Been dealing with some health problems lately so I'm too sick to work on my own projects but instead have a lot of time for bucket list games. Can't complain (too much).

Terranigma is one of the several "good vibes" SNES games. Others include Chrono Trigger, Soul Blazer, Secret of Evermore, EVO... probably more. But they're the best type of nostalgia imo. Only a few other PS1 games come close to that feel. Can't really describe what that feel actually is, but if you know you know I'd say.

I've tried beating Terranigma twice, but I lost interest about halfway once and the other I think I got stuck on Bloody Mary (that's the boss that everyone complains about so I think that was probably it).

This game is beautiful though. Graphics and music is absolute top notch for the system. Might even be my favorite at times. I don't mind being sick so much if I have Ark as company.

Radiant Silvergun, like it's close cousin Alien Soldier, (another of my all-time favorite games) is what I call a solution-shooter; which is to say, it playfully hides a "correct" playstyle for a boss, or a level, or even a singular piece of a level, behind a slew of various weapon options and possible pathways and approaches. There are many different WORKABLE ways to play, and to defeat bosses, to be sure... but there is almost always, I have found, an EASIEST way--such that, if you study, then uncover, and then string together all of the Easiest Ways through the entire game, it would transform a seemingly impossible, WRETCHEDLY-difficult experience into a surprisingly simply completable one.

For a very primitive example: sure, you could try and grit your way through a boss encounter dodging everything on the bottom of the screen, utilizing your straight-ahead cannon for maximum damage, as though it were a CAVE shmup... but have you tried swooping around and to the left (out of the way, perhaps, of most of the bullet-hell), and utilizing your side-shot instead?

It's this simple mechanism that not only keeps Radiant Silvergun from becoming frustrating, but that makes it feel so awash in fascinating possibility. Like a Soulsborne game, it sheds layers of difficulty upon every death and continue, not because you got better at twitch movement (but, hey, maybe you did), but because you learned stuff that will legitimately help you the next time--and not just simple bullet patterns, but the effectiveness of different combinations of weapons, the value of an offensive or defensive strategy (like Ikaruga, the entire game can be beaten without firing a shot), and much more.

This style of gameplay necessitates countless trial and error runs, which never feel grindy because, again, you're not just attempting to get 'gud' at the game (that is to say, to master its core movement and shooting mechanics); you're attempting to gain knowledge about its design. For this reason, the optimal way to play Radiant Silvergun initially is in a Saturn emulator, utilizing savestates to study every individual encounter. Treasure knew this, and so, while they didn't provide the ability to literally save one's state, they did thankfully include a stage select in the Saturn port that breaks the game up into 20-30 minute chunks. (That anyone could have learned this game in the arcade is mind-boggling.)

I completely understand complaints about the difficulty. The final gauntlet of bosses, especially, is almost hilariously grueling, even after many studious playthroughs. But that's extremely important to the other, major thing Radiant Silvergun has going for it over almost any other shmup that I've played: meaningful narrative stakes.

There's a story here. There's symbolism; there's camaraderie, and sacrifice, and redemption. There's the entire world to save, and the game makes us FEEL that, with a huge orchestral score, and movie-quality voice acting. When bosses are raining hellfire on you toward the end of the game, and you desperately wonder how you'll ever make it, you're doing so in tandem with the game's characters in its story, which feels insanely unique in a shmup, even all these years later.

(If you find the game too difficult to enjoy, I would honestly recommend just watching a Let's Play as though it were a movie, and basking in the sheer visual- and design-audacity of some of these fucking boss fights (ESPECIALLY Xiga)).

As I did with Alien Soldier, I'm putting a 1CC of Radiant Silvergun on my bucket list. It's a game that I'll happily return to, over and over, to find just one more of those Easiest Ways--a new nook away from the bullets, a new weapon strategy, a new ship path, a new boss weakness. I could watch experts and just attempt to mimic them, of course, but to do so would be to miss the entire point, and the ultimate beauty, of this game.

You’re trying to tell me these are mechs? They look like potential rayman characters

One of the last games released for the famicom during the shift to the super famicom in Japan, joy mech fight was nintendo’s last attempt to create a fighting game for the famicom (like what they did with urban champion). This game was actually never brought to the west until Nintendo switch online a year ago so uhh…good job Nintendo. Good to see the game finally got a localisation! Oh wait-

So because I can’t read what’s going on, I’m currently going off of what it says on the Wikipedia page. Dr. Emon and Dr. Walnuts create these really cool robots until walnuts steals them and plans world domination. Thankfully, Emon brings a robot called sukapon and turns him into a military robot to fight back against Walnuts and all his robots. Pretty simple plot.

Gameplay is your typical fighting game, though it has quite a lot of charm to it. In the story mode, you eventually get 36 available fighters, each with their own abilities that you can use. These can also be played in the multiplayer modes, and some are extremely easy to master. The story mode consists of beating 7 fighters per level until having to face a boss at the end. After finishing the boss, you move onto the next level.

Overall, whilst not the best game on the famicom, I must admit that joy mech fight has a really nice charm to it. And as one of the last famicom games, it has a really nice presentation that I love and it doesn’t feel stiff at all. It is probably one of the best fighting games on the famicom, but whether it is on a similar level to that of street fighter 2 or tekken is possibly a very big stretch.

Fun gameplay, really nice presentation, neat music, rayman if it was a fighting game

even through the tedium that was trial-and-erroring the educational minigames (hard to play games about knowing a language you don't know), the game had a lot of charm~! the presentation is /phenomenal/, and was honestly enough to carry the rest of the game on its own, but the level design and mechanics, while not shining quite as brightly, still held up well.
the game is also really generous, having infinite continues, which i appreciated as i died a lot (even though it's really not that difficult... i guess i suck at platformers, despite loving 'em!)

...

right after writing this, i played through the game again using the passwords on gamefaqs to skip the minigames and dang, this game is breazy! it also has some /real/ good color palettes.

Cry for the moon...

Entering the infinite void of what's beyond the thermosphere of our planet, we gaze upon her majesty. That moment we take in the supposed sanctuary of our mother goddess is where our unknowable enemy launches their sneaky surprise attack at the start of the round, we don't even notice there's two moons until it's too late. The imposter of our beautiful rock in the sky slowly approaches from the background as warning sirens blare through your speakers. I hope you're prepared fellow pilot, because it's only downhill from here when it comes to questioning what lies in front of your eyes.

The mechanics of your ship are shoddy and experimental at best, just as rough and rugged as the scenery you'll be digesting in your next trip through your shmup smorgasbord. The unknowable enemy will not make things easy with their positioning and method of approach, and your ship may be ill-equipped to deal with their lunacy and onslaught of Space Mambos. Persevere through it all and your Black Fly getting inevitably crushed and sandwiched between the ceiling and floor by a funny rascal, and you may just find yourself in a fight against a phantom phallus utilizing your own kind's history and imagery of what may be your childhood pet cat to drag you deeper into it's method of madness.

Once all is said and done, you will be led to wonder, were you dreaming or was it reality? Perhaps it's time to wake up...you were born to be free....

Wake up.

You know, the original Wild Guns was pretty alright, but you know what it was missing this whole time?... A DOGGO!

I don't think that saying the original game was pretty stellar would be a hot take; Wild Guns is a pretty damn fun and interesting take on shooting galleries, combining them with the platforming genre and delivering an outstanding visual style and setting —I've always had a weakness for the idea of robots and giant floating ships in the Wild West, and this game takes insporation from all kinds of works based on that idea— resulting in a game that the only reason I haven't ever returned to it being because I'm terrible at it.

While I can't think of anything particularly wrong with it, I wouldn't have complaint if some things were done differently; the lack of any kind of save feature, while making it very much in line with the arcade experiences it draws inspiration from and it isn't a lengthy experience by any chance, it would have still been welcomed, such as more mini-boss variety or a bit of re-tooling on the already present big bads. I didn’t know much about Reloaded going into it, but I thought it would be basically that; a retake that takes the chance to update and change some aspects, keeping the core the same while modifying and altering parts of the original experience, like so many remakes do. But... no, Wild Guns Reloaded keeps the experience the exact same, only adding to what was already there, and it honestly feels as if this was the game they wanted to make back in 1994.

Why do I say that? Well, Bullet is in it for one, but even setting aside that big and clear improvement, every other aspect that was in the original experience is brought to its best possible limit. The first game was already pretty, Reloaded is outright majestic: the pixel art is so detailed and perfected for both enemies and the stages themselves that the fact it still feels like the original artwork is honestly remarkable. The SNES game is still amazing to look that even to this day, but here I truly get the feeling I’m playing a forgotten real Arcade version; no big changes were made, nor was anything lost in the 22-year leap. Same sentiment goes towards the OST, I still LOVE how the original sounds, but the new remixes are takes that I also enjoy quite a bit. I don’t think that Reloaded puts these aspects of its predecessor to shame, but it’s a pretty worthy upgrade and accomplished what it was probably going for, the feeling that this could have been on a cabinet alongside the likes of Metal Slug back in the 90s.

In every other sense, this is quite literally Wild Guns... but more of it! Brand new secret stages, enemies and themes are already wonderful additions, but also having Doris and The Best Character in Gaming to add 4-player-multiplayer is one of those changes that wasn’t necessary at all but incentivizes replayability even more: Doris is an interesting character to play as, much more methodical but an absolute powerhouse if you manage it right, even tho it never clicked with me, I can totally see how useful it can be solo or with other players... and then there’s Bullet. Clint and Annie are fun to play, they are the original pair and they feel perfectly adequate to this curious style of gameplay, Bullet is the odd one out, and yet I prefer him so much more: were the other two sacrifice movility for the shake of more precise shooting, Bullet is te opposite, only being to auto aim in a sepcific part once the button is held down, but you are completely free to move while you do it. I adore this more agressive way of approaching stages and even if it can take a bit to grow accostumed, I find it so rewarding, there’s a reason I praised it even before getting to him, beating Kid’s ass never felt better.

Even more jaw-dropping visuals, more stuff to test and have fun with, same great game as always, and a nice puppy; calling Wild Guns Reloaded a ‘’remaster’’ feels like trowing out the sheer effort and work it was put into replicating the original and going even further than one. Still, I don’t see Reloaded as a replacement, but it’s a fantastic option to have nonetheless, is the same fun time after all, just flashier and with more to discover...

Big thanks to @DeltaWDunn for recommending it to me! I’ll be honest and say that before it was brought into my attention, I didn’t even know this game existed, but I’m so glad someone pointed me to it, so once again, huge thanks!

Total dearth of anything to engage with, completely disrespected my time and energy. I guess I could be charitable and say the game is functionally sound and feels like a shmup should, and the 15 supporting weapons to select from are neat, but there's nothing going on in this game, there's no level design, half the bosses die from 1 bomb and the other half take 100,000 (no exaggeration) shots to the head. How do you make something like this? Debatably even worse than D-Force on sheer artistic merit

Software Creations supposedly began work on Equinox in March 1990, being the first Western developer to gain access to a SNES devkit. The game wasn't completed for another three years, reportedly at least partially due to visual bugs, and even in the final product you can still see glimpses of flickering and incorrect overlapping. Not only that, but there are weird glitches that can happen for unknown reasons that may lead to soft resets. The damn thing is barely holding itself together, and it nearly collapses under its ambitions alone even without the technical issues in mind.

Yet, in spite of all that, I mostly enjoyed myself. It definitely got a bit exhausting towards the end of its eight hour runtime as the dungeons became more and more massive, but it starts off surprisingly strong and still manages to keep things going acceptably throughout. My favorite aspect is probably the ambient soundtrack by the Follins, which I never found myself getting tired of throughout the entire game. Wasn't always a fan of the way the game looked, especially not that grimace Glendaal makes every time he dies, but there are some very pretty areas such as Quagmire and Atlena during the midgame. It reminds me a lot of Landstalker in that aspect - not just that they're both isometric action RPGs, but they're both kind of ugly for the most part yet still endearing. I'm not sure which I prefer.

The puzzles aren't so great either once you reach a certain point, mostly consisting of weird optical illusions and other sorts of perspective fuckery. An interview from 1994 mentions that 3D shadowing to allow for better depth perception wasn't really possible at the time, possibly indicating that a lot of these types of rooms were meant to be clearer than they really are. Hitboxes can also be pretty frustrating, especially with spikes, and I found that none of the bosses were very engaging. Combined with how long the game is, it seems like the negatives should outweigh the positives, but such is thankfully not the case for me this time.

Equinox is definitely more of a 'vibes game' than something I'd really entertain the thought of revisiting, but I had a pretty decent time regardless. Not very descriptive, of course, but surely it makes sense. The soothing soundtrack and smaller emphasis on combat really do wonders to the feel of the whole thing, despite the aggravating difficulty later on. I would definitely recommend this if you're super into Landstalker or Light Crusader. I don't know if it's necessarily better than those, and it's certainly a little janky, but it's worth a look if you're in that crowd.

Okay look, I can spin all sorts of shit into something being actually good, but I just can't do it here. R-Type II as far as it's original arcade incarnation is concerned is borderline unplayable. Absolutely reprehensible morally unsound difficulty that I would expect from loop 2 gameplay. Gradius III at least gave me some hospitality before it caved my skull in. R-Type II is exceptionally rude in comparison.

You can talk as much smack as you want about Super R-Type's slowdown and lack of checkpoints, but they remixed and added stages for the better in that port/not-port of this. I also couldn't help but think the stronger charged shot was harder to use here than in Super, so all around I'm just yearning for my childhood back instead of this hellhole I found myself in when I dared to play the second half of R-Types today. I regret everything, you owe me for this R-Type!

Give me my slowdown back, give me what I want! Give me the good music too! Give me what I want!

There's definitely a vibe to Super Mario RPG. This isn't nostalgia talking. I didn't play the game until 2017, on the SNES Mini. But the music, the writing, the sequence of tasks you have to perform... this is the game Squaresoft made when they thought Final Fantasy VII was going to be an N64 project. It's a silly, kid-friendly fairytale RPG, but there's a real through line from this to both Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time. It's not that games don't make us feel like they used to when we kids. They just stopped making them like this.

So much of what I love about Mario RPG is in its presentation. It was a real technical achievement on the SNES, but that meant it was pushing against boundaries in every direction. I mean, really, this was an isometric RPG with pre-rendered graphics and a very prominent jump button, and that was about as 3D as you were getting in an adventure game back then. Characters had very limited poses to communicate with, and they opted to keep Mario mute as he gave direct responses to NPCs, expressing himself through pantomime and, again, his trademark jumping. It's a bit of a puppet show, and it's deeply endearing.

Removing the limitations of an old game is always hazardous, and particularly when that carries so much of its appeal. New developers, ArtePiazza, have earned Square Enix's trust from decades of ports and remakes, spanning all the way back to the Super Famicom version of Dragon Quest III, and they've taken great pains to stay faithful to the original game's charm, though you can feel the stress they were under, taking Zoom meetings with Shigeru Miyamoto and Tetsuya Nomura. Playing this game is accepting that it's going to look like a Fancy Modern version, discarding the funny old sprites, and past that, there's very little for the old guard to grumble about. Hell, the bulk of the characters still look like beautifully crude old CGI.

There's a suite of quality of life tweaks that take much of the old SNES RPG pain out of the experience. Downed characters can be swapped mid-battle, timing-based attacks now give a little heads up to help you figure out when you're supposed to press A, and the game's constantly auto-saving. It's less of a commitment. Yes, I like the tension that comes from not knowing when you'll be allowed to turn a game off, but I was still using save states when I played on the SNES Mini. I'm not kidding on that we had it better off in the nineties.

I really don't know what younger audiences will make of this, though. Seeing copies sitting on the shelves of Smyths Toys, with the no-nonsense "MARIO RPG" title and stark box art, it doesn't come with a disclaimer that says "THIS CONTROLS A BIT LIKE LANDSTALKER". If you're not already well versed in 16-Bit games, the game could feel really stiff and awkward. This is a game before there was a consensus on what Mario sounded like. Are kids going to understand why he's not whooping and exclaiming with every jump? Let's face facts. People who have first-hand experience of the 1996 release line-up are fucking old now. Most people buying Mario games aren't us. Are they going to understand? And if not, why doesn't Princess Peach look like the crude assembly of geometric shapes that she did on the SNES? There's concessions made for the modern perception of the Mario brand here, and they really clash against the eight-way movement system and silent text boxes. I think it's a real downer that they couldn't fully commit to the bit.

There's new FMV cutscenes that mimic the movement and animation of the original. I'm sure there's a certain kind of player who will see these and gasp in awe. They're not me, though. I don't think they're anywhere near as charming when freed of the static perspective. Again, this isn't a game that I've had a long relationship with. If I'd played the game at a more impressionable age, and fantasised about a more tangible version of its world, maybe it would have done something for me. I just like the old approach more.

So, it's bittersweet in all. A compromise. A better-playing version of a game I really like, but a version I like less overall. When I next want to play Mario RPG, I honestly don't know whether I'll play this or the SNES version. In all likelihood, I'll grumble about the indecision and play something else altogether. That's a shame. The game's really good, I like it a lot, and I respect the people who worked on this new version. If you want to play Mario RPG, I think the Switch release is the much more reasonable recommendation. But if you're like me, and you admire what developers were able to achieve on more rudimentary hardware, and the amusing, lovable games all those limitations lead to, I think you know that you'd be denying yourself something for the sake of convenience.

Never mind me, though. I'm a nut. Go have fun.

I’ll confess: I’ve never beaten a single Zelda game in my life. Sure, I grew up a Nintendo kid playing almost nothing but Mario and Pokemon, but for some reason I never really felt enticed to give Nintendo’s most critically acclaimed series a serious shot. I’ve tried out the opening hours of Wind Waker (something that I desperately need to finish one of these days) and have played plenty of scattered hours of Ocarina of Time at a friend’s house, and yet it wasn’t enough considering the series has eluded me until now. So, it felt like a solid challenge to cap off 2023, given my recent run with time loop adventure games… and that poyfuh recommended the game to me over a year ago. It took a while to muster up the commitment, but I finally got there! Feel free to take my readings here with a grain of salt given my lack of nostalgia for Zelda, but hopefully I can bring something different to the table by focusing on what impact it had upon a relative newcomer.

For lack of better words, The Legend of Zelda is an adventure game series. Maybe the adventure game series. Quite a few good friends and users I closely follow have commented about how Zelda is really a mish-mosh of different genres, which in essence forms the adventure game. Innuendo Studios has defined this as “games that tell stories using puzzles,” though this is a very loose definition as both narratives and puzzles take many different forms. Essentially, the genre has become a blanket term that has come to incorporate many different types of games. Zelda, as the platonic encapsulation of adventure games, has as a result, come to include many different types of genre-specific gameplay in one cohesive product. To sum this up, here’s a bit that I’ve jokingly brought up with friends: every game is basically Zelda, because Zelda is basically every game.

What I’m trying to say here, is that Majora’s Mask, much like the rest of Zelda, is not so much about any one single game mechanic so much as the coalescence of them all. No one particular element is going to stand out as exceptional because many games before and after have surpassed them, but the whole is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. Much like how a classic adventure game is a fusion of different game mechanics, Majora’s Mask focuses on the intersection of different narratives and activities to evoke “the adventurer’s spirit.” It’s very easy to be critical of specific mechanics and ideas presented within the game in isolation (and I absolutely will be due to my point of reference), but they nevertheless come together to create a game unlike any other.

I suppose the easiest way to explain the premise of Majora’s Mask is to describe it as a cross between a metroidvania (item/ability gating) and a mystroidvania (knowledge gating). The time loop facilitates both of these aspects: as Link repeats the three-day cycle to gather information regarding Termina’s workings, he also gains new key items (both classic Zelda tools like the Hookshot and masks to wear/transform), learns new songs for his ocarina, and gains access to new areas and allies that can further aid his progress. The pressing issue then, is that Majora’s Mask doesn’t fully lean into the strengths of either genre.

Majora’s Mask feels underwhelming when compared to traditional metroidvanias, because key items feel underutilized. Much of this is due to the lock-and-key nature of the puzzles. Classic Zelda games focused on items with multiple facets via both dealing damage in fights and traversal/exploration: one classic example is the hookshot, which can let Link grapple up towards wooden surfaces/chests while also acting as a ranged weapon capable of pulling items and enemies towards him. However, Majora’s Mask focuses on the collection of masks as the vast majority of key items, and most are used for one exact situation (i.e. Don Gero’s mask lets you talk to frogs) and nothing else. Additionally, the masks aren’t very balanced in terms of utility, as some masks are useless once obtained (i.e. the Troupe Leader’s mask) while some are so conventionally strong that you’ll be constantly relying upon them (i.e. the Bunny Hood increases Link’s running speed and agility, so it’s a godsend for general traversal and boss fights).

On the other hand, Majora’s Mask also feels a little lacking as a mystroidvania, because there’s relatively little observation involved when compared to similar titles. The Bomber’s Notebook is your main tool is your main tool to keep track of everyone’s schedules across the three-day time loop, but it’s a bit limited in scope. There’s only twenty inhabitants recorded with schedules, and of those twenty, at least a fourth of them can be stamped as resolved by simply speaking to them once at the right time with the right item/mask. In fact, there’s only two side-questlines that force Link to commit to strict and specific time limits across the three-day cycle (Kafei and the main Romani Ranch quest). As a result, completing the Bomber’s Notebook is surprisingly straightforward, and usually doesn’t require more than one iteration of the time loop to follow and solve each case, given that Link has the appropriate items on hand when necessary.

That's not to say that the time loop is a net negative in the scope of Majora’s Mask, but rather that in comparison to other time loop games since then, it doesn’t capitalize as much in its execution. For example, there is very little usage of the time loop in regards to its four main dungeons. As Scamsley has pointed out, the presence of a time loop should lend naturally to speedrunning (via both knowledge gating to clear the dungeon faster with skips and ability-gating to use obtained items for shortcuts), but this is more or less made redundant by beating the dungeon’s boss, as the game is content giving you a direct teleport to refight dungeon bosses in subsequent resets instead. Additionally, almost all of the time-sensitive content is located within Clock Town; while it’s quite satisfying figuring out how schedules play out in the main hub, it feels like a squandered opportunity to not include enough specifically timed events elsewhere to fully utilize the three-day cycle. The presence of owl statues throughout the map sort of speaks to this; rather than have the player spend time traversing on foot and potentially stumble upon other time sensitive events, the developers would prefer for players to jump to whatever destinations they had in mind as to avoid wasting time in areas where these time-sensitive quests didn’t exist.

On top of all of this is a general clunkiness that exists between many of the game’s various systems. There’s just enough quality-of-life to where the game feels thoughtful for its time, but also plenty of wasted time here and there that made me wonder if the developers could have gone a little further. The sheer number of key items in the menu is a huge culprit; with only three key item slots accessible at any time (and the ocarina/three transformation masks constantly taking up slots), the player is constantly roaming through the four menu screens to select the appropriate item for each situation, and it’s made worse because most items are used once and then immediately replaced as a stream of inventory puzzles. There’s also a ton of downtime from having to watch the same cutscenes over and over even if you’ve seen them in previous loops, and from being subjected to the same non-skippable Song of Soaring animation every time you teleport to an owl statue. At the very least, you can skip the mask transformations once viewed for the first time. Parsing through the three-day cycle can also be a bit annoying; the Song of Double Time does at least let you skip a full twelve hours ahead to the start of each day/night cycle, but oftentimes the timed events in question begin at midnight or midday, meaning that you’ll have to wait around for a few in-game hours since the Song of Double Time plants you at 6 AM/PM. Finally, I think it’s an interesting idea resetting the player’s rupee and general ammo count (i.e. bombs, arrows, Deku Nuts, etc) with each new loop while allowing the player to farm pre-existing Rupee chests that have been opened in previous cycles. However, while there is a bank that allows the player to store Rupees between loops, there’s no item storage facility to stockpile ammo between loops, meaning that the player will likely spend a few minutes at the start of each loop whacking bushes and enemies for basic resources (or at least eat into the player’s account to buy supplies at shops, if they don’t spend time farming chests for the Rupees instead).

Honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when trying to judge Majora’s Mask against today’s standards of what we consider a “good” adventure game. I do have other scattered complaints, such as boss fights being generally underwhelming (I might have legitimately spent more time fighting dungeon mini-bosses than the four main masked bosses themselves), certain tedious side-games like the RNG-heavy Dampé grave digging or the Goron race with rubber-banding AI, a few overused mini-bosses such as having to fight Wizzrobe six different times, and how outside of the Stone Temple, mask abilities are never satisfyingly blended together in puzzles/quests. The cherry on top of all this is the presence of the Stone Mask, which I’d say is a bit too good since it lets you completely ignore most dungeon enemies. That in itself made me question the quality of that one forced stealth section in Great Bay; if the optimal solution is to wear a mask which lets you outright ignore the entire system, then should it even exist? Even from the perspective of someone who’s never cleared a Zelda game before, I find myself nodding in agreement when others claim that Majora’s Mask shows its age a bit more than Ocarina of Time.

But that’s not really why we play Zelda games, right? Despite the clunkiness of some mechanics and the many areas of potential improvement, many of us are willing to sit through and accept these flaws because the general experience is the selling point. The obvious argument to be made is that while plenty of MM’s mechanics feel undercooked, the actual mechanism of gameplay is constantly shifting about to suit the specific context. In a sense, Majora’s Mask can be viewed as an antecedent to the modern possession game: the basic control scheme remains the same regardless of the mask worn, but the functionality of the basic control scheme differs. This allows the game to stick to a grounded and consistent formula even though Link’s toolkit is constantly evolving on the fly, and while there are occasional moments of jank from certain side-games, most are over in a flash and still contribute positively towards the final goal of gaining enough knowledge and utility to prevent the impending crisis.

Essentially, many of the previously mentioned shortcomings end up inverting in on themselves. While Majora’s Mask has plenty of rough edges due to its rushed development and heavy re-use of assets, it’s these rough edges that lend so much towards its personality. I love how absolutely absurd and deranged the writing becomes, and the adventure game structure lets Majora’s Mask take complete advantage of the situation. One minute you’re tracking down a circus performer so he can spill his life story about joining an animal troupe since humans are also animals, then the next minute you’re fending off these zombie lantern alien ghosts with searchlight eyes so they don’t kidnap your new friend and her cows before the sun rises. The seeming lack of focus with the constant barrage of minigames and side-quests keeps the player constantly guessing what the next twist of events will bring, and the game is more than happy to ask rather than answer questions.

The backing time loop connecting all of these events together is really what drives the message home. Even though it’s absolutely tedious having to watch the same cutscenes over and over again, nothing illustrates the plight of Termina more starkly than forcing players to endlessly relive the day’s events and realizing that they are the only chance this world stands at reaching a new timeline. The ending credits bring such a gratifying emotional rush because the game deliberately withholds any semblance of permanent catharsis until you finally break through. You can’t help everyone in a single time loop, and they will never be free of their troubles until the moon stops falling. Until then, they’ll be hopelessly repeating the same tasks three days at a time, waiting for the dawn of a new day that will never come.

At the end of the day, I could keep finding things to nitpick about Majora’s Mask, but I also can’t imagine the game without these shortcomings since they form an integral part of the game’s identity. The masks might be glorified gimmicks, but they’re fantastic symbolism that are forever carried with you upon your journey even as time is constantly erased, and ultimately strengthen the adventure game aspect by assigning you new tasks to peruse. The time loop might not be fully utilized outside of Clock Town and contain extended gaps of waiting to get to important events, but it’s the forced repetition of the three-day cycle’s events that enforces the gravity of the situation upon the player. Individual characters aside from Skull Kid might not have the fleshed-out backgrounds that I had hoped for, but it’s a non-issue when Majora’s Mask is ultimately the story of Termina itself, formed from the intersecting schedules of all the different characters and elements at play. Separately, I think all of these elements are easily picked apart, but meshed together, they contribute to this pervasive nightmare of abject misery where even in the face of imminent death, fleeting moments of joy and comfort are enough to humanize the fantastical elements of Termina and keep the player moving forward towards a better future.

The story of and surrounding Majora’s Mask fascinates me, especially when learning that director Eiji Aonuma has since expressed regrets regarding its development. I and many others, however, see nothing to be ashamed of with their final product. If anything, Majora’s Mask is classic Nintendo at its core: instead of making a product that was visibly better than its competition, the developers took a chance and sought out to make something that was visibly different. The Wii is often cited as the most prevalent example of this “blue ocean strategy," though I firmly believe that Majora’s Mask was Nintendo’s first notable crack at it. Having to follow-up a game considered by many as the greatest of all time with an even shorter development period was a daunting ask, but as far I’m concerned, they absolutely succeeded. It doesn’t matter that other time loop adventure games have since outclassed their grandfather; there’s simply nothing like Majora’s Mask, and I doubt there ever will be.

Potentially the best Tengo Project/Natsume title and easily my favorite of the bunch. Know I’m intensely biased towards Wild Guns, as it represented one of the first arcade (or, maybe more accurately, arcade-inspired) games I ever put any amount of time into, but it’s one I’ve only grown more fond of as I’ve played through it over the years.

If there’s anything close to a lynchpin mechanic here, it’s the Vulcan Meter- shoot down enemy bullets and you’ll build up towards a mode that allows for a brief period of invincibility and extra damage, crucial for some of the tougher bosses. The catch is that it triggers automatically, so the process of managing it upends some of your dominant defensive strategies: it’d be easy to get complacent and shoot down every bullet, but because this will leave you exposed on some of the tougher fights, tools like jumping, rolling, and bombing all get their place in the defensive hierarchy- anything to avoid unnecessarily activating it. It additionally helps in keeping some of the repeat fights engaging thanks to inherent variance brought on by these shifting priorities: fight the dualist miniboss on the first stage, and there’s little reason not to try and stun him to build a bit of extra meter, but later encounters will have you re-examining those same strategies, frantically jumping around shots you’d be otherwise tempted to counter.

It’s a system that also speaks to the game’s uncommon generosity among arcade titles, the combination of the game-changing nature of the Vulcan Meter and the way an extra life is always in reach thanks to the low scoring threshold making for runs where pushing through attempts, instead of endlessly resetting them, is encouraged. Improvisational too! Aside from the deviations of the brought on the player’s fluctuating resources, there are also randomized item drops, sometimes granting you extra-powerful weapons, sometimes saddling you with the near-useless “P-Shooter.” The result is a game where multiple runs can vary wildly from one another- and given that a successful clear only takes about 30 minutes to complete, makes the prospect of going for another one endlessly inviting.

I could go on: the way the scoring system encourages you to stay one place and keep firing to build and maintain your multiplier, eating through your special weapon’s ammo in the process, or the constant temptation to lasso and stun targets- a move that'll leave you momentarily vulnerable, but can be so, so worthwhile on some of the deadlier fights.

Remarkable that everything here gels so well together, especially given that many of the other Natsume titles at the time had the benefit of being based on older titles and the tight window of time for the game’s development. Would never have guessed its origin would be so unromantic, but regardless, the end result is one of my favorite titles of all time- if you’ve been thinking of jumping into this style of game, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better entry point.

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While we were waiting for our next subcontracted work to begin, our boss told us to develop a new game with two conditions: quickly and cheaply. I believe from the initial planning to the finished app it took us about five months. I’m sorry the answer is so boring!

Wild Guns creator Shunichi Taniguchi https://shmuplations.com/wildguns/

Now this, this is it. This is the Gradius experience I've been looking for. Gradius is a series I've wanted to love but it's constant stagnant level design, enemy design and visuals just made every game feel almost like remixes of the original. They felt uninspired, stale and though there are flashes of promise they never hit a height to open up that potential. Gradius Gaiden feels like the first true sequel to the original Gradius, it just took Konami 11 years to get there, or 20 for it's eventual Western release. Gaiden takes all the aspects of Gradius and builds or reuses them in fresher ways to make it both exciting yet familiar all at once.

This being a console release immediately made it more accessible for a start. That artificial arcade difficulty has been removed so it's now still challenging without being controller throwing obnoxious. After a cool cutscene you can choose between 4 different ships with their own unique weapons, the Vic Viper, Lord British (a ship from the spin off Salamander series), Jade Knight and Falchion β.

Once the game starts the action doesn't take long to get going and many staples of the series like the Easter Island Statue heads, volcanoes, and flame dragons are there though with some twists. The Easter statues fire giant lasers, volcanoes can now be destroyed before erupting and the flame dragons are used as attack weapons out of a bacterial ship rather than a solar flare in an interesting twist. The new stuff though is more important mixed in with giant snow caterpillars, ship graveyards, crytal levels and many of the bosses are really cool to fight and don't just feel like the same basic ship from every other Gradius game. The game is fun, feels pretty action heavy and stage 8's sequence while hard was especially intense. I loved it.

Visually Gaiden really uses the PlayStation's capabilities with coloured detailed sprites, transparency effects etc. There are some really cool little features like one boss that spins the whole level around you whilst enclosed, or crystals that reflect lasers for example. It is very intricate looking and has a good soundtrack to boot, and I don't just mean music as the vocal narration the series is known for is a lot more pronounced and audibly clearer with my favorite part being the spinning boss mentioned above verbally taunting you during the fight which I've not really seen before in a shoot 'em up. The OST is fantastic with the traditional Gradius theme ramped up but the whole OST is really worth a listen too.

Honestly I don't have much bad to say about this game. It's balanced right, it looks gorgeous, the music is great, it's a blend of old and new in a fresh way and have you seen that cover art?

I've been meaning to replay this for a good while now, having seen all kinds of differing opinions from my friends and not really remembering my own anymore. After about an hour and a half of bumbling around, I found that I still enjoyed it. Most of all, probably the weird blocky look it has. I'm not even sure they could add any more detail, but I'm glad they didn't. Makes for hell of a distinct appearance.

The framerate is definitely an issue, sometimes making it a bit hard to squeeze through tighter spots, but I think it's played up a bit by people who aren't used to that kind of thing. I, for one, will take a sluggish but relatively consistent framerate over a sloppy and wildly fluctuating one like in Thunder Force IV or Steel Empire. Neither are ideal, but hopefully that makes sense. I think the former is a lot easier to adapt to. As far as this game goes, it shouldn't really cause many problems in routes 1 or 2 anyway. 3, as I've learned tonight, is a lot more to worry about.

Pretty much everyone agrees that Star Fox 64 is a major improvement over this, with some going on to comparatively dismiss this one as a novelty or tech demo. It's hard to argue with that since 64 is in fact much better, but if this is a novelty it's a pretty damn good one. I totally understand the faults of this game, but they just don't really bother me here for some reason.

That does remind me though that I played 64 like a decade ago and desperately need to try it again. Maybe that'll come next.

Out of all of Tengo Project’s games, this is one that seems to be straining the most at being something entirely new- really it’s only bookended by some classic levels and stars some of the same characters, but it’s got a ton of new additions: characters, mechanics, levels, and a much stronger emphasis on it’s story than I was expecting. There’s something like 30 minutes worth of cutscenes and there’s twists and time travel and you play as a bunch of different characters- it’s a lot! A little darker too? Some of the later stages and bosses are probably going to be a surprise for anyone looking forward to another ultra-cute action game. (Would never have guessed “Burning Cityscape” as one of the locales.)

Certainly seems more in its element when you’re playing as one of the new characters, such as Hotaru (the samurai ghost) who seems better suited to the more serious tone the game is aiming for, and allows you to play a little more freely. One of the reasons I had a harder time getting into the older games was the way you would lose some of your power when you got hit, leading to moments where you hadn't actually died, but were practically in a no-win situation, limply attacking bosses with your most basic moves.

Hotaru, in contrast, doesn't suffer from the same concerns, as even her most basic attack does a tremendous amount of damage, with the different types of power-ups feeling less vital to her success, serving more to accentuate her normal attack instead of bringing it up to a base level of usability. Even at my lowest moments, runs still felt viable when playing as her- really, all of the new characters benefit from these sorts of additions, balancing practicality with excitement.

You get to hover over terrain, spawn miniature copies of yourself, have dodges with actual i-frames- these are great additions and I’m still learning new ways of utilizing the abilities throughout the game, but it means Pocky and Rocky sort of get sidelined in their own revival: a little out of place, tonally, and more cumbersome, mechanically. (It’s especially surprising given that Wild Guns Reloaded and The Ninja Warriors Once Again did a great job of expanding the roster in some weird directions while keeping the original cast relevant.)

I don’t mean to sound too down on the game, I’ve played through it a bunch over the last few days, and it’s another excellent addition to Tengo Project’s body of work, but I am left wondering if it signals a shift in their future, veering so far from the source material that they might as well go all the way. They’ve done three best-in-class revivals, but now I’m more interested to see what they might do with their own original project, unconcerned with the expectations of the past.