the discrepancy between top banana's advertised aesthetic, signified by its cover art, and the manifestly psychedelic artwork reflected within is ferociously disorienting. ive never felt such abrasive whiplash, anticipating a rote and teed-up but hamfistedly executed platformer and getting instead what can only be described as environmental rave horror.

im pretty happy to walk into games knowing next to nothing these days, people love inadvertently ruining the joy of discovery online nowadays. i sat there for half an hour, adjusting the settings of my amiga emulator, trying to get this damn thing to work with no knowledge of the games mechanics or stylings. for a time i was accompanied only by the lovingly recreated whirring and chugging of the amiga emulator reading my floppy disk files, presumably orchestrated so as to reflect the sounds an actual amiga might make. we're segued into the game with a loop of a music video entitled 'Global Chaos' featuring protagonist KT, and then momentarily halted by copy-protection as the game asks us to use a specific word from the game's manual as passcode. following this, the player is unceremoniously thrust into the game proper and finds they must contend with an arcane control scheme. z moves left, x moves right, the enter key fires hearts, the quote key jumps, and the / key will stop jump momentum at any interval, bringing you down to a platform.

according to the manual, top banana's world is facing calamity: "not from slimy aliens or evil wizards but from direct consequences of our own greed and stupidity." in plainer terms, corresponding to the systems of the game itself, the manual lets us know the goal is simple: reach the top of the stage, prove your skill and courage in the material world, and become the top banana after seeking ultimate wisdom in the Mind-Scape. along the way you navigate perilous floods and you vanquish foes, among them bulldozers and emaciated individuals, with the power of love, akin to an off-kilter love-de-lic experience. it would be a straightforward endeavour were it not for some frankly eerie sound design, evocative of silent hill and siren, setting the tone for the experience. note that i wouldnt make that comparison lightly. this is compounded further by some genuinely eye-straining and cluttered visuals.

and this is where my interests in top banana as an ineffectual and rudimentary, but otherwise somewhat functional platformer end and my interest in top banana as an aesthetic experience begin, something of a vulgar, perverse mother 3. because it's clearly not up to snuff as an arcade platformer - controls are slippery, the ruleset is abundantly unclear, visuals are sometimes indecipherable, the effects of powerups are very rarely beneficial - despite being obsequious to the general rule of thumbs for a variety of very difficult arcade platformers, ie directing the player to adhere to a strict choreography in order to progress effectively. but it is, in many ways, something of a forward-thinking experience that could only have been constructed by a multimedia collective, not fully dedicated to games but instead interested in their form, structure, and conveyance. a lot of the spritework and textures in top banana wouldn't feel too out of place in something from jack king-spooner's body of work (like a boss that's a cross between a police helmet and a spider), with the claustrophobia of its platforming feeling not dissimilar from itch.io works, or something like problem attic. and obviously the sound design is very much worth mentioning too, with its rainforest stages all sounding like a turbulent mix of either raging fires in the distance or generic jungle ambience; the mind can't quite decide initially. all told, the game's environmentalist journey has you traverse hollowed-out industrial cities, crumbling religious temples, and a "psychedelic hip-house", the haze and splendor of a mind flayed, as you fight against your "fears, dreams, and illusions". kind of earnestly bleak stuff, kicking you back to the starting point ghosts n goblins style, without any felt impact on the world or its inhabitants but instead jeering and laughing from the game itself. love, self-actualization and self-prioritization, and spiritual enlightenment aren't enough in the face of the world's evils, it seems.

i also think it's noteworthy that it takes its environmentalist bent to the furthest extent it can, releasing with environmentally friendly packaging and even allowing for a supposed large breadth of freedom with regards to editing sprites and sound, kind of riffing on that sustainability. put your money where your mouth is and all that, serves as a nice implicit acknowledgment this medium is a nightmare wrt exploitation of environment

it's really quite fascinating playing something that feels modern in sensibilities and tone with relation to the medium, despite releasing into a media zeitgeist already dominated by themes of environmental preservation as it relates to encroaching technological advancement (with even dinosaurs ending with its cast confronting corporate-engineered apocalypse). no doubt in my mind rainbow islands is the better game but there's something about this games tailored spitefulness im enamored with. it's cynical and cruel, i kind of love it. KICK IT TO EM.

Shigeru Miyamoto has gone on record saying that Mario “isn’t the kind of game you necessarily have to finish, it should be fun to just pick up and play,” and as a kid I often really would boot it up solely to jump around Bob-Omb Battlefield for a bit and feel myself or whatever. A pattern I’ve observed with a lot of gamers is that, as they get older, they slowly prioritize finishing games over simply the inherent fun of playing them — and while I definitely feel that was accurate for my late teens/early twenties as well, I’ve since returned to craving those more innate pleasures.

It’s wild how much Nintendo got right about Mario’s animations and the overall sound design on this first attempt, conveying that perfect sweetspot between weight and nimbleness, something I honestly don’t get as much out of 64's successors. Similarly, the level design also manages to find this nebulous since-unmatched middle-ground between open-ness and tight pacing, with many of the stages presenting you with vertical, spiral-shaped layouts, made up of multiple digestible paths that intersect so seamlessly that you never stop to think about them as anything other than one cohesive whole.

Aspects that feel like obvious limitations, like being booted out of the level when grabbing a Star or the rigid camera, end up aiding the game’s pacing and overall structure the more you actually think about it. The way you bounce between different paintings within Peach’s castle, completely at your own leisure, mirrors how you tackle the obstacles inside those worlds; loose and free-form and whichever way seems enjoyable to you at the moment without even having to think about it. It all seems so simple, and yet I’m still waiting for another platformer that is this immediately fun and endlessly replayable.

If there's anything that was on my mind about Resident Evil 4's development, it's how it branched off into the creation of Devil May Cry. After experiencing it for myself, I can see a good chunk of DMC1's DNA in this game. Both of them are incredibly tight action-based experiences that are tonally in sync with both their oppressive atmospheres and campy storylines. The main difference I picked up on from DMC is that RE4 is a comparably more linear experience. Not to say that DMC was anything close to a search action title, but RE4 felt more like a rollercoaster ride of action. I think this works to its benefit, though. It allows RE4 to keep a strong level of momentum throughout the entire experience. In fact, I think its pacing is more similar to DMC3 in that regard. What I believe this showcases is how RE4 reflects the direction of the action games that followed it and how they focus on more linear, moment-to-moment experiences that build up over the course of the game. It makes RE4 that much more interesting to analyze as a cornerstone of gaming history.

an adaptation of the fevered sugar-fueled scribblings in the margins of your maths textbook, impossible battles and astonishing reveals and incredible images streamed directly from the imagination of a bored 11-year old. zero restraint, zero conception of what is and is not "enough", pulling from all the things they love with reckless abandon, rendered with all the technical mastery of one of the most legendary studios in the industry at the height of their powers.

sin and punishment reeks of a dense inner mythology that it almost never lets the viewer peer into, not so much beginning in media res but existing almost entirely in the head of it's creator, assuming an understanding that could only be found inside there. i mean this as the highest possible praise, sin and punishment channels an effortlessly positive adolescent enthusiasm that other games could only dream of replicating. pairing this with an understanding of cinematic technique in gameplay years ahead of the curve, turn-of-the-millennium eco-warrior themes screamed loud enough to be heard above the glorious cacophony, a beautiful tapestry of rail shooting that entices perfection like few other games manage and what else could Sin and Punishment possibly do? what more could we possibly ask for?

well, one of the best final bosses that video games have ever seen certainly helps.

A warning from Beyond The Time, from futures wrapped in themselves: Kill the future they say Must Be. Preferably with a gunblade.

in a genre well known for conservative sensibilities and a dearth of anthropological and cultural respect, as well as voyeuristic and hedonistic death tourism, blood on the sand stands out as self-aggrandizing, maximalist, and bordering on parodic in a way very few tend to be. a subversive and stately satire this is not, but the mere insertion of 50 cent into a wartorn setting when his previous digital outing humbly involved enacting vengeance against the american criminal underworld says as much about the aughts zeitgeist as our proclivities in the horror genre during that era does. maybe this buries the lede somewhat, because one of the most important facts about this game was only revealed relatively recently, but blood on the sand was alleged to have started as a tom clancy game recently; conflicting reports from development suggested its yarn was spun from a failed covert-one project, an adaptation of bourne trilogy alum robert ludlum's ideas. one article implicitly posits that these prospective titles were stages in a continuum prior to publisher vivendi's decision to use their convenient rights to 50 cent, although its also possible the use of tom clancy was shorthand for use in an interview given that vivendi didn’t have the license to adapt tom clancy’s works. whatever the case, this largely explains the game's constituent elements – fighting tooth and nail through a wartorn middle-east setting, so familiar to video games and film of the era, recontextualized to fit 50 cent.

other games centered around rappers are designed around an understanding of their core ethos; the wu-tang clan, with their sound representing an evocative mix of east asian and black culture, with particular reverence afforded towards martial arts, found themselves on the psx with 1999’s shaolin style, a fighting game that literalized and made tangible the groups stage personae and the aesthetic undercurrents in their discography. or take the def jam franchise, which takes the feuds, the aggression, and the machismo of the music industry during that time and channels that raw energy into a wrestling game developed by AKI. and this was mythological for its cast – there’s an interview with method man that always makes me crack up where he essentially says that all he cared about was having the hottest finishing move in the game. even rap jam volume one, a basketball game for the snes, plays to some of these sensibilities by essentially offering basketball Without Limits. coolio isn’t afraid to throw hands there. rims creak under the weight of dunks from impossible heights. it’s all performance centered around culture, identity, reputation.

what makes 50 cent unique in this regard, especially as far as performance and cultural mythology is concerned, is the now-infamous, oft-referenced incident in which, early in his career, he was shot nine times in south jamaica allegedly as the result of the release of his controversial song, ‘ghetto qu’ran’. ‘bulletproof’ isn’t just the title of a licensed video game, it’s part and parcel of the 50 cent brand and his identity, referenced often in his discography and utilized to demonstrate the artists grit and countercultural edge. the violence of his work is therefore afforded numerous dimensions given his firsthand experience with this kind of trauma, which in turn represents part of the appeal, that kind of verisimilitude. certainly, bulletproof (the game) plays into this mythology. where fighting games seem the natural route for the wu-tang clan, 50 cents life and identity could only ever have seen translation into ludology through firefights. it’s a bit macabre but totally in line with his career sensibilities.

blood on the sand, then, seemingly represents a reactionary inverse to bulletproof’s simple reiteration and expression of the 50 cent persona. instead of playing a nameless, hardened soldier fighting on behalf of an imperialist agenda in the middle east as is the standard in this format, that voiceless force of nature has been replaced by 50 cent, who can easily, cynically, be read as the all-american invulnerable supersoldier - one who built his brand from the ashes of derelict poverty. y'know, bootstraps, the american way. but the game rejects any easy textual understanding. yes, 50, narratively and mechanically, is totally committed as an agent of destruction and havoc, but his quest primarily pits him against a rogues gallery of self-interested judas archetypes; 50 is naturally distrustful and seldom offers aid, only so long as his goals align with other parties. and these rivals are all configured as gangsters, entrepreneurs, those seeking profits. an early conversation is helpful in this regard, in which 50 cent claims new yorks streets are entirely owned by gangsters; his conversational partner claims the middle eastern region theyre in is controlled by organized crime on a scale surpassing that of new york. the kind of americanized conception of gang warfare transplanted onto the middle east revealed through this dick-measuring contest is the crux of blood on the sand’s text, additionally reflected in its color coded enemy design, evoking gang colors and affiliation more than it necessarily does terrorism, as well as in its environmental design, like a hyper-americanized strip club sticking out like a sore thumb. the connotations of the war on terror are there but one gets the sense that blood on the sand uses those familiar political and genre elements as (unfortunately) familiarized backdrop and setting moreso than it does to convey a straightforward narrative about combatting jihadist insurgents.

another thing setting blood on the sand apart from its milieu is 50’s characterization – this alone isn’t revelatory but it’s in stark contrast to others in the genre. uncharted is allowed to disguise its lack of humanity through a constant assault of quips and ironic insincerity, as protagonist nathan drake pilfers the remains of ancient civilizations for profit and slaughters anyone in his path, reenacting colonial tendencies in the process for the sake of ‘a good time’. and this is a constant thread in all the games, encountering ancient societies where something went wrong and the enemy type shifts towards supernatural, impossibly advanced yet primitive ghoul caricatures. these misanthropic attributes are not alone to uncharted, as several other adventure shooters share much of the same problems. perhaps the most brutally honest any of these games has ever been is when you lead a no-holds barred defence against enemies laying siege to a fast food establishment in modern warfare 2.

50 cent, meanwhile, is unceasingly committed to securing the bag – there’s no pretense of nobility or honor here, but he will have banter with the rest of g-unit, air his frustrations with the constantly spiraling nature of his journey to get a skull back, and discuss the setting and architecture with his allies. it's all a matter of debt collection from shady benefactors who continually steer you in the wrong direction, and 50 is content to follow this labyrinthine design so long as payments still on the table. so, blood on the sands rejection of its central middle eastern analogue transforms the game into an interpretive assault on the restraints and foibles of the modern music industry. the whole plot is kickstarted when 50 cents contract isn’t honoured and he isn’t paid a cool 10 mil for a concert he held; a diamond-encrusted skull is offered as a means of recompensation, which becomes the driving force of the narrative and its collection becomes the locus for his rampage. thus, it can be said that blood on the sand is very simply a game about honoring the work of artists, and of fairly compensating them for their labour. one of many traitorous parties in-game is a paramilitary squad who force 50 into committing a heist and then attempt to take the payout for themselves; during the subsequent boss battle, the squad’s commander, voiced by lance reddick, tells 50 to walk away with his life and squander the profit for everyone’s sake. after all, his nephew’s an ardent fan, and 50 should chalk this mishap up to experience before he gets hurt. this read is bolstered by a couple of tidbits: the knowledge that, according to 50, blood on the sand is in part a tie-in to g-unit’s 2008 damning ‘elephant in the sand’ mixtape, which followed a longstanding feud between 50 cent on the one hand and ja rule and fat joe on the other hand, his peers in the industry. additionally, a great deal of blood on the sand’s visual identity and palette was inspired by the film blood diamond of all things, which of course involves atrocities in sierra leone revolving around the highly inhumane and exploitative diamond mining trade, all farmed during a war zone. continuing the read, theres obviously more than a few unsavoury statements one could make about the music industry in this light. that kind of exploitation -> reclamation loop was something i felt that was common to the games mini-arcs.

one other film i didn’t expect to weigh on my mind so heavily over the course of my playthrough was uncut gems! the image of 50 holding a diamond encrusted skull, a symbol of his labour and his persona, is downright operatic. it parallels kevin garnetts role in uncut gems, who perceives entire iridescent universes, with his lived experiences superimposed and rapidly cutting in and out of frame, and the metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears of many in an unethically sourced black opal. he becomes determined, obsessed even, to hold on the alluring gem, as he considers it a symbolic representation of wealth, fortune, and physical prowess - like a good luck charm. clearly, the skull, with its own implied sordid history, has similar value for 50 as well - it's considered priceless, but his intentions with it are undisclosed for the entire narrative. he simply wants it. both fictionalized portrayals of these 'characters' are in conversation with their mythologized roles in culture, but where uncut gems is concerned with destiny, stability, and fortune, with questions of materialism and faith at the forefront, blood on the sand makes no such appeals to higher powers – 50 is, after all, bulletproof, and the game is more than happy to let him manifest his own payback narrative, the gods be damned. the exploitation of miners in uncut gems’ prologue frames its narrative, but through bombast and hyperbole 50 uses the lens of a militarized zeitgeist to take revenge on his own enemies in the industry, both real and perceived - which serves its purpose as a reclamation narrative.

perhaps these are some highbrow, navel-gazey interpretations and readings on why you should play blood on the sand. but you wanna know the lowbrow, crass, real reason? the game’s just fun as hell. even leaving aside its aesthetics this is a white-knuckled responsive third person shooter, rapidly maneuvering you through conflict after conflict in an arcade setting with more of a semblance of actual encounter design than the majority of its peers. these mechanics are framed by an unrelenting tempo of macro and micro goals in visually distinguishable and legible skirmishes while aiming for combo chains and high scores. 50 cent and devil may cry’s dante alike both see the value of taunting enemies to bolster their ranks and to style on their enemies. 50 cent basically gets heat moves as well, and he can activate max paynes bullet time. this bullet time mechanic is known as gangsta fire, and it essentially makes 50 move faster while also slowing down time. its meter is quite strict and can only reliably be filled up quickly by means of stage pickups, meaning that there's a balancing act between meter preservation and combo priority at all times. and it’s all set to a wide selection of 50 cents discography, freely customizable in the games playlist function. even where the game fails in its design from time to time (optional scoring goals are too often intertwined with the overt objective of the mission, thus not pushing players out of their comfort zone; an overabundance of helicopter encounters, charmingly explained away by 50 cent’s son’s obsession with them and request to include them; gold ranks are almost impossible to acquire outside of hard mode), the experience of listening to P.I.M.P. while racking up the body count with a mossberg and with a LMG as 50 hurls shittalk is unlike anything else in the medium. but i think this paragraph is fairly obvious to anyone who’s played this. so here’s my consensus: i was grinning ear to ear the whole time. this is by far one of the finest exploitation genre games you can play, bordering on high art. in a games industry that now lies about american war crimes, and in a music industry dominated by spotify, blood on the sand is one of the last bulwarks of honesty left. hands down the most culturally significant response to 9/11 right here in this game.


(this game invokes dmca's ire so almost all the gameplay footage you can find of it online doesnt have the soundtrack blaring. totally misrepresents the intensity of the experience imo! no 21 questions or candy shop though...)

My knowledge of the whole danmaku shmup genre is about as limited as my interest in them. The only two I really got into was during when I was exploring Treasure's catalog of games with Radiant Silvergun and Ikargua, two games I very much enjoy but only on a baseline level. Never had the thought of wanting to 1CC them personally. In fact, the thought of sitting down to attempt 1ccing something like Radiant Silvergun would admittedly be a nightmare even if I do like that game very much casually lol.

Everything else though? I either never played or don't have much of an interest to. I don't know much about your Touhous or your DoDonPachis, I don't know what the hell a Ketsui or a Battle Garegga or even a Gradius is. You show me something that resembles a spaceship, an anime girl, or an anime girl in a spaceship maneuvering and shooting around a plethora of pixelated color vomit representing as "bullets" in a claustrophobic 240x320 vertical space I would probably respond to it as "Neat", but that's as far as I would go.

I think my disinterest in the genre stems from not wanting to invest time into learning an arcade game I don't necessarily care about, like most of these games kinda look the same to me. There needs to be more substance to a game for me than just learning about how to dodge this and that bullet pattern at this and that time at X Y and Z coordinates to really invest my interest in wanting to spend time to master a game that's all about skill mastery, y'know?

But even despite my lack of knowledge, interest, or even care of the whole shoot-em-up genre, after finally sitting down with all of ZeroRangers 8 stages and its batshit insane finale sequence, I can say that I do know this: ZeroRanger is a damn good game.

This may be one of the most overlooked indie darlings of the late 2010s and it's a damn shame. This game had a long arduous development spanning 10 years by two dudes, with some help from other outside sources, and you can feel just how much passion illuminates from this game right at the very first stage of gameplay. This game was practically built on a bromance.

And I think that passion is shown by just how much ZeroRanger just wants you to keep playing it. When you start a new save file, you are thrusted into a grim unwinnable situation: playing the game that you know nothing about. It expects you to lose on your first go, but then shows to the player (after their mind has been blown out of their skull) the continue system, showing that the points they've accumulated on each run will go into getting more continues, encouraging the player right then and there that despite the challenge ahead, the game will throw bones to you as long as you keep trying. It tells you on the game over screen "Never give up!" and then a real opening cutscene plays with these gorgeous visuals following with a triumphant tune, turning what was a dark moment into an adventurous one. This is ZeroRanger's true intent: this is a game about overcoming what seems impossible.

What makes ZeroRanger's challenge so approachable is its accessibility. The game's bullet patterns aren't as immediately wild as what you would find in a Touhou or a HellSinker until the later half, and the game gives stages frequent checkpoints and will let you return to a stage you haven't completed upon a failed run, as well as giving you those aforementioned continues the more points you gathered. But what's interesting is despite this, ZeroRanger still doesn't hold back any punches. The game is still relentlessly challenging but it understands the player won't learn its ins and outs by slamming their faces into a wall. These little guidances don't take away any of the tension and challenge found in these stages and will still punish the player accordingly if they fail to keep up. It's still a game that wants you to one day do it all on one run, but it's also a game that teaches the player on each and every stage with each and every boss, or for a player that just wants to enjoy it casually. It's one of the few exceptions of a game that is accessible without compromising its challenge, which I have to commend because developers still to this day haven't found a way to really balance the two without one feeling too handholdy or the other feeling too punishing.

It also helps that ZeroRangers presentation here is just on point. It's got gorgeous detailed sprite work and the whole game sticks to this bold dark green and bright orange color palette that not also looks striking but also makes it impossible for bullets to blend in with the background. You know you gotta shoot the green thing and it spits out contrasting bright orange bullets that are easy to track your eyes with even if you aren't looking at the whole screen. Now granted, late at night the orange can strain my eyes a bit, but it also helps that the game has a plethora of visual settings that you can adjust. Using scanlines helped, I personally like the Hori ones!

Every stage also just impresses me not only visually but auditory. The game has this crunchy sound design when either pelting something with bullets or blowing shit up. It may not be as visceral sounding as every shot from Ikaruga, but it still does its job by making it satisfying to just blow the spaceships up. The soundtrack though? Nothing short of fantastic here. Apparently, the devs were inspired by Undertale's soundtrack to create bangers of their own, and despite it being comprised of MIDI's, the layering and melodies are just incredible here. Every stage I kept saying to myself "Ah this is the best track... actually this is the best track... actually this is the best track... actually this is the-" and so on. (My personal favorite is The Sea Has Returned. Those fucking saxophones give me goosebumps every time man.)

The game's passion doesn't just stop with its challenging gameplay or its gorgeous visuals and head-banging music though, one thing that gripped me was just how effortlessly cool it becomes. It starts out innocently enough on its first two stages, but then you hit stage 3 and the game goes total apeshit mode. If the references to other shmups or games flew over your head, then maybe the 1,000 on-the-nose references to every influential mecha anime ever won't. You'd think it'd be obnoxious to be asked by the devs over and over again "Hey do you like Gurren Lagann!?" or "Hey do you like Neon Genesis Evangelion!?" but they're presented with such a bold earnestness to them that I can't help but feel their inclusions are just warm smiles from the devs every time I see them. It also doesn't take away from the game's own story. By the halfway mark of this 4-hour game, I was completely engrossed by what it was going to throw at me next and was rewarded with a brand new insane set-piece and set of challenges to overcome, climaxing with a finale that was harrowing but beautiful and personal. People weren't kidding when they said this is a game that you don't want to spoil yourself on, so if you haven't gotten around to it, now's your chance to experience this if I've enticed you enough. (If the game feels a bit basic in its first two stages, don't worry, the game introduces a new mechanic that helps you tackle enemies and bullets that rivals Ikaruga's acclaimed polarity system.)

So, despite me beating ZeroRanger, I'm going to be playing it again very soon. Probably numerous times until I can actually 1CC it. I haven't really imposed this challenge on me since wanting to 1CC Super Monkey Ball Expert-Extra, but I feel the need to because like Super Monkey Ball I just found ZeroRanger to be just so damn charming man. This is clearly a passion project through and through and it's so rare to see a game come out with this much love and care put into every minute of gameplay that I can't help but fall in love with it. System Erasure did the impossible by making a game to attract people who aren't normally into shmups while still being a celebration of the genre, so now it's time for me to see the invisible and keep playing this game until I can checkmark that "Mastered" tab because this game just welcomes me with open arms every time I boot it up.

Row row fight the power.

part of the reason I love old-school sega games is because I just love the way their games feel. games designed by sega straddle the line between nuanced, logical physics and exaggerated, arcade-y physics with aplomb. the sega rally series captures this perfectly, where the terrain material and topography are intimately factored into the performance of your car while at the same time you can perfectly drift around corners and fly over hills with a bit of squash-and-stretch going on. the tightrope here is between making the player feel like they're in total control of the car (with the consequences that result) while simultaneously hand-waving the internal mechanisms that limit player expression. the early monkey ball games are the same way: the level design is punishing yet it's addicting because any strategy you devise can probably work thanks to how controllable the ball is. it's why I've stuck with this series so long: from barely making it past beginner as a young child, to learning the extra levels as a high schooler, to finally conquering master and master extra in both games as I whittled away time during a global lockdown.

that being said, I didn't want to go into this game with unrealistic hopes. I knew the original engine was not being used here, so I figured it probably would be a bit stiffer and maybe a little hand-holdy. after all, this remake is partially meant to introduce new players and give them leverage to actually succeed in comparison to the original games, where over half of the levels were tucked behind some serious execution barriers. when I popped it in for the first time this mostly held true: I ran smb1 beginner (newly christened as "casual") without much issue. it wasn't until I touched smb1 expert immediately after...

167 deaths. 167 deaths without including expert extra no less, which I accidentally voided myself out of thanks to misreading the helper option menu that pops up automatically (protip to UI designers: don't make both your selected and unselected options bright colors!!!). these levels are no cakewalk, let's be clear, but I know these levels by the back of my hand. I've 1cc'd expert + expert extra in the original many many times, and even now out of practice I can manage 10 - 15 deaths. it just shocked me that this game felt so different, and so much less precise. in a lot of ways it felt like the original levels popped into Unity with a basic sphere physics plugin, and the results were not pretty. my roommates (also long-time monkey ball fans) also immediately wrote off the game after playing it. even though we had been so hype about finally getting an HD monkey ball - a monkey ball game that wasn't garbage and didn't require us to pull out our CRT - all of our energy immediately dissapated once we got our hands on the game.

so what exactly is the issue here? basically everyone agrees that the physics in this game are noticably different from that of the original, but I want to delve into why. after playing this game for quite a bit (all of story mode, up through master mode in smb1, all the deluxe levels, and poking around into other stuff here and there) I think I've narrowed it down to frictional differences between the two games. for those of you who haven't taken high school physics in some time, let me present the equation f = μN, where f is the frictional force applied parallel to surface we are moving upon (usually horizontally), μ is the coefficient of friction, and N is the normal force applied perpendicular to the surface (hence the name "normal"). before your eyes glaze over, let me connect these to some intangible game-feel statements:

coefficient of friction: this refers to how difficult it is to move over a material; for example, it accounts for why it's more difficult to slide your coffee table when it's on a shaggy carpet versus a finished wood floor. as it relates to the how it feels in this game, I'll borrow a quote from my roommate when he was playing the game: "it feels like every single floor is made out of glass"

normal force: this refers to how hard the object is pushing down on the surface, which in this case mainly refers to the gravitational force the object exerts. this scales with the mass, so we can think of it as how much the object weighs; a cardboard box is a lot easier to move than a full wardrobe. this affects the game-feel, as my girlfriend eloquently put: "it's like there's no monkey at all, and you're just rolling around a hollow ball"

so tldr: there's a severe lack of friction in this game in comparison to the original. in the original game, the ball was weighty, and the friction on the goal posts or ledges allows you to grip them easily (and a bit unrealistically for that matter). these things are boons to the player that go a long way towards making impossible looking courses just barely doable with practice. here the stages refuse to budge when you try to force them to, and you end up without a lot of the gravity-defying tricks you could initially pull off. I'll give some examples of situations that pop up that break under the new physics:

stopping the ball: this took a lot of adjustment for me, and while it's just a matter of relearning muscle memory it very noticeably makes some stages harder. in the original game you could stop pretty much on a dime (unless you were rolling to the point of sparks flying), whereas here the ball will sliiiiiiiide all over the place unless you very deliberately deccelerate. this is more of a general issue but a good example of where this becomes frustrating is Twin Cross, where you're expected to roll across a series of 1x1 tiles in diagonal lines. you need to keep a certain level of speed up to avoid falling off when crossing the corners of two tiles, but then also must deccelerate at the right moment to keep your ball from flying off at the end of a line (which itself is just a 1x1 tile floating in space). Edge Master also becomes more annoying than its prior appearances thanks to this issue, as staying within the bounds of the upward face of the first rotation becomes very precise given how much speed you gain when the stage rotates.

narrow lines: approach a ledge in this game and you'll notice that the bottom of your ball will just be barely close to the ledge when your character starts trembling and attempting to balance themself. compare that to the original, where the characters won't start said animation until their feet are literally touching the ledge, far closer to the center of mass for the ball. you basically have a lot less wiggle room on the edge, and it can become very apparent in certain levels that depend on this. kudos to the dev team for adjust Catwalk to accommodate, but on the flipside look at Invasion. I'd say this level was middle of the road in terms of its original difficulty, but here it's fucking brutal towards the end, where you're expected to navigate in a curve on a ledge around staggered bumpers. comments I've read on early gameplay capture on youtube were quick to point to this stage as one of the biggest difficulty bumps for a remade stage.

slopes: friction is the reason why we don't instantly slide down slopes in real life, hence why we use snowboards and skis instead of just standing on mountains waiting to gain speed. however, in monkey ball the goal is usually not to slide down slopes unless you're explicitly supposed to, and many levels depend on you being able to balance yourself on slopes either while waiting for a cycle or when speeding through before you have a chance to fall off. Drum and Twister back-to-back in smb1's ice world were originally breather stages, where you simply had to keep yourself balanced in brief intervals before reaching the goal. here they became much more precise than I feel was intended, as even slightly moving from the narrow top of the curve on either of these levels will send you careening to your death with no recourse. from smb2 I can absolutely not forget to mention Warp... oh my god Warp. this level was already surprisingly difficult in smb2, given that the flatter part of the curves here are covered with bumpers and maintaing yourself on a slope is already a trickier technique to learn (I see a lot of more casual players get stuck on Floor Bent from smb1 for this reason). here it's nigh impossible to do thanks to how little grip you have. Cross Floors is another smb2 example that requires a lot of practice in the original and here feels terrible to attempt.

centripedal force: some of you may have seen charity donation recepticles shaped like curved funnels (I've seen them in american malls at least), where you can put a coin into a slot and it will spiral around the funnel down and down until falling through a hole at the bottom, much like water spinning in a drain. there are multiple areas in the original monkey ball games that utilize this phenomenon to great effect, and it relies on the friction of the slope or wall that the ball is on to keep it from dropping out. however, when I first played Spiral Hard in this game, I was very surprised to find that I could not simply drop in as I was accustomed to, as even with a decent amount of speed the ball does not grab onto the slope and instead falls off. it took me several tries to successfully drop in, where I had to come in with an exceptional amount of speed, heavily tilt against the slope to avoid falling off, try to balance out before I lost the speed I needed to stay in, and then continue on my way. this level is already difficult enough as is, with a path that narrows the further it spirals down and a goal that is difficult to aim for, so I don't see why dropping in needs to also require a lot of set up when it didn't originally. the end of Stamina Master is also much more difficult than before thanks to this, as the spiral towards the end becomes nearly vertical, and I would often drop out of it completely before I reached the goal. the pipe stages also seem to struggle with keeping you moving, such as the smb1 expert extra stage Curl Pipe, where the second hill virtually always stopped me dead in my tracks (though I've had this happen occasionally in the original as well).

this would be a good time for me to also mention how the camera has changed significantly from the original games. the camera used to rather aggressively stick to the ball's back, whereas here the camera will follow your stick without really staying glued to a particular orientation on the ball. to solve this there is now camera control on the right-stick... this sort of defeats the purpose of the original one-giant-banana-joystick control scheme, but I'm sure plenty of players will feel more comfortable with it there. the big issue here comes when trying to line up straight lines: in the original game it was very doable to turn in place with the camera lining up directly with the center of the monkey's back. here it's already hard enough to turn in place given that you slide around with so little provocation, and now you must center the camera manually using... non-analog controls? yes, the right stick does not seem to have a real gradient of turning from my time playing with it, giving it little more functionality than d-pad camera controls. you can at least adjust camera sensitivity, but I feel like you're forced to sometimes go in and change it per stage, ie high sensitivity for when you need to turn quickly or steadily on fast stages, and low sensitivity when you line up precise shots. the latter was a necessity on Exam-C (a particularly infamous stage) and the aforementioned Twin Cross, as well as Checker, and it made all three of these stages much more tedious than I would've liked. sometimes the camera just breaks entirely, most notably on Centrifugal from smb2, where the speed of rotation in the giant wheel of death causes the camera to get stuck outside the level geometry, or flip in front of you to mess up the angle you're tilting the stage in.

I wanted to include this diatribe about the physics in here just to have some sort of document with the issues I've noticed with this game, and as to provide a detailed summary of why and where the physics are different without just saying they are. players who know the levels above might have noticed that they're virtually all pulled from expert and master: this is because the beginner and advanced difficulties (casual and normal) are totally playable regardless of the changes. that is not to say they aren't still difficult (I still have not beaten Polar Large in this game and, much to my consternation, can not even figure out a good route through it for some reason) but if you're coming in just to fuck around a bit, play through part of story mode, enjoy the cameos, and play minigames with friends, you're not going to notice the different game-feel to the extent of it being overbearing. on the flipside, I do feel justified in presenting my opinions on this in pedantic detail because beginner and advanced only make up 108 stages out of the 258 total stages between the non-DX games, which is to say that for over half of the game you will likely notice what I mentioned above unless you have never played the originals.

regardless of everything listed above, I've actually rated this one a bit higher than super monkey ball deluxe, a collection that still has the original physics intact. my rationale: banana mania is an amazing package overall. what honestly frustrates me more than anything about this game is that it perfectly captures the features and content I'd want in a remake of these games without the tight gameplay I originally adored in the originals. whereas deluxe (on ps2 mind you) was a poorly performing mess with overly-long course structure and a lack of improvements over smb2, this game is packed to the brim with extra modes, great cameo characters, and accesibility features. not everything really hits, but I appreciate how much effort and material there is here with so little development time.

the main game specifically deliminates between the first two games for its courses, unlike deluxe where stages from both games were interleaved. each course is 1:1 with their original set of stages, with extra stages now being unlocked if all the regular stages were completed without the helper functions active. master mode for smb1 is now accessible just by completing expert without the 1cc requirement or even extra stages being finished. there are also marathon modes for each, which while not as wild as the ultimate course from deluxe, still are great additions. stages in both have been rebalanced, with the original layouts being included in a special purchaseable game mode. overall the rebalances were really well done: probably the most notable for me was Arthopod, a stage from smb2 that was complete bullshit originally and has now been made less annoying to deal with by far by removing gaps. virtually all of smb1 master was rebalanced as well, with Stamina Master getting a much-needed nerf to its infamous middle 1x1 moving tile balancing section (which balances out the more difficult first and last sections a bit). the other master changes honestly make some of the stages like Dodge Master and Dance Master trivial, but I don't really mind considering that the requirements for obtaining master are less restrictive now. other changes are more subtle, such as adding curved inlets to the titular launchers in Launchers (which honestly don't help very much) or an extra 30 seconds for the timer in Exam-C (which helps an insane amount).

there's a story mode identical to that of smb2, with truncated cutscenes in mime retelling the lovably bizarre plot of the original. personally I don't mind this change, as the story isn't really that important or complicated. I'm a little puzzled at why they didn't use the expanded worlds of deluxe's story mode, but it's not a big difference either way. as I mentioned prior stages that were changed have their original versions present in a standalone mode, and all of the deluxe-exclusive levels have a mode as well. playing through them all back to back, I have to say I still like them for the most part, as there's a lot of great ideas present (maybe one too many maze stages tho). there are also a few modes that remix the levels. golden banana mode is probably the best of these, where you need to collect every banana in a stage in order to clear it. this actually changes how the stages need to be approached quite a bit. the opposite of this is dark banana mode, where any banana touched instantly causes a game over. while the idea is good in concept, they're designed for a level of precision I just don't think exists in this game. finally there's reverse mode, where certain levels start you at the goal and make you work your way back to the starting point. the best level of these is Free Throw, where they make you throw yourself backwards onto the starting platform in a cool twist. the others mainly just require you to tread the same path as whatever the hardest goal is, so they come across as rather redundant.

minigames are also back in full force, with all of the features from deluxe retained to my knowledge. the big thing that turned me off here was the lack of alternating multiplayer, which even in a patch could be such a trivial addition. I bought this on ps4, where I don't really have extra controllers to work with, and it's frustrating that my roommates and I can't play monkey target or billiards by passing the controller around. overall the minigames seem to be pretty much as I remember them from the old games, with all the customization you could want to boot. I can't really pretend something like monkey race isn't scuffed as fuck, but they were in the originals as well so it's pretty faithful. all that I played other than monkey target look very solid... monkey target is honestly a "Made in Dreams"-ass game here, but it's so annoying in its original form that I'll let it slide here. most of the other games here I can just experience via yakuza or really don't care that much about, beyond perhaps trying to go for completion later down the line.

I also wanted to briefly mention the art design for both the menus and the levels, which are absolutely phenomenal. beyond some UI nitpicks I mentioned earlier I think the interface is very clear and clean, and feels like an accurate translation from the older games to a modern style. the world designs are really gorgeous, and blew me away with their accuracy. I really would not have thought a quickie project for RGG would capture the style and detail of the original worlds so well in HD, but they absolutely nailed it here. the banana blitz-era monkey designs I'm not crazy about but they do the job fine, and the cutesy redesigns of kiryu and beat are so fun; I still can't believe they're in the game!! the music has all been remixed as well, though I personally think they're pretty middling overall. the original soundtracks are legendary so I definitely didn't expect them to live up here, but they really veer into tacky EDM territory more often than I would like.

finally, I wanted to bring up the accessibility options, which are much-needed additions for newer fans looking to try the series out. you can use helper functions in each level to double the timer as well as open up a very useful slow motion mode for the cost of receiving no points upon clearing the level and disabling the extra stages for the course. I messed around with these a bit and I think they do a good job of covering the bases for someone learning a given stage. if stage is too taxing, you can also pay 2000 banana coins to mark it as cleared. which is a hefty toll but honestly worth it when poking around in the special modes to skip annoying levels that would take a lot of practice. finally, the jump from banana blitz has been added in as a purchaseable item, and surprisingly it doesn't void trophies/extra stuff like the helper functions (though it can't be used in ranking mode). when watching trailers I thought I wouldn't touch this at all but I decided to try it out when struggling on Warp and wow did it really save my ass. because the jump wasn't present in the original games, it opens up a lot of ways to break previously challenging level design, and honestly that became the most fun part of the game for me at points. skipping all of the tiring maze levels from smb2 feels so great, and I even managed to pull off a strat equivalent to the speedrun route for Stamina Master by jumping at the peak of the first ramp. it honestly made the final worlds of story mode a lot more enjoyable given how many frustrating and gimmicky levels are contained within it (they were bad in the original too, not just this game). when I eventually get around to smb2 master and master extra, I'm sure I'll have fun finding ways to break levels that originally took me dozens of lives to beat.

I think I've exhaustively covered every aspect of this game that I've played so far... and now that I've finished this giant wall of text I can finally move onto some other games. I don't think I've wasted my time with this game at all, and I'm glad this package exists, but man does it really not scratch that itch that the original games do. perhaps an engine on par with the original simply isn't capable of happening without the original source code available... but at the end of the day I'll still have the original games to return to when I really want to experience monkey ball as it originally felt.

it took me ENTIRELY TOO LONG to understand that this is a quintessential video game. my past attempts at plumbing its depths have failed—it felt cramped and clunky compared to super metroid or even the nes original. every so often i would make another failed attempt and come away with the impression that it was one of those "you had to be there" experiences and i had simply missed the boat forever... (i scarcely even knew of it until after i had played SUPER metroid, despite my age (i turned 11 in june of 1991, setting na release dates aside)) which sort of reinforced my uncertainty about its whole appeal, because, i mean, i HAD a game boy and i love and cherish the handheld mario and zelda games of the same era. what was i missing?

maybe first and foremost—and i am certainly not saying anything new or revelatory, here—that cramped screen space is a boon to the claustrophobic atmosphere of this thing, definitively setting it apart from other games in the series. you especially begin to feel this when you've made some progress and begin to hurt for a map, or some indication of where precisely the metroids you've yet to find and defeat may be lurking. the sheer empty darkness of these chasms is both smothering and informative of the barely fathomable scope of the world around you. this rules! metroid 2 is a HORROR game. its music often being sparse gothic dirges, all discordant 4-bit harpsichord, pulse wave doom and skittering alien noises, the vibe is relentlessly eerie. an even spookier precursor to the dank jams of castlevania: harmony of dissonance. it takes you back to a time when nintendo weren't afraid to experiment and make strange, almost avant garde art with their games. this is just about a masterpiece of exemplifying the beauty of technological limitations.

i won't get deep into the storytelling aspects, but one of the more impressive things to me, here, is the fine balance of streamlined, almost arcade game like flow to things (read: yes, it can feel a bit repetitive (though i DO feel this has been overstated, as the quake and lava-lowering that marks its gated progression is actually pretty satisfying when you've been hunting for a while...)) and environmental, cinematic (dialogue-free) storytelling. the events of super metroid resound in my mind now that i have my own experience with the oddly bleak return of samus in there, too.

(note: i played this in retroarch with one of those game boy color shaders that represents the handheld's screen as a frame around the game itself and i 100% recommend this.)

(extra side note: if metroid was inspired by alien, metroid 2 would seem to be obviously inspired by aliens in that it is primarily a mission of extermination... but it also presages the ideas of prometheus—specifically with regard to the fate of the chozo and the engineers and their role in the existence of each's lethal cosmic progeny—in some pretty interesting ways. makes u think.)

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is an experience unlike any other. It's hard to begin to put the game into words. I think a lot of critics are quick to dismiss YIIK because of it's pretentious title, ridiculously unlikable protagonist and the ongoing controversy surrounding the game over time - some of which is justified, some of which is blown out of proportion. These things are true, unfortunately. The subtitle of YIIK is ridiculously pretentious, and regardless of intent the protagonist, Alex, is deeply, deeply unlikable. But what more is there to YIIK? I think what is here conveys more than a failed pretentious JRPG-wannabe meme game. This game IS saying things, and I think considering just how much of a process this game was for the developers - who saw their own mother die during production of the game - it would be disrespectful for me to disregard their intentions and attempts at making meaning through the gameplay and the story. So, forgive me if this is a long review beforehand.

YIIK focuses on a year in the life of Alex Eggleston, the most average young adult white dude to have probably ever been conceived. We all know someone like Alex YIIK (which is what I will be calling him in this review.) Vapid, yet confrontational. Smug, yet substanceless. Every human flaw you can imagine, Alex YIIK has it in droves, and he doesn't really have much in the way of positive attributes to like him. Why do people... LIKE Alex YIIK? What are his positive traits? He's never succeeded at anything worthwhile, he's not kind or big-hearted, he's not particularly smart or attractive. As a result, Alex YIIK, our protagonist, is the walking flaw. He's an amalgamation of everything that could possibly be wrong with a human being. The creators know it, and they make it very clear after a while. He's a pretentious little brat, who thinks the world revolves around him.

You might think it's a bit weird that I've gone on to talk about this first before talking about the gameplay, or the overall plot - but it's important to understand that if Alex YIIK does not work, this game does not work. If this game cannot make Alex YIIK into a deep and substantial character with a strong role in the story then it's game over. The whole game revolves around him. A lengthy amount of what I'm saying is going to be about him.
So, how does Alex YIIK play out? How does he fit into the story? ... Good question.

The idea of the story presented by YIIK is that Alex YIIK is explicitly a bad person. All of these negative traits are not a byproduct of poor writing, they are intentional. So, the story necessitates that he grow and become a kind person who cares for his friends and appreciates the world around them. It's a simple moral. Alex YIIK starts off the story by being a bad friend, bullying Rory, and berating his mother for not doing good enough. At the end of the story, YIIK is clear - Alex YIIK is a terrible guy, and he has hurt all of his friends and family. He knows it, and he makes a vow to change. So, we have an arc. How does the story actually engage with this, and importantly, can a story like this work in the first place?

You'll quickly notice that every question you can ask of YIIK leads to another one. This is because YIIK is very poorly written. It's an undeniable feature of the game that no amount of reduced monologue options (yes, that is a real feature) can fix. YIIK is convoluted, often needlessly, requiring you to interrogate every aspect of the text with a fervor to understand basic things about it. Despite what detractors would have you believe, this has nothing to do with postmodernism. It has everything to do with incompetence. Characters recite wikipedia articles to Alex YIIK about the mechanisms of metaphysics, Alex YIIK goes on borderline nonsensical tirades to the audience about whatever the hell he feels like and the two endings presented are incredibly abstract in an uninteresting and somewhat lazy way. So, decoding Alex YIIK and the story itself is needlessly hard, because YIIK tells its story very poorly. Again, the memes are right, and funny. "Vibrating With Motion" is more than just a meme, it's an indicator as to how the game's writing fails.

However, despite this, I think Alex YIIK does KIND OF work as a protagonist. His unlikability is undeniable, but the story does have a few very compelling ideas working with him.
A) Alex YIIK's unlikability is very, very well established. The story constructs his role well, and a lot of his internal monologues provide this increasingly frustrating sense that Alex YIIK knows what he is doing is wrong, but that his arrogance won't let him stop. It is genuinely harsh and sometimes almost personal to see him be a fuck-up. They wrote the most unlikable man in the world, to great effect.
B) The idea that Alex YIIK REALLY IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE is deeply, deeply fascinating. The world does revolve around Alex YIIK, and it's something that Alex YIIK explicitly rejects. But really, all he is rejecting is the responsibility and the acknowledgement that comes with. He was fine with acting like he was the only one who mattered until responsibility came with it. So, when he faces the facts? When he realises that his presence in the universe is what will tear everything apart, and then he sees it happen? That's incredibly emotionally damaging for Alex YIIK, and does GENUINELY humble him. I like that. It's a good subversion.
C) The game essentially ends on the twist that you, the player, are the Alex YIIK of your own dimension. That sounds... ridiculous. That's because it is. It does really add to him, though. Alex YIIK goes from an unlikable bastard, to an uncomfortable mirror. Somewhere, in another universe, you could have been Alex YIIK. Exactly like him. Earlier, I mentioned that we all know someone like Alex YIIK. That someone is us. Alex YIIK has flaws so numerous, inevitably, we will see that flaw in ourselves. This is really cool. I think it explains why Alex YIIK is so viscerally hateable. It's like looking into one of those mirrors that makes you look fatter than you really are. Everybody laughs at a hall of mirrors, but if you're afraid of being fat, seeing that in the mirror can be quite impactful and scary. Alex YIIK is that for every flaw a person can have. That's scary, and quite powerful. I like that a lot.
D) The ending of the game does hold Alex YIIK accountable for being such an asshole. I have my issues with the ending but Alex YIIK doesn't get off scot-free. Just the opposite, he gets punished extensively.

That's what I like about Alex YIIK. I think he's a very interesting character when viewed through these specific ideas. However, uh, while I think these ideas really work, there is a story going on around him that he does not work in.

Alex YIIK has friends who seem to forgive him for everything and treat him like some kind of saint. Why would he even have friends who care about him? He's done nothing to earn their respect and friendship. He has no redeeming qualities at all. Yet, even when he shows basically no reform and offers weak-willed half hearted apologies, everybody falls to their feet to pray for him. This is really stupid. The rest of the cast will consistently break character just to puff Alex up. It just runs in contrast to the game's themes. Alex YIIK has to care for his friends, be a nice guy and do for them what they do for him - he can't be totally unlikable all the time and have people fall at his feet. This happens for the whole story, to the point where it gets all of his friends killed. This is what really instigates his change, but this is only for the final few hours of the game. They sell it, but it's already too late. Alex YIIK does go through development before that point, becoming marginally nicer - but it's not enough of a constant change to lead to this kind of Persona 4 style friendship group that support each other all the time. Especially not when Alex YIIK can make one of the characters kill themselves. Which, disregarding the obvious tastelessness on display, is absolutely terrible - and is tolerated by the main cast. It just doesn't work out. Alex YIIK develops in a way that feels totally disconnected from the rest of the cast, and it seriously kills the theme of the game.

In summary on Alex YIIK himself before I talk briefly about the rest of the cast, Alex YIIK simultaneously works, and yet, he doesn't. He's a great character concept carrying poignant ideas throughout the story, even if he's written poorly - but he is in total disconnect with the world around him. This kills him as a character, and makes him feel more like he is being celebrated for being a bad person, rather than growing - which he needs to do for the story to function.

The rest of the cast are rather hit or miss. I was a really big fan of Rory and Claudio. Rory is a sweet but really depressed guy who's struggling with his mental health after the death of his sister. He doesn't know how to cope, and this has led him to the point of delusion - when he meets the cast, he almost seriously hurts them because of this delusion. This plunges him into depression when Alex YIIK screams at him, telling him nobody cares about his dead sister. A lot of the game is helping him cope, and becoming a better and more confident person who can help others. He's sweet, and I like him. Claudio, on the other hand, is a mature black man who runs a record shop and is super into weird anime. He's really chill and respectful, and he doesn't like to lose his mind over anything. He's got a business of his own, a comfortable adult life, and he's happy that way. I like that. He's a good contrast to Alex YIIK - when he isn’t breaking his character to lick his boots. The rest of the cast suck and are boring. Most of them are just exposition dumps. Michael especially is probably the most boring fictional character ever, despite being a clear expy of Yosuke from Persona 4. I found most of them grating, with Rory and Claudio being the only major exceptions.

I still haven't talked about the gameplay yet, and it's for good reason. It REALLY sucks. Everything is based on little QTE minigames, and all of them are very unfun and repetitive. These minigames are clearly inspired by Mario and Luigi, but they lack the diversity to keep them interesting. Instead, you are doing the same QTE on loop with little to no strategy. It's just painfully boring, and that is all there is to it. Add on the uninteresting dungeons that do little of note with their puzzles as well as mind-numbing grinding requirements throughout the game, and actually playing this game is terrible. The gameplay just isn't up to par.

The music, on the other hand, is somewhat solid. It's all hit or miss with this game, but I think this soundtrack does land some good ones. Alex's theme is actually pretty good, and it makes for a good leitmotif that reappears throughout the game in various new contexts. A lot of the battle music is really awesome, and diverse, due to the huge amount of composers who worked on the game. Some of the tracks are still really bad, though. The soundtrack lacks consistency and cohesion outside of Alex's motif, which is definitely a result of numerous composers who were working on different pages. The visuals are particularly striking and memorable, too. I really liked them, they really do encapsulate post-modern visual design, conveying many emotions and scenarios through minimalism and surrealism. It's a cool visual fulfillment of post-modernism inspired by post-modern paintings and artists.

So what's left to say about YIIK? Honestly? A lot. Maybe one day I will make a full-on video essay on this behemoth. It's a complex beast, and I'm glad I sat down and really gave it a chance. However, it also really, really sucks. It sucks to see a game that I personally find myself morally agreeing with in many ways just... suck so much shit. But still, I think there is something to be learnt from this. I think just like how Alex YIIK represents our worst insecurity - YIIK itself is no different. Anybody could have made a game like YIIK - ambitious, with a lot to say, that falls short for one reason or another. I feel for the developers, because I think they had a lot of ideas and everything just kind of came crashing down on them. Their heart was in this, and so was their passion. It just hasn't born out. It can happen to anybody, it really can. I don't fault them for this game. I don’t fault Alex YIIK entirely, either. Because in both cases, it really can happen to anybody. We’ve all got a bit of Alex YIIK in us - and we all have the potential in us to make something like YIIK, for better or for worse. This isn't just a "quirky Earthbound-inspired RPG,” like many people insist that it is. This is a uniquely bad game - something that could only come from passion, and love.

So, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is bad. Really bad, actually. But it is genuine. ACKK Studios was making what they wanted to make. This is an earnest trainwreck, rather than a cynical attempt at a generic, indie RPG. Maybe that brings you comfort. Maybe that makes the game even funnier. Personally, I think that makes this whole thing hurt just a bit more.