than the great big worlds they initially set up 9 years ago.

Not a lot is really changed at all gameplay wise, either. The slowdown is fixed, but aside from that it is pretty much the same. My memory used to be a bit cloudy of this one and I assumed a part of why people prefer this version was adopting Kirby Super Star style gameplay or something, but I was surprised to see it doesn't actually do that at all. So what gives? Is the slowdown really that much of a make or break thing? Maybe there's just something I don't understand.

Whatever the case, it's kind of just okay on its own. But when compared to the original and when I take in what makes that one stand out so much, it lessens my opinion of this one a little. I've always just thought it feels like a lot of the charm and soul is taken out, leaving behind just a hollow husk of the original game. I guess it has Meta Knightmare. Yay...? It,, doesn't really make up for things though in my opinion. I don't know man. I don't think there was really a reason for this remake to be made, and it could have at least done the job a little better. It seems to miss the point on a lot of things that made the original as extraordinary as it is.

Dracula X isn't necessarily an affront to the franchise but it by all means is a poorly thought out and rather unfortunate neutering of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. It mostly just feels like a whole lot of nothing, like they needed to toss out a quick Castlevania game before the SNES' marketability started waning. It's not even really a port of Rondo so much as just a barren slog that happens to reuse its assets.

On top of thoroughly boring level design, the lack of enemy variety adds a lot to how rushed it feels. They especially loved to reuse the annoying ass knight with the spear, for...some reason. At the very least, it does feel like proper care was put into the first level, but that's about all I can give this one. It all just feels super stripped back from both IV and Rondo, and maybe even 3 honestly.

I suppose they thought the final fight with Dracula in Rondo was too easy, so here they redrew him and ramped the fight up to utterly nonsensical levels. The first phase mostly consists of trying to figure out where the hell he spawned, and then once you find him you have to be careful his fireballs don't knock you into one of eight bottomless pits strewn across the area. Even hitting him is a chore, his hitbox is as small as it is in other games but with constantly jumping over and avoiding the pits it becomes so much more of a hassle. He becomes easier to hit in his second phase, so much easier actually that he takes up a big fucking portion of the screen and knocks you into the pits even more than he already was beforehand. I wasted 15 minutes on this fight even with abusing savestates, not the most but still absolutely not normal for a non-RPG boss. When I was done he kinda just slumped over and disappeared in a single frame, like he was deleted from an image or something. Wonderful.

I kind of doubt that fight was even playtested, seeing as there are no testers listed in the credits. Once again, it just adds on even more to the rushed aura around this game. I'm not particularly sure if a faithful port of Rondo was possible, seeing as I'm no hardware expert, but they definitely could've done a better standalone game than this too. It really makes you wonder which one they were even going for here, and whatever the case, it falls flat pretty hard.