I love this game to death, actually. Has a similar level of nostalgia (very extremely high) for me as Dynamite Headdy, although I'm a little more partial to that game. The art and sprites are absolutely wonderful, and the soundtrack is one of my favorites (Star Humming being my favorite credits song in probably any game).

Level design was considerably better than I recalled, which is part of why I'm bumping it up further. It can seem kind of awkward at a glance, but with some mastering of the mechanics everything becomes very fun to explore. Even Planet Sonata was far less grating this playthrough than on previous ones. All that said, enemy placement is kind of cheap at times, and every now and then you'll get hit by something that was off screen with no heads up or anything. The final boss is also much harder than the rest of the game and it takes a solid amount of work just to get through some attacks alone without damage, but despite being a little bullshit I've always enjoyed said boss. Maybe nostalgia again.

This game is good as fuck. It's generally pretty easy for the Genesis library, only slightly more difficult than the original Sonic games. Would recommend at least once either way, but especially if you're a fan of those. Definitely not worth missing out on.

Level design takes a serious hit here compared to Adventure and even the first game honestly. Around Red Canyon onwards many of the levels comprise of autoscrollers and windy segments. Rainbow Drop puzzles are immensely unfun in the later levels as well, Cloudy Park in particular just has an insanely ridiculous one. I don't know, 3 retains a lot of things this one does but it's just such a better game to me. I dont know where such a big difference comes in for me, but this one is really kind of a letdown in comparison to its surroundings in the mainline series. Those are pretty high bars for sure though, and even still this is not particularly close to being a bad game. Maybe one of the best for the Game Boy, actually.

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.

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.

I have a love-hate relationship with mini golf, which carries on over to this game. It's very neat and usually decently fun to go out and do, but with 1 player it's lonely and depressing and with more you're always making a big scene at each other bc like your friend will do something like bounce you out of the way and get in the hole before you at the same time. So usually mini golf video games end up on about the same enjoyment as actual mini golf every time. (unless the course is fucking dogshit, like Kingdom in Tower Unite for example. Fuck you. Die)

(played on normal as falco & fay)

The big thing everyone knows about this one is that it was initially unreleased. Says it was finished in 1995-1996 or so, then shelved, then dumped online, then released officially like two decades later. By now it's not great really, but in the context of the SNES library it's a pretty good one.

...just, a way too short one as well. Like 30 minutes even with no skill. The structure is a bit odd as well, I definitely prefer the linear approach of the original and 64. That aside, generally improvements are made over the original. It runs a lot smoother and there's a bit more variety, and I like the new ship models and characters. One thing of note is it doesn't have that same feel of like innovation and wonder as the original did, how crazy it was for its time, etc., it kind of really is just, Star Fox Two:tm:. More of the same with improvements. I think this is the better game, but 1 has more charm to it and generally a more interesting aura. Whatever the case, they make a hell of an odd duology in the 16-bit era, and I find them both to be somewhat underappreciated.

One of two launch titles for the SNES, main goal appears to be showing off what Mode 7 could do. It's a lot better than Super Mario Kart, the console's other big racer, but 1 that's a low bar and 2 it still has a fair share of really awful moments.

There's this part in White Land II where you have to hold down to get across a gap, but there's no indicator of this whatsoever. Spent a lot more time than I should have just trying to build up more speed there to no avail, and had to look up what to do. Also there are these orange cars always in your way that aren't even part of the fucking race? They always slow you down if you bump into them, and sometimes they explode on contact, which typically sends you into a wall and makes you take damage as well. If you take too much, you explode, and have to start over from the beginning of lap 1. It gets really annoying, especially when out of the racing genre you're only used to games like the Mario Kart series. There's also Silence and Fire Field, which are terribly designed and much too difficult.

It does have its high points, every Mute City course is very good for example, but also all three leagues have a blunder or two in them, and none are particularly fun to finish off. I guess the Queen League is a little better than the other two, if I had to choose one. Definitely an interesting game, especially for the time and how it works, but it really just isn't that fun to play for me.

One of my friends has a SNES although she's like my age, she says her parents just gave em consoles like that instead of what was big at the time. She said this was the worst game that she could recall in her library, so I played it in vc and it's just four shitty reskins of old as time minigames like Space Invaders and Frogger, except where like Pumbaa burps on things and Timon jumps across hippos. You'll see all there is to see in maybe 5-10 minutes. I wasn't even originally going to log this one but fuck it i want the busy day badge lol

This is a pretty absurd game. Generally it's just average, or slightly below, but there's some things of interest to talk about.

The biggest selling point apparently is that these guys Psykosonik did the OST, but it's just okay and reuses songs very often. For example, the opening theme is also used for stage 3, 6, the final boss, and the credits. Also, the entire soundtrack is different in the original Japanese release. And the character names, and the story, and even the title (Sword Maniac). The English localization can pretty much be summed up as insane 90s futuristic bullshit, and I have no idea what the original is about.

Gameplay doesn't change any, though. The stages are okay, but the bosses switch to this 1v1 fighting style and they are all ABSURDLY difficult. They all work about the same, but I never really got down a strategy because they always block a grand majority of attacks and it seems random when they don't. I ended up just abusing save states at each one until I was past them.

Other than those things though, there's not really much to say. Weird ass game all in all.

Not particularly better or worse than 1 honestly. It's far less choppy, which is great. But it definitely feels a bit unfinished, the way it lays itself out makes you think there would be more to it than the original. There's no need for an rpg style world map in a sidescroller with just six levels, honestly. There's also a lot of things you can buy that are completely pointless, like flowers or house remodeling. It genuinely does make me wonder if there was meant to be a lot more to this one than in the final release.