Charles Martinet popped OFF on this one. Could’ve used another world or two, if only to help pad out the difficulty curve (the last level especially feels like an ultra-sadistic bonus stage), but Treasure keeps a steady flow of creativity running through these levels, which mostly manage to balance sprawling layouts with focused design. I actually think the game could’ve been even better if they’d leaned more into the non-linearity—each level is full of alternate paths and entire sub-areas that fold back in on themselves beautifully, but progress is often gated by annoyingly specific bottlenecks. (That is to say: required area A and optional areas B and C will all be fully interconnected, but required area D will only be accessible from area A. I’d like these levels a lot more if A, B, and C all led to D. U C?) Gloriously unhinged boss designs, too; shame the final one is such an anticlimax. Would’ve killed for a 3DS remake of this back in the day.